How to hack your gut bacteria so you can lose weight and fight disease At first, research suggested that one class of bacteria—probiotics—helped people improve digestion

Here’s everything you could possibly want to know about your microbiome

“Microbiome” is a buzzword that’s taken over the nutrition world in the last few years. 

No, it’s not that Pauly Shore movie from the 1990s. (That’s Bio-Dome.) Microbiome refers to the vast and complex populations of bacteria that live on and in your body.  

At first, research suggested that one class of bacteria—probiotics—helped people improve digestion. But eventually, researchers discovered that there’s much more to it.

“These bacteria in our gut are wired into our immune system, our metabolism, and even our brain,” says Erica Sonnenburg, Ph.D., a microbiota researcher at Stanford University Medical School. 

“I think if you have allergies, asthma, weight issues, diabetes, and even depression and anxiety, it could mean that your gut is not in an optimal state,” she says.

In the words of Ron Burgundy, your microbiota is “kind of a big deal.”

Sonnenburg speculates that we are only as healthy as our bacteria. 

“If you count up all the collective genome that our microbiota provides and compare that to our human genome, humans are actually 99 percent microbe and only 1 percent human,” she says.

So how do you benefit? It starts with your diet.

Maybe you’ve heard that you should be eating more fermented foods—stuff like kombucha, kimchi (keep reading for a recipe below), yogurt, kefir, and sauerkraut—to introduce more good bacteria into your gut. 

But you also need fiber in order to help feed new and existing good bacteria. So on top of fermented foods, you should also be taking in fiber-rich vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, and grains. 

Second, stop applying hand sanitizer more often than Kim Kardashian updates her Snapchat. New research shows that frequent hand sanitizer application kills good bacteria living on you, increasing your risk of illness.

And, lastly, limit antibiotic use to only when absolutely necessary.

“Antibiotics don’t help fight off viral infections, which are the bulk of the infections we deal with,” Sonnenburg says.

While all this may seem complex and mysterious, the great news is that your microbiome is under your control. And with these simple dietary changes and health practices, you can improve your microbiome within a few days.

If you’re looking for some inspiration to get started, try the following kimchi recipe.

Lucia Shin’s Simple Kimchi Recipe

This homemade kimchi recipe comes from my friend’s mom and has been passed down through generations in Korea.

Try the tart, spicy fermented condiment in a quesadilla with sharp cheddar cheese or mixed into scrambled eggs.

What You’ll Need:

1 head Napa cabbage, cut into bite-sized squares, washed and drained
½ cup Kosher salt
¼ cup crushed red pepper flakes
2 Tbsp fish sauce
4 scallions, cut into 1-inch pieces
½ small onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 thumb-sized piece fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 tsp sugar 

How to Make It:

1. In a large bowl, toss together the cabbage and salt. Let stand, stirring every now and then, until the cabbage is limp and soft, about 2 hours.

2. Rinse the cabbage well under cold water. Drain it thoroughly in a colander, about 20 minutes. Taste the cabbage. If it’s too salty, rinse and drain it again.

3. In a large bowl, mix the drained cabbage with the crushed red pepper flakes, fish sauce, scallions, onion, garlic, ginger, and sugar. Season to taste with salt, if necessary.

4. Pack the kimchi into a jar and let the jar stand at room temperature for 1 to 2 days to ferment. Then store it in the fridge.

The best way to burn fat if you hate cardio Don’t get me wrong, cycling is a great form of exercise but I prefer using functional and athletic movements like you’ll find below

There’s cardio, and then there’s MetaCardio.

Cardio is any exercise that gets your heart rate up, burns fat, and improves whole body circulation. MetaCardio does all that and more.

Instead of using traditional modes of cardio training, MetaCardio employs resistance training exercises to provide a muscle-building stimulus, which, in turn, enhances the overall fat-burning and metabolism-boosting potential of your workout.

There are lots of ways you can do MetaCardio, but 20-10 intervals are among my favorites.

This particular interval became world famous in 1994 when the Tabata study discovered that 4-minutes of 20-10 intervals delivered greater fat loss and fitness improvements than 60 minutes of long, slow, and boring cardio.

Now, to be clear, I use an adapted approach to Tabata training. For one, I typically use alternating sets of non-competitive exercises (supersets or circuits) instead of straight sets of the same move. I find this allows for better form and higher intensity throughout the duration of the workout. It also delivers a better cardiovascular response.

(However, when my goal is to focus on muscle building instead of fat loss, I will use straight sets of 20-10 intervals for a single move to provide a massive dose of local metabolic stress or “muscle pumps.”)

In addition, I like to use more functional moves than the study, which used a cycling machine. Don’t get me wrong, cycling is a great form of exercise and I do it too. But for the general population looking for the highest fitness return in the shortest period of time, I prefer using functional and athletic movements like you’ll find in the workouts below.

