If you think there is a proposed “death panel” in the current health care legislation you are being misled. Read more.
Archive for August, 2009
The Real Health Care Crisis
August 13th, 20095 Steps to Better Search Engine Optimization for Your Blog – Get More Readers, Make More Money
August 13th, 2009SEO Tips to Make Your Blog More Search Engine Friendly
Making your blog suitable for search engines and easy to navigate for your visitors is at the root of SEO. Here are a few tips to help you get more traffic and achieve what you want to online.
Search engine optimization is the process of making a website more easily accessible by search engines and making it very clear what your website is about. This is basically what SEO is all about. It’s about making your website clear and following certain standards and practices.
It’s also about getting your website ranked higher in the search engine results pages (SERPS) so that you get more traffic to your site and can more easily achieve your objectives.
Here are five basic steps to better on-site SEO for your website.
1) Write a Clear Title that Includes Your Keywords.
This is a smart thing to do for two reasons. One, it clearly states to a possible reader what your post or article is about and tells them what they will get out of it. Two, it makes it clear to search engines that the term you use in the title is a very important one on that individual page. This will help that page rank higher in the search engines for those keywords.
2) Link to Your Homepage and Other Related Pages from New Blog Posts or Articles.
When you write a new blog post, link to other pages on the same site that are related. Make sure to use keyword-rich anchor text that explains in a couple words what the linked-to post is about. This will help further strengthen the SEO of the page and will give your readers a clear path to information that may interest them. You can also link to your home page with the keywords you’re focusing on for the entire site as a whole. Again, this helps your readers navigate the site, keeps them on your site longer, and will strengthen the SEO qualities of the home page.
3) Use Your Chosen Keyword Phrase in the Body of Your Content.
Just like you want to use the keyword phrase in the title of your article, you want to make sure to use it in the body of your blog posts or website content. This will reinforce to search engines and website visitors what your content is about. If your blog is about “antique silver spoons,” you want to target that phrase and include it in the body of the writing.
4) Write Decently Long Posts
A good rule of thumb is to make each piece of content in the 250 to 500 word range. The more you write, the more material search engine bots have to read to know what your site is about. Longer, informative posts should increase your traffic over time, and the better written your work is, the more people will link to it, and help your content in search rankings. You may also find that terms you haven’t thought about are bringing people to your site because you will have more combinations of word on every single page of your website.
5) Write Great Content that is Useful and Informative.
People sometimes forget that the best way to make your site a success is to write extraordinary articles that people will naturally want to link to, bookmark, and show their friends and family. Spending a lot of time on the front end making sure your content is really good will help you more than any other search engine optimization methods every will. Focus on creating value for people and you will have a successful site.
If you do only one thing after reading this article, do this. Write awesome stuff that people fall in love with.
It is very hard to create an immensely successful blog overnight. In fact, it’s near impossible. The bloggers who are making a lot of money work harder than most and put the time in every day to create great work. That being said, if you write something so useful, so helpful, so entertaining, or hopefully all of the above, you could be one of the few overnight success stories.
It takes work, dedication, and some promotion, but you can create a successful blog and even make money from your efforts. You can start a blog for free at blogger.com or wordpress.com, but I highly recommend starting one on private hosting with your own domain name of your choice. This kind of blog will be more valuable in the long run since you will own it outright.
If you are looking for hosting, AN Hosting is the company that hosts a lot of big name blogger’s sites. AN is inexpensive and you even get a free domain name for life with some of the plans. Kill two birds with one stone.
Good luck and remember that the more work you put in, the better your blog will be in the long run. It can be very lonely at times when you feel like no one is interested in your work, but one day the flood gates will open and you will have a popular site.
Key Tips:
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
Better SEO leads to more readers, more subscribers, and making more money online.
SEO is the process of making your website more accessible to search engines. Basically, the clearer you are about what your site is or does, the easier people will find it and the higher it will rank in searches.
Four Ways NOT to Find a Job
August 3rd, 2009Have you been doing all the wrong things in your job search? I know I have. Here are a few things to avoid as you hunt for a job, as they really do not work–most of the time.
Sure, people get lucky sometimes, but maximize your interview chances by following these four tips–or, rather, these four non-tips.
Send in Resume Before Talking to Someone at the Company
This just doesn’t work. If you can talk to someone before sending in a resume and include a cover letter saying something about how you made contact, you will increase your chances of having your res looked at exponentially.
Job Fairs
These tend to be a waste of time–especially if companies in the booths don’t even accept resumes. These amount to being nothing more than cattle drives.
Headhunters
Why pay someone to find a job? These guys aren’t the kind of headhunters you want to work with. The company looking to hire is the one who pays for this kind of service. If one of these people asks for a check, tell them to take a hike.
Resume Blasts
This is nothing more than spam. No one likes a generic cover letter. BORING.
There are three things employers really are concerned with when they are searching for job candidates.
First, employers want to know if you have the “chops”–the experience and the ability to do the job they want you to do with the minimum amount of training.
Second, employers want someone who they wouldn’t mind seeing around the office everyday and working on projects with. Can I actually work with this guy or gal? Does she really understand what we want her to do? Will he make me look good or will I look like an idiot for hiring him?
Third, employers want someone who really wants the job. A big problem some companies run into (especially smaller ones) is spending a lot of money getting a new hire up to speed and trained, only to have them leave for another company with their newly acquired skills and training in their back pocket. The most expensive asset most companies invest in are employees. People are expensive.
If you really are interested in the job, prove it. Contact people from the company to talk about the position. Keep in touch. Sure, this isn’t always going to work, but the more effort you put into getting the job and showing genuine interest, the better your chances become for landing it.
