To paraphrase a famous Kung Fu Panda movie and quote Jean de La Fontaine "Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it." I believe, discussing the turning points on our path, will emphasize the need for "informed" decisions.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Monday, October 12, 2015
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Five Keys to Happiness | LinkedIn
Jeff Weiner
CEO at LinkedIn
Five Keys to Happiness
I've had the privilege of knowing Ray Chambers as both a mentor and a friend for almost a decade. After a legendary career on Wall Street, where he was acknowledged as having developed the modern day leveraged buyout (the acquisition of Gibson Greetings in 1982), he did his last major transaction just prior to the '87 crash and would go on to close the firm roughly two years later.
The reason for his somewhat abrupt transition was simple: After having achieved almost unimaginable success as an investor, Ray realized he wasn't happy. Subsequently, he dedicated himself to studying happiness with the same intellectual rigor, discipline, and intuition that led him to the top of Wall Street, and concluded he wanted to pursue a life of philanthropic activity.
Over the next 25+ years, he went on to found or lead efforts such as the National Mentoring Partnership, the Points of Light Foundation, America's Promise, The Millennium Promise Alliance, Malaria No More, and today is the special emissary to the United Nations to help eradicate deaths due to Malaria. His success with Malaria led the Secretary General to ask Ray to help oversee the UN's efforts to realize all of its health-related Millennium Development Goals. As far as having a positive impact on the world, it doesn't get much bigger than that.
I've learned a lot from Ray through the years, but the advice I find myself coming back to most often is his five keys to achieving happiness. While some of the suggestions are more challenging to live by then others (just try being loving vs. being right the next time you find yourself in an argument), all are worth aspiring to on a daily basis.
Hope you find his advice as invaluable as I have:
1. Live in the moment
2. It's better to be loving than to be right
3. Be a spectator to your thoughts, especially when you become emotional
4. Be grateful for at least one thing every day
5. Help others every chance you get
Saturday, October 10, 2015
5 Dead Simple SEO Hacks to Save You Time | Entrepreneur.com
5 Dead-Simple SEO Hacks to Save You Time
February 10, 2014
Let me be very clear, when I talk about “hacking” SEO, I’m talking about saving time and doing things as efficiently as possible. I’d never encourage gray or black hat techniques to game the search engines!
So with that in mind, let’s look at a few ways to speed up the process of performing proper SEO on your site. SEO rules must be followed carefully, but that doesn’t mean that you need to waste time doing things the hard way. The following five hacks will cut back the amount of time you have to spend on SEO while simultaneously improving your natural search performance:
Hack 1: Get keyword ideas from your internal search data. When people search inside your site using your search bar, they’re doing so because the content they’re looking for isn’t immediately apparent. By tracking these searches, you’ve got a supply of fresh new keywords that you know your customers interests will seek. Building content around them automatically pays off in terms of SEO, as you’re helping to satisfy both visitors and the search engines.
Related: Your SEO Checklist: 4 Steps to Optimizing Your Website
The analytics programs of some sites will automatically return this data, but if you have a Wordpress site that doesn’t, take a look at the Search Meter plugin. It’s free to install and will automatically help you uncover the most popular search terms from within your very own website.
Hack 2: Find keyword suggestions using the Google Adwords Keyword Planner. Since most Google Analytics data has turned into “not provided,” you’ve got to get a bit more clever when it comes to getting keyword information from the search giant.
Log into the new Google Adwords Keyword Planner and select the “Search for keyword and ad group ideas” option. Then, enter your site’s URL into the “Your landing page” field, set the targeting option to your country and run your search. The “Keyword ideas” tab that appears will give you a series of phrases Google believes related to your site. Powerful options to target with onsite SEO and content campaigns if you aren’t already.
