Add You - Internet and Businesses Online

Producing Premium Performance
One of the major issues that arises in managing a small or medium size business is in the area of employee performance. Many business owners are frustrated with the poor performance of their team or some individuals within their team. No matter how hard they try, they don’t seem to be able to create a sustainable improvement in performance. The tendency is to blame the employees for poor performance. However, more often than not, the problem stems from not establishing an effective performance management framework.There are a number of elements that create a framework for producing premium performance.The most important element is to establish a clear description of the required outcome of the job. This may be in terms of a position description if the job is broad and covers a number of responsibilities. Or it may simply be providing a sample or a picture of an article that should be produced by the work. When there is a clear understanding of the output required, it is much more likely that result will be produced.The second element requires establishing a best practice approach to doing the work. Often there are many ways a job can be done, but usually only one way is the most efficient. A best practice approach involves determining the best way to do the job and then requiring everyone to do

from directories are weighted less now. (This is one we have found no evidence for, but is most likely true or will be soon)

• Decreased Rate of Link Building - The speed and volume of inbound link creation to your site from other websites, if changed, can negatively affect your rankings more so now. (This one is most likely true too).

• Reciprocal Links - Reciprocal link trades are worth less then they were before or are worth nothing now. (It’s probably true that they are at least worth less now).

• Linking to Bad Neighborhoods - Reciprocal link trades hurt your rankings when you link to sites that are considered 'bad neighborhoods' by Google, such as link farms or sites that are banned by Google. (This is most likely true and has been for a while).

• Link Schemes - Participating in link schemes such as Co-ops or Link Vault can hurt your ranking more than help them. (I have not found any evidence of this so far for my client's sites, but this could be true).

Again, I don't think anyone outside Google knows which of these factors above are true or false, and how each one affects a given keyword phrase's ranking. In fact, that's the idea. Google doesn't want people 'gaming' their system. There are so many variables that need to be considered that it is very difficult to figure out which ones affect what.

*** So, what do you do no

Writing a Cover Letter
As a novice writer, I had no idea that cover letters existed until I attempted to submit my first short story manuscript to a publication whose submission guidelines required that a cover letter accompany every manuscript. Once aware of cover letters, however, I found myself confused. So I conducted a bit of research. If you are just embarking on the writer’s journey and seeking to submit your first short story manuscript, hopefully this article will assist you as some guides on cover letters have helped me.Grab your magnifying glass and come along with me to take a closer look at this type of letter.Cover letters are brief letters usually included with short story manuscripts. Normally a letter containing one to three short paragraphs, the cover letter is most often paper-clipped in front of your manuscript’s first page when you are mailing your submission. If you are submitting your manuscript through email, then your cover letter comes before your story as the main body of your email, and still serves as your introduction. Whether you are submitting through postal mail or email, your cover letter should be single-spaced, written in standard block or semi-block format, and double-spaced between paragraphs. If you are mailing your manuscript, then you should consider typing your cover letter on plain white 8 ?” by 11” paper.As stated, th

Starting this past fall (2005) Google launched a major update to their search algorithm which shook up the search engine optimization (SEO) community and millions of website rankings. The update has been named Jagger and is apparently finished.

The keywords that people used to find your site with in Google may not be producing as many visits any more because the Jagger changes caused your rankings to plummet. Of course many people have seen their rankings stay the same or improve in Jagger's aftermath too.

If your site's rankings have decreased, what can be done to get back to where you were or better in the post-Jagger Google world?

There are still a lot of questions to be sure, but there are some good beginnings of answers as well. Since this update was rolled out over months and in three distinct phases, it has been much more difficult to determine what factors have been given more weight or less.

For instance, IBL (inbound links to your site) have always been important to achieve high rankings in Google. But there are many different kinds of IBL's. Link trades, where you put my link on your site and I put your link on my site may be less valuable than a one-way link.

This has been the case for a while, but is the importance of each changed now since Jagger? Probably. I don't know all the answers, and I don't think anyone knows all the answers save the people at the 'plex (short for Google-plex).

What are some theories? Here are some of the top ones, but I am not saying they are necessarily true or false. And this is not a full list, there are most likely numerous other factors that affect Google rankings after Jagger that no one has recognized at all yet.

