This is the first in a series of articles designed to help your hire company or rental company improve your website rankings.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the termed used to generically describe those things you can do to improve your search engine ranking.

That is how high you appear in the search results of a search engine, ie Google, Yahoo or Bing, when your potential customers type in the keywords that best describe your hire or rental business.

For example, if a customer seeking a party rental or party hire company in their area, types in “party rental miami” then in an ideal world you are the first company to appear in the search engine results.

Achieving that result though requires that you use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques.

Search Engine Optimization. This term is widely used in the search engine industry as a collective name for those activities that are directly or indirectly aimed at improving a page’s search engine ranking.

Yes you can pay someone to do it!

Or You can do the SEO yourself!

This series of articles will help you to get started doing it yourself.

The first thing to do is getting a basic understanding or how Search Engines work and then also of SEO

First How Search Engines Work

The first thing to do is to understand the search engine optimisation and to do that you need to understand the basics of how search engines work.
Although an older article, I like it because it keeps things pretty simple enabling you to get a basic understanding which can be built on later.

Second A Basic Introduction to Understanding SEO

There are a number of papers around which introduce your to SEO.

On our EzySoft YouTube channel we have some great introductory video’s to SEO, the best being Search Engine Optimization, click here

Or if you prefer to read,  start with, a basic introduction to SEO. Or alternatively this one is equally short and sweet, introduction to SEO.

Next Article – Getting Started

The next article gets you started with your DIY SEO

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

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Welcome to the Thumbs Up Edition of my review of the week in tech – each week.

I’m picking out the things that I liked the most that I submitted via Twitter for you all to read. If you haven’t already seen my Twitter feed of tech tips add me @aholesgrove or have a look at http://twitter.com/aholesgrove and subscribe to the RSS feed of my tweets.

This week in Thumbs Up I found a couple of fantastic little handy apps and some surprising news about the uptake of Windows 7.  Check it out below:

• Why couldn’t someone release this years ago – XP Quick Fix Plus Repairs Common Windows XP Errors http://bit.ly/38Hhtd

Well… I don’t think I need to remind anyone that XP has had its fair share of problems.  This program launches into an interface which details 40 of the biggest problems in XP whilst providing an interface to click a button to plug that problem.  Unbelievably amazing app.  I would recommend you grab this app and run it on your XP installation and I would also recommend that Microsoft hunt down the developer of this software, write them a blank check to buy the whole company and submit this software over Windows Update.

• This is pretty handy – Cache My Work Restores Your Workspace After a Restart [Downloads] http://bit.ly/2Ffdyv

I have this happen to me all the time – I get into work in the morning and Windows rebooted through the night to install automatic updates, therefore everything that was open on my desktop had been automatically closed.  Trust me, this freaks me out everytime it happens as I usually have about 10 – 15 scripts open on my desktop at any one time that I am working on and it’s annoying to have to retrace my steps and figure out what I was working on at the end of the day yesterday instead of just having it all there still open like it is supposed to be.  This application attempts to address this issue by keeping a log of everything that is open on the desktop – if you have to suddenly reboot, this program will reopen all of your applications for you when Windows starts up and in some cases can even reopen the files you were working with inside your applications.  It’s not perfect, but it’s heaps better than nothing.  I installed this and I love it.

• This is a great tip – Adding Flip 3D to Windows 7′s Taskbar http://tinyurl.com/ybb85pn #Channel10

So, if you follow the instuctions here you can essentially make a little tool that replicates the Windows Key + TAB functionality, but I tell you what – despite the Windows Key being on 104 keyboards ever since the release of Windows 95, there are an alarmingly frustrating amount of people out there that have absolutely no idea what the Windows Key is.  So, when a core piece of functionality for cycling through windows open on your desktop involves telling people to “use the Windows key”, it is extremely easier to just set this icon up on their task bar.  Trust me, it is.  And you know what?  I actually like it – once launched, you can just hit the TAB key to cycle between windows, instead of having to keep holding the Windows key whilst tabbing to keep the Flip 3D feature open.  Check out the article this is worth doing for your Windows 7 machine.

