Crisis, Opportunity and At Will Employment

August 9, 2016
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Many people feel that outsourcing an IT department to an IT support Austin is an intrinsically negative activity for a company to engage in. They feel this way because in order to outsource a job it means that the people who perform that job or function inside the company will necessarily loose their positions. This is because loosing one’s position and source of income and livelihood is always a disruptive and anxiety ridden experience.

But this experience can also be the opportunity to perhaps improve one’s position as well. It is a well known adage that in the Chinese language the words for “crisis” and “opportunity” are the same word. Unfortunately this adage is somewhat inaccurate as I once had occasion to ask a native Mandarin Chinese speaker whether it is in fact true that “crisis” and “opportunity” are the same word in Chinese. She replied that the two words were similar but not actually the same. Nevertheless, the fact that they are similar is good enough for the sake of this article to make the point I want to make and that point is that having one’s IT job outsourced to a managed IT services Austin is not necessarily a horrible situation.

Many people feel that their “safe” nine to five job working in an office offers them security. Unfortunately, the sense of security that this job provides is illusory. It is illusory because the company they work for can terminate their employment at any time for any non discriminatory reason. This is because non contract employment in the United States is governed by the common law “at will” theory. This of course is not true in other countries particularly in Western Europe for example. In France there are legal protections that make it difficult for a company to terminate their employees. These types of protections although providing some degree of security for the employee tend to have a dampening effect on overall levels of employment.

SEO Utah

A Conversation with an IT Tech

August 6, 2016
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I am standing here with an IT Tech. I understand that the business you work for has recently outsourced their IT department to an IT support Austin.

IT : That is correct.

So are you going to loose your job?

IT : I am not sure about that. My department has certainly downsized since the outsourcing but we still have equipment here that requires on the spot maintenance and servicing. So I think they will keep me around to serve that function.

Have they promised you that your position is secure for the foreseeable future?

IT : In today’s corporate environment there are no guarantees of employment without a contract. All employees are considered “at will” employees by law which means the employee can quit at any time for any reason and the employer can fire the employee at any time for any reason.

That arrangement seems to favor the employer more than the employee.

IT : You can look at it that way. But if an employee has valuable skills he or she can shop them around to whoever is willing to pay the most for them.

That assumes that the economy is running under normal parameters. If the economy is sluggish it might not matter how good your skills are. You still might find yourself in a position where you cannot find a job.

IT : That is true and I have been certainly thinking about that ever since my company outsourced its IT department to a managed IT services Austin. However I guess in this day and age employees either have to try harder or become entrepreneurs if they want job security.

Right. It just seems like a tenuous situation in which to build a life where the flow of income can be disrupted at any point.

SEO Utah

Links and SEO

June 30, 2016June 30, 2016
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Search engine optimization is the process by which websites make themselves known on the internet. In a sense, SEO Park City businesses speak the language of the internet and understand its nuances. This is important because speaking on the internet is not accomplished effectively in the same way speaking in the public square is accomplished effectively. In the public square a person can shout at the top of their lungs or speak in a compelling manner or about a subject of interest in order to capture the attention of their intended audience. Not so on the internet.

In order for a SEO Utah business to capture the attention of its intended audience on the internet it must first capture the attention of search engines. This is because the intended audience is more than likely going to use a search engine in order to find the information contained on the website. Accordingly, in order to optimize the content on the website such that it makes itself known on the internet the content must do what it takes to capture the attention of the search engine.

As stated earlier, search engines are attracted to specific things. One of those things is the amount of links on other unrelated websites point to another website. The logic behind this is that the more links to a particular website in conjunction with the use of specific keywords, the more important or relevant that website would be in relation to those keywords. As such, when a person surfing the web uses those particular keywords the higher that website would appear in the search engine listings relative to other websites with less links pointing to it. Of course there are other factors to consider in terms of what techniques tend to optimize internet content over and above the use of links. None of them, however, involve shouting at the top of one’s lungs in the middle of the public square.

SEO Utah

Blog Networks

May 13, 2016
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One popular Utah SEO technique is to create what is known as a blog network. A blog network is sometimes called a “link farm” but is essentially a collection of blogs which have each been created and are owned by one SEO Salt Lake City business. Sometimes the blogs are connected but they do not have to be in order for their search engine optimization qualities to function effectively. Each blog entry will contain hyperlinks to other websites for the purpose of increasing their search engine rankings or revenue which is generated from the blog’s advertising.

