Walking on the beach we came across this beach inspiration left by another beach walker.
In the busy world of business we so often put our work before ourselves. It is important that we give ourselves the time and care and remember that to love ourselves is to be of greater value to others and the world.
When did you last look in the mirror and say I love you?
With gratitude and in abundance always,
– Des Walsh & Suzie Cheel
Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,
I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.
They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.
I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.
Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.
If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Recently, Google took it upon itself to be the bastion of quality in the world of internet marketing. Every website promotion company is well aware of the recent search algorithm updates. However, itâs not only organic search that is being assessed by Google in terms of quality. Pay per click advertising or paid searches are subjected to quality checkpoints as well and in the end, a Quality Score is assigned to every keyword of your ad campaign.
According to the definition provided by Google itself: Quality Score is an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Having a high Quality Score means that our systems think your ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad.
This definition may appear to be crystal clear, but very few marketers know how to deal with Quality Score. Here is a straightforward and simple guide that you can use in understanding Quality Score.
Google Analytics (GA) is a tool that provides rich insights to a website promotion company as to how its paid search campaigns are doing. However, there are times that you cannot assess the quality of your campaigns because Google Analytics return (not set) or (not provided) keyword data when you extract a GA report. For a rookie website promotion company, this may be confusing and may even be used interchangeably although they are two very different concepts.
A (not set) keyword data occurs when something is missing between the GA tracking and the AdWords click. Typically, this happens with auto-tagging or when repetitive codes are found on pages or there are multiple GA accounts connected to your AdWords campaign.
An experienced website promotion company would know that a URL is not just a web address. In terms of PPC Quality Score, display URLs play a significant role, since one of the criteria used by Google to calculate for your Quality Score is the click through rates of your display URLs. Length and presentation of display URLs are critical factors as to whether searchers will click on your ad or not.
For one, Google will automatically add www to display URLs with fewer than 35 characters. Historical data will show that URLs without the www prefix get more clicks than those with the www prefix. Another not so known fact is that if you exceed the 35-character limit by two (37 characters) it is perfectly fine. Last, if you really canât contain your URL within 35 characters, insert a few keywords so that when Google shortens it, your keywords are highlighted in the display URL. However, exercise extreme care as Google will decide how to shorten your URL. Basically, the rule of thumb is to target 35 characters without www.
Getting a score of perfect 10 is every web promotion companyâs dream. The excitement is equal to going viral in social media marketing services. But before you jump up and down, check for which keywords those perfect scores were given and most likely, youâll find out that these keywords have zero impressions and zero clicks. Experts are now toying with and testing whether including âemptyâ keywords gets a perfect score of 10. Your ads wonât show up for these keywords. The goal is to increase the overall score for the entire campaign and raise an ad groupâs eligibility for auctions.
Another crucial concept worth pointing out is that your ad groups and keywords have pre-assigned scores before you even launch your campaign and many experts have observed that most of these starting scores would be the end scores by the time a campaign is done. This particular information led PPC marketers to believe that you can actually modify your campaignâs architecture to boost your Google Quality Score even before you launch your ad campaign.
Along with the campaignâs architecture, matching keyword types within ad groups can increase quality scores. To get the most impressions, it is encouraged that you use a number ad groups for all keyword match types that you want to target.
Finally, if your ad campaign is fresh and new, donât use the automated bid management yet. Statistics will show that campaigns that were manually optimized during their early stages were more successful versus those that were introduced with the automated bid management system.
The Quality Score that every web promotion company is using today may not be the same a couple of years down the road. In fact, what Google considers as quality ad campaigns may not stand true in the near future. Who knows? Maybe social media marketing services will be closely tied into the PPC Quality Score. A lot of things can happen and the key is to always be on the lookout and satisfy whatever quality indicators there are.
The American Red Cross test to become a lifeguard includes a pretty scary segment. You practice swimming out to rescue a âdrowning swimmerâ and they basically try to drown you.
As a small business owner, especially in the online world, it can feel as though the world is trying to drown you–Google algorithm changes, new social networks, shifting features–all are conspiring to pull you under the surface.
Itâs helpful to have some strategies in place that will help you move from treading water to doing laps like Michael Phelps.
If you want to stay good at something, you need to continue learning all the time. Particularly with an online-based business, the sands are shifting constantly, and you need to set up a mechanism for learning new techniques. Take a look at sites like Codecademy.com and Udemy, or the courses offered through AppSumo, to keep your skills sharp. Itâs also a good idea to subscribe to the official technical blogs for some of your key platforms; youâll often get advance notice of upcoming changes. (For example hereâs a link to the Twitter Engineering blog).
Build in time each week for relaxation. The Internet will still be there when you get back. One big mistake many business owners make is allowing the business to take over virtually their entire life. Leave space for breathing, family, friends, and sitting in the porch swing. Your best ideas might emerge from downtime.
When you made your goals for 2013, did you break them down into manageable tasks that you can track during the year? Even Olympic swimmers make use of those lane markers on the bottom of the pool, and ropes on each side. You need to have milestones so that you can make course corrections along the way. I started using a year-at-a-glance calendar this year for that purpose, from NeuYear.net.
If you want to move forward this year, make sure you do some of this:
How are you going to ensure that your business moves forward this year?
Photo Credit: maHidoodi, Flickr CC.
One of the things that resonated with me as a writer during the new year is a wish that one of my favorite authors shared:
It’s a New Year and with it comes a fresh opportunity to shape our world.
