Wavetalent

Common SEO mistakes

admin — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:54:37 +0000

AVOID THESE COMMON SEO MISTAKES

As we all know, SEO plays a critical factor in the success of a website. It is important that you know the basic rules of SEO before launching a campaign, otherwise, you may be putting your online presence at risk. It pays to know the most common mistakes that you need to avoid.

Target Audience. Before you launch an SEO campaign, it is important that you properly identify your target audience. This requires a considerable study and review to be able to accurately target your key audience.

DIY SEO. Most people think of cutting down on cost by doing their own SEO. While the basic techniques may be easy to implement, it is highly recommended that you get the services of a professional SEO specialist to execute the proper practices. This will save you more time and be able to get more results.

Wrong Keyword Choice. The choice of keyword you optimize is very important. This is not derived through guessing games. A research needs to be conducted to derive the right set of keywords then analysis on what keywords would be best optimized.

Backlink Spamming. When in comes to backlinks, quality should take precedence then the quantity. The relevance of the linked sites and their respective page ranks should also be taken into account.

Ignoring Title Tags. Title tags should never be overlooked as this will show up in the search results as the title of your page.

The Virtual Assistant In Today’s Economic Climate

admin — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 07:21:20 +0000

Because of the existing economic conditions, small businesses must look for new ideas to enhance efficiency while bringing down expenses. In an effort to manage expenses, a lot of business people have begun to carry out non-income producing responsibilities on their own. Yet what a lot of businesses don’t realize is that by carrying out these things themselves, they’re costing themselves money as opposed to lowering costs. An innovative solution to this very widespread dilemma is to hire a virtual assistant.

A virtual assistant can execute many chores which are necessary to an organization, but do not call for a physical presence at the office location. Chores like responding to email, sending invoices, running a blog, and maintaining contact with clients can be outsourced to a virtual assistant overseas. Thanks largely to the availability of the web employing a virtual assistant to undertake the duties of a secretary is now achievable and economical. Outsourcing lots of the things necessary to catapult a venture into success can now be conducted with the help and support of a qualified and eager virtual assistant in the Philippines.

As a business person you may not wish to take on additional costs to be able to conduct a business, particularly with the shakiness of the economy. By working with a virtual secretary from the Philippines it is possible to reduce your expenditures while boosting your efficiency and also your income. And although it’s true that there are virtual assistants and virtual assistant placement services readily available through several other places and cultures, my experience has proven that employees in the Philippines have normally sought higher education, are eager to succeed, possess a good work ethic and hold a high esteem for American values in the workplace.

When researching the specifics of working with a secretary offshore as opposed to a local secretary the cost effective route is to delegate the job offshore. It’s been reported by the bureau of labor statistics that the annual median earnings in 2008 for administrative assistants and secretaries in America was $29,050. As of May 2008 the figure was upwards of $40,000. Realistically, that is a a shockingly high amount to pay every single year for a support staff that doesn’t create money. A number of these secretaries are engaged fulltime and consequently incur extra expenditures such as health care insurance coverage, unemployment, payroll tax and workers’ comp. With an assistant in the Philippines, the yearly pay will be a small fraction of what is paid to an American employee and the company would not have to pay the legally required additional costs.

Now let me explain on why hiring a Philippine virtual secretary may be of such huge benefit to your company. Perhaps you yet think that the obvious way to economize is simply by carrying out the chores of running a business on your own. Then again, how much money are you truly generating or saving as you answer e-mail, settle payments, answer calls, or garner content through research? The Pareto principle dictates that 20 percent of the tasks you do accounts for 80 percent of your earned income. Which means that, there is 80 percent of your time that could and really should be employed to grow and flourish in your existing industry.

However, when you’re using up that time doing duties ordinarily designated to workplace employees, you then have noticeably restricted the possible advancement of your business. Utilizing the same concept, you will recognize that although you’re having to pay someone for 100% of his or her working time they’re only working 20 percent of it for you. The truth is that your company will still need a supportive staff in order to continue expanding. Do you realistically want to pay out in excess of 30 thousand dollars for twenty percent of someone’s effort? It’s a lot better to employ a virtual assistant!

Here are 12 reasons to hire a Virtual Assistant now:

admin — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 07:48:16 +0000

1. You will have more free time to spend with your family and friends.

2. You will have more time to work on growing your business.

3. Reduce your business overhead costs.

4. You don’t provide benefits, office equipment or office space.

5. No need to train staff. VAs come equipped and trained in their specialty areas.

6. You will be provided with skills that you don’t have but need

(e.g. Create PowerPoint slide presentations).

