Which SEO Tools Are Most Useful?

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SEO tools perform many different services, and each one is tailored to assist you in developing your web site so that it receives much more web traffic in the competitive online market place. SEO tools perform many different services, and each one is tailored to assist you in developing your web site so that it receives much more web traffic in the competitive online market place. Some of these tools are tools you must pay for, while others are free. The impact of SEO is incredibly important as it relates to a website’s ultimate success. Depending upon the type of website you’re running, you may find some tool use to be much more beneficial than others. It might seem like a difficult task to discern between useful and time-wasting tools, but defining your goals can help you narrow down which ones you should try.

The first thing you must consider when deciding on which tools are worth your money is that SEO work is an ever-evolving industry. This means you must stay aware of what is out there, particularly in a time in which new tools are developed rapidly. Keyword tools are undoubtedly some of the first ones you might come across during your initial search. You might want to try Google’s new Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest. Both of these tools are great to use for creating lists of keywords and then prioritizing them to see how often they are searched for. This provides incredible insight into what you need to focus on in regard to keyword implementation within your webpages.

Another key aspect of your SEO development is search engine ranking. Unfortunately many people fail to realize that monitoring your search engine ranking and visibility can feel like a full time job itself. Te good news is that there are tools which can help you monitor it more closely. One web app called Search Latte is extremely helpful. While simple, it can still help you to check on your site’s ranking within different countries, and this is extremely important in a global market. If you need to see much more data, then definitely consider Getstat. It provides detailed reports and massive amounts of data regarding keywords, while also categorizing information according to region.

Links and the monitoring of these links to other sites is another growing aspect of the SEO tool trade. Establishing legitimate links between your website and others enables you to benefit from increased exposure. Simply adding links to your site is not enough to help you to become successful. Use a tool such as Google Chrome’s extension called Check My Links. This allows you to troubleshoot problems involving link connectivity. it can pinpoint broken links, and test your current links to ensure that they are working properly. Mozscape does a great job of monitoring links for issues, as well as helping you to make sure that all of your links are up and running. It provides alerts as well, which can provide peace of mind on your busiest days.

In addition to the previously mentioned tools, there are other helpful tools such as Social Crawlytics and Topsy. Topsy is especially useful in helping you to search by URL or search term. It delivers mentions on social media which helps you to gain a better perspective on whether or not your site is receiving adequate attention on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. These mentions can show you how the impact of SEO really makes a difference. The driving force behind your decisions to choose some SEO tools over others revolves around assessing your goals for your website. Your tool use can make an immediate impact on the success of your site, and you can begin to reap the rewards from SEO.

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SEO Tools to Learn

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Your online business will thrive if you have mastered the art of search engine optimization or SEO. Search engine optimization will increase the chances that your website will be seen by customers who are ready to do business. If you know the basics of SEO, your website will be ranked higher and will appear among the top search results. This will enable customers to easily see your website. There are several tools that you can use to help you in your online marketing. These SEO tools are as follows:

Google keyword planner. When you are putting content or articles in your website, you should know the right keywords to use. Google keyword planner is a great SEO tool to help you determine which keyword or keyword phrases has the higher search volume. With the keyword planner, you will be able to know which version of the keyword phrase to use that will give you more traffic to your website. The keyword planner will also give you information on what the customers are expecting to read on your website’s page.

Google trends. Another tool that SEO experts are using is Google Trends. This tool will show you people’s interest for a specific keyword phrase over a period of time. Basically, this tool will help you in determining when you should post your content. Google Trends will show you what potential customers are searching for and the period when a specific keyword is search the most. This tool is important since it will let you know when the right time to post new content in your website is.

Plagiarism checkers. Search engines frown upon the use of duplicate contents. If you need to post an already existing content, you must properly give credit to the original author or else, search engines will see your content as being plagiarized and this content will not be allowed to be posted. There are a lot of plagiarism checkers that you can use for free that will determine the authenticity of any content that you are about to post in you website.

Common sense. If you are doing your own writing, you should keep in mind that writing blogs and web articles is not enough. You should always write content with a specific goal in mind that is to get your readers to purchase what product or service you are selling. Google keyword and Google trends can give you a list of different versions of keywords that you can use which are related to your product. However, you must use these keywords in such a way that it flows naturally throughout the article. Bombarding your article with a lot of keywords may trick the search engines to give you a higher ranking, this practice will not be appealing to your potential customers since they are the ones who are going to read your content.

