Productivity

These 7 Productivity Tips were posted by Iiya Pozin on the inc.com website. (Click Here To See Article) View the tip and assess yourself to see if you are guilty of any of these tips. Also, see if you can take one or two of them and improve yourself. (I will give it a try and report back in the comments.) Leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts or tips.

Here are his tips for staying productive:

1. 1. Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks. Writing “launch company website” at the top of your to-do list is a sure way to make sure you never get it done. Break down the work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few hours or less: Sketch a wireframe, outline an introduction for the homepage video, etc. That’s how you set goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.
2. 2. Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you dumber than being stoned. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women). 
3. 3. Be militant about eliminating distractions. Lock your door, put a sign up, turn off your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging. In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and focus on completing one task.
4. 4. Schedule your email. Pick two or three times during the day when you’re going to use your email. Checking your email constantly throughout the day creates a ton of noise and kills your productivity.
5. 5. Use the phone. Email isn’t meant for conversations. Don’t reply more than twice to an email. Pick up the phone instead. 
6. 6. Work on your own agenda. Don’t let something else set your day. Most people go right to their emails and start freaking out. You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing. After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, then set prioritized goals for the rest of your day. 
7. 7. Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals. Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours.

 SURVEY SAYS SEO IS KING 
MerchantCircle conducted a survey in November and the survey polled over 1.6 million small businesses. Over 80% of the people surveyed were from business with less than four employees. The most interesting finding was that (63 percent) had yearly advertising and marketing budget of $2,500 or less.

Also interesting is how high “traditional media” ranked. That category would include newspapers, yellow pages, direct mail, traditional radio and so on. Newspapers and direct mail were the top traditional channels being used by this group of survey respondents.

However Facebook (not Facebook Ads) was the most common marketing tool, used by 70 percent of these SMB respondents. The question was, “Are you promoting your business with the following websites/services?”

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Search Engine Marketing Overview Presentation

What is Search Engine Optimization? 
Watch this video explaining SEO! In three minutes, the video covers the basics of SEO including; words matter, titles matter, inbound links matters, words in links (anchor text), and reputation are the basics. 

Why do you care about Search Engine Optimization?

People don’t “surf the net” anymore, they search the internet. Data has shown that for B2C and B2B businesses, search engine marketing has proven to be one of the most effective and cost effective ways to create brand awareness and generate new leads.

91% of buyers go to a supplier's website before calling.
If they don't find what they need, 80% choose another supplier.

When it comes to search engine optimization, the content of your website will play one of the largest roles in determining how well your website will rank. Due to this, it is vital that your content be optimized for specific keywords and closely related terms.

Outline below are only a few of the processes involved in proper search engine optimization: 

• Link Building Process
• Keyword Research
• Competitive Analysis
• Article Creation, Submission, and Announcement
• Utilization of Meta-Data
• Keyword Creation
• Read more details 

Contact us today for your FREE complimentary SEO evaluation of of your internet presence! Call now 310-909-8835.

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Top Questions to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Firm
As search engine optimization (SEO) has made its way onto the radar of small business owners, e-commerce site managers and marketing executives, many companies have sought the expert advice of either an SEO firm or SEO consultant.

Unfortunately, because SEO is a constantly-evolving combination of art, science and math, there's a lot of confusion at the client end about what "SEO work" actually entails. Since client education is paramount to combat these bad experiences, I thought it would be helpful to offer the most important questions that clients should ask when hiring an SEO firm for their company's website – whether it's e-commerce or lead generation.

1. Can you explain how SEO works?
First, ask potential vendors to explain, in layman's terms, how SEO basically works. If they cannot explain what "on-page SEO" and "link building" are, how they optimize a site, that's a red flag. Ask, up front about their pricing structure as well. Is it retainer-based? Is there a contract to sign? (If so, is there a 30-day out?) Each company will probably have a different approach to their SEO work and their fee structure.

2. What methods does your firm use to get results?
Will they make changes to your existing web page coding or will they just be adding or revising meta tags? Will they be performing search engine optimization copywriting and editing to add relevant keywords to your visible page text? Will they be adding new pages, or possibly redesigning your navigation to make it more search engine friendly?

3. Can you provide a complimentary SEO evaluation of my internet presence?
Very important! Before hiring any SEO vendor, they should be able to provide you with a complimentary evaluation of your current web presence. A SWOT Analysis (which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) would be ideal.

4. Does your SEO firm or its principals have marketing experience background?
Search engine optimization is art, science, and math. When done correctly, all of these aspects including an understanding of how to motivate people to buy will ensure success.

5. Who is going to do the work on a monthly basis?
Establish whether the SEO company is going to be working on your behalf, or if they are going to simply create a strategy and have your in-house developers roll it out. Some aspects such as link building may be handled on their end, while on-page optimization may need to be fulfilled in-house. Iron out the details of “who does what”.

6. Will you be adding additional pages to my website?
If a search engine optimization company answers "no" to this question but answers "yes" to the question above, it likely means that it will be employing what I call the "shoehorn" approach to optimization. This means that the firm will try to shoehorn key phrases into existing pages on your website, rather than expanding your website to include new content.

7. What reports will I get and how often?
Having an SEO company working on your behalf isn’t very valuable if you don’t have a consistent flow of reports to inform you of changes in sales, signups, traffic or rankings. Make sure they intend to provide ample documentation of what was done and how it affected your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

8. How will your overall Return On Investment (ROI) be measured?
At the end of the day, SEO is a performance based campaign which should be (easily can be) measured with tight metrics which impact a company’s top line or bottom line.

9. What is the history of your company?
Find out how long they have been in business and why they decided to go into the SEO industry. People with experience have a great advantage in SEO because they know how the industry has changed and are more likely to be versed in what works and what doesn’t.

10. Can you provide a list of references?
This is the only way to truly get a read on how well a company performs and what kind of ROI you can expect is to talk directly to their previous and present clients. (If a client chose not to continue their SEO contract with that vendor, don't be shy about asking why.) Part of your responsibility as a client is to vet potential SEO firms, so make sure you're doing due diligence in each case.

Contact us today for your FREE complimentary SEO evaluation of of your internet presence! Call now 310-909-8835.

Related Content
Search Engine Optimization Services
Learn SEO 
Upcoming Internet Marketing Webinars