• Interesting statistics – Windows 7 Market Share Climbing Fast http://tinyurl.com/ydlm8mt #Channel10

So much for Apple‘s new ads saying that everyone was excited around the Windows 7 launch because it was time to upgrade to a Mac.  All it took was for Windows 7 to be on the market for two weeks, and already the global marketshare for Windows 7 machines across the world is bigger than Mac OSX Snow Leopard, which has been on the market for three months.  As of the time of writing, 3.27% of all computers in the WORLD have Windows 7 on it.  Pretty amazing statistic.  Another under the radar piece of info in this article is the fact that the global marketshare for Windows overall was almost 93%, which is a lot better than it used to be earlier in the year when I heard that it had dropped just under 90%.  It seems that there aren’t as many Macs in the world as everyone thought there was – Apple still have their work cut out for them, no wonder they are spending half a billion dollars are year on advertising.

• Geek alert! – Coke Zero Has Zero Calories And Sugar, But Is High In Spy Cameras http://bit.ly/2uIK8h

You’ve gotta love spy cams built into everyday objects – they are mega handy.  This artcle demonstrates a Coke can with a camera inside and a USC cable attached so you can use it as an instant web cam for spying on your house / office whilst you are not there.  Interested?  Me too.  Check out the link.

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

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• Windows 7 already bigger than Snow Leopard and Linux combined (downloadsquad.com)
• Windows 7: like Vista, but good (guardian.co.uk)
• Mossberg on Windows 7 vs OS X – “A Toss Up” (jkontherun.com)
• Prepare for the desktop update onslaught with Snow Leopard and Windows 7 (ztrek.blogspot.com)

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Each week I’m picking out the things that I liked the most that I submitted via Twitter for you all to read. If you haven’t already seen my Twitter feed of tech tips add me @aholesgrove or have a look at http://twitter.com/aholesgrove and subscribe to the RSS feed of my tweets.

I missed out on doing this weekly review on time as it was all hands on deck in Making Life Ezy putting the final touches on HireEzy 2.1 before release that week. We’re all done now and everything is back to normal.

This week in Thumbs Up the common theme here is Windows 7.  It’s out – finally – and it’s awesome.  I’ve been finding all sorts of really handy links which I think you’ll like, such as how to change settings, handy little apps and more. Check it out:

• Wow this is a great idea – Gridvista Makes Organizing Screen Real Estate Simple [Downloads] http://tinyurl.com/yhb42ba #Lifehacker

This feature is something that sort of exists in Windows 7 already but takes it to the next level – what you can do is split your monitor into multiple monitors, so that you can maximise a program into a portion of your monitor and then maximise a seperate window into another portion of your monitor.  What you’re left with is a few apps open on the screen at the same time, all into their tidy areas.  Pretty handy for power users, check out the screenshots on the article link.

• Great article – Top 10 Windows 7 Booster Apps [Lifehacker Top 10] http://tinyurl.com/yfnfoqg #Lifehacker

I won’t detail all of the Top 10 here so I encourage you to take a look yourself, but the summary here is tips for changing some of the look and feel of Windows 7 back to older styles of Windows for the technology phobics out there, in addition to useful jumplist applications for GMail and FireFox, which allow you to access application shortcuts from the taskbar which is handy (especially if you’re using a touchscreen). There are also a couple of super handy apps at the bottom – one of which I detailed last week, the alternate ALT+TAB application, but also a sinlge program that will install a whole pile of programs for you that you might use all the time – in one installation – which is really handy for people buying new PC’s and find downloading and installing all of their favourite utilities a drag.  Check it out.

• RT @makinglifeezy How to Design a Company Name, Logo and Colour Scheme – http://tr.im/CKmk Includes examples of the bad ones

Our very own marketing department put together this little gem of an article – a list of links to other sites detailing how to choose the core details of your business well.  Great examples here of the right and wrong way of doing things, I found it quite educational.

• Great bunch of links here to Windows 7 articles and free software – This Week’s Most Popular Posts [Highlights] http://bit.ly/34Vf7i

A pretty self explanatory post here – this article has a whole pile of links to good tips and handy apps and definately worth a read of you’ve just grabbed yourself a copy of Windows 7 or a thinking of doing so.

• Here’s a huge pile of links to useful #Windows7 articles and tutorials – Lifehacker’s Complete Guide to Windows 7 http://j.mp/3Fy0cc

… and another one! Consider this article the ultimate crash course in Windows 7.  Forget about buying books or training courses, EVERYTHING is here.  The best part about this article? I can guarantee that you’ll see something in the list here and you’ll say “wow I didn’t know it could do THAT!”  Check it out!

• WOW – Psystar Lets You Put Snow Leopard On A Non-Hacked PC http://bit.ly/4l1bge

Here’s a good way of somewhat balancing out all the excitement for Windows 7 – post an article about how you can install Mac OSX on a normal PC so that you don’t have to buy an expensive Mac.  I’ve been reading other articles about people who are tried this out and they say it’s legit and works well – even on netbooks.  If you’re willing to give it a try, then have a look at this.