In writing content for your website, remember that you should always write for people first before you write for the search engines. One way to make sure that you have good quality content is to either read your work out loud or have another person read them too.

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Source by Jim Gilbertson

The Most Outstanding 15 Local SEO Tools To Improve Your Ranking

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The Importance Of Local SEO

Local SEO is an essential part of your SEO strategy, especially if you’re a smaller to mid-sized company that relies on the business of local customers. There are many different strategies that you can implement, from optimizing your content using keywords to submitting your NAP (name, address and phone number) to various local directories. To help organize, streamline and track all of your local SEO efforts, you should make use of these local SEO tools.

The following are 15 different local SEO tools that you might find extremely useful, some of which are available at a small cost and some of which are free also.

1. Google AdWords Keyword Planner

This tool works for strengthening your local SEO keywords. During the keyword research phase, you can identify the traffic for specific keywords as well as find new local keywords based on local searches. The Keyword Planner tool even lets you conduct research based on geographic regions. Not only it is a useful tool to have for your local SEO keyword efforts, it’s free to boot, and arguably one of the most useful free SEO tools available as well.

2. SEOProfiler

The most powerful local SEO tools that you can put in SEOProfiler, as it includes features such as a website audit tool, website page optimization, a link disinfection tool that identifies bad backlinks, the ability to identify strong local keywords and even customizable PDF reports.

3. Moz Local

Moz Local is a basic local listing management tool that allows users to manage local listings as well as claim and verify listing submissions. The tool also works with data aggregators to help push listings, making sure that your business is visible. Additionally, the tool will scan through your citations and notify you of any errors that it finds which could be hurting your local SEO. Moz Local will give you a rundown on what kind of categories you’re listed under and what type of media is used for your citation.

4. BuzzStream

BuzzStream is a tool for earning local backlinks as it can help you identify and build relationships with local influencers to help drive word-of-mouth traffic as well as boost local awareness of your brand. The tool is also effective for content promotion and digital PR.

5. SEOPressor

SEOPressor is a tool that scores your site’s overall SEO strength and provides guidance and recommendations for how you can improve it, which will in turn help with your local SEO even if it’s not specifically built for that. Particularly useful is its audit feature that will notify you of any pages that need to be optimized in certain ways, it’s a feature that has earned SEOPressor as one of the best SEO tools for small business.

6. Whitespark Local Citation Finder

The most full-fledged local listing management tool that you can invest is Whitespark Local Citation Finder. In addition to basic local listing management, the tool finds where you should list your business to improve local SEO rankings. It also boasts a number of additional features, including the ability to collect customer feedback and online reviews, monitor local search rankings by a city, discover create link opportunities and more.

7. Synup

Synup is useful for submitting your NAP to local directories. It’s a tool that allows you to easily manage your local listings as well as review and analyze your listings and NAP data. It’s one of the most comprehensive directory lists that you can have and it will allow you to check listings to see if you have existing credentials on them, to add your NAP to listings and fix incorrect data on existing listings.

8. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog helps to audit and index the website’s HTML and Meta Data in addition to helping you find any broken links to avoid hurting your local SEO rankings. There are advanced features available as well, but for a price.

9. Serplify

Serplify is web software that will help you to achieve a page one ranking on Google’s results pages by adding domains and locations you want to rank for and automatically adding thousands of optimized unique pages of content for every keyword, as well as automatically mass indexing, optimizing and syndicating your content.

10. Local SEO Checklist

This tool will ensure that you can boost your local SEO rankings. As this tool offers 40 different options that detail specific tasks to help you optimize your site and increase your ranking by developing your blog, your on-page SEO, your social media and more.

11. Upcity Free Website Analyzer

UpCity is basically an SEO report card. All you have to submit your website as it will analyze every aspect of the page, giving you an overall score out of 100 that compares your page to your competitors.

12. ReviewTrackers

ReviewTrackers is a tool that tracks the customer reviews of your business. It plays a big part in your local SEO strategy, not to mention your reputation, which makes this tool very useful. Basically, it collects online reviews and feedback from over 70 review sites that you can use to determine your brand’s reputation as well as awareness.