The following list consists of ideas I have read online, which I spend hours each day doing, or some of our own hard-earned observations using the large number of clients' websites in many different industries to learn from.

Read the following with a grain of salt, which is always a good idea when reading any articles or forum posts about SEO or Jagger.

*** Things That Could Possibly HELP You More In Jagger's Aftermath ***

• Aged Domains - Sites with domains that are older rank better now - the older the domain, the better its rankings with all other things being equal. (This is probably true to some degree).

• Very Relevant Links - IBL (inbound links) and OBL (outbound links) relevancy is more important after Jagger. This means that if you point to related sites or you get links from other sites that are related to your website, you may rank better after Jagger with all other things being equal. (This is probably true to some degree as well).

• Links From Trusted Sites Help - TrustRank (or a similar concept) is more important than ever after Jagger. TrustRank is a concept that says if you get a link pointing to your site that is highly trusted by Google (trusted either programmatically or by human editors), then you will rank better with all other things being equal. (See http://www.vldb.org/conf/2004/RS15P3.PDF).

• Variety of Links - Links from .edu and .org websites are good for increasing your rankings and are more important than ever. (It's vital to get links form a wide variety of websites. Just like your investing, you need to diversify your IBL’s. (This has probably been true even before Jagger).

• Aged Links - The older the link that points to your site, the more weight it's given now. (This also has probably been true even before Jagger).

• Embedded Links - Links that are embedded in sentences and paragraphs instead of stand-alone links are weighted more heavily now. (This may be true soon if not already).

• Article Links - Articles are what directories had been a year or two ago for link building. Links from the author by-line or within the article that point back to your site will positively affect your rankings.

• Fresh & Unique Content - Now, more than ever, regularly updated and added ordinal content will help your rankings. (This is almost definitely true.)

• Be a Big Guy - If you are a big behemoth site like Wikipedia, Yahoo, AOL, Ebay, Amazon, etc., you will rank better than you did before Jagger.

• High Traffic & Stickiness - User popularity statistics now, or will soon, affect rankings. In other words, user actions on your website, like how long they stay (stickiness), how many pages they visit, and even how many people visit your site in a given period, can all affect how Google ranks your site. (This may be true soon if not already).

*** Things That Could Possibly Not Help You Anymore, or May Even HURT You More In Jagger's Aftermath ***

• Duplicate Content - Any kind of duplicate content can hurt your rankings. Some say this only refers to other sites having the same content as you while others say even duplicate content within your own site can be bad. I find the latter hard to believe since all sites have repeating slogans, phrases, checkout instructions, or any number of other duplicate sentences within the same site. (Use http://www.copyscape.com/ to find people who are stealing your original written content and publishing it on their site).

•Hidden Text - Hidden text within your html, in div tags, CSS, or comments, can negatively affect your rankings. (This is something you should never do).

• Footer Links – Some say links in the footer are disregarded now. (This is one we have found no evidence for).

• Directory Links - Links from directories are weighted less now. (This is one we have found no evidence for, but is most likely true or will be soon)

• Reciprocal Links - Reciprocal link trades are worth less then they were before or are worth nothing now. (It’s probably true that they are at least worth less now).

*** So, what do you do now

It's Bad Business
I have a habit of trying to engage retailers in brief discussions about their business when I'm in their stores - to learn whatever I can. I admit it - I am looking for something that is "wrong," or which might be done better. Sometimes it's just "how's business been lately," hoping to glean some insight(s) into challenges they are having. Other times, when I witness something specific, I ask about it.Three different retailers in the last month have made my quest easy; they asked me for personal information (address, phone number, etc.) during the checkout process - but never asked me for my e-mail address. On each occasion I asked why. One said that it was a franchise "policy" to only send out e-mails from headquarters, another said "well, we usually ask for that too" and dutifully wrote it down, and the third admitted that they didn't keep track of e-mail addresses - even though the store spends several thousand dollars a year mailing out fliers and discount offers to customers.As Paul Newman said in the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," when talking about E.H. Harriman's reaction to hiring a chase team to catch those famous train robbers - "that’s bad business. If he’d pay me what he’s paying them to get me to quit robbing him, I’d quit robbing him!" How can any retailer not collect and use e-mail addresses? That's bad business, too

he answers save the people at the 'plex (short for Google-plex).