Let’s face it.  The recent technological revolution has made the concept of “best practices” a moving target.  As companies attempt to keep pace with the competition, sometimes the most difficult decisions involve adopting new tools just to keep up.  Take a walk down the cereal aisle at your local mega-grocery store and you have a close metaphor for the issues facing the business world.  You have to eat something so you can keep moving, but with so many choices how do you make the best purchases to maximize your money, time and effort.  Here is a quick list of the top 5 business tools to help outmaneuver your competition and avoid a headache in the process.

Accounting, Billing, Invoicing & Estimating

Simply Invoices – Let me throw this out there…I love 37 Signals; they make effective software.  Simply Invoices is a web-based application integrated with 37 Signals’ Basecamp API.  The program, built by Roobasoft, is designed to bring a Zen level of simplicity to the invoicing process.  With additional integration into the Tick time tracking application, Simply Invoices offers a plug and play solution that can services a wide range of companies.  Simply Invoices is one of those tools that will give you the incentive to make the jump away from the bulky invoicing system that you are currently using.

Collaboration Tools

Basecamp – This elegant collaboration suite is one of the most respected project management tools among small businesses, entrepreneurs and freelancers.  Ask someone who is familiar with Basecamp and you are likely to get a positive review.  If you are looking for a product to help assign tasks, meet deadlines, centralize feedback, and make your clients happy, then you should check out Basecamp.  With a full API available, Basecamp has a variety of add-on applications, like the previously mentioned Simply Invoices, to help customize the service to your needs.

The Hiring Process

Newton – If you are looking for a powerful tool to help bring sanity to your hiring process, look no further.  Newton is a web-based recruiting software application designed to make hiring simple.  Newton’s recruiting software handles all of the operational tasks associated with recruiting from hosting your careers website to providing you a 360 degree view of your hiring process.  Newton provides hiring software with an emphasis on core feature that help you save time and become more efficient.

Making Your Pitch

DimDim – If your company ever has a virtual presentation, DimDim is your dream solution.  This free, web conferencing application allows you to share your desktop and make high-quality, virtual presentations over the internet.  If your sales team is limited in the number off on-site pitches they can make, this application will help increase their range and get a fire started under your new business process.

Communication Systems

RingCentral – This amazingly powerful virtual PBX system is essentially a full-service phone system in a box.  RingCentral’s web-hosted application provides all the functionality of an in-house PBX system with additional flexibility to boot.  All calls are registered and stored online along with messages and dynamic usage reports.  RingCentral provides a number of bells and whistles such as easy to use extensions and call routing features.  The best part is the price.  If you want the functionality without the financial headache, check out RingCentral.

I am an aspiring blogger. I enjoy sharing helpful information with people. My three favorite topics are business, computers and travel.

Resource Info:
Basecamp
Newton

Author: Byron Mackelroy
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Your title tag is the most important 3 to 12 words on your Web page. It accounts for up to 80% of your rankings on search engines.

Here’s why:

Search Engines look for “searched for” words first in title tags.

The title tag is one of the main places search engines look to get a description of your site when posting the results of a keyword search.

Most people destroy any chance of success by making one or more of the following 3 mistakes in their title tags.

Before we start let’s describe what a TITLE TAG is and where it goes.
Your TITLE TAG goes at the top of the page right after your HEAD TAG. Use HTML code and do it exactly as shown below:

Now let’s get started.

Mistake #1. If your keywords or keyword phrases are not in your title tag, your Web page will NOT be found anywhere near the top of the search engines when these keywords and keyword phrases are search for.

Your keyword phrases absolutely MUST be in your title tag.

Mistake #2. Trying to put too many words and phrases in the title tag. Your title tag must be less than about 80 characters (including spaces) for Google and most other search engines. That’s why you can’t optimize a page for more than three to five keywords or keyword phrases. Two or three are better.