13. Copyscape

Nothing will hurt your site more than copied content. Duplicate content is a way to damage your ranking, for regular SEO and local SEO. Put your content through Copyscape to make sure it’s completely original and it avoid plagiarism, whether it’s content duplicated from your own site or content duplicated from another source outside of your site.

14. PageSpeed Insights

The rate at which your web pages load will have a huge impact on your local SEO rankings. The slower your pages load, will less likely visitors are to remain on your page. This can have a big impact on your bounce rate, which could hurt your rankings. PageSpeed Insights will not only review the load times of your site but also make suggestions on how to improve it.

15. Ahrefs

Ahrefs can help with your local SEO strategy by providing a detailed backlink profile for any website you want. This allows you to see who is linking to your site, what anchor text they’re using for backlinks and how strong your backlinks are. It also allows you to check the strength of your competitor’s backlinks. The tool is used by thousands of users throughout the world.

SEO is incredibly important to the success of your online marketing efforts, because of this, a lot of marketers implement various SEO tools including local SEO tools, some of which can be found for free, in order to track, measure and analyze their SEO efforts. You may already even be using some of the more common SEO tools, such as Google Analytics. However, it’s important that you don’t forget about your local SEO efforts as well.

By using these local SEO tools it will make you easier to implement local SEO strategies as well as to track them and measure the performance, thereby helping to ensure that your local SEO efforts are as strongest as they can be.

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Holly Mann Honest Riches Review – Is This a Scam?

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Honest Riches was written by Holly Mann, a mother and disabled veteran. She started internet marketing to supplement her income. After several requests she decided to write the Honest Riches ebook. This book teaches you how to successfully start an online affiliate business with little start up money. Several of the strategies mentioned are free. When Honest Riches was updated, Holly added more information and changed the name from Breakthrough Money Making Secrets Revealed.

Here is a break down of what you will receive with Holly Mann Honest Riches:

Chapter 1:

This chapter is primarily for beginners. It explains how to pick a topic that will yield the fastest results and greatest chance of success by selecting a sub topic (niche). For example, if you are interested in cars, you might want to choose a niche on custom auto wheels.

The next topic is how to obtain information for free. Holly provides links to several free websites to improve your site’s ranking. Search engine optimization basics and domain name selection are explained. I wish that I would have read this book before picking my domain name. Your domain name is very important. Most people don’t give it enough thought.

Holly explains how to get inbound links by submitting articles. She gives you the actual links to the best sites. This is very helpful and will increase your search engine optimization. Keyword selection is the next topic. Holly provides links for several tools to help make setting up your website easier. Some are free.

She provides enough information to help the beginner get started on a budget. This chapter also explains how to see what your competitors are doing. The next section is about setting up a partnership if money is tight. A sample contract is attached.

Chapter 2:

This is a relatively short chapter on how to find content that will drive more people to your website for free. Links are provided to search for free content.

Chapter 3:

This chapter explains how to get a free website up in minutes. Holly explains how to set up your own free blog. She than provides some ideas on how to make money with blogs and how to improve your ranking. You don’t have to spend any money to get ranked on Google and other search engines. A free tool is provided to update your blog.

Chapter 4:

This chapter is about advertising your website. Links to free online advertising directories are provided. AdWords advertising is also briefly mentioned.

Chapter 5:

This chapter explains how to get free site traffic from Forums. This technique is completely free and has worked very well for Holly. She also explains how to start your own group or forum. Paid advertising is also mentioned here.

Chapter 6:

This chapter lists the top paying affiliate programs to sign up with. This is completely free. Holly provides information about each affiliate program. She also mentions a few of the highest paying affiliates to promote.

Chapter 7:

This chapter is about drop shipping and Wholesalers. A list of 6 droppshippers is provided.

Holly also provides a nice bonus tip for eBayers at the end.

Holly Mann’s Honest Riches teaches you how to successfully make money online with very little start up money. Holly gives you several methods that are totally free. This ebook is also very easy to understand. Everything is explained well.

Because I am always looking for free or very low cost advertising, I have used some of the techniques in Holly Mann Honest Riches, and they have worked very well for me. This is one of the best books to get you started if you are on tight budget. Holly has also added a free website and forum for anyone that purchases Honest Riches.