WordPress is a popular platform for creating blog networks for the purpose of search engine optimization. This is true because WordPress allows an SEO Park City business to create an account with numerous sub accounts. This allows multiple blogs to be posted to by (typically freelance) content creators in order for the links within the blogs to appear to originate from multiple sources. The intention behind this is to “fool” the search engines into thinking that the website linked to is more relevant than other websites and thus increase its rank in the search engine’s listings.

This technique is frowned upon by search engines however for the obvious reason that artificially increasing the relevance of a website in this manner defeats the purpose of the search engine’s goal to provide relevant information to its customers. To this end some search engines have sought to identify blog networks with “thin content” in order to prevent their content from being considered by the web crawlers designed to measure the relevance of a website by enumerating the number of links to it exist. For this reason some SEO Utah businesses employ content creators to create content which is less thin than auto generated content which had been previously labeled as thin by search engines.

SEO Utah

SEO Not Necessarily for Human Consumption

March 24, 2016
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When writing SEO Salt Lake City for web bots, although correct grammar is not required, artful content creators will seek ways to weave the keywords into text that reads as if it is written for human consumption. This is a good practice because web bots are designed to react to actual content and discard content that is obvious spam. The question remains how competent a web bot is at this task. Content creators would do well to anticipate that web bots are getting better at their task on a daily basis. As such creating content as if the target audience is an actual human is good insurance against a web bot discarding the content as spam.

A typical strategy for most Utah SEO outfits is to create a series of “fake blogs” intended to trick the web bot into thinking it is looking at content written by a disinterested third party. This content need only be three hundred words in length (typically amounting to three paragraphs of one hundred or so words each). Within this content there should be at least two key words and two links back to whatever website the SEO content is trying to enhance in the search engine listings. Moreover, the content has to be mostly or completely original. To top it off, adding a picture in combination with the aforementioned seems to be enough (for now) to fool the web bots into thinking the content is sufficiently “legitimate” to positively influence the ranking of the website linked to in the content.

Ultimately, the more legitimate links to a particular website in existence out there on the web, the higher the website linked to will appear on search engine listings when searching for the keywords embedded in the content. As such one strategy employed by SEO outfits is to create content web bots will deem legitimate but not necessarily for human consumption.

SEO Utah

Citations Help Utah Business Get Discovered On Line

October 20, 2015
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SEO Utah

When designing an SEO strategy for a local Utah business one tactic to consider is the use of local citations. A citation is an online reference to your business’s “NAP” or name, address and phone number. Google uses citations when evaluating your business’s online presence to determine how relevant your business is in relation to a particular Google search. As such, the more citations to your business Google finds on the web the more potentially relevant Google will consider your business to be. The more relevant Google considers your business to be, the closer to the top your business will appear in the listings resulting from a Google search.

Where to List Your Business

There are many ways to build the on line presence of your business by increasing the number of citations available for Google to find. Websites such as Yelp, Hotfrog, Yell.com and Foursquare are obvious first places to list citations to your business. Here is a list of the top 50 citation sources in the United States. These websites allow people to search for local businesses by asking you what type of business you are looking for and the location in which you want to find it. As such a business’s name, local Utah address and phone number is all readily displayed together. In addition to these websites, listing your business’s NAP on local blogs and on line periodicals will help to increase your business’s relevance in a Google search. A business can also be listed through Google itself on “Google My Business.”

Citations Should Be Consistent

It is important to make sure that the information contained in all citations to your business is consistent. Inconsistent citations will negatively impact your relevance in a Google search. As such, if inconsistent citations exist for your business you should act to make them consistent.

SEO Utah

Understanding the Basics of SEO – Park City SEO

August 12, 2015August 12, 2015
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SEO is simply described as understanding the way search engines think and work. The purpose of SEO or search engine optimization isn’t to undermine or cheat search engines, but to communicate to them your intentions so they can recommend your website for relevant searches. Local SEO Park City companies make it their first priority to understand the ways of Google, Bing, and other popular search engines. Here are some things to consider when optimizing your site and other social properties.

