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Tag: growth

SEO fundamentals

Most small business owners have heard of SEO and know this is the secret sauce that can push your content up the list of search engines. But many do not know exactly what it entails or how to put it into practice. Here are some SEO basics:

Research

You have to know not only what your competition is doing but what your customers are searching for. If you are promoting and producing content that is irrelevant to consumers’ needs, all of the coding and keywords in the world cannot help you. You need to know your own brand and the words that your audiences associate with your brand to be most effective. Google Ads Keyword Planner can help.

Organization

The way your structure your site and individual pages will help search engines place priority on your content. Deciding which keywords you want to emphasize can help you think through the pages you have  already created and the ones you need to build in order to meet your business goals. It is tricky to rank for words that are not included in your pages, so think about the keywords and phrases you want placed throughout your site.

Links

Links help show that your content is valuable. By sending audiences not only to relevant pages within your site but also to other sites that have equally valuable information, search crawlers can recognize you’re not producing spam or junk merely for the sake of SEO rankings.

Results

The whole point of SEO is to connect with a wider audience. Monitor your website’s traffic to make sure what you are doing is working. See where traffic is heading and how long they are staying. Hosts like Squarespace have analytics tools built in, or you can use Google Analytics for more in-depth data comparisons.

11 reasons to work for free

“Why do you work for free?”

I hear this question often, especially after having volunteered for five years in Nepal. Most creatives, freelancers, and entrepreneurs will face this very same question at some point in their careers.

Should I work for free? Should I participate in this unpaid project? Should I volunteer my time?

Working for free can come with many benefits. Here are my top nine:

  1. Connections
  2. Personal satisfaction
  3. Appreciation
  4. Experience
  5. Opportunity
  6. Exposure
  7. Growth and development
  8. Supporting something irreplaceable
  9. Building your resume
  10. Changing careers
  11. Exploring new interests

Yes, absolutely, work for free. But choose projects and commitments mindfully, with the utmost respect for your valuable time.

More reading:

In search of health and wellbeing

An ayurvedic center in Nepal offers month-long programs for people who have fallen out of good health. Practitioners target various elements in the body believing that once balance is restored, a calmer, more peaceful state of living will be experienced. Diet, yoga, cleansing and various ayurvedic practices are incorporated into treatment plans, and participants are discouraged from engaging in unnecessary work. A strict schedule, waking at 6:00AM and sleeping by 10PM, is followed, and clients follow recommendations to detoxify and restore the body.

The center is simply decorated. Glass bottles of herbs and oils rest on a bright windowsill.

“What happens when clients leave?” I asked the owner.

“One of two things,” he replied, “They return to same challenges with new perspective, better equipped to make non-reactive decisions. Or they make significant changes after realizing their situations no longer serve them.”

I don’t think you need to spend a month in a health center to make adjustments in your life, but you do need to take an honest look at your lifestyle and what best serves you.

We all have habits we complete on autopilot. Inviting mindfulness to our days and daily activities can help us assess what changes need to be made and whether we are on the right path to health and wellbeing.

The balance of hustle: How do you find flow?

The line between engagement and productivity, a flow state in which decisions and actions are fluid and purposeful; balanced with the cost of too much: moments of exhaustion, lack of focus and clarity, the heaviness of feeling overwhelmed.

How do you create balance?

Harvard Business Review estimates 150 million workers across North America and Western Europe are favoring independence over traditional employment.

I want to hear from founders, entrepreneurs, freelancers, and others who are hustling in the gig economy (and most likely working overtime). What are your tips for managing workload and client demands? How do you ensure you’re giving enough to your team while keeping a hardy reserve of energy for yourself?

Talk to me. Send me a message or tweet me @redheadlefthand.

Your plan should not include a miracle

This is the best piece of advice I have received: If you’re planning on a miracle, you don’t have a plan.

A large sum of money that suddenly comes into your possession. A phone call from a famous person who wants to interview you. A perfect press announcement in the nation’s most popular newspaper. A prize.

Plan on making your own miracle. You’ll be a lot more successful that way.