I’ve put together two unique MetaCardio workouts for you to try: one for the lower body and one for the upper body. (I also partnered with Men’s Health to create an entire body-transformation program using the concept, complete with 8 fat-torching workouts, recovery and core-training routines, and equipment that will help you get shredded.

The workouts below use a mix of explosive bodyweight, resistance band, and dumbbell exercises to fire up your fast-twitch muscle fibers. And because working your fast-twitch fibers burns the most calories both during and after your workout, MetaCardio is also where shred meets gainz!

Here’s how it works:

Each workout consists of four total supersets, a combination of two specific exercises that you continuously alternate between.

Perform each move for 20 seconds with 10 seconds of rest between moves. Repeat this process for 5 to 10 minutes before moving on to the next superset. Beginners, you should lean on the lower end of that range, and advanced trainees should try to complete the full 10 minutes.

Rest 1 to 2 minutes between supersets to maintain proper exercise form and to keep training intensity high.

MetaCardio Lower-Body Workout

Superset #1

1. Miniband seal jacks (with the band around your ankles)

2. Miniband plank jacks (with the band around your ankles)

Superset #2

1. Single-leg shoulders-elevated plyo hip thrust, left

2. Single-leg shoulders-elevated plyo hip thrust, right

Superset #3

1. Bulgarian split squat jump, left

2. Bulgarian split squat jump, right

Superset #4

1. Dumbbell overhead skier swing

2. Rotational skater jump

MetaCardio Upper-Body Workout

Superset #1

1. Band jack pull apart

2. Band jack pushup

Superset #2

1. Band jack curl

2. Band jack press

Superset #3

1. Clap pushup to mountain climber

2. Dumbbell hammer catch curl

Superset #4

1. Seesaw bent-over row

2. Seesaw overhead press

If you would prefer to add these to your current workout plan as a starter or finisher, just pick a single superset of your choice and crank it out for 5 to 10 minutes. The choice is yours!

You’re a smarter person for the 58 minutes after your workout There’s a growing body of data that shows the more physical activity you engage in, the better long-term memory you have,

Discover the science of how exercise boosts your brain

Before you conquer that end-of-the-year presentation, carve out a few minutes to work out.

Exercising anywhere from 20 minutes to about an hour before a mentally demanding task might help you remember important information you need to succeed, suggests a new study from Michigan State University.

“There’s a growing body of data that shows the more physical activity you engage in, the better long-term memory you have,” says lead study author Matthew Pontifex, Ph.D.

To see how a sweat session could impact learning and memory within one day, Pontifex and his team had 92 adults memorize a list of word associations.

After 12 hours, the study participants were tested on how many word associations they remembered from that morning.

The results, he says, were surprising. “If you spent all day on the couch or all day physically active, it didn’t make a difference,” he said.

But people who exercised in the hour prior to testing performed better than others, regardless of their age.

Even a leisurely walk around the block was enough for some participants to boost their memory.

Exercise may increase the availability of the neurotransmitter noripenephrine in brain regions critical for long-term memory, prior research suggests.

But not all sweat sessions boost memory, the researchers found.

People who exercised in the one to two hours after learning new information, 10 to 11 hours before the test, actually performed worse than other study subjects.

“There’s something about exercising just after you learn something that makes it harder to remember,” Pontifex says.

The researchers aren’t sure why, but they have an idea: “The simplest explanation is that exercise helps stimulate the brain,” he says. “If you don't exercise after learning something, you’re allowing those memories to consolidate and then they become stored.”

Give your brain that shot of stimulation just before you need to recall something instead.

“This relates to the idea that exercise is medicine,” says Pontifex. “Our study is showing you when to take that medicine.”

Indian villagers are drinking cow urine to cure acne In Hindu culture, the cow is a sacred animal, and many of its followers believe any cow byproduct has healing properties.

Don't knock it until you try it?

The men in the Indian village of Udaipur drink and bathe in cow urine to cure their acne, which doesn’t sound like a legit skin-saving solution to us . . . but only because we haven’t tried it.

In Hindu culture, the cow is a sacred animal, and many of its followers believe any cow byproduct has healing properties.

That’s why lots of guys in Udaipur swear by the urine to not just get rid of pimples, but also eliminate all health problems, according to a report in The Daily Mail.

One man, Hemant Paliwal, has guzzled a warm glass of cow urine every day for the last 4 years, and regularly takes pee baths with his buddies.

“I was suffering from acute lung diseases and would catch a cough and cold regularly,” Paliwal told The Daily Mail. “I even had acne and pimples on my skin, but once I started applying urine, my face was crystal clear in just a week. Since then, there hasn’t been a single day when I haven’t drunk cow urine.”

Hey, everyone needs a morning routine.