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Using Trade Books in the Classroom

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Looking for a way to encourage your students’ interest in a topic? Trade books can provide the needed spark. Trade books, which are primarily designed to entertain and inform outside the classroom, can be used successfully in the classroom to heighten motivation in your students. Trade books cover just about every topic under the sun, so you can probably find a book that will align with your curriculum objectives in such a way as to help your students see the applicability of the topic. Students may show a keener interest in the lively way a trade book presents material over the stilted writings in a textbook. While textbooks cover a topic in a prescribed way, a trade book may introduce or expand upon a topic by including it in a fictional setting, or alternatively, a non-fiction account from real life.

Classroom activities can be built around the book’s topic, so in addition to the reading practice and vocabulary development, all types of offshoot activities can be developed. Depending on the book, there may be several ways to explore the concepts presented in the story or account. Possibilities for math, science, social studies, geography, history, economics, and more may exist using the book as a jumping off point. Here are some ideas on how to use a trade book in the classroom.

Interest is fundamental. Since the primary reason for introducing a trade book into the classroom is to create interest in a topic, look for books which tell a story which is engaging. Humor helps since many children enjoy humor and they may read with more attention if it is presented in a funny way. The book can still present serious topics and ideas. Another tip is to select books which address the interests of your students’ age group. Elementary students tend to like stories about animals, children their own age, and fairy tales. Middle school students are often like adventures, science fiction, and mysteries. High school students enjoy books written for grown-ups – biographies, general fiction, adventures, mysteries, historical novels, and science fiction.

Check for special features. Books with special features add more educational value. For instance, books with glossaries can aid vocabulary development. Books with research notes, bibliographies listing more potential material for exploration, and website listings related to the topic can assist you in developing teaching materials or assist students in writing reports. Recipes can make for fun learning experiences. Maps provide visual orientation for written descriptions. Drawings and photographs can provide precise information on the physical aspects of an object. All of these features can be used to enhance your students’ understanding of the teaching objective.

Reinforce literacy skills. Almost any trade book can be used to support literacy skill development and reinforcement. Besides providing reading practice, trade books can be used to support vocabulary development, story telling skills, writing skills, and even editing skills. Some publishers provide reading grade-level score information for their books. Many do not, as there is the perception that doing so many prevent some readers who would otherwise be interested, from reading the book. Most schools grant credit to students who read books beyond assigned reading as a method of encouraging reading practice. The Accelerated Reader Program is used by over 73,000 schools nationwide. The database for this service includes more than 120,000 books, but is limited when you consider that according to Publishers Weekly around 30,000 new children’s books are published each year. You may wish to allow a wider choice in books than those currently in the Accelerated Reader Program database. Have students write a few paragraphs summarizing the story to prove they have read the book. A child may be really interested in cars and willing to spend time reading about vintage models or auto repair but not be particularly interested in Tom Sawyer.

Search for resources. Search the internet for teaching resources designed for the book you have selected. Some publishers provide lesson plans, worksheets, discussion questions, and other teaching material to complement their books. Visit the publisher’s website or the author’s website to see what might be offered. You can also do this in reverse to find a book to use. Search the internet using keywords like “teaching materials”, “teaching aids”, “lesson plans”, “lesson plan”, “teaching ideas”, “teaching resources”, or “teaching activities”. You can also search for particular lesson plan topics and you may find a publisher who has developed material for a related book.

Read, discuss, then act. Start the new lesson by having students read the book you have selected. This can be done as homework or an in-class activity depending on your objectives and available time. Then begin a discussion of the book bringing out the aspect related to your teaching objective. Follow the discussion by actively using the material related to your teaching objective. For instance, if your objective is for students to understand a historical event, have your students:

a. construct time lines,

b. create dioramas,

c. assemble costumes,

d. reenact the event,

e. participate in a mock game show where the students are divided into teams and answer questions related to the event,

f. create poster board displays,

g. draw pictures depicting the event,

h. or write their own story incorporating the historical event.

Any or all of these activities will make the lesson more interesting to your students.

