How To Start A Blog For Free

Learning to blog is fun and easy, and it doesn’t even have to cost a cent. In this post I’m going to show you how to start a blog for free (maybe you don’t need this info, but I am sure you know someone who does).

One of the great things about blogging is that anyone can do it and the barrier to entry is nill, nought, zip, zilch assuming that you have or have access to a computer with an internet connection. I don’t know many people without a computer that don’t have an internet connection. Blogging is as easy as playing with Lego.

Interviewing Tips

Introduction:


The interview is when employers will get to know your personality, interests, goals, and objectives. You will no longer be a list of skills and experiences on a piece of paper; this is your opportunity to give specific examples and anecdotes and explain how these experiences make you the perfect candidate for the position. It is the perfect time to demonstrate your interest in the position and your knowledge about the company and the industry. This is the time for the employer to find out who you are, so be yourself. 

What Employers Are Looking For: 


Interviews can be very stressful, but the best way to overcome this is to be prepared and know what employers are looking for:

• Job candidates with a definite idea of their goals, objectives, strengths, and skills.
• Candidates who are knowledgeable about the position they are interviewing for, the company and its products, and the industry overall.
• Candidates who can match their own skills and experiences with the needs of the company.
• Candidates who are confident in themselves and their ability to contribute to the company.
• Candidates who can discuss past experiences and give specific examples that demonstrate their skills and accomplishments.
   

Prepare Beforehand:


Another way to decrease the stress of an interview is to prepare beforehand. Review your resume and make sure you know your skills, experiences, goals, interests, accomplishments, and objectives inside and out. You'll be asked a lot of open-ended questions, and you will need to be able to give specific examples and articulate yourself clearly and concisely.


Familiarize yourself with the most common Questions Asked by an Employer. Develop answers to these questions, but do not memorize your answers. Make sure all of your responses are positive and highlight your skills and accomplishments. When asked about difficult or negative experiences, describe those experiences as learning experiences.


During the interview, the employer will not be the only person asking questions; you are expected to ask questions throughout the interview, as well as at the end when the inevitable question is asked: "So, do you have any questions for me?" Always ask questions. If the employer has answered all of your questions already, come up with something else to ask about. Your questions can demonstrate your interest in the position and your knowledge about the company and industry. Keep your entire questions        job     related.




TIPS FOR INTERVIEW:

Here are a few suggestions on how to approach the interview process:

• Research the company. It is good to become familiar with the organization, the position and the person who may be your boss. Try to match your skills and experience to the position you are seeking.

• Look good. First impressions are lasting, so make it count. Projecting a confident and professional image is essential. Dress professionally, but don't overdo it with jewelry or excessive perfume or cologne.

• Know the location of the interview. Consider driving/ arriving at the location in advance. Rushing around trying to find the facility can add to your nervousness.

• Know your resume. Be prepared to discuss and defend every aspect of your education and career experience.

• Focus more on the interview, less on the job. There's time to evaluate the job and whether you want it after the interviewer has learned about you. For now, your goal is to get invited back for a second interview or an offer. Then you can decide if the job is just what you want.

How To Write A Cover Letter: A Step-By-Step Guide

Three to five short paragraphs are all you need to create a dynamic cover letter. By making your cover letter as concise as possible, you demonstrate your ability to communicate clearly and effectively. Our guide takes you through each step of the letter-writing process.

Step 1 - The Salutation

• Address the letter to a name: "Dear Sir" If you can't obtain the information by calling the company, use a title: "Dear Advertising Manager."

• Make sure the company address on your letter matches the one on your envelope.

Step 2 - Introductory Paragraph

• Open with a sentence that grabs the reader's attention. For example, explain how your skills uniquely qualify you for the job or that you are enthusiastic about the position or company.

• State what position you are applying for and where you learned about the job.

Step 3 - Why I'm the Perfect Person for the Job Paragraph

• Be specific without repeating everything that is on your resume.

• Briefly explain important career achievements.

• Define how you can contribute to the company's success. How do your skills make you stand out?

5 SEO Principles I Learned Over The Years

I don’t consider myself an SEO expert, but I have been in the trenches for many years already, and managed to build some fairly successful websites when it comes to search engine traffic, with a couple of them breaking the one million monthly visitors mark.

Over this time I came across many SEO tips and tricks, but those come and go. On the other hand there are some basic principles that never change, and I want to talk about some of them.

1. Clichê as it may sound, content is still king.

You probably already know this, so I won’t waste too many words on this point. But yeah having unique and useful content is still the cornerstone of any SEO strategy. Without it no sophisticated SEO tactics will be able to drive a lot of organic traffic to your website.

2. You have to partner with Google, and not compete against it.

When trying to optimize your website for Google you have basically two approaches to follow: you either co-operate with it or you try to out-smart it.

Out-smarting it involves trying to find loopholes in the algorithm, ways to trick the search bots, methods to artificially increase your rankings and so on. The so-called blackhat SEO. In my opinion this is the worst approach you can follow, as it might work in the short term, but in the long run you’ll probably have a lot of headaches.

If instead you play along with Google you’ll be building a more solid asset out of your websites, and in the long term you’ll receive a lot more traffic from it. You can read more about this on Danny Sullivans’ post No, Advanced SEO Does Not Mean Spamming.

The Most Effective Way to Become an SEO Master

A couple of months ago a friend of mine asked my help with one of his websites. It is an online store that sells sports equipment, and he hired a local web agency to revamp the design and the site structure.

Long story short the agency completely destroyed the optimization he had on his site, changing all permalinks, putting the same title tag on all pages of the site and so on. As a result the good rankings he had disappeared over night, and he was pretty pissed.

He set up a meeting with the agency to discuss the issue, and he asked me to go along with him to back him up and to give my take on the issue.

After talking for 5 minutes with the guys who owned this web agency I realized they didn’t have a clue of what they were talking about. I pressed them a bit with some technical questions and one of them said:

“Hey man, I know this stuff, I am even doing the Google course!”.

To which I replied:

“What Google course? Google doesn’t offer any SEO course officially.”

The guy started mumbling and couldn’t explain what course he was talking about. Then I asked them:

“Okay forget about courses and books, just give me the URL of a couple of sites you managed to increase the search rankings and the traffic. And please show me the Google Analytics so I can see the organic traffic numbers.”

Silence…

In the end the guys admitted that they didn’t know much about SEO, and I gave them a to-do list of things they should do to fix my friend’s website.

But my point is: there’s only one way to effectively learn and become good at SEO, and that is by getting your hands dirty and doing it.

Sure, books and courses can help, and there are some good ones out there, but all the books and courses together represent only 10% of your learning curse. The rest will come from hands-on experience. From building 10 websites from scratch and failing with 9 of them, while making one to the top of the search rankings and seeing your organic traffic explode.

Only when you try to do the stuff yourself you’ll understand and learn what works and what doesn’t, which methods are effective and which are not.

I was inspired to write this post after reading a similar post on Shoemoney’s blog: If You Are Such a Hotshot SEO, Why Are You Trolling For Clients?.

If you are starting to learn about SEO stay tuned for tomorrow’s post as well, when I’ll review a set of SEO tools that can get you going a lot faster.