Mistake #3. I think this is the most repeated mistake of all and it is so easy to avoid. Be sure to START your title tag with a keyword or keyword phrase. And even more important . . . start your title tag with your most important keyword phrase.

Here are some other important notes about title tags.
Don’t repeat words over and over in your title tag. You can use some words two times such as “golf clubs” and “golf shoes,” but don’t over do it.

Have a different title tag for each page of your Web site.

Don’t put your company name in your title tag.

Killer Title Tags are your key to high rankings on search engines
Most people spend days or weeks on their Web site pages and then spend less than five minutes (some people have admitted to spending less than one minute) writing their title tags.

Remember: Your title tag is responsible for 80% of your success for high ranking on the search engines. AND it is responsible for getting traffic after you get the high ranking (because it is likely to be used for the description of your site when search engines list your page in the results for a keyword search.)

In summary: The time you spend designing and writing your title tags will be well rewarded.

Craige Stacey has been studying search engines optimization as a hobby and has achieved some very good search engine positions in the past for membership website software

Author: Craige Stacey
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

What’s the best way to optimize your site for the search engines? Should you be focused on building back links or should you be working on onsite SEO instead? Should you work on making your site more usable to your visitors or reworking it to have a higher keyword density?

-

[Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

If you have never built a website before, one of the quickest and easiest ways to get your first domain live and operational in only minutes is to install WordPress on your website.

WordPress is a blogging platform that allows you to have a pre-built website for free that will allow you to focus on the more important items like content, and if you desire it, sales and profits.

WordPress Benefits

In more than a decade online, I have literally built dozens of websites, many from the ground up… But since I discovered the ease of use and powerful flexibility of the WordPress platform, I am building most of my newest websites under this Content Management System (CMS).

The reasons I prefer the WordPress blogging platform are many, but I will sum it up with the following five key benefits:

1. Quick and Easy Installation – If you have a web hosting company that runs cPanelX as your webmasters’ control panel (many of the more popular web hosting companies do), then you will find an option in your control panel called, “Fantastico De Luxe”. When you click on the Fantastico icon, you will be taken to a page where you can add a multitude of free applications to your website, by following some simple instructions. Just click on the WordPress link to install WordPress on your website. The software will ask you some basic general information, then do the full install of one of the most recent WordPress builds into your website.

2. Website Themes – Few webmasters want to use the generic WordPress Theme that ships with WordPress. The default WP Theme is plain Jane, and to my taste, perfectly drab. There are many people who design custom WordPress Themes that you can easily upload to your domain, to change the appearance and feel of your WordPress website. Some of the WP Themes are paid versions, but most of them are free. There are more than one thousand themes loaded directly into the WordPress website ( wordpress.org/extend/themes/ ), from which you can choose, although you are not limited to just the themes loaded into the WordPress website.

3. Website Functionality – Just like with the WordPress Themes, if there is a specific functionality you want your blog to perform, there are programmers out there who have made WordPress Plugins that will do for you those things you would like to do. There are nearly 8,000 WordPress Plugins on the WordPress.org website ( wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ ), and thousands more that are not in the WordPress database. If you find a Plugin you want, just download, unzip, and upload it to the appropriate Plugin directory on your blog. After you have uploaded the Plugin, simply go to the Admin area of your Blog to activate the software.

4. Open Source – WordPress has been built in PHP, and its source code is visible to everyone who wants to look at it. On top of that, WordPress has included comprehensive documentation and a range of functions to help programmers work within the WordPress Codex. Anyone with a minimal knowledge of PHP can program WordPress Themes and Plugins, without too much effort.

5. Self-Updating – In recent versions, WordPress has included a feature that will notify you if upgrades are available for the basic WordPress operating system or your chosen WP Plugins. When upgrades become available, you will be notified, and often you only need to click a link to automatically install the upgrades and updates.

I have a friend who is a PHP coder by trade. I try not to mention WordPress in his presence, because every time I do so, I get an ear-full of “WordPress Sucks…”

To be honest with you, I still like WordPress… I like it, because it is easy to install and maintain, and I can improve it easily by using templates and plugins.