You might also consider inviting the author to your classroom or the author may offer an e-mail exchange service where your students can interact with the author directly to ask questions about the book. The author’s enthusiasm for the topic is often infectious and students can connect to the material through the author.

Engage your students’ imagination and curiosity. Use trade books to bring fresh excitement to your classroom. You can develop teaching materials to fit your teaching objectives or you may be able to find teaching resources ready for use on the internet. In either case, you can enliven a potentially dull topic and captivate your class by taking advantage of a trade book.

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A Content Marketing Strategy to Improve Your Site’s SEO Score

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The Golden State Warriors basketball team has already broken a number of NBA records in their pursuit to break the longest win streak in NBA history. However, even if you’re not a fan of the NBA or the Warriors, there are lessons that can be drawn from the team’s tremendous feat. Our team sat down this week to discuss content marketing, a popular marketing strategy, and how website owners can take a lesson from the Warriors to improve their content marketing… and their SEO score.

SEO is a strategy that takes some effort, and, contrary to some peoples’ beliefs, just because you rank for a keyword today (especially a keyword or keyword phrase that is competitive) doesn’t mean your competitors won’t put their own strategy in place to “steal” your relevancy through a more consistent and persistent SEO effort. Just like the Golden State Warriors, if your team (or you, if you’re the owner or sole proprietor) doesn’t show up every day and produce quality work, eventually you’ll struggle to compete with those “teams” that are executing day in and day out. But what do you do when you’re just starting out and/or operating on a tighter budget, and you don’t have much money to spend on a professional to handle SEO for you? We suggest you start with publishing relevant content. And often.

This may seem pretty obvious, but when we speak to many of our clients this is one thing we almost always advocate that they do even if we’re writing some of the content for them. Why?

• Your content will be unique and Google LOVES unique.

• It allows you to showcase a little of your expertise to prospects and partners, and can keep people coming back to your website for future ideas.

• If your targeted keywords are part of the content, it will help increase your page rank over time.

• You control the quality of the content. No third party can possibly care as much about your business and your industry as much as you, so your own content will help that enthusiasm shine through.

• You can be timely and relevant in the topics you speak about, which is an easy way to latch on to what’s trending and increase your odds that your content ranks.

So how does your company become the Golden State Warriors of content marketing and SEO? Here’s a process we would suggest:

1. Explore Google Trends and pull from ideas that have been popular in recent weeks. People always ask us why we advocate this, and it usually stems from this question: “None of the trending topics are ever about my industry, so why would I use this?” First off, the trending topics don’t need to be about your industry. Take the article you’re currently reading, for example. While we write this, the Golden State Warriors are trending as a result of their (currently) undefeated season in the NBA. So, what if the title of our article was, “How Content Marketing Can Be Improved By Analyzing the Golden State Warrior Winning Streak”? What would we write about? Maybe we would draw parallels between a team-written blog with consistently well-written and detailed articles and why not relying on a single player to win a game is the reason Golden State continues to beat its opponents. The reality is, it doesn’t matter. You just want to draw readers in, and take advantage of what people are already searching for on the Internet.

2. Once you’ve found an idea for your latest post, just start writing. Writing about what, you ask? Anything! Not every article needs to be researched and sourced, and not every article needs to be 3,000 characters long. Just look at Twitter. Twitter gives you 140 characters to convey a message, yet how many people view these tweets and act upon them in some way? Millions! The point is, don’t worry about the length. Worry about the quality and completeness of a thought, and whether it will get your readers to act.

3. Now that you’ve written your article, it’s time to maximize it’s benefits to your website through internal and external links. Internal links have great SEO benefit because they allow readers to easily transition from one page to another based on what they’re reading and the actions you want them to take. They also keep people from “bouncing”, or coming to your website and immediately leaving, and increase the amount of time spent reviewing the rest of the content on your website. So, read through your article and find words or phrases that can be used to link to other parts of your website. External links, on the other hand, are links that lead readers to another website. For example, above I linked to Google Trends. Why? It’s looked upon favorably by Google when you’re not constantly building links just to your site, and it also gives you an opportunity to swap links with another website. Let’s say that there is a complementary product (but not direct competition) that you referenced in your article. You could reach out to that other company to let them know, and ask them if they would mind putting your link somewhere within their website. What’s the benefit to you? It’s free advertising to their readership, and if their page rank is higher than yours it’ll give your website an SEO boost if visitors come to it through the link on that higher page ranked site.