So this is my wish, a wish for me as much as it is a wish for you: in the world to come, let us be brave â let us walk into the dark without fear, and step into the unknown with smiles on our faces, even if we’re faking them.
And whatever happens to us, whatever we make, whatever we learn, let us take joy in it. We can find joy in the world if it’s joy we’re looking for, we can take joy in the act of creation.
So that is my wish for you, and for me. Bravery and joy.
If you are familiar with this, then you know Iâm talking about Neil Gaimanâs New Yearâs wish. This is a wish that I feel resonates with every writer who is shaped by his or her experiences.
Bravery is a mantra that I think everyone should embrace this year, especially when we’ve been given a reprieve on doomsday last December. This is the year to make things happen and here are some resolutions that will help you achieve your writing goals.
No matter how busy you are with writing, always set aside time for travel, to de-stress and unwind. Most writers, myself included, tend to be perfectionists and workaholics, which when combined can lead to being overworked and burned out. This is why taking a break every now and then is vital to keep your creative juices flowing.
Still not convinced? Perhaps this checklist can help shed light on why writers need to travel. Before you go on your adventure, keep in mind that travel is very unpredictable; therefore, itâs better to be prepared for the worst that could happen. Always take travel insurance with you as your backup plan.
You might wonder how a must-read list of books will help you achieve your writing goals. Author Stephen King in his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, shares this valuable piece of advice to writers:
âIf you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.â
The importance of reading is reiterated throughout his book, which is woven with his often humorous insights on writing as a craft. He further states, âGood description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot.”
Getting published is one of writersâ dearest dreams, a dream that is riddled with hurdles like trying to survive daily life. Dreams donât come true overnight and the reality is you have to work to survive. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can just abandon your dream of becoming an author. It can still happen, if you make it happen.
Set aside time to write for yourself and not just for work. You might feel overwhelmed at the sheer volume of words needed to create your book, but itâs never really about the words. Itâs the story that youâre telling. Like what a friend of mine said when he paraphrased Lao Tzu’s famous quote, âThe journey of a thousand words begins with one word.â
Swallow your fear and try to be brave as you take it one word at a time. Take comfort in what Stephen King said:
âThe scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.â
One of the biggest challenges that small business owners have is finding the right employees to help take their company to new heights.
In order to find the right pieces to the employee puzzle, it is important that those running businesses take an ample amount of time to research all prospective employees, especially in a day and age of a struggling economy, not to mention numerous cases of identity theft.
According to a number of corporate security experts, some 25 to 40 percent of all workers swipe stuff from business owners, with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) estimating that employee theft involving cash, property, and merchandise may cost American companies upwards of $50 billion on an annual basis.
While some business owners are on top of the matter, others find themselves so busy that they can easily miss theft going on right under their noses.
So, how can you as a small business owner better prevent yourself and your company from being crime victims?
Among the things to look at:
* Screening applicants – First and foremost, make sure you do a thorough screening for each and every employee you consider hiring (see more below). While their qualifications for the job may be outstanding, they could have a skeleton or two in their closet that could end up costing you more than just time missed on the job. Even though many job application forms ask applicants if they have been in trouble with the law, donât be naive to think that everyone fills them out truthfully. If your suspicions are raised about a candidate, follow through on them to make sure this individual will not cause you trouble should you hire them;
* Social media chatter – One of the ways to screen employees is to follow their chatter on social media. While most are probably smart enough not to brag of any past thefts involving employers, some folks just canât help opening their mouths. If you see any such behavior on social media that indicates this applicant may be a troublemaker should you hire them, move on from them to the next person;
* Change in routine – In the event you hire someone and notice a change in their habits, donât automatically dismiss it as no big deal. Most people have a schedule they follow on a daily basis. If someone has been coming in normal hours for several months, then does a 180 and comes in unusually early or stays later than normal, there is nothing wrong with questioning them on it. While the change may be to personal scheduling needs, it could also be to access items at work such as financial records, computer passwords etc. that could be a precursor to theft;
* Financial freedom – Â Depending on the size of your small business, you may have one or more people handling finances, i.e. who cuts the checks, who has access to the company credit card to make office purchases or travel to meet clients. Make sure the individual or individuals in charge of such tasks are trustworthy enough to have in this position. It never hurts for you or someone outside the finance department to check the books from time to time, looking for any inaccuracies or large withdrawals during the year;
* Secure your business – Even though you may be watching every dollar you spend, having a security system in place at work is not only to keep the bad guys out, but also to make sure you donât have any thieves right there in the office. Having an employee take a pen or two from the office supply home with them is a far cry from taking money out of the payroll box or making out checks to themselves for supposed âwork-relatedâ expenses. Whether you go with obvious security like cameras on the ceiling or closed-circuit cameras, locked boxes for money and other financial items, or having a log that all employees must sign in and out with to remove any items from the office, have a secure plan in place;
* Let them be warned – Lastly, make sure EVERYONE under your employ knows there are consequences if they are caught stealing from the business. With the economy still struggling to gain sound footing, it is not uncommon to pick up the newspaper or read online of another employee arrested and charged with employer theft. If you donât point out the severe consequences that can happen with such decisions, you set yourself and your business up for trouble.
Employee theft happens more often than you may realize, so donât be the next victim.
Photo credit: martinpi.com
About the Author: With 23 years of experience as a writer, Dave Thomas covers a wide
array of financial topics, including finding the right home security system.