Tag Archives: work
Why the Agile Scrum Methodology Best Suits Modern-Day Companies
If you are any bit interested in how project management has evolved in this day and age, you would know full well that the agile scrum methodology is one of the best methodologies to take on. You would already be aware that scrum has gone above and beyond the realm of software development, and has been implemented in a very wide variety of industries. But have you really, truly thought about why this is so, or do you just know this because its popular opinion?
If youre leaning more towards the latter, then its high time you knew that scrums popularity is due to its being a very modern, very forward-thinking kind of methodology. Not only does it work smoothly on the whole, but agile scrum is also something that speaks clearly to the bright young men and women who run most of todays businesses.
The use of a scrum master alone is already a progressive factor that is particularly enticing for the modern-day worker. Gone are the days when people would rather have an authority figure lording over them every second of every work day. Before, authority figures used to be seen as a plus, because people grew up in a time when they were more used to traditions, conventions, and a very strict set of rules to live by. In contrast, people today grow up far more leniently, and are encouraged to think and act for themselvessomething that the agile scrum methodology espouses wholeheartedly. Having a scrum master simply for guiding employees through the process, as opposed to having them for ordering employees around, goes quite well with todays more liberal mindset.
Moreover, the cross-functional aspect of this methodology is also perfectly attuned with the times. These days, people dont grow up wishing and hoping to become a single type of person, steering their lives in a single direction and making no other detours whatsoever. These days, people embrace possibility with gusto. They are far more open to the idea that any one person is capable of being several things all at once, that they can study up on more than one thing and be an expert in all of them. The agile scrum methodologys insistence that the people who use it have to be skilled in several different ways, then, is absolutely spot-on for todays different outlook.
In fact, one would be hard pressed to take on a form of project management that isnt as flexible as scrum and fully believe that it will work spectacularly. It is no longer wise to stick with traditions and conventions with an iron fist. If you want to run a business smoothly and successfully, you really have to think beyond what they taught you in business school, and go with what seems most natural for just about any person.
The agile scrum methodology is much more than just a way of doing things. It can be seen as an overarching philosophy for how various industries should be handled in this day and age. If you want your business to succeed these days, you have to be a great and humane employer, and to become one, you have to know when and where to bend the rules, or even get rid of the rules altogether.
Article Submitter v3 The facts and myths
What is Article Submitter and does it work?
The fact you are reading this article is proof enough that Article Submitter does work as this article was submitted with the software. But beware!! There is much to do before this submitter software can be used without crashes.
The Article Submitter software is quite good really, its sadly let down by its database of article websites that will accept your articles. Having spent days taming this beast and forcing it to do what it should do anyway, I decided to write this article about Article Submitter so others could make wise and informed decisions about buying submitter software.
Like I say, the software does the job, but needs a day or two invested into making it work to acceptable standard. If you are not prepared to spend this time then Article Submitter is not for you. As it simple does not work out of the box! If however, you are prepared to give up a couple of days and fine tune Article Submitter, you can submit articles all day long on virtually auto pilot. And submitting articles does work. You get loads of good backlinks, the search engines will love you and your site will rocket up the search engine listings. Creating and successfully submitting informative articles about whichever product or service your site offers, will generate high quality visitors and increased affiliate or sales revenue.
Why on earth the guys (or gals) down at Article Submitters office dont clean up the database is a total mystery to me. I used the latest Version 3 with the latest (supposedly cleaned) database to try out. The database had over 400 article sites listed when I got it. After deleting out the bad url’s, hacked sites and just simply badly set up sites, there were only just over 200 sites left. What took me two days would have taken them a couple of hours to sort out.
Basically, once you have created the author information page, you register it. Have a big sheet of paper and pen at the ready.
As this software goes through the automated process of registering a new account with all the article sites, you will need to note the failed ones. There will be 404’s, php / script loading faults, hacked by MOu34d, stuck pages or just times out. Note these urls in Article Submitters menu (left top) Where ‘Directory:’ will show the submission sites url you are on. In the
travel category for example we found initially around 40 dud sites for one reason or another. Close down Article Submitter and open up the file directories.cdb with note pad (Make a backup copy first in case you mess up). Scrolling down the list of directory sites, find the bad ones and delete everything beginning with containing the bad site. You can find some worked examples at my website linked at the bottom of this article. Save the file and open the program again. Click ‘Manage article directories list’ the page will then show in pink any sites that failed for some reason to register the author details. Note all of these and after closing Article Submitter, open up directories.cdb with notepad again and delete all those sites as before.
Next, choose your article and start submission. Have the pad and pen ready again as there will still be quite a few missed first time round and some will time out with bad php or poorly hosted. So note all these down again. When a site freezes or shows blank page or does some other weird php badly written script failure, just click the ‘Skip url’ button after noting it.
By now, you will have been working on the software for some hours and probably wondering why the heck you bothered. Well, Ive tried a few article submitters over the years and this one is brilliant once you’ve made the changes, it will work like a dream on virtually auto pilot.
Article Submitters database is stored under C:/Program Files/Submit Suite/ in that folder you will find a file named directories.cdb. This is the main file that Article Submitter stores information about which article directories to submit to.
Modifying it is a breeze once opened in Notepad.
For a complete worked example, go to the main article at bottom of this article. You can also download a cleaned Article Submitter database from there as well as a free trial copy of the software to experiment with.
SEO Website Development Considerations (Page 1 of 2)
Google uses hundreds of different signals and criteria to rank your website. There are many overlooked SEO considerations that people often miss when designing a website. Work with an SEO expert to develop a cohesive optimization strategy before you begin any work on your site.
Keyword research
Good keyword research is essential to the success of a successful of any website marketing campaign. A descriptive, yet keyword rich domain name is imperative to your success. Choose keywords for your content that are relevant to your business or industry. You want to have terms that have a good search volume but are not too initially competitive.
It takes time and effort to go after high competition phrases. A good strategy is to have more immediate, attainable keyword goals and get ranking for those first. Continue to revisit your targeted keywords as markets and search patterns fluctuate often.
Take the time to work with your SEO specialist to ensure a proper selection of terms to target. Your targeted keywords will need to be included in the page title, the meta description tag and in the heading elements and content of your site and will be the primary factor in determining your rankings in search engines.
An analysis needs to be performed of the competitiveness of your keywords against who is currently in the top ranked positions for those same terms in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This will provide an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of your current and potential competitors which you may be able to exploit to your own success.
Meta Tags
Once you have developed a list of keywords to target, implement these in to your website HTML code. This is one of the most crucial areas of SEO that often get overlooked.
Page Title: (while technically not a meta tag) is the first thing that search engine bots look at when attempting to classify and index your site. It carries the most weight for SEO and must be relevant to the content of your page and site as well. A title tag should be no more than 165 characters, otherwise the extra text will be truncated and show as 3 dots (“…”).
Meta Description: This is the description that shows in the search results. Have a clearly worded tag line that states exactly who or what you are and what you are providing. The description must be less than 155 characters and should include your most important keywords that you are targeting.
Meta Keywords: While this tag is not considered crucial to SEO anymore, it is included for best practices. Do not use more than 8-10 keywords (300 characters) and make sure that the same words appear in the content of the page they are being used on.
Content
Google has always stated that content is paramount for rankings. The content of your site not only lets your viewers know what your site is about, but it is what the search engine bots use to classify your site. The newest algorithm update from Google means now more than ever, well written, original textual content is mandatory for all onsite and offsite web content. Failure to provide relevant content carries the risk of incurring ranking penalties from Google.