I am a coder, but life is too short to spend all of my time coding new websites… I am happy to spend my time creating content that will lead to sales… So for me, WordPress is good, and I am happy to put it on as many websites as I need to do…

If you are new to the Internet, then you might agree that WordPress is a blessing to those of us, who have more important things to do than to recreate the wheel…

Barry Prouty writes about the WordPress blogging platform. He covers topics such as WordPress Templates, WordPress Plugins, and the WordPress Codex (for programmers). For anyone looking for free “targeted” content for their blog and inbound links for their blog posts, check out the free Back Links Magnet WordPress Plugin at: http://www.backlinksmagnet.com/blog/

Author: Barry Prouty
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Follow only your SEO expert’s advice, and you’ll spend all your time researching keyword phrases and looking for possible backlinks. Follow your web designer and you’ll be immersed in building the right image for your site. Ignore everyone but your programmer and your site’s code will be a thing of beauty. But no one will ever see it.

While each of these experts have a point  — after all, your site must be optimized for search engines, have a professional image and be coded properly – they’re all missing one key element in the equation: Content.

Why is content so important?

-

[Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

When it comes to building profitable search engine optimized websites online, these are the five reasons why you need your own keyword research tool, if you would like to make any kind of money online:

1. Why Keyword Research Is Vital To Your Online Success
The problem you are faced with daily is building better websites by targeting better keywords. That all starts with better keyword research and an easy to use keyword research tool.

The pressure for newcomers starting out online is that you just can’t afford to pay those high price monthly fees to get better keywords. So you will need to get your own keyword research tool.

2. Don’t Try To Target Those High Volume Keywords
Another frustrating problem your faced with daily is which keywords must one target online to see a little success. As a beginner I made those mistakes also, going after keywords with high monthly search volume. the problem with that is that those keywords has way to much competition for any beginner.

You need to learn how to do your own keyword research, that will enable you to find keywords that doesn’t have much competition and at least over 50 searches per month.

3. Can Just Any Keyword Tool Do The Trick?
This is the most confusing problem newcomers are plagued with online today. They come online and find a couple of those free keyword research tools, and believe that once they build a couple pages for those keywords, that success will be just around the corner.

Months go by and they wonder why no clicks, and then they give it all up and decide that this online marketing thing just don’t work. the sad fact is that it does work, but you have to get the right tools, and that means you will need your own keyword research tool.

The days of building websites without using any type of keyword research is now extinct, step into the real world of marketing and wake up to the fact that keyword research is a must.

4. Go For The Low Hanging Fruit, It Is Within Your Reach
I once believed that the more searches a keyword had, the better it would be for my websites. Well, that is true and at the same, a blatant lie. It is true for those who understand Search Engine Optimization, and has been online long enough to know exactly what it tales to build better websites.

Stop chasing after those keywords with many searches, it is the low hanging fruits, the keywords that not many are targeting, that will bring you the best results. And for those who believe that PPC keyword research is any easier, it is not, the same principle applies there.

5. Build Your Web Pages Around Only One Keyword
Now for a little SEO primer, and to help you further understand why keyword research is so important.

If you want to build a profitable website, it will be best to target only one keyword per page, and just sprinkle related keyword phrases into the page your building.

You will be building content rich pages with a very tight theme that the search engines loves. So don’t build pages that has 5 or six keywords all over the site, learn from my mistakes, it will shave years off your learning curve.

I used to spend a lot of money each and every month doing keyword research until I heard of this superb keyword research tool, that outperforms most of those paid keyword services. I got myself a copy and now I can do my keyword research all year long for one low price.

Alexander Marlin, has been building profitable search engine optimized websites [http://how-to-build-website.com] online for years now, he believes that you can master keyword research [http://how-to-build-website.com/keyword-research.html] if you owned your own keyword research tool.