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• Taskbar Meters Monitor Your Windows 7 Hardware in the Taskbar [Downloads] (lifehacker.com)
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• Gmail Alerts in Windows 7 Taskbar with Gmail Notifier Plus (paulspoerry.com)

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

It is well worth reading, the link is below

Twitter Spam: 3 Ways Scammers are Filling Twitter With Junk

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

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ArticleCoop | 7 Steps to Off Page SEO Techniques

7 Steps to Off Page SEO Techniques

By: Bill Wynne

Off page SEO Techniques are very important for any website, blog or otherwise that wants to harness the power of organic traffic from the big search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process that includes a number of elements to insure a more favorable position for your website in search engine result pages like those of Google, Yahoo and Bing. The success of your online marketing is greatly enhanced when you can increase the ratio of your organic traffic to 80%. This traffic is free and very valuable.

There are two kinds of SEO, on page and off page SEO techniques. We will only discus off page SEO techniques in this article. Off page SEO are the things you need to do to get a higher page rank (PR) and a good position in the search engines like Google for your website after you launch the website.

What are the off page SEO techniques? Off page SEO techniques are always connected to building your link popularity. Link popularity represents the number of back links or links back to your website from other websites that your website has. To check you website’s current link popularity, go to Link Popularity and use the free tool to check your website’s link popularity. The greater link popularity that your website possesses the higher your page rank (PR) will be. To build your link popularity you need to increase the number of websites that link back to your website.

There are a number of off page SEO techniques

1. Email site webmasters that are responsible for websites similar to yours in content and ask them for a link that you will reciprocate on. There are sites that have a page full of links and the links are not relevant to each other as far as content is concerned. Link Farms can damage the reputation of your website with Google instead of helping it. It is not advisable that you take the easy route and join in any link farms. Link schemes are not approved by Google and before you take what may appear to be an easy route for getting back links you should read information on Google’s site about illegitimate linking methods, this will assure you of more success with Google. One strategy used is to launch a lot of fraudulent sites to create lots of links to one site or more. Google has ways to track this and the sites involved could likely be blacklisted by Google.

2. Content – The best way to conduct your off page SEO techniques then is to insure that you have unique, highly informative content. When you have great content other webmasters will want to link to your site. If they just copy and paste your content on their website that is a violation of intellectual property copyright laws. Make people want to link to your website. This is the best of all off page SEO techniques to increase the number of websites linking to yours.

3. Article marketing – There are hundreds if not thousands of article directories on the Internet. You can submit articles to these sites and for every submission, you will be allotted a resource box in which you can introduce yourself and share a link to your website. Some of these article directories have high page ranks. If your articles are accepted, they will be included in their pages. Having a website with high PR linking to yours would go a long way in increasing your own page rank. Additionally, if you will submit just one article to a thousand directories, you’d have a thousand pages linking to your website! Sounds like a daunting task? There are services detailed on my blog that you can use for monthly fees or software that is automated.

4. Forum marketing – There are online communities that are dedicated to the subject of your website. Find those forums, join them and become part of the community. You want to leave relevant valuable comments showing you are part of the community and not just spamming. You will be seen as a spammer just there to post a link and you could be banned from that forum. In the forum you will be able to have a signature box that will accompany every post or comment that you make in the forum. Your resource box allows you to have one or two links to your website. For every post you make, you will have a link to your website.

5. Craigslist – Craigslist is a well-known classifieds website with a PR7. A PR7 score is very high! Having a link on a website with a PR7 will give a boost to your website. To have a link on Craigslist go to the site, choose the category that is relevant to your website, post your advertisement with your link of course and see what happens. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads your ad. The object was to have a link to your website on Craigslist. Your ad will expire so you should have a way to remind yourself to post there when your ad expires to maintain a constant link there.

6. Look for partners who are willing to include your list in their pages. The easiest way to do this is to use the free tool at Webconfs

7. Triangular linking – Google does not like reciprocal linking but triangular linking is one way of getting around this limitation. Look for webmasters who will work with you on this one of the off page SEO techniques. Webmaster A posts a link to Webmaster B’s website. Webmaster B posts a link to Webmaster C’s website. Webmaster C posts a link to Webmaster A’s website. It is the same principle as reciprocal linking, but the search engine spiders are not programmed to determine this type of linking.

