I’m back!

Hey guys I’m back! It’s been exactly one year since I updated this blog.  My apologies for not keeping this blog up-to-date, I was very busy last year and failed to post some articles.

I’m preparing a new article and I’ll have it up probably by tomorrow. Keep on visiting this page. Thanks!

Building a successful and prolific relationship with your Virtual Assistants

Creating a rapport with your virtual assistant assures higher productivity and success not only towards your business but also to you and your VA. There are numerous factors that will affect how you will be able to develop a dynamic bond with your VA and vice versa. I’ve  come up with my list which I considered important.

“What do I want my Virtual Assistant to do?”. After deciding that you’ll hire a virtual assistant, ask yourself this question and try to create a list of all the things that you want your Virtual Assistant to do for you.By constructing a comprehensive list of your VA tasks will enable you to find  a competent candidate that will suit your requirements.

Character and Techniques Orientation. Now that you hired the perfect VA for you, have a small talk about the characteristics and  manner of how you do things. It  will give your VA an idea on how you manage your routines and slightly give him the impression of your expectations. This will also orient you with your VA’s traits and ideals.

Define work flow processes. Agreeing on the work flow processes will minimize the chances of doing wrong. This will also ensure your information security and privacy.

Provide Precise Instructions. Ready for the tasks? Always provide clear instructions to eliminate miscommunication and errors. Another thing is that don’t forget to add deadlines, whether its specific or general as long as you included a target date. With deadlines your VA can manage his tasks within the given period.

Trust your Virtual Assistant. Learn to trust your virtual assistant. Otherwise it will cause inefficiency to both of you. I know it would be hard at first but to soothe your paranoia develop a process wherein you’re regularly updated with the work progress. Trust is important to develop a sound relationship between you and your VA.

Having a virtual assistant can provide a number of benefits for you and your business. Spend time to develop the structure that will make it a great experience for both of you.

Online Tools to Check Website Speed and Browser Compatibility

Website Speed

Speed on  website optimization is essential. Thus, adherence to it may result to more traffic and ad revenues to your website.
Website Speed Optimization.com provides a speed test tool to test your web site’s speed optimization. Enter your website URL for page size, composition and download time calculation then it will provide a more detailed calculation of each individual and grouped web page elements. From these characteristics, tips to improve web page download time and best recommendations on website optimization will be provided.

Browser Compatibility

Sometimes software limitations hinder webmasters to develop a well-optimized website. With different platform come different softwares with limited to excellent functionalities. As webmasters, it is important to consider the site appearance across different browsers since these browsers have their own bugs and flaws.

Webmasters may have one or more of these browsers installed in their computers but possibly not all. Here’s an online tool that checks browser compatibility across any platform. Browsershots.org provides screen shots of your website design in all browsers just by submitting your URL. A number of distributed computers will open your web site using different browsers and create screen shots of your website.

This tool will enable webmasters to view their website appearance in different browsers without installing and considering each browser’s specifications.

Speed on Website Optimization

Speed is another important element in web optimization. Speed here means the amount of time spent for your web pages to download its content. Previously, I discussed with you some important tips on how to optimize your web pages for web crawlers and to add up I’ll be talking about speed on web optimization.

It has been proven that an increase in page load will annoy your visitors and probably decrease traffic and ad revenues to your website. Visitors mostly spend less than 30 seconds before they decide to stay or leave a particular site. Most likely if it will take them another few seconds for the page to fully download, visitors will proceed to a next possible site in the SERP or Search Engines Result Page.

Be sure that your web pages are loading quickly into your user’s computer screen despite their internet connections. Here are ways on how to speed up your web pages.

• Keep your scripts simple. Avoid unnecessary use of scripting languages and flash. Incorporation of such makes it harder for web crawlers to crawl your site.

• Avoid adding irrelevant web graphics on your web pages. Make an impressive expression to your visitors through your content not with the use of unimportant graphics or fancy animations.

• If an image must be added to convey an important idea or point, consider the image size and file type to use.

Thus, with more demanding audience and harder competition, speed optimization must be highly considered. To know more tips on website optimization, grab Andy Kings’ book entitled Website Optimization.