The first thing you need to ask yourself is what are search engines looking for and what aren’t they? Search engines work by referring Internet users to websites and content that is the most relevant to what they are searching for. How then, does a search engine determine what is relevant? Search engines look at content, performance of a site, a site’s authority, as well as the user’s experience navigating a site. All of these things play into how well your site will appear in a search and are what search engines look for.

What is content?

Content is simply the text on a page, it also includes descriptions, titles, and other media.

What is performance?

Performance relating to search SEO, is how fast and well your site works. Does it perform accurately and efficiently?

What is Authority?

Search engines look at the content of your page and authority refers to how other authoritative sites refer and link back to your site and vice versa. Does your site provide good enough content to link to other authoritative sites as well?

What is User Experience and Navigation?

This can be easily explained if you think about your own experience when you visit a site. What are some of your first impressions when seeing a site? Some things you might think about are how the site looks. As you start browsing the site, you might question the ease at which you can find things. Does the site look safe? These are the same things search engines look for in a user’s experience and they ask the same questions.

Ok… now what are some things search engines skip over or things they overlook? Key word stuffing should be avoided and buying links that lead nowhere isn’t recommended. When you overuse keywords on your pages it actually harms you rather than help and is referred to as, ‘Keyword Stuffing’. You also want your users to have a good experience on your page. Having too many ads and placing content in awkward places will increase your bounce rate, which is not good. Knowing and tracing your bounce rate will help you determine how to keep it at reasonable rate.

SEO also extends onto any social sites you have, for example…Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube etc. Keyword strategy is important to implement on social media sites and email as well. This is often called multi-channel optimization and will help your company’s brand. It’s also important to be consistent with your keywords and phrases within all platforms, don’t alternate or use different variations that will confuse search engines.

SEO goes far beyond what we’ve discussed, but following these few rules will help you site rank higher and increase search engine’s relevant results. Check your local listings for search engine optimization Park City Utah and you will be able to find local specialists who know how to better optimize your online marketing needs.

SEO Utah

6 Types of Free Gifts that Can Get you…

June 5, 2015June 5, 2015
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Free gifts, who doesn’t like them? “Leading with value” is a catchphrase and business core value – where business (both small and large) desire to give to their clients and customers by providing value even before they purchase from the. You can see this in action at a Best Buy tech desk, where you can go in and ask a question about an electronic that you have and they’ll freely give you as much information as they can. From there sometimes they can fix the problem on the spot free of charge. What a great way to get people to both come into the store and to interact with your personnel.

It’s much the same way online. You can easily give away “free” value to help people see more of what you have to offer as well as insight into an area they are in need of more information. Everything from how-tos all the way to where-tos (Places to visit) to tips Here’s a list of 6 items that you can give away to add value and gain trust and following.

EBooks – One of the earliest online items for people to be able to buy, eBooks offer something that most people are already acquainted with as well as something that has become even more accessible with the availability of tablets to the masses on which they can be reading these books. It can be even more powerful If it’s something you normally sell on your website or elsewhere, then the visitor feels a lot of incentive to get the free item.
Software – The barrier to entry used to be so high for software. Now you can often easily and cheaply build plug-ins, apps, online tools, downloadable tools, if you use the right tool or have the right connections. In addition you can purchase private label rights software that you can utilize to add value to your customers.
Reports – Have some time on your side? A report is just a short eBook that is more focused on solving one problem, instead of an overall “how to” like a book would be. If you can do the leg work and the research work, the report could be an ideal offering of a smaller portion of what you have. It can also be more niche specific to target new verticals that you may want to bring into your funnel. You can also produce a report from software – similar to a FREE SEO report from an SEO agency in Salt Lake City.
Coupons – This one is a stead standby. People do love being able to get a deal and what better way than by getting it right from you. While you may want to watch out for discount seekers, as they may not make good long-term customers, you can still benefit greatly by reducing the barrier for people to try out your service or product by using a coupon. Don’t misuse the coupon though. Be sure that you have a strong follow-up plan in place to build a relationship with those that use the coupon. Sites like Groupon and Living Social were raving successes because people love coupons, but most businesses who offer deals there have done poorly at building a relationship with those that bought a coupon for their business.
Videos – Offering a video lesson or videos of a live event as a freebie is a great way to repurpose videos that you’ve made. Just load them up to deliver to the people who sign up for your list. People love video and YouTube is continuing to be one of the leading search engines in the world over all. You can choose to deliver the video after sign-up or offer free podcasts or videos to build a relationship before purchase and give even more reason for them to sign-up, whether it’s to get additional videos, further insights, or just to be mailed links by which to watch the next video.
Checklists – Checklists are so simple and yet, many people crave them. Why? Because there is so much information out there, we need someone to take it back to its basics again and a checklist is a great way to do that. The top 10, 5, or whatever number you choose will often be great intro information, however, if you want to make a bigger impact, get a little crazier and go for 50 or 100.