4. With your article written, and links embedded, you’re probably wondering where to post your content. Before Google’s Panda update, which we saw more of a penalty around duplicate content, people who spent time creating quality articles thought it best to get it out on as many websites and social media accounts as possible. We no longer believe this is optimal. Even though we know you spent all that time writing a great article and want to make sure you maximize the number of eyeballs on it, it can actually do you more harm than good to repost your content in multiple locations. That’s why we suggest you put content in a single location only, or you make sure that any of the publishing websites you use (for example, Search Engine Journal) will allow you to use a rel=canonical reference to ensure Google doesn’t penalize you for duplicate content!

5. Lastly, if you want to go above and beyond with your content marketing, forum discussions and the like can be a great way to increase the number of backlinks to your article. Reddit, for instance, has emerged as a really powerful social medium for expertise in certain areas. If you join groups relevant to your industry, you’ll likely find tons of user-generated questions that you can answer (and reference your article in) that will give you a static link back to your article for future Reddit users with the same question. For the record, it doesn’t have to be Reddit. You can do this same strategy on all social media websites.

So, if you’re looking to improve on your content marketing strategy and also want to save some of your SEO budget, we suggest you start with the process outlined above. The Warriors didn’t become the team they are today overnight, so keep doing the right things week in and week out and eventually you’ll be dominating your competition! And if you don’t know how your website currently ranks, or just want a second opinion, we suggest you check out our Free SEO Report.

Good luck and good writing!

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Reduce Popular Business Communication Tool Use?

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Many managers are looking for ways to improve their business communications and reduce wasted time within and outside their companies. Are the most common business communication tools of meetings and emails the real problem? According to recent studies, the number of meetings and their duration has increased but meetings often are less than 50% productive. Are we using meetings when another communication tool like email might be more effective? Email use is on the rise and this too is getting a bad reputation as overused or poorly constructed. Emails are used for internal communications and external marketing so they need to be effective. Many managers are looking for ways to reduce both meetings and emails in their companies. Is reduction the answer or is the answer using the tools correctly and more effectively?

I’ve written a book on meeting management and articles on what goes wrong in meetings, so I already know where most people need help. I wanted to confirm that others may be concerned about what may go wrong in meetings and that meetings need improvement. Since I recently wrote an on-line article titled “Minding Meeting Manners”, so I thought it might be helpful to use a popular internet search engine to measure how important the topic of “meeting etiquette” or “meeting manners” is. Using these as keyword in my search, the combined total was over 41,900 results. Just to see if there was agreement with some of my meeting improvement ideas in my articles and books, I read a few of the results which had descriptions that indicated they would provide solutions. Much of the text I read included a few of the thirteen items in my article or some of the hints in my book. However, they often listed other problem areas that were job specific. Although the item I reviewed did not yield all the same things I felt were essential, they did reinforce my belief that meetings are important and that everyone needs to better know how to take advantage f this group communication method for business purposes.

After looking up meetings, I decided to check out “email etiquette” and got over 348,000 results. I scanned the list of options in the first few pages and checked out the ones that claimed to include tips in their descriptions. Some of those I read I agreed with as relevant for professional emails and others I disagreed with because they might work for personal email but were not the correct usage for business communications. However, I found that much of the text agreed with many of the thirteen I listed in the on-line article I wrote last month titled “Encouraging Email Etiquette”. Some justified their belief in what they stated with an explanation but most did not. For people to display proper etiquette in emails, they not only need to know what is acceptable but why that should be the norm. Email is a great communication tool but only if the receiver understands what the sender is trying to say. Although I may not agree with every email etiquette item I reviewed, the number of results clearly indicates this is a valid communication concern for business professionals.

I wanted to find out if the two most popular business communication tools needed to be reduced or if they needed to be used effectively. In turning to the internet as a research tool, I’m not sure if the resulting numbers can indicate which tool people really need the most help with or which is used the most. Either way, I feel confident that the results indicate all professionals need both meeting and email communication skills to be improved for business purposes. Improvement and proper utilization is more realistically the answer to business communication problems than trying to reduce the necessary use of meetings or email.

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