Author Resource: Find more related information on Article Marketing on Bill’s Blog. Since 99′ Bill Wynne has successfully used the Internet to effectively convey information for profit and not-for-profit. Recently, Bill created a blog to share his experiences in Internet Marketing. His blog offers free tools and articles like Off Page SEO Techniques

Article From ArticleCoop

Each week I’m picking out the things that I liked the most that I submitted via Twitter for you all to read. If you haven’t already seen my Twitter feed of tech tips add me @aholesgrove or have a look at http://twitter.com/aholesgrove and subscribe to the RSS feed of my tweets.

This week in Thumbs Up is all about handy Windows apps, plus some interesting statistics about social media in the enterprise:

• Hey cool! This will be handy – New App Links SkyDrive to Windows Explorer http://bit.ly/ncuiT

If you haven’t heard of Windows SkyDrive, it’s basically a free online storage solution provided by Microsoft which gives you 25gb to store whatever you want on the internet so that you can access from anyway.  It’s not really pushed at the moment which is why not many people know about it, but that will certainly change once Office 2010 is released, as it is heavily focused on extending the Office experience beyond the desktop allowing people to create and save MS Office documents online using online browsing versions and store them in their SkyDrive using the Office Live plugin.  Personally, I’ve found it really handy and I use it alot.  What this application does (which was NOT created by Microsoft, by the way) is install your SkyDrive as another hard drive on your computer in the Explorer shell, so that you can simply copy and paste to it like any other hard drive – the online difference of course is that you are storing your stuff on Microsoft’s servers.  This is really great for backing up all of your critical information so that if your machine breaks down or is stolen, you can simply replace it and remap your SkyDrive to the machine using this application and voila – you have all your information back.  Highly recommended.

• Very interesting – Palo Alto Networks: Twitter Usage Soars in the Enterprise http://bit.ly/TBJt1

There is another article of similar theme that I tweeted as well this week, which you can read here – http://bit.ly/1P8llM – which also touches on how social networking usage is exploding in the business and enterprise workplaces.  The reason why?  It is a far more effective way of engaging your audience and getting your message across.  I am willing to bet my left kidney that Google will shell out somewhere in the vacinity of $2 billion to buy out Twitter and position it as it’s newest advertising medium, considering that many businesses are telling the same story as we are – Google Adwords is a WASTE OF MONEY.  Our company stopped using it earlier in the year and we now exclusively advertise our products and services through Twitter (and Facebook to a lesser extent) and the result has been a 700% increase in sales leads.  True story.  We are so happy with the results that we will never use Google Adwords ever again – which by the way supplies Google with 97% of their $16 billion a year in revenue.  You do the math – Google will have to radically adjust their business model or risk becoming irrelevant and having their revenue dry up big time.

• Good article – Stop Paying for Windows Security; Microsoft’s Security Tools Are Good Enough [Opinion] http://bit.ly/19flzZ

I’ve blogged about Microsoft Security Essentials before – if you haven’t yet heard of this program, it’s Microsoft’s version of a free anti-virus program – and since it’s release I have been surprised about the amount of articles likes these that are getting published which are complementary to Microsoft for this being a great release.  What I would add to the fact that it is a good enough security program is the fact that it DOESN”T ANNOY YOU.  I’ve been running it myself ever since it was released and not once ever has the program prompted me to interact with it in any way.  At first I was a little worried that perhaps the virus definitions weren’t up to date so on the odd occasion I opened it up to check – I was wrong, the program is updating itself almost daily and it isn’t doing anything annoying on the screen to indicate that it’s working in the background.  In my opinion, that is the ultimate security program, as I often forget that it is there.  I have been going through the process of uninstalling AVG and other virus programs on the computers that I come across and have been installing this instead, it truly is a nice, solid release and I’d recommend it to anybody.  If you’d like to try it yourself, you can download it for free at http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials.

• Awesome app – Paint.NET Releases Big Update, Still a Killer Photoshop Alternative [Downloads] http://bit.ly/2Ok9bW

Photoshopping has pretty much become a verb now, on par with Googling a search of Tweeting a message and yet Photoshop is an extremely expensive piece of software that only business professionals can afford.  This application – Paint.NET – which has been around for a while, is a FREE program that gives you all the basics of image editing and some advanced options too.  I’ve been recommending this to people who are uploading graphics to their website and want to do some basic image manipulation themselves and this program will do it all for them for the nice price of nothing. I’d recommend this to anybody – it’s a Windows only release, but let’s face it, the majority of Mac users probably have Windows installed as well, or will need to install it soon.  Grab this and enjoy (and check out the article for more tips on how to use the program).