Utilize the ideas above to bring in even more people to your funnel. Use them to bridge the gap of trust and value and show potential clients and customers the value you provide. As you can see, there are so many different ways to go about this, that you can really decide which one fits best for you and your potential customers.

SEO Utah

How to Make Your Site Mobile Friendly

May 4, 2015
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In recent posts, we’ve talked about the upcoming Mobilegeddon (which is already upon us) and how to determine if your site is SEO friendly or not. Today we’re going to give a couple of resources to look at if your site comes back as not SEO friendly. With most things, there’s an easy way and a hard way.

Too note, there are several ways by which you can make your site mobile friendly – the two main styles are making it responsive (creating a fluid like design that responds to the display/media type) and making it adaptive (creating several different designs with specific sizing for different designs). That discussion of which is better can be left for you to choose. Hear, we’ll largely be talking about responsive solutions.

Easy Way – WordPress

While some may debate whether WordPress is the best platform or not to host your site on, we have to say that from personal experience we strongly agree. Having worked with several different CMS platforms as well as several different types of static sites, WordPress continually appears as one the easiest to implement and use and yet one of the most dependable and powerful. You can do everything from host a simple blog to turn it into a robust eCommerce site. WordPress is also so easy to update and add further capabilities to – such as easy social sharing, list building, SEO compatibility, and even mobile responsiveness.

Yes, in many sites, mobile friendliness can be attained simply by adding a mobile plug-in. With a little bit of work to make it look good and unique, your site could be mobile friendly very quickly and can often be done by even a novice to web design with a WordPress plug-in. Some of the most common WordPress Plug-ins for making a site mobile friendly are:

Jetpack by WordPress.com
WPtouch Mobile Plugin
WP Mobile Detector
WordPress Mobile Pack 2.0

Hard Way – Any Other Way Than a Plug-in (Via WordPress)!

Yes, for novices, any other way than a plug-in or a simple line of code will be harder to implement, but doesn’t make it any less important or needed on sites outside of WordPress (or other comparable CMS platforms with mobile plug-ins or extensions.) A great place to start here is to look again to our favorite search leader Google. Google actually has a pretty thorough explanation of creating mobile friendly websites as well as some of the common pitfalls mobile friendly coding can create for search engines. Very nice of them to give us such insight into the design and implementation. They have a solid section of mobile information at https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/get-started/?hl=en.

In addition, another great resource in helping you understand mobile design experience even further is https://www.edx.org/course/building-mobile-experiences-mitx-21w-789x. That mobile course is offered by MIT for free through edX. However, this is not really an easy to get going course for newbies, but is great for developers or intermediate coders.

For novices, we can’t help but recommend simply using the WordPress platform and implementing one of their plug-ins to make your website SEO friendly. If you want to keep your current platform or straight code, then the Google and MIT resources are great to help you understand the most important elements and even a little deeper. With that being said, the importance of simply partnering with an agency to cannot be understated. Use their skills to help make the process so much easier and more pleasurable for yourself as well knowing that the design is done in the best way for both your rankings and your users. Check out Barking Frog SEOs mobile website design capabilities as well as their solid local search engine optimization abilities if you’re looking for an agency that can truly get you the rankings you deserve and ensure that your site is mobile friendly.

