Tuesday, December 24, 2013

SEO: Hiring Out Versus Going It Alone

If you have a website for your business, you have probably come to realize how important it will be for you to boost this website's online visibility (after all, you are unlikely to get a lot of visitors to your site if no one knows that your site exists in the first place!), but while this might seem like a straightforward issue, there are a couple complications that come into play when you are trying to boost your website's profile: namely, whether it is better to do this yourself, or to hire someone else.

While it would be wonderful if there were an across-the-board answer that solves this problem, the truth is that the answer to this question will be different for every different company.

SEO (which stands for "search engine optimization") is the process of causing your website to appeal to search engines - and there are actually people who are "SEO experts," and who make a living doing SEO work for different websites; the good news about hiring one such expert, of course, is that they are able to quickly carry your website to the top of search engine rankings pages, but the bad news is that they often charge an arm and a leg to do so!

When trying to figure out whether or not you should hire someone to do your SEO work, the main thing you need to determine is which has more value for you: your time or your money. For some people, it will be worth the money they save for them to study up on SEO themselves, and to build their website on their own; on the other hand, there will be those who will lose more money in the amount of time it takes them to learn and implement all this stuff than the money they would pay someone else to do it - in which case, it is well worth hiring out!

Of course, it doesn't really matter how you get to the desired end result (that is, a website that ranks highly on search engines) so much as it matters that you get there somehow - but with this knowledge, you can decide whether you want to get there on your own or hire someone else to help.

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How To Make Customers Feel Welcome Without Making Them Feel Overwhelmed

One thing that will be important if you have your own company is that you make customers feel welcome when they walk in your store, but another thing that is important for you to realize is that it is also possible to make customers feel suffocated and overwhelmed; in order to increase the success of your business, it will be important that you have an understanding of the difference between making your customers feel comfortable and making them feel like they just want you to leave them alone!

You should greet a customer the moment they enter the store, and then you should ask them if there is anything you can help them with; this is important, as a lot of people will greet a customer, wait for them to walk around for a bit, and then ask if they need help with anything - but when you ask as an addendum to the greeting, the customer will feel as though you are being helpful, without feeling as though you are being overbearing.

Another thing that tends to bother customers is a "hovering body"; you will want your customers to know that you are available to help them in any way they need and to answer any questions they have, but it is much better (and much more effective) to let them know you are ready to help by wearing a smile and remaining open and available with your body language than by sticking close to them and waiting for them to ask you a question.

And if the customer requests help from you, make sure you go over and above what is necessary in trying to help them, sticking with them as long as they need you - but not sticking with them any longer than they do!

Being helpful to your customers without making them feel like you are bothering them, or like you are trying to "sell them something," can be a fine line to walk, but you will keep getting better at it as you keep these tips in mind - and eventually you will have no problem at all making your customers feel comfortable and right at home!

Completing A Long-Term Project More Easily By Tracking Your Progress

Regardless of whether you are a high school student, a college student, or a full-time employee at a desk job, one of the most difficult things can be working on a long-term project that requires a lot of work, and one of the reasons why this can be so difficult is that it is often difficult to see your progress. While working on a project over a long span of time, it can feel like the project will never end; one way to counteract this feeling is by keeping track of your progress as you make your way through a project.

The first thing you need to do in order to track your progress throughout the duration of a project is to devise a step-by-step plan of how you will approach the project; this will give you a framework from which you can work, figuring out how much work you need to do at each point in time.

As you start moving through the project, you can fill in notes regarding your work on each section of the project; not only will these notes help you see how far along in the project you have come, but they will also give you a detailed breakdown of how much work you have done.

You can "mark each section off your list" as you complete each section, which will allow you see how many sections you started out with and how many you still have left to complete.

When it comes to long-term projects, discipline will, of course, be a very important aspect, as you can come up with all the "plans" and "charts" you want, but this will mean nothing if you are not maintaining discipline to work on the project as time passes. As long as you are able to focus on a long-term project from an early point - keeping track of your progress as you make your way through it - you should have no problem completing the project successfully and without any stress!

How To Keep Conversations Short

People often say that time is money, and even if you disagree with this, you certainly feel that time is important. Regardless of whether someone believes time to be money or leisure or fun, one thing remains constant: time is important. And even though it might seem funny to figure out how to "keep conversations short," you will also acknowledge that you often end up in conversations you would rather end quickly. Regardless of whether these conversations end up occurring with a neighbor, a coworker, or a stranger, you will find that you have more time if you learn how to keep these conversations short.

Be polite: When aiming to end a conversation quickly, the best thing you can do is to summon every ounce of politeness you can muster. In fact, you may end up finding that the conversation actually drags on longer if you are rude to the person with whom you are trying to end a conversation. If, on the other hand, you are polite and friendly, it becomes much easier to graciously end the conversation, as your counterpart can leave the conversation feeling fulfilled.

Recognize what people want to talk about: Even though conversation is intended to be a back-and-forth exchange between two people, most people truly are most enamored when they are talking about their own self. Allow the other person to tell you all the things they want to tell you as quickly as possible by turning every question they ask back to them, and in this way they will feel fulfilled with the conversation much more quickly.

Know how to graciously finish: Too many people make the mistake of making excuses when they are trying to leave a conversation, and these excuses feel like exactly that: excuses! Instead, the best way to end a conversation is to simply end it; tell the person that it was great talking to them, and tell them you look forward to catching up with them again at some point in the future.

If you follow these tips, you will be able to consistently keep conversations short when you need to; and what's more, you will do so in such a way that your conversational counterpart always feels fulfilled!