Hack 3: Add Google Authorship code to your site’s header. There are a few different ways that you can set up and claim Google Authorship (which you really should do for SEO purposes), but the easiest has to be the following:
If you have a Wordpress site, don’t worry about plugins or email confirmations. Instead, just plug the following code into the header.php file of your site (making sure to replace the profile link with your code):
Related: 5 SEO Trends Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know for 2014
Doing so ensures that your profile code will be propagated to all pages of your site – right where Google can find it and give you credit for your efforts.
Hack 4: Submit entire domains to the Disavow Links tool. When the Disavow Links tool first came out, SEOs were super cautious about submitting individual links only. Indeed, it made sense to be cautious before it was known exactly what impact the tool would have on a site’s performance. If the tool immediately devalued any links submitted, cutting off an entire domain could have an unnecessarily widespread impact -- taking down useful links, as well as bad.
However, in a June 2013 video, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam, made it clear that webmasters didn’t need to be too picky about the links they submitted using the tool. Instead of offering individual links, Cutts recommended providing entire URLs -- saving tons of time for formerly nitpicky SEOs.
If a backlink analysis of your site’s inbound links reveals a few negative issues, don’t worry about being selective in your disavowal request. Submitting entire domains is a good SEO practice, and it’s a good time-saver as well.
Hack 5: Combine Javascript tags with Google Tag Manager. Google Analytics, Twitter and Google+ are just a few of the sites that request to install JavaScript code on your site to power certain functionalities. But unfortunately, every one of these snippets that you install slows down your site -- and it’s well-known that slow sites are bad for SEO.
To save the time of requiring your site to fire each snippet individually, take a look at Google’s free Tag Manager tool. Simply enter your code pieces into the tool’s tag generator and you’ll be provided with a site-wide tag that will fire each JavaScript file according to the rules you specify. Once this tag is installed on your site, you’ll see load times decrease immediately compared to your initial on-page configuration.
Related: Simplify Your SEO Program With These 5 Strategies
So with that in mind, let’s look at a few ways to speed up the process of performing proper SEO on your site. SEO rules must be followed carefully, but that doesn’t mean that you need to waste time doing things the hard way. The following five hacks will cut back the amount of time you have to spend on SEO while simultaneously improving your natural search performance:
Hack 1: Get keyword ideas from your internal search data. When people search inside your site using your search bar, they’re doing so because the content they’re looking for isn’t immediately apparent. By tracking these searches, you’ve got a supply of fresh new keywords that you know your customers interests will seek. Building content around them automatically pays off in terms of SEO, as you’re helping to satisfy both visitors and the search engines.
Related: Your SEO Checklist: 4 Steps to Optimizing Your Website
The analytics programs of some sites will automatically return this data, but if you have a Wordpress site that doesn’t, take a look at the Search Meter plugin. It’s free to install and will automatically help you uncover the most popular search terms from within your very own website.
Hack 2: Find keyword suggestions using the Google Adwords Keyword Planner. Since most Google Analytics data has turned into “not provided,” you’ve got to get a bit more clever when it comes to getting keyword information from the search giant.
Hack 3: Add Google Authorship code to your site’s header. There are a few different ways that you can set up and claim Google Authorship (which you really should do for SEO purposes), but the easiest has to be the following:
If you have a Wordpress site, don’t worry about plugins or email confirmations. Instead, just plug the following code into the header.php file of your site (making sure to replace the profile link with your code):
Related: 5 SEO Trends Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know for 2014
Doing so ensures that your profile code will be propagated to all pages of your site – right where Google can find it and give you credit for your efforts.
Hack 4: Submit entire domains to the Disavow Links tool. When the Disavow Links tool first came out, SEOs were super cautious about submitting individual links only. Indeed, it made sense to be cautious before it was known exactly what impact the tool would have on a site’s performance. If the tool immediately devalued any links submitted, cutting off an entire domain could have an unnecessarily widespread impact -- taking down useful links, as well as bad.
However, in a June 2013 video, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam, made it clear that webmasters didn’t need to be too picky about the links they submitted using the tool. Instead of offering individual links, Cutts recommended providing entire URLs -- saving tons of time for formerly nitpicky SEOs.
If a backlink analysis of your site’s inbound links reveals a few negative issues, don’t worry about being selective in your disavowal request. Submitting entire domains is a good SEO practice, and it’s a good time-saver as well.
Hack 5: Combine Javascript tags with Google Tag Manager. Google Analytics, Twitter and Google+ are just a few of the sites that request to install JavaScript code on your site to power certain functionalities. But unfortunately, every one of these snippets that you install slows down your site -- and it’s well-known that slow sites are bad for SEO.
To save the time of requiring your site to fire each snippet individually, take a look at Google’s free Tag Manager tool. Simply enter your code pieces into the tool’s tag generator and you’ll be provided with a site-wide tag that will fire each JavaScript file according to the rules you specify. Once this tag is installed on your site, you’ll see load times decrease immediately compared to your initial on-page configuration.
Related: Simplify Your SEO Program With These 5 Strategies
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5 Dead Simple SEO Hacks to Save You Time | Entrepreneur.com
Friday, October 9, 2015
10 Reasons to Start Looking for a Better Job
10 Reasons to Start Looking for a Better Job
How many years have you worked on your job? Are you satisfied with it? Maybe it’s time to find a new job which would meet your desires?Many people don’t change their current place of work because of being afraid of not finding better. But think about the time and efforts you spend doing something you don’t like and exhausting your mental and emotional resources. How long will you be patient? You deserve the best. You just need to believe in yourself and get rid of any doubt and fear! You’re not a tree planted in the ground. You are a human and have the right to change what you don’t like. Here are 10 main reasons which indicate that you need to consider looking for a new job that would better suit your interests and expectations.
1. You don’t enjoy your work
You wake up every morning without a smile because you have to go again in the place where you don’t want to be and do things you hate doing? Many people take up a vacant position only for money and don’t enjoy their work. This is the main reason to consider changing your job simply because there is no point of spending 1/3 of your life on something you don’t like.2. Lack of understanding with your boss
Your boss often offends you or puts you in an awkward position? He/she is always dissatisfied and never appreciates your efforts? Don’t tolerate it! Quit and let him try to find such a valuable employee like you.3. Bad working conditions and difficult schedule
Working conditions and the time schedule directly affect your ability to work and the quality of life in general. Often have to stay at work till late at night because your boss says so? Do you work all day and all week so that no time remains for yourself and your family and friends? Think about it.4. Small wages
This is one of the most common reasons that make people change jobs. Do you feel that your work is not sufficiently appreciated and you get a small salary? Then, the decision to change your job is the most appropriate in this case.5. Bad relationship with your colleagues
If the people you work with don’t support and don’t appreciate you, then there is no sense to continue working in a team without being a part of it.6. Your work is underestimated
If you feel that you are working hard but nobody notices this, look for a place where your efforts will be appreciated.7. Your opinion isn’t taken into account
Everyone feels important and necessary when his opinion is taken into account. But when a person’s initiatives are suppressed, he feels like being nothing. Do you feel this way? If yes, quitting your current job is the right decision.8. Lack of career prospects
Everything in nature is constantly changing and developing. Human is part of nature, so he also tends to change and evolve. If the work doesn’t give you the opportunities to grow, do you really have to stay there?9. Lack of personal development
This is as a result of the previous case. Career growth is an aspect of personal development, and when you don’t evolve as a personality, at some point you start feeling incomplete and stuck in your life.10. Constant psychological stress and health risks
Maybe health is not the most important thing in life but without health everything is nothing! If your job threatens your life and health – both physical and mental – think twice whether you really need to stay there.Don’t waste a minute on what isn’t your passion. Combat your fears and doubts and start looking for a decent job on a site for job search like trud.co.uk. This is a great system that contains job offers for different types of employment. This service offers a structured format of displaying ads and comfortable search engine.
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
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