SEO Utah

How to Animal Proof Your Website

March 24, 2015
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“Animal proof?” you ask. Yes, animal proof, in particular panda, penguin, and pigeon although we’re sure more. What are we referring to by naming pandas, penguins, and pigeons? None other than the almighty Google’s algorithm changes. While each change effects different aspects of the web and search, all of the changes are focused on done with the same intent. To improve the quality of results and reduce spam. Google’s focus since their inception is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Therefore they are constantly trying to figure out how to do that more effectively and efficiently. One of the reasons that they have to work so hard is because so many people are trying to “game” the system and thus the reason that many sites were hurt by the updates. Outside of technical errors, which Google has had, most of the search results changes have been in an effort to control or eliminate spam and provide better quality results. Here-in we can put together an animal proof plan for continuing to grow and market your website. Think of it like a coin – heads and tails, but they both part of the same coin.

1. Heads – Content is still King

Unique and useful content is still the king of the internet. People are looking for it and Google wants to serve it up. The problem sometimes arises that we have different meanings of useful and unique content or trouble figuring out how to create it. For instance, many stores sell the same item and yet Google can’t just provide a list of stores and say you choose. They want to try to organize the information to help you make the best choice with the best information. Therefore they can’t simply provide results that all say the same thing. They need information that is unique. Those stores which take the time to make their information more unique than others will often find it being crawled and indexed more relevantly than those whose content is left as the manufacturers description only. Here’s 4 rules of thumb to keep in mind for content.

Unique. Don’t just use the same description everyone else uses – or the same information that you give to your sales reps or affiliates. Create content that is unique to your site. Don’t be afraid to include your personality or experiences within the content as those are parts of what make you unique.
Staleness. Nothings worse than opening the bag of potato chips and going to take your first bite and finding out the kids had left them open and now their stale. Google feels the same way…. at least about content. They don’t want to serve content to a user that is outdated and doesn’t contain fresh information. They want to see you actively adding relevant content to keep things fresh and to prove that you are continuing to provide up-to-date information for their users.
Focus. It never ceases to amaze me when non-writers go to put together some information. It’s usually just ambiguous information without a clear cut focus or it is all “corporate speak” and doesn’t pertain to the needs of users. Just because you know your industry jargon for instance, does not mean that your potential client does. We need to create content based on what the user is looking for. In addition, content needs to be created in a focused direction, which should cover topics, keywords, or lists that the user would be looking for. Now don’t go keywords stuffing your articles or creating spammy content, but do take the time to actually look at what people are searching for and then include that within your content.
Great Content. Engage, entertain, and educate. Keep those three rules in mind when you create your content and you will fast be on the path to creating great content that both the user and the search engines will love. Don’t make the content all about you, but rather make it all about reaching “them”.

2. Tails – Authority (links)

Yes, Google wants great content to serve up but they also want it to be correct content. The way that they determine the authority of the content is still largely based on the links that you have. Think about it, if you have something that is really beneficial to people (like great content) they’re going to be more like to tell each other about it – hence the links. And of course if you can get a brand or noted authority to tell someone else about it, it is valued even higher. Hence why .gov and .edu links tend to carry more weight. They are from more highly trusted resources in Google’s eyes. Of course Google has worked hard to determine what links look good and what don’t but here’s 3 rules to keep in mind when thinking about links.

Natural. You need both the link and your link portfolio to appear natural. Therefore you wouldn’t have all the links coming back to your site using keywords as anchor text, nor would you want them all using “click here”. A proper balance of your URL, business name and keywords should be used when possible. You can even include your geography, for instance, a phrase like Utah SEO, would bring in both the location you serve and the type of service you offer.
Lead with Value. Give people something to link back to. Provide a valuable resource, tool, or report. Something that takes some time and effort and can provide great value to another person – but give it away for free!
Bad Neighbors. Nobody enjoys bad neighbors and neither will your rankings. Take the time to look at the links that you have and make sure they’re from good neighborhoods. Don’t be fooled into thinking that every link is a good link. On the other hand don’t be fooled into thinking that every link has to be the perfect link. Just be sure to disavow any of the poor ones and don’t try to get anymore of those.

There you have it, 7 rules based around the two sides of the coin will keep your site animal proof and your site in great shape to continue to grow and provide more and more value to people. Take the time to implement each one into everyday procedures on your site and you will soon be gaining the rankings you have been looking for as well as making the world a better place!

What is content?

What is performance?

What is Authority?

What is User Experience and Navigation?

1. Heads – Content is still King

2. Tails – Authority (links)