7. VAs provide you with additional help. VAs are an additional set of hands.

8. You will have someone that helps you implement your great ideas quicker to build your business faster.

9. VAs do even your boring tasks! Hate data entry? Hire a VA to do it for you.

10. Get help with emergencies quick.

11. Use software you don’t even own (many VA’s own and use Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Adobe Acrobat and more).

12. VAs are professionals they understand everything just ask and they give answer’s quickly.

Hiring a Reactive Virtual Assistant vs. a Proactive One

admin — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 02:11:22 +0000

When it comes to looking for and hiring the right VA, you want to look at the difference between someone who is reactive versus someone who is proactive as it will make a HUGE difference in your business.

A reactive virtual assistant is what I like to call a puppet. Now, the term may sound a bit harsh but really, it describes the role pretty precisely. This type of virtual assistant responds to specific requests and executes on exactly what you tell them to do. There will be little ‘bigger picture thinking’ and they won’t necessarily suggest to you better, faster, cheaper or more efficient ways of achieving the same end result.

A proactive VA is someone who thinks like an entrepreneur. Someone who has done a lot in their own business or for their client’s businesses and they get it. They understand what needs to be done, the best tools to use, the cheaper ways to achieve the same results and they share this with you often. When you ask for something to be done, they clarify with you before starting, they don’t make assumptions but at the same time, they are also empowered to make decisions based on knowing you and your company well. A proactive VA views it as a “partnership” and values the efficiency and insight they bring to the task.

As an entrepreneur who is Looking for a Virtual Assistant, you may consider the proactive VAs of Wavetalent. They know how to listen, which let them understand what your business really need. Plus with the warm approach of David and Steve. You may think they are your friends. Wavetalent is your friend.

Matroska Media Container

admin — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:07:58 +0000

An MKV file (Matroska Video) file is not your regular video and audio compression format. An MKV file is an open source container format. It is a general-purpose audio and video container and a competing format to the more popular AVI and MP4 formats. With its futuristic design approach, it can provide support for a vast number of audio, video and subtitle compression formats. Its features exceed even those of AVI and MP4 files.

An MKV file contains compressed video and audio streams along with an encoder. A codec or Coder/Decoder is required to play this type of file. MKV aims to be the leading standard for multimedia container formats. It is based on EBML (Extensible Binary Meta Language), a subclass of XML.

Specifically, MKV file is a Matroska file – an open source container that houses an unlimited amount of video, audio, and even subtitles data in a single file. Its primary purpose is to create a unifying or universal format for multimedia storage with the benefit of being completely open source.

Lately, more and more groups, even in the fansub scene, are starting to use MKV. Lots of people doesn’t know what an MKV is, what can be done with it, or why anyone would want to use it.

Matroska is an open standard, meaning that it’s free for anyone to use, and that all the specifications are public. Its homepage can be found at www.matroska.org.

MKV Features

1. Cross-platform audio/video multimedia container format. Designed to hold any type of codec. (Audio, Video, Subtitle, etc).

2. Designed for editability.

3. Purposely flexible design.

4. HTTP and RTP audio & video streaming capability over the internet.

5. Tools and libraries for developers adding MKV support to their applications.

6. Comprehensive support by new Samsung and LG TV and Blu-ray players. Direct television USB playback support – MKVs can be directly played from USB when plugged into the television USB port

7. Reliable error restoration mechanism

Licensing MKV Files

License

Matroska has several components that are licensed in different ways to maximize it’s software and hardware adoption.

Cost
There is no cost to use the components as long as you respect the license it is released under.

Commercial Products
To help Matroska evolve we do encourage companies that release commercial hardware or software products that use Matroska or EBML to become a sponsor. In exchange for your sponsorship, we allow the sponsor to use the Matroska logo’s and trademarks in packaging, physical products, promotional material, and on their websites.

Phone Etiquette for Contractors

admin — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 06:39:09 +0000

Working from home as a contractor can be a liberating experience, in that you can often make your own rules, but when it comes to telephone calls with employers, standard rules of business do apply.

Here are some basic phone manners you need to master whether talking one-on-one with your employer or engaging in a conference call:

1. Eliminate distractions. Do whatever you can to quiet your surroundings. This may mean turning down your radio or it may mean locking yourself in the bathroom.