Another guy, Yogesh Paliwal—it’s unclear if they’re related, or if everyone in Udaipur has the same last name—told The Daily Mail that women in the village also subscribe to cow urine’s powers, but threw some serious shade at the fairer sex.

“Many girls in the village are curing their acne with cow urine but they won’t admit it,” Paliwal said.

Believe it or not, more than 40 percent of twenty-something guys still suffer from acne, according to a study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. So if you’re still popping zits as a grown-ass man, here are 5 Ways to Treat Your Acne that don’t involve holding your nose while taking a swig of cow piss.

The science behind why only one nostril clogs when you’re sick Ever wonder why it seems like one nostril feels way more clogged than the other?

Your nose is smarter than you think.

Being stuffed up sucks. Ever wonder why it seems like one nostril feels way more clogged than the other? It’s not just your imagination: There’s a scientific reason behind it.

Credit a physiological response called the nasal cycle, a process where your nostrils take turns sucking in more air, says Rachel Roditi, M.D., a surgeon in the division of otolaryngology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Find out why your nostrils play tag team—and what you can do when one side’s all jammed up.

Why One Nostril Gets More Congested

Structures in both sides of your nose called inferior turbinates are responsible for warming and humidifying air before it reaches your lungs, says Dr. Roditi. This protects your lungs by reducing dryness and irritation. That process is a lot of work. So your nose funnels its resources more to one side than the other to make the process more efficient.

It sends more blood flow to one nostril, which warms the air coming in through there, but also causes the turbinate on that side to swell.

That swelling means there’s less room for air to make its way in. It’s pretty subtle, though - unless you have a cold, infection, allergies, or a structural problem like a deviated septum, you probably won’t notice it going on.

But when you are sick, blood flow to your nose increases even more, sparking more swelling and greater mucus production in your nasal region, says Dr. Roditi.

Even though you’re congested throughout your entire nose, you feel it more strongly in the one nostril where the turbinate is already swollen as part of the normal nasal cycle.

How to Treat Your Congestion

There’s really nothing you can do to shut off the nasal cycle, says Dr. Roditi.

It’s likely that one nostril will always feel more stuffed up than the other when you’re sick.

Still, after about 90 minutes to 4 hours, your nose switches sides. When that occurs, you’ll probably feel some relief when the swelling in the one nostril goes down - but then the other side will start to feel clogged instead.

Your best bet is to work on easing the congestion overall. Steam from a hot shower or humidifier can help open the floodgates, says Dr. Roditi. And saline nasal sprays can help flush out mucus, too.

Consider topical nasal congestion sprays with oxymetazoline, like Afrin which constricts blood vessels - more of a last resort, says Jonathan A. Bernstein, M.D., an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Asthma. “These sprays can cause rebound congestion,” he says. That means your nose becomes addicted to them, and relies on them to open up.

If you must use them, stick to two puffs a day for no more than five to seven days, he says.

If your stuffed-up symptoms persist beyond 10 to 14 days, or you notice nasal congestion at times other than when you’re sick, check in with your doctor to make sure that something bigger - like a deviated septum - isn’t at play, says Dr. Roditi.

These two things can cut your risk of heart failure Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the U.S.

awsomegist.blogspot.com

They’ll do your body good in a bunch of other ways, too

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the U.S. Want to opt out of that group?

A new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggests two possible strategies: exercise more and whittle down your excess weight.

Researchers analyzed data from three large studies with about 51,000 participants, and found that lack of exercise and too much extra weight are strongly associated with a type of heart failure called preserved ejection fraction (PEF), which has a particularly poor prognosis.

In the research, the incidence of PEF was 19 percent lower for individuals who exercised at recommended levels—which is at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity throughout the week, or at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity, according to the World Health Organization.

Also, higher body mass index levels were more strongly linked to PEF than to the more treatable type of heart failure.

Now, it’s not terribly surprising that exercising more and avoiding weight gain is good for your heart. But the findings are especially important because preserved ejection fraction heart failure is particularly hard to treat.

When PEF develops, the heart stiffens and resists expansion. This is different from another common type of heart failure, in which the heart doesn’t squeeze enough—a condition that is more treatable.

Plus, medications haven’t been shown to reduce mortality for PEF, and heart transplants aren’t considered an option, either. So knowing how you can protect your heart in the first place becomes extra vital.

Get moving, bring your weight down, and you can give your heart its best chance for beating as long as possible.

How to prevent razor burns Shaving is a good form of exfoliating, or sloughing off dead skin cells, but overdoing it can cause you trouble.

Use these tips to avoid nasty nicks and have the smoothest shave ever

Ever wonder why some guys let their facial hair run rampant?

Beyond paying tribute to the bearded rock gods in ZZ Top, these men (like celebrities and their facial hair) might prefer their unruly manes to the discomfort or pain that razor burn brings.