Hiring Virtual Assistants Cut Costs

Currently, the whole world is experiencing a global financial crisis. Everyday, the number of people being discharged from work grows and companies look for better alternatives just to cut off costs. Mostly, one of the highest percentage of these costs goes to wages, benefits and taxes for employees. In response to the crisis, companies nowadays consider hiring virtual assistants instead of having in-house employees since employment process takes higher cost and longer time.

Virtual assistants are well-trained professionals in their fields. Virtual assistants duties include, (but of course not limited) to the following: Administrative Office Support & Management, Project work: article writing, blog posting, editing, Business Operations Support and Start-up Assistance, Lifestyle Management Solutions/Consulting, Accounting and Bookkeeping Services.

These tasks being outsourced are tasks that take time and sometimes people in charge are incompetent and lack basic knowledge about the task. With a virtual assistant around, you can free yourself from burden and focus more on designing strategic plans that will drive more revenues to your company.

Some of the issues being raised by companies in hiring virtual assistants are the security at risk, costs and assurance that their virtual assistants are really working on the tasks. Outsourcing companies such as Virtual Assistant Inc. always prioritize their clients’ benefit and satisfaction more than anything else. Thus, they design a reliable and secure procedure on how clients can deliver and receive documents and information. Monitoring systems are being installed to assure clients that their assigned virtual assistants are doing their jobs. Like others, Virtual Assistant Inc. provides the same efficient output before time lines in lesser costs. For as low as $6 – $20 dollars per hour, Virtual Assistant Inc. can provide you with a highly trained VA to do your tasks for you.

Looking for ways to cut costs, hire a virtual assistant! Start your search with Virtual Assistant Inc., your dedicated online assistance provider.

Adding Mobile Site to Google

With the rapid changes in technology, we can access different websites using our mobile phones. According to the recent study of Nielsen Online in United Kingdom, the number of people going online using their mobile phones has gone up to 25% 2008 compared to 3% increase in PC internet use.

In the long run Mobile SEO will be significant, where the evolution of mobile internet is heavily used and mobile searches will be monetized.

Currently, Google added sites to their mobile indexes database every time they crawl the web. Google provides guides for webmasters on how to develop a website that will deliver content in mobile phones. Furthermore, these guidelines will help Google find, index and rank your website. Below is a brief overview of the guidelines.

Have your mark ups validated and evaluate the DOCTYPE of the markup language that has been used. In the http type header, indicate the proper internet media type and the character encoding that has been used in the document.

When everything seems to be perfectly evaluated and if you are sure enough that Google can crawl your site have it submitted to Google’s mobile index using the Google Webmasters Tools and your done.

Weighing the Benefits: India and Philippines on Outsourcing

Which country is better? India or the Philippines? Companies find it hard to weigh the advantages of these two countries with regard to outsourcing. Grab a weighing scale and let’s judge who weighs better than the other.

Outsourcing in India

With the influence of British culture, India’s education system focuses more on science and mathematics which gives them an edge in Information Technology (considered the backbone of outsourcing operations). Moreover, with India’s edge in IT, US companies consider them as their first choice in software outsourcing.

Another advantage that keeps India on the top of the list is its reliable bandwidth systems and its continuous development in their high speed communication technologies.

Though they can’t speak with the proper American accent, India is more proficient in their written skills using English language.

Outsourcing in Philippines

One of the many reasons why the Philippines has been one of the top outsourcing destinations is its undeniable proficiency in English language with a literacy rate of 94%. English serves as the second language to Filipinos and emphasizing the necessity of learning the language is shown during early years of education. Furthermore, its strong affinity with the western culture makes them effective communicators using English as a medium.

Philippines provides businesses with higher cost savings. Wages are typically lesser than US rates.

In addition to that, Philippines is well-renowned for its high quality of customer service. Although in some cases other outsourcing countries provide a lesser cost in other services, companies or businesses likely settles with Philippines high quality works.

Businesses and companies internationally acknowledge the strength of Philippine’s outsourcing industry. Recently, Virtual Assistant Inc, a US based outsourcing company that specializes in website development and maintenance, accounting services and SEO, opened its own delivery center in the Philippines.

Good Web Design Principles

Web designing is somewhat complicated since it involves different areas of expertise and skills as well as basic principles. In creating a website, there are more things to be considered to make it usable and pleasing. Examples of things to be considered are the purpose of the website, target audience, Images required, text content, functionalities needed and search engine optimization.

In this article, we are going to discuss some important features in creating a good web design.