2. Greet your employer and identify yourself. Yes, your employer’s caller ID may have already told him it’s you calling, but you still need to say: “Hi, Employer. This is Contractor X. How are you?” If you are answering your own phone, start by saying: “Hi, this is Contractor X.”

3. Don’t talk over others. Be mindful — especially on conference calls — of not interrupting. Practice patience. Focus on politeness. If you start to talk at the same time, always offer to let the other person go first. Listen more than you talk.

4. Keep it clean. Most contractors barely know their employers, so it’s important to observe respectful boundaries: don’t swear, don’t gossip, keep it clean. (Besides, a lot of people record calls, you know — would you really want some things repeated?)

5. Practice reflective listening. This skill is especially important during one-on-one calls with your employer. When you’ve been given a directive (”Here’s what I need you to do…”) follow it up by confirming what you’ve just heard (”So, you’d like me to…”). Echo instructions. Echo deadlines.

6. Know when to cut the small talk. Engaging in a little chit chat can be good for your rapport with your employer, but know when it’s time to get down to business. Listen for cues. On a conference call, follow your employer’s lead. If she is being chatty that’s great, feel free to engage. But do so carefully: no long stories, heavy opinions, or tangents.

contractor phone etiquette 27. Don’t put your employer on hold. If you can, avoid ever putting your employer on hold. In fact, when something important does come up — like your son injuring himself while you are on the phone — don’t say: “Can you hold while I check on my son?” Instead say: “I’m sorry, a little emergency just came up here. Can we reschedule or can I call you back once I get things sorted out?”

8. Don’t talk to others while you are on the phone. This is pretty much the same as putting your employer on hold … only worse. Again, if a crisis comes up, then get off the call quickly, rather than trying to juggle the call at a bad moment. (Your employer doesn’t want to listen to you tell your roommate how to get red wine out of the carpet.)

9. Keep calls brief. While you may not be able to control the length of every call, we encourage you to not linger after the necessary information has been communicated. If you are the one who made the call, it’s great to close with: “Well, I’ll let you get back to work now. Thanks for your time.”

10. End with assurances. When closing down a call, reaffirm or re-communicate the next time you’ll be talking or touching base. For example: “I’ll email you those files, and just to verify, our next call is two weeks from today at two, right?” It’s a great way to end on a positive note.

Google Chrome vs. Mozilla Firefox – The Browser Duel

admin — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 03:10:22 +0000

Let´s start with the advantages of both browsers.

Best thing in Google Chrome:

* It is really fast: loading new pages or opening a chrome browser window is definitely fast.
* It is still fast even after adding dozens of Chrome Extensions!
* The Google Chrome User Interface is very simple and not polluted with unnecessary features that you don´t use regularly

Best thing in Firefox:

* Firefox still has the biggest variety of useful Firefox Plug-ins
* Since Firefox is together with Internet Explorer the most popular browser, all the web-designers test their sites in Firefox – and you can be pretty much sure that every website works fine while browsing through the web
* It is an open-source browser

Reasons why most people no longer use Firefox as their primary browser:

* The more plug-ins you add to Firefox, the slower it tends to be – that doesn´t happen in Chrome.
* The way extensions are implemented in Google´s minimalistic UI is much cooler.

Reasons why most people are fully switching to the Google Chrome Browser:

* There are some Firefox plug-ins I can´t live without that are (not yet) available for Google Chrome like for example Selenium IDE for QA testing or Firebug.
* Google Chrome is not yet on everybody´s “browsers-to-test” list => from time to time you can see smaller design bugs while browsing through the web.

WORDPRESS MADE EASIER

Alvin — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:04:52 +0000

These are some of the new features of WP v3.1. It has a lot of new stuff that will be useful around the dashboard plus support the new microsoft browser, the IE9.

Here are the new things you can expect to see the next time you’re in your dashboard:

Easier Internal Linking

You’re writing a post (or a page) in WordPress. You mention something you’ve written about before, and think to yourself, “I’m going to link to that last post!” What do you do? You might open a new tab and search for the older content in your dashboard’s list of posts, or you might go to your live blog and find it. Either way, you have to find that content and get the URL, so that when you click on the link button in the post editor, you’ll have it ready.

With the new internal linking feature, you can now enter any URL to create a link just like you used to, OR you can search your existing posts and pages right there in the link popup. A combination of pre-loading, autocomplete, and some ajax goodness make the new link creation tool a joy to use. We hope this addition spurs you to make more connections between pieces of content on your site, which will make it easier for your visitors to find more related content from you.

