Won Me

When requested to write an article about public speaking tips, I experienced an epiphany, of sorts. Now there’s a word I’ve never written, let alone spoken! Many people will do just about anything to avoid public speaking. Or, you may have said “Who’s got the time?” or “That’s not good use of my time.” Therein lies the epiphany; it’s all about time!

**The best public speakers make the time to learn about their
audience so that what they’re saying is what the audience is
interested in hearing.

**The best public speakers know that timing is everything.
They find out exactly what their speaking time allotment is,
and then practice getting their timing right so they don’t
run over or run short.

**The best public speakers appreciate the value of time out.
They leave a “cushion” of time before and after they speak,
to reduce stage fright.

**The best public speakers recognize the third time’s a charm.
On average you’ll want to practice your presentation aloud
three times to work on your opening and closing, your
nonverbal language and your intonation.

**The best public speakers are aware that time marches on.
While the initial 30-60 seconds of a presentation seem like
hours due to an elevated stress level, it quickly subsides as
you proceed with your purpose and remember that the audience
is there because they need what you have.

Finally, there’s no time like the present to work on your T.I.P.S., which by the way represents Talking Is Public Speaking©. Every time you speak, it’s a form of public speaking. If you want to develop your skills, I urge you to only seek input from an experienced and credentialed professional. Nothing less will do. Isn’t it about time?

By: Dale Klein, M.A., Corporate Communication & Speech Specialist (SPEECH MATTERS)www.speech-matters.com

Dale Klein, Corporate Communication & Speech Specialist may be contacted at 518-664-6004 or by visiting her website at http://www.speech-matters.com. When you want to speak like a “pro,” there’s only one place to go… SPEECH MATTERS.

If you have a website, sooner or later you’ll get interested in search engine optimisation. It’s the art (or is it a science?) of tweaking your website copy and links, so your site ranks higher in the search engines.

There are many professional search engine optimisation firms (commonly known as SEOs) who will charge you substantial amounts of money to improve your website’s rankings for certain search terms.

It’s tempting to go down the SEO track, particularly when you find your precious site languishing far, far down the rankings on Google.

But one of the world’s top Web marketing experts, Ken Evoy, has written a new report predicting the imminent demise of the SEO industry - and recommending an alternative, more reliable method of achieving a top search engine ranking.

Evoy argues search engines are getting smarter and smarter at recognising sites that have been “SEO’d”.

The engines are constantly getting more sophisticated, to avoid some of the unethical SEO practices being used to trick them into giving a site a good ranking.

So SEO experts are on a continual treadmill to keep up.

Initially, SEO revolved mainly around keywords. Now, it seems to centre around building inbound links to the site, to get a higher ‘page rank’ on Google.

But Evoy believes website owners are wasting their time and money by becoming too focused on either of these SEO techniques.

They would be better off, he argues, simply adding more and more quality content to their websites, to provide visitors with what they really want on the Web - information.

To quote Evoy: “Make your content so good that others will want to link to you.”

He adds, a little honest push-start by a solid, simple inbound link programme is a good idea but this doesn’t have to become an all-consuming pre-occupation.

All you need are a few popular sites, in your market sector, linking to you. There are several ways to achieve this, including contacting the owners of sites you would like linking to you, and asking if they want to exchange links.

Evoy’s company, Sitesell.com, has an excellent, free link exchange service, which I have found very satisfactory for gaining links to my own sites.

Once you have a few quality links to your site, that’s enough, according to Evoy. From then on, concentrate on adding more and more content to your site.

There is an important place for keywords on these new content pages. It helps to focus each page on one or two keywords (actually, it’s better to use key phrases, because these are what Web searchers typically use) sprinkle these keywords and phrases throughout your page.

You can find the best keywords by using a service called Wordtracker. This is particularly useful because it saves you from simply guessing which words and phrases people are searching on, and gives you the actual search terms being used - and how much competition there is for these terms.

I won’t go too much into keyword analysis here. Suffice it to say, if you follow Evoy’s advice, you’ll focus mainly on writing content-filled pages that are of genuine value to your prospective customers or clients.

As the search engines see the content on your site continually changing, they’ll return more often. They’ll spider new content on your pages faster and faster. This is good news and helps your search engine rankings.

The only downside of Evoy’s approach is that it does take time and commitment to keep adding content to your website. It may seem easier to pay an SEO expert.

But consider this. Even if you do achieve a good ranking in the search engines through SEO, if a visitor arrives and finds mediocre content, what’s the use. They’ll simply click away. For most small businesses, with limited financial resources, the key to getting your website noticed in the search engines is a slow, steady approach of adding more and more pages with great, relevant content for your marketplace.

Then you can forget about SEO and every other trick.

Focus on building content and everything else will take care of itself.