Author: Alexander Marlin
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

You’ve heard plenty about search engine optimization and other methods for bringing in more customers to your website. In all of the excitement over SEO, many people lose sight of the most important thing of all: their customers. If you’re not making a positive user experience a priority, then you can implement all the SEO techniques in the world and still fail to attract a loyal customer base.

How can you tell if you’ve lost sight of your customers’ needs? These are all indicators that you’re paying too much attention to search engine optimization and not enough to your customers:
-
[Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

Being entrepreneurs we are full of ideas. Often those ideas turn into little side projects. If we don’t have a good system for keeping track of everything projects will be forgotten or neglected.

Below is the system I’m currently working with for all my websites and projects.

Systems for your business and to keep track of your projects online are things I would consider essential to your Mojo!

In order to really have business freedom you need to know where everything is, get to it quickly, get your answers in short order and move on to the next project as fast as possible. Keeping organized will help you do that.

PLEASE NOTE – I really believe that everyone needs to create a system that works for them. I’m sharing my system not for you to copy exactly, but as an example of what might work for you.

Marketing Plan

I have my marketing plan in a binder and in an Open Office document. (If you’re not sure what Open Office is it rivals Microsoft Office but it’s completely FREE!). I usually change/revamp/update it about every six months. I need to do a new one actually, my old one is marked up all over the place with all the changes I’ve made .

I also have a mindmap of products/projects I am working on or have planned. I use freemind for the mindmaps which is open source.

Activity Report:

My activity report is like my bookkeeping for my entire business. I track everything in here that relates to income/expenses.

It has tabs for:
Overall Expenses, Internet Expenses, Affiliate Expenses (the ones I pay), GST Tracker (Canada), GST Paid, Affiliate Marketing Tracker, Client Sales Tracker, Coaching Sales Tracker, Product Sales Tracker

Really detailed I know but it gives me a really good overview of my entire business when I keep on top of it. Now that I send in GST I have to at least keep it up to date within the last three months but I’ve been working on keeping it completely current.

Affiliate Marketing:

- I have a spreadsheet where I list business name, affiliate #, user ID, password, resources area, affiliate link, redirect link, commission rate every time I sign up for a new program. As soon as I sign up for a program I also create a redirect. If I wait for ‘later’ it never gets done so I get on this right away.

Project Management

(This may not apply unless you provide a service, though some of it I do also use for my affiliate marketing/info product biz)

- I’m having fun with this one. The fact that I just started my outsourced affiliate management services business is giving me a new opportunity to organize in a way I never did the first time. Here’s how I’ve got this organized now:

1. Client Project Binder – First page is current clients, Second page is potential clients. I have a blue page for every client and white sheets for project details. I use a little postit sticky (yellow) to tell me I need to do something for a client and a pink sticky to say I’m waiting on a client.

Just started the paper binder and I am loving it so far! Having something actually physical and quick at hand will make a big difference to my client projects I think.

2. Basecamp – I love basecamp. I use this to organize all my projects. It’s a paid program and I don’t love the fees though, I just got used to using it and I can’t see myself running my business without it. I post to-dos, due-dates, files, messages and all client projects in there.

3. Freshbooks – again another paid service and you don’t need this if you don’t provide a service.

4. Backpack – I am just starting to use this. It’s $7/month or more but I don’t see myself using more than the smallest plan. I have been creating systems for everything I do for a long time as well and I plan on uploading every system to backpack so I can easily get someone taking over my services when the time is right and I find the right person. It will also make it more attractive to sell if every system is in place and in a very transferable place.

Conversions

Email – Aweber rocks for this. I love testing out my opt-in forms and I can keep copies of all my old forms to compare or compare the location of forms and have the conversion rate of opt-in automatically figured out.

Sales Conversions

This is a fun one. I tried for a long time to keep a spreadsheet for each website so I could track conversions regularly but I just didn’t keep the discipline to update it on a regular basis for my own projects.