Column Sorting

When you’re in your dashboard and you click to the Posts section (or Pages, Media, any screen with one of those listing tables), do you ever wish you could click a column header to change the display, like to sort things by date, alphabetically, by author, or other criteria? I know I wish for it all the time. And now we have it! This feature is a product of a successful Google Summer of Code student project, proof that the program is a great way to get involved with WordPress development. The little arrow next to the column heading shows you which column is determining the sort order, and if it’s ascending or descending. Just click on the column header to sort by that column, or to reverse the order.

Better Pagination

If you have a lot of content, you may have run into a mildly annoying experience at some point when paging through screens in the dashboard that list your posts, media files, etc. Clicking forward and back is easy enough, as is skipping to the first or last couple of screens, but what about the middle? Say you had 23 screens worth of post listings, you’re on screen #6, and based on the dates, you think the one you’re looking for might be around page 15 or so. You would have had to click several times to advance a few screens at a time until you reached the screen you wanted. No more! With our new pagination style, those quick forward/back and first/last links are still there, but now you can jump right to any screen by just changing the editable number shown in the pagination area (and hitting enter). Sweet!

Ajax Search Results

Reviewing search results will be faster and no longer require screen refreshes in the dashboard, thanks to the addition of ajax to the search results screen. Go Speed Racer!

Improved IE9 Support

If you’ve had any trouble using drag and drop features in the dashboard or have had any problems with the Visual editor on the post creation screen when using Internet Explorer 9, sorry! Improvements have been made to make these features work smoothly in the latest Microsoftbrowser.

Wavetalent is the name. – Isaias

admin — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 08:06:17 +0000

I was out of work for almost a year when my cousin told me about this company called Wavetalent. It’s was mid-July when Alvin told me about the company where he is working. The first thing that came into my mind is to apply for a job. I was not working, jobs are hard to find here, so I would just go and play in the cafe most of the time. In late September, my cousin told me that Wavetalent needed a new recruit because they were starting to get busy. On that particular day I had another purpose for going to the city, to pass my resume at a gadget store in which my auntie told me about that needed a new employee to help expand their business in the city. I was on my way to the city that time, when Steve text me to ask if I could go to his place and be interviewed at that time. I only had one resume printed, so when I arrived in the city, I hurried to a printing store to print another copy in case Steve wanted one. After stopping at the copy shop, I text Steve for directions on how to get to his place because it was my first time travelling into what i call “uncharted territory”.

As instructed, I rode a multicab from the city to the town of Albuera. I stopped in Gungab, Albuera and I looked over the place, I said to myself “nice” this place is peaceful – just like my hometown. I began to look for the place in which Steve lives. I easily found it because it’s not far from where I stopped. I opened the door and there I met Steve and we shook hands and he said he was glad that I made it because his partner David was still online at that time. Steven and I talked for a while about the job they could offer me, and he told me a little about the nature of the job. At that time, I couldn’t easily absorb what a virtual assistant was. After talking to Steve about the job, Steve told me he would introduce me to David, his friend and partner. I chatted with David and he told me about “wordpress”.

David then interviewed me and asked about my skills, and experience. After my Interview with David, Steven introduced me to the team he assembled. My cousin Alvin is an intregal part of the team, as is Jhay, Steve’s brother-in-law. I just wanted to see what they had been doing, and chatted with my cousin about how he is doing. After that I thanked Steven for the interview and I hurried back home. A few days later, Steven text me and asked if I could drop by and do some work for wavetalent. I went to Steven’s place and we talked about the work, seems they had a job for me right away! I was very excited, so I sat at one of the computer terminals, and started chatting with David. He said that I should research about SEO or Search Engine Optimization and give him a detailed report in the afternoon about what I learned.

I researched SEO on the internet and compiled everything about what I read and learned. When I finished compiling the report I sent it to Steven and David. That was my first time working with Wavetalent, and I have been honing my skills ever since. I am glad that I joined this team with the objective to progress while learning and Wavetalent is the name!

“From Networking to Web Programming”- Jhay

admin — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 06:37:07 +0000

Hi Guys, I just want to share a little info on how I went
from networking to web programming. At first it was so hard for me,
adjusting and learning those codes I encountered – specifically
PHP codes. Unlike networking, it’s all about device
configuration, port forwarding, and shutdown computer using
mobile, which I love most! but as I learn everyday,
I familiarize myself with those codes and now it seems like it’s easy. Now i can say that there’s no difficulties in this world,
just believe in yourself, study hard and focus on
what you want to accomplish!