• Wow – Firefox Tops Vulnerability List (internetnews.com) http://bit.ly/3lqzXF

It surprises a fair few people that I talk to when I tell them that I’m a dedicated Internet Explorer user, but truth be told, Firefox is a great browser but still has a ways to go. Do you ever wonder why Google invested a whole pile of money into building their own browser even though they pony up the majority of the funds that Mozilla uses to operate whilst building free products like Firefox? It’s because sometimes in situations like these where the browser is such an important tool, it’s beneficial that it is being designed and built by people who spend all day working in computer security for a wide range of software products, not just one.  This article goes on to detail how Firefox is the most vulnerable browser to hack attempts and general exploits, even above Internet Explorer.  Something else that most people don’t know about Firefox is that it is a memory hog.  I’ve often looked at people’s computers who have Firefox open and 3 or four tabs open and Firefox is using around 180 – 200mb of RAM from the machine just to do that.  It’s pretty ridiculous.  My general advice is to stick with the browser that comes with the computer – IE on Windows or Safari on a Mac, as they are both acutely fine tuned for their respective environments.  What about Google Chrome you might say?  Well, you can always use that browser if you don’t mind the fact that it is butt ugly.

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About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

Now we will move on to getting started.

Step One:  Analyse your current site.

Why? Because firstly it will give you a list of things you need to do to improve your SEO and secondly it will enable you to track your improvement overtime.

There are a number of great sites which help you do this, but we love Web SEO Analytics tools.

WebSEOAnalytics has excellent SEO analysis tools, best of all they are free.  The first one to use is the Web SEO Analysis Tool, it will give you a comprehensive report on your current site.

Step Two:  Get the SEO Tool Bar

Download the SEO tool bar for Firefox, it you have IE or another browser, you may wish to consider installing Firefox.

This tool bar gives you excellent analysis tools for every site you visit.  The information it has is really useful as you go forward in undertaking the SEO yourself.

You could also consider using the Alexa toolbar as well, it has some useful tools in it as well.  Alexa can help your search rankings as explained in a previous article

Step Three: Start Fixing the Issues

The Analysis Report you received from Web SEO Analytics may include some issues or errors you may not understand.  Don’t stress, either go back to Web SEO Analytics web site or get this really good free ebook that can help.

In the previous article we discussed how companies are missing out out a golden opportunity in using Social Media to create sales leads.

In this article we will explain how to align Social Media to the customer buying process.

The example used is a party or event rental company.

Understanding the Customer Buying Process

Lets go back to marketing basics. People or businesses when they are considering a party or event generally go through the following process before buying:

1. Look For Ideas
2. Look for suppliers of equipment or services for those ideas
3. Contact the supplier
4. Start of normal sales process

Now Align To Social Media

[table id=7 /]

We are happy to provide advise to you if you are a hire or rental company.  No charge its a service we provide.  Why because our hire and rental management software comes with embedded social media marketing tools and we want people to appreciate the value of using them.

Please contact us Email Us

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Two great articles look at both questions, both well worth reading:

1. The first proposes that Social Media has been around for over a hundred years.  An excellent article written by journalist Ron Callari is  “100 years of Social Media“.
2. The second article is also definitely worth reading, if you are worried about Social Media creating problems in your business. With out ruining the great article written by Ken Burbary for you, I will simply insert the link here.

The Hire and Rental industry whether a party, event, baby, equipment, audio visual rental or hire company are ideally placed to take advantage of Social Media marketing.

If you are a Rental or Hire Business and not sure where to start?

Then contact us at  www.makinglifeezy.com.au and we will be happy to help you.

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Getting it wrong can be a limitation on growth – or worse!

There is quite some theory behind naming, logo design and colour.

We have put together this list to help you get to grips with some of the theories.

Spending time on name, logo and colour is well worth the effort.

Examples of Getting it Wrong

Here are some examples of getting it wrong:

List of bad logo design’s and names

The Worst Bad, Ugly and Horrible Designs

What Makes A Good Logo?

What Makes a Good Logo

Top Ten Logo’s of All Time

Thought Provoking Logo’s

50 Clever Logo’s

Developing an Image

Logo Design – How to design a logo

Colour Theory – Theory behind Colour

Color Symbolism - What Different Colours Means to Different Cultures

Colour Considerations – What different colours mean for business

Thinking of a Company Name

Considerations – What You Should Consider

A Process – An approach to developing a name

Name Generator – Automatic Name Generator

SEO Impact – Think SEO Before You Name

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