Richards Consulting, Inc.

10 Proven Steps to Search Engine Optimization

2010-10-09T13:31:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Ten Steps

Website optimization - what is it? Well, ask yourself this question:

Are you satisfied with your website?

Do you believe that your site is drawing in enough traffic, people are getting what they came for, and there's really no room for improvement?
Well, then you're probably going to want to stop reading. However, for the rest of us who have websites, we know that there's always something that could be tweaked for increased web site traffic, better customer satisfaction, and a higher search engine ranking. How exactly do you go about doing that? Follow these Ten Steps to a Well-Optimized Site and I think you'll see that these goals are not as lofty as you might think.

Step 1: What Is Search Engine Optimization?

In a very basic nutshell, search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is making your site and the site's individual pages visible and relevant to both search engines and search engine users.

Step 2: Target Marketing-Does Your Internet Marketing Strategy Match Your Intended Audience?

Understanding your audience is a huge part of a successful Internet marketing strategy. You need to pinpoint who it is you will be marketing your site to, and write your content accordingly. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it's worth a serious look.

Step 3: Keywords and Phrases 101: Make Your Site Search-Engine Friendly

What are keywords, and why should you learn about them? Keywords are simply targeted words that determine which category your site will be listed under in search engines and directories,as well as words that searchers input to search engines in order to find relevant sites. If you don't do your homework and select targeted key phrases, you are missing a significant portion of potential traffic.

Step 4: Including Keywords and Phrases In Your Content and Source Code

You’ve got your hard-earned list of keywords, now you’re going to have to actually put them somewhere. The more places you can reasonably put your keywords, the easier you will be found. That being said, don’t go nuts and paste them in every nook and cranny. This is called “keyword stuffing” and search engines don’t look kindly on this practice.

RCI SEO Directory Submission Service

Step 5: How To Write Good Web Content

Compelling content on your website is the essential key to good search engine results. Obviously, there are many more factors that search engine spiders look at when indexing a website, but content is the vital foundation on which good rankings are built.

Step 6: Using Title Tags in Website Optimization

Although the title tag is kind of the redheaded stepchild of search engine optimization, its lack of notoriety does not make it any less important. Most search engines index the contents of the title tag, and actually make it one of the most important factors in the ranking process. So if you don’t have an optimized title tag, you might be missing the boat as far as rankings are concerned.

Step 7: Keywords and Description Meta Tags

These two tags are not very important in the grand scheme of things, but every little bit counts. Make your Meta tags optimized and help search engines to index your site better.

Step 8: Ten Tips for Search-Engine Friendly Site Design

Learn how to optimize your site design for search engines and search engine users with my free search engine optimization site design step by step tutorial. And no, you may NOT use dancing singing kittens on your website (unless that's what your site is about).

Step 9: Site Submission-The Basics of Submitting Your Site

Search engines have gotten so good at indexing websites that it's not really necessary to go through the saga of site submission-unless you have a brand new site, in which it's highly suggested that you submit to a search directory.

Step 10: Wait For Results

You've done the work; now how long are you going to have to wait to see improvement in your ranking results? The answer is different for every site, however, if you keep pluggin' away using the suggestions in these Ten Steps and are patient, eventually you will see the results you're looking for.

Now What? Website Optimization for the Long Haul

A well-optimized site doesn't get that way overnight; behind every successful website is a ton of hard work, patience, and more hard work. Use these Website Optimization in Ten Easy Steps to make your site the absolute best site that it can be, and eventually all your hard work will pay off.