“You need to remember that shaving is a process that not only affects the hair, but also the skin,” says Joshua Zeichner, M.D., director of cosmetic and clinical research at Mount Sinai Hospital’s Department of Dermatology.

Shaving is a good form of exfoliating, or sloughing off dead skin cells, but overdoing it can bring redness, cause razor bumps, and expose tender skin.

If you’re red, dry or itchy, take a few days off to heal, says Jeffrey Benabio, M.D., Physician Director of Healthcare Transformation at Kaiser Permanente.

Read on for more dermatologists’ tips for reducing razor burn and getting the closest shave yet.

First, take a steamy shower

Warm water softens both your hair and skin, reducing tension as your razor blade cuts your scruff, Zeicher says.

Lather up

Massage shaving cream into your face and neck in a circular motion and let it sit for 1 to 2 minutes. If you want to get fancy, try a badger shave brush to help lift the hairs, soften them, and spread shaving cream evenly, Benabio says.

Feeling too lazy to lather? Keep in mind that a dry shave drags the blade across the skin, increasing the likelihood for ingrown hairs, razor bumps, and irritation, Benabio says.

Replace your razor

If you feel any tugging while shaving, ditch your razor and swap it for a new one, Zeichner says. A lot of guys use old blades that cause tiny tears in the skin that can be uncomfortable, Benabio adds.

While your razor may have grown on you, it’s time to cut ties. For a standard shaver, use it about 5 to 7 times before trashing the tool.

Follow the order

Give the thickest hairs the longest amount of time to soften up with the shaving gel, Zeicher advises.

Start with the sides of your beard, then move to your neck and up your chin, and end with your mustache.

Go with the flow

Shaving against the grain may give you a closer shave, but can increase your risk of skin irritation, Zeichner says.

Doing so causes the hairs to be cut below the surface of the skin. When the hair regrows, it becomes trapped and curls back on itself and grows inward.

This causes inflamed, red bumps that are further injured the next time you shave, Banabio says.

Note that hair on different areas of your face may grow in completely different directions, so using a mirror is preferable than a blind shower shave.

Reduce the pressure

You don’t have to push hard to get a good shave, Zeicher says. It only increases skin irritation.

To avoid rough handling, you can use a vibrating razor handle to help decrease the amount of pressure you apply.

Rinse and repeat

Wash the razor under warm water every one to two strokes to clear away stubble and cream blocking the blade, which can cause nicks in your skin. Don’t tap the razor to shake off the cream as it can damage the blade.

When you finally get your face as smooth as it was before you hit puberty, apply a moisturizer to help your skin heal.

How Working for a Toxic Boss Can Make You Toxic The viral nature of toxic behaviour

Lethal pioneers in associations are excessively regular today. Presently new research demonstrates that harmful pioneers can really make specialists show lethal conduct.

In my book, Eye of the Storm: How Mindful Leaders Can Transform Chaotic Workplaces, I portrayed how progressively working environments are getting to be distinctly harmful conditions occupied by lethal pioneers.

I stated, "Constant requests, outrageous weight and merciless savagery are all trademarks of a lethal organization, similar to a turned detach between what a firm says it accomplishes for representatives and what it really is doing. Individuals are taken a gander at as costs, as opposed to resources. On its books, an organization may have dynamic strategies with respect to work-life issues, yet in truth utilizes low maintenance specialists, who are attempting to adjust profession and family. Dread and neurosis, and tension to the point of frenzy, are different attributes of a dangerous working environment."

There are numerous reasons why poisonous work environments are multiplying. With uber mergers and globalization, a few enterprises are getting to be distinctly vaster and generic, while at the same time repeating floods of occupation cuts have left organizations incline and left people with workloads more prominent than is sensibly attainable as time goes on. Rather than compensating long haul arranging, practicality is requested.

Indications Of A Toxic Workplace:

Worry in the work environment influencing worker prosperity, manager social insurance expenses and profitability.

Emotional wellness issues frequently bringing about therapeutic leave.

All sticks and no carrots-administration concentrates exclusively on what workers are doing. wrong or adjusting issues, and once in a while give positive input for what is going right.

The inching organization—excessively numerous levels of endorsement and administration to complete things.

A particular concentrate on benefits, beating the opposition and cost cutting without thought of other main concerns.

Harassing of representatives by administration, or endured by administration when it happens among workers.

Losing the human touch-individuals are thought to be articles, with little sympathy toward their joy or potentially prosperity.

Elevated amounts of turnover, non-appearance and burnout.

An emphasis on "settling" representatives as opposed to organizing solid working environments.

A Leadership Crisis

The National Leadership Index (NLI), discharged by the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and Merriman River Group indicated low open trust in pioneers in business and government. Money Street and Congress emerged as the divisions in which Americans have the minimum certainty—in fact, the certainty