So I’m setting up conversion tracking through Google so it’s automated. I know it can be done but I’ve just never done it.

Google
Ya I use Google too.
Gmail – email
Documents – Surveys mostly
Calendar – calendar to send me an email

–

So there you have it! I hope that will be helpful to you and that you get your system together sooner rather than later so you can be highly productive and create business freedom for yourself now.

Get articles like this, more helpful tips and advice about online business by visiting http://www.MarketersMojo.com

Author: Angela Wills
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

You’ve probably read those sales pitches which promise that you can use search engine optimization to become a millionaire overnight. There are plenty of unscrupulous SEO experts and of course, con artists out there who are on the lookout for a quick buck from people who are, well, on the lookout for a quick buck. These people tell you that if you adopt their less-than-ethical strategies, great riches can be yours in no time.

Of course, these come-ons are more hype than substance and even supposing for a moment that you really could make a lot of money in the short term by flouting SEO best practices, would you rather make money right now or have a business which is sustainable and continues to grow and generate revenue year after year? Hopefully the latter – because if you’re going for the quick cash-in, you’ll only be left disappointed, with nothing to show for the work you’ve done.

So how do ethics and SEO tie in? Let’s start by looking at white hat (ethical) vs. black hat (questionable/unethical) SEO.

Black hat SEO involves trying to get a high ranking in the search engines in ways which violate the letter or the spirit of ethical SEO practices. Some examples of black hat SEO include:

-
[Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

Working for yourself is tough. You don’t realize that until you start doing it – working from home that is. Your dream was of breaking free of that 9am – 5pm grind of office politics, ungrateful bosses and salaries that just didn’t match the work you were putting in. You got sick of it and set up your own business. You no longer had to worry about anyone cracking the whip over your head.

Or did you?

Now you’re the boss. Of yourself. You have to crack the whip over your own head to keep things going. That single task is a lot more difficult than most entrepreneurs would believe.

Most home business owners find that it’s easy to get distracted. A friend calls. There’s something on TV. They have a longer lunch than usual. Then they get a bit behind in their work. Then the pressure mounts. As the pressure increases their motivation drops off – quickly! It’s starting to feel like your old 9 – 5 job again all of a sudden.

Now that your motivation is suffering everything else tends to suffer with it. Your inspiration and creativity suffers. Small problems now seem huge and impossible to deal with. Heck it can get so bad that you almost consider going back to your crummy daytime job again.

So how you do beat this motivational nightmare? Use the 24 Hour Goal method!

The what? How does that work?

When most of us lack motivation business and its related tasks seem like a huge mountain in front of us that we can never climb. It’s simply too much to handle. What about if we just decided to get as far as basecamp as our first step and then worry about the other stages later? The highest mountain can be climbed one stage at a time.

That’s what the 24 Hour Goal method is. Bite sized chunks of work.

Simply sit down with a piece of paper and write down something you need to achieve for your business in the next 24 hours. Write it down on paper where you can see it. Stick it up on the wall near your desk. You need to be reminded of this constantly.

The goal or task needs to be realistic and achieveable within 24 hours. Don’t go trying to reinvent the wheel.

Now for the next 24 hours after setting that goal you sit down and make it happen. Literally no matter what! You need to be laser focused on this one single task. Let nothing distract you. Make this single thing happen!

The sense of satisfaction you’ll feel after achieving this single goal will amaze you. Not only that but you’ll find yourself motivated to working at your full potential again and taking on bigger and bigger goals to conquer.

I suppose this whole process comes from that old joke:

“How do you eat an elephant?”
Just one bite at a time

Now you understand how to get your motivation back. What are you waiting for? Set those goals and conquer them in the next 24 hours. What have you got to lose by using the 24 Hour Goal method?

This article was written by Niall Roche and provided courtesy of http://www.homeofficebuddy.com. This site is for anyone who works from home or needs help and advice setting up their own home office.

Author: Niall Roche
Article Source: EzineArticles.com