His Name is on Every Car

2010-02-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

(AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi) Akio Toyoda Congressional Testimony February 23, 2010 I am Akio Toyoda of Toyota Motor Corporation. I would first like to state that I love cars as much as anyone, and I love Toyota as much as anyone. I take the utmost pleasure in offering vehicles that our customers love, and I know that Toyota's 200,000 team members, dealers, and suppliers across America feel the same way. However, in the past few months, our customers have started to feel uncertain about the safety of Toyota's vehicles, and I take full responsibility for that. Today, I would like to explain to the American people, as well as our customers in the U.S. and around the world, how seriously Toyota takes the quality and safety of its vehicles. I would like to express my appreciation to Chairman Towns and Ranking Member Issa, as well as the members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, for giving me this opportunity to express my thoughts today. I would like to focus my comments on three topics - Toyota's basic philosophy regarding quality control, the cause of the recalls, and how we will manage quality control going forward. First, I want to discuss the philosophy of Toyota's quality control. I myself, as well as Toyota, am not perfect. At times, we do find defects. But in such situations, we always stop, strive to understand the problem, and make changes to improve further. In the name of the company, its long-standing tradition and pride, we never run away from our problems or pretend we don't notice them. By making continuous improvements, we aim to continue offering even better products for society. That is the core value we have kept closest to our hearts since the founding days of the company. At Toyota, we believe the key to making quality products is to develop quality people. Each employee thinks about what he or she should do, continuously making improvements, and by doing so, makes even better cars. We have been actively engaged in developing people who share and can execute on this core value. It has been over 50 years since we began selling in this great country, and over 25 years since we started production here. And in the process, we have been able to share this core value with the 200,000 people at Toyota operations, dealers, and suppliers in this country. That is what I am most proud of. Second, I would like to discuss what caused the recall issues we are facing now. Toyota has, for the past few years, been expanding its business rapidly. Quite frankly, I fear the pace at which we have grown may have been too quick. I would like to point out here that Toyota's priority has traditionally been the following: First; Safety, Second; Quality, and Third; Volume. These priorities became confused, and we were not able to stop, think, and make improvements as much as we were able to before, and our basic stance to listen to customers' voices to make better products has weakened somewhat. We pursued growth over the speed at which we were able to develop our people and our organization, and we should sincerely be mindful of that. I regret that this has resulted in the safety issues described in the recalls we face today, and I am deeply sorry for any accidents that Toyota drivers have experienced. Especially, I would like to extend my condolences to the members of the Saylor family, for the accident in San Diego. I would like to send my prayers again, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again. Since last June, when I first took office, I have personally placed the highest priority on improving quality over quantity, and I have shared that direction with our stakeholders. As you well know, I am the grandson of the founder, and all the Toyota vehicles bear my name. For me, when the cars are damaged, it is as though I am as well. I, more than anyone, wish for Toyota's cars to be safe, and for our customers to feel safe when they use our vehicles. Under my leadership, I would like to reaffirm our values of placing safety and quality the highest on our list of priorities, which we have held to firmly from the time we were founded. I will also strive to devise a system in which we can surely execute what we value. Third, I would like to discuss how we plan to manage quality control as we go forward. Up to now, any decisions on conducting recalls have been made by the Customer Quality Engineering Division at Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan. This division confirms whether there are technical problems and makes a decision on the necessity of a recall. However, reflecting on the issues today, what we lacked was the customers' perspective. To make improvements on this, we will make the following changes to the recall decision making process. When recall decisions are made, a step will be added in the process to ensure that management will make a responsible decision from the perspective of "customer safety first." To do that, we will devise a system in which customers' voices around the world will reach our management in a timely manner, and also a system in which each region will be able to make decisions as necessary. Further, we will form a quality advisory group composed of respected outside experts from North America and around the world to ensure that we do not make a misguided decision. Finally, we will invest heavily in quality in the U.S., through the establishment of an Automotive Center of Quality Excellence, the introduction of a new position - Product Safety Executive, and the sharing of more information and responsibility within the company for product quality decisions, including defects and recalls. Even more importantly, I will ensure that members of the management team actually drive the cars, and that they check for themselves where the problem lies as well as its severity. I myself am a trained test driver. As a professional, I am able to check on problems in a car, and can understand how severe the safety concern is in a car. I drove the vehicles in the accelerator pedal recall as well as the Prius, comparing the vehicles before and after the remedy in various environmental settings. I believe that only by examining the problems on-site, can one make decisions from the customer perspective. One cannot rely on reports or data in a meeting room. Through the measures I have just discussed, and with whatever results we obtain from the investigations we are conducting in cooperation with NHTSA, I intend to further improve on the quality of Toyota vehicles and fulfill our principle of putting the customer first. My name is on every car. You have my personal commitment that Toyota will work vigorously and unceasingly to restore the trust of our customers. Thank you.

Are You Utilizing Your USB Flash Drive?

2010-02-20T10:05:00.000-08:00

By now, you have probably found, like most people that transporting your data is the most common use for a USB flash drive. So, I have a question for you - have you considered the other possibilities for the use of your USB flash drive? Here are a few ideas;

You can run portable applications

In addition to storing your data, you can run portable applications from a USB flash drive. For example, OpenOffice, which is a complete office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package, and database, is available as a portable application. Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are also available as portable applications. When you combine the office suite with the ability to surf the Web and check email, you'll be able to take your most vital computing applications with you wherever you go -- right in your pocket.

If that's not enough, you can choose other applications to install on your USB flash drive from PortableApps.com (Figure A). You can even install an entire prepackaged suite of applications that includes such things as an audio player, games, an antivirus utility, and a handy menu system.