Simple web design. Simplicity means we need to focus on the goals and purpose of the site, direct users to things that they look for, avoid unimportant things on the screen, the lesser the unimportant stuffs the higher the percentage that users notice the important ones. Being simple means to take into consideration the things needed to be achieved by using mediums that are really necessary.

Fewer columns. Recently, two column layout is widely used and three column layout is considered maximum. In using fewer columns, there will be distinct communication of the information we want to deliver.

Have a distinguishable top section. In designing website, the main branding and navigation must be clear, bold and obvious. Top section of your page or the header is well differentiated among the rest of the content.

Simple navigation. Navigation needs to be clearly identifiable, and should be easy to interpret, target and select. Clarify navigation through positioning, color, tone and shape, making navigation items large and bold and using clear text to show its purpose.

Use strong colors. Strong colors are bright colors that complement your over all web page design. Use these colors to divide your page into clear sections and to highlight important elements.

Web Optimization Tips

How can web developers ensure that their websites are optimized for search engine? What is website optimization? In this article we will tackle few tips to have a well optimized website. Let’s start with the definition of website optimization. Website optimization also known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the means of having a high ranked website visibility in search engines such as Google and Yahoo. This is to have your websites visible at the first page of Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).

Search Engines

Search engine is a tool used to locate or find information in the internet. Examples of such are Google, Yahoo, MSN and more. Google, as one of the biggest search engines, they fill their index databases by letting robots or spiders automatically crawl/visit and index the contents of websites that was submitted to them through their addurl tool. The results of this crawl is being stored in their index database and displayed as a result with the use of their query processor. Google noted that not all websites that are submitted for crawling will be visible to their SERPs.

Keywords

Keywords serve as an important factor in website optimization. Websites are not ranked as a whole; instead keywords are used to verify the relevance of your website to particular subject. Have a bunch of related keywords before getting started and check for indications on the most frequently used keywords. Moreover, also use synonyms of these words.

Another thing to consider in using keywords is the placement of such. The important parts where you can insert these keywords are in URL, title, alt, hyperlinks and body of your site. In url, a low level url (ex. www.thisismysite.com/index.htm) are more important than higher level url (ex. www.thisismysite.com/subdir/anothersubdir/index.htm). Frequency, keyword proximity or prominence affects websites ranking.Some elements should contain the following:

• Title should have a word count of between 5 to 6 with a keyword frequency of 1 and a keyword prominence of at least 60%

• Alt should have a word count of 1-35 and keyword frequency of 1to 2.

• Hyperlinks should have a keyword frequency between 1-8.

• Body text must have a keyword frequency between 1 and 6, word count of between 3 and 400, keyword prominence of about 50% and total frequency of between 5 and 20.

Additional Tips

First, make sure that your website’s contents are updated and informative. Second, create links to and from quality and relevant websites. Google pagerank is a link relevance and importance tool that scales websites according to sites that links to it. Higher rank websites appears at the top of search results. Third, create a standard based website, this means your website must be clear and well-formatted. Avoid using web technologies that spiders or robots don’t understand. Lastly, avoid using hidden text and links, never practice cloaking, sending automated queries to Google and loading pages with irrelevant keywords.

To know more on web optimization visit Googles webmasters guidelines and www.googleguide.com.

Mensurate your website health and value

Development in web technologies is rapidly emerging from one after the other and though this development revolutionizes and simplifies the ways and means of how we use and design the web, these changes are somewhat an added burden to some companies. Sometimes, few companies find it hard to point out the important factors that compose a successful website.

With regards to the existing needs of these companies, Bartlett Communications launched a free online website evaluation tool called eValuator. Evaluator provides companies an evaluation tool on their website health and value by simply entering their website url. After the software evaluated the specified website, the tool will provide information on its functionality and wellness and it will also indicate ways of improving the web site’s performance.

How eValuator works?

Evaluator

1. A scoring system is used to rate the website based on 15 different indicators.(e.g. technical issues, Google PageRank, Alexa TrafficRank, marketing factors, and analytics)

2. These indicators are weighed individually according to its level of significance.

3. After assessing the website according to the criteria, a detailed description of such criteria is presented and the suggested ways to improve the website performance.

In using this tool, marketing heads of small to medium businesses can create a more vivid strategy and better understanding on how to increase traffic on their website and most importantly to increase business sales.

Check out www.bartlettcommunications.com for more information.