Internet Marketing Tools and Web Development

Creating and managing your personal brand is essential for career success. Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand, written by career coaching gurus William Arruda and Kristen Dixson, is a valuable resource for any professional who wishes to set him or herself apart from competitors. If you want to advance in your career, whether you are self-employed or work for a small or large company, the advice in this book can help you accomplish your goals.Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand begins by guiding readers through the process of figuring out what their personal brand should be, and then provides practical tips for creating, communicating, and maintaining it. The authors explain creating and managing a personal brand is vital for career success in today’s highly competitive economy. They provide readers with sound, easy-to-follow advice on how to build and manage their own personal brand for positive career impact.

This book is a must-read for entrepreneurs, sales professionals, and those who are interested in rising to the top of their professions, regardless of their field or current level. Whether you are just starting out in your career or you are looking at moving to the top of the corporate ladder, or you are anywhere in between these to points, following the advice delivered in this book can help you get ahead.

Learning to brand yourself as a professional is the key to long-term success, and those who become the most highly regarded business leaders of the 21st century will be the ones who understand and utilize the concepts highlighted in Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand.

About the Author
Book review provided by Mary White, M.A., SPHR training and career expert with Mobile Technical Institute and MTI Business Solutions (http://www.mobiletechwebsite.com). Visit http://www.dailybizsolutions.com for small business marketing, PR, and operations advice, as well as an ongoing series of business book reviews. See http://www.dailycareerconnection.com for professional development tips and career advice.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

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In the ultimate fair play move, Google makes it so that you can compete with large advertisers on some scale at least. A highly competitive keyword can have $5.00 (or even more) cost per click, but can you get a return on that kind of investment? If it takes say 50 clicks to get a sale, you paid $250.00 for that single sale. Depending on what product you’re selling that may not be worth it at all. That ROI number depends completely on your conversion rate, and your product price, both long and short term. The good news: raising your conversion rate can now make your advertising less expensive.

I saw this first hand while advertising my hosting services. When I first started running Adsense ads, I would start of at $0.25 per click limit and then within a day to a week it would be up to $1.00 or $5.00 minimum bids. So I’d stop running and try something else and come back and do it again, doing the same thing. (Kind of makes you think of that insanity definition.)

Then I observed that if I just redesigned (reworded) the ad, or changed the url that it was linking to and came back to it a day or two later the ad was running again. Google was raising my prices because the ad was not performing well. I assume they measure this by looking at bounces. Meaning if someone clicks my ad and comes back to Google seconds later, it means the ad and the page that it clicked through to were not relevant to what I was advertising nor what the user was looking for.

Not only does this level the playing field on a NATIONAL advertising campaign, but it shows you almost immediately whether your ad is working! Google is telling you, your ad isn’t working, we’ll still deliver it for you, you’ll just have to pay more, your choice.  This is something no other advertising media is going to do for you! Google, in there outstanding vision, realizes that end users need to have a good experience and rewards advertisers who provide it. So when you see, “Your ad has been deactivated unless you raise your minimum to bid to $5.00″. Take that has a blessing, that you were notified your advertising can be better.

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On your mark… Get set… GO!  You have 2-5 seconds.  If your web page does not load within that time, the back button is being pushed.  The search engines know if a user clicks a result to your site.  They also know if the user stays on your site or comes right back to try another listing.  If your web page loads slowly this “bounce” rate is a good indicator that your site was not relevant for the result it appeared for.  This is a red flag to search algorithms, that you shouldn’t be showing up for that keyword.  A page that loads quickly has a better shot at keeping a user on the page, and therefore shows the search engines you are in fact relevant.

This really applies to the bigger issue of long term web site optimization.  If you’re doing a quick fix to get higher in search results, sooner or later that quick fix is probably going to be weeded out by the search engine.  Meaning that you should first approach any search engine optimization project with the mind set of “Be Relevant to Your Users”.  If you put being relevant ahead of being heavy on keywords, in the long term you will win out.  Remember, search engines are in the business of making their results as relevant as possible, and will change their systems in the future to exclude the results that aren’t.

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