You can boot an operating system

If you want to do more than just run your own applications, you might want to consider booting an entire operating system from your USB flash drive. You can boot either Windows or Linux from a USB flash drive; however, the process is not an exact science and you may be in for a technical adventure.

Fortunately, there are some guides you can follow. To learn how to boot Windows XP from a USB flash drive, see the article Creating a bootable USB flash drive for Windows XP. To learn how to boot a version of Linux from a USB flash drive, see the article Puppy Linux teaches an old dog new tricks.

You can connect to a wireless network

If you have a wireless network, you can use the Wireless Network Setup Wizard in Windows XP or the Windows Connect Now (WCN) feature built into Vista to save wireless network configuration information to a USB flash drive. You can then use your drive to quickly and easily connect another computer or a WCN-compatible device, such as a router or printer, to your wireless network. To learn more about using the Wireless Network Setup Wizard, see the Help And Support Center, which is accessible from Windows XP's Start menu. To learn more about using the Windows Connect Now feature, see Windows Help And Support, which is accessible from Windows Vista's Start menu.

You can create a password reset disk

A password reset disk can really come in handy if you forget the password to your user account on a Windows system that is not a part of a domain. If you find yourself in that situation, you can use the password reset disk to reset your password and quickly get back into your user account. In Windows Vista, you can use USB flash drive rather than a floppy disk as a password reset disk (Figure B). For details on how to do so, see the article Create a Vista password reset disk using a USB flash drive.

You can boost your operating system's performance

If you're running Windows Vista, you can use a USB flash drive to speed up your system with the ReadyBoost technology. ReadyBoost can use the storage space on a USB Flash drive as an additional memory cache to aid the memory cache on your hard disk. And because flash memory is more responsive than a hard disk, with its physical moving parts, the memory cache provided by ReadyBoost can significantly improve system responsiveness.

Using ReadyBoost is easy. You just insert your USB flash drive into your Vista system and follow the onscreen prompts to configure and use ReadyBoost. If you want more details, check out the article How SuperFetch and ReadyBoost work together.

You can manage your data

If all you really want to do with your USB flash drive is transport data, and you're running Windows XP, you can do so more efficiently with the Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager (Figure C). Once you have installed this manager, you can easily copy files to and from your drive, back up and restore the entire flash drive to and from your hard disk, change the drive label, and even create an autorun.inf file to launch Drive Manager automatically when you plug in the drive. To learn more about and download the USB Flash Drive Manager visit the Microsoft TechNet Magazine site.

You can play your music

Would you like to be listening to music when you're using a computer at the office, but you don't have an MP3 player? If so, you can use a USB flash drive as an MP3 player along with Windows Media Player and a set of headphones. Just copy your MP3 files to your USB flash drive, plug it into your computer, and direct Windows Media Player to build a library of the songs on your drive. You can use all of Windows Media Player's playback features, such as playlists and favorites, to easily customize your music listening experience. And best of all, you won't have to worry about running low on battery power.

You can password-protect your flash drive

If you use a USB flash drive to transport sensitive data that you would prefer to protect from prying eyes, should you lose the drive, Rohos Mini Drive (Figure D) can safeguard that data. This security tool allows you to create a secret partition on the drive and then password-protect/encrypt that partition, thus protecting any documents you copy to that partition via the utility's file manager. You can download and read a review of Rohos Mini Drive at CNET Download.com.

You can run a web site

If you are a Web developer, you may be interested to know that with Server2Go, you can easily run a Web server that supports Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Perl right from a USB flash drive. You can use Server2Go right out of the box without any installation. It runs on all versions of Windows, supports most common browsers, and is completely free. To a developer, the benefits of having a portable Web server on a USB drive are numerous. For example, imagine being able to carry a live Web site demo into a sales pitch meeting. For more information about this package, visit the Server2Go site.

You can lock your PC

Have you ever seen a movie in which a person in some secret government installation simply inserts and removes a card to log in and log out of a PC? If you thought that idea was cool, you'll definitely want to investigate Predator (Figure E). Once installed and configured, this little freeware utility will allow you to turn a USB flash drive into a key you can use to lock and unlock your computer.

While the USB flash drive is connected to your computer, everything works as it normally would. Once you remove the USB flash drive, your computer is locked down -- the keyboard and mouse are disabled and the screen darkens. To unlock your computer, you just plug in the USB flash drive and the computer will be unlocked and you can begin using it. To learn more about Predator, and/or to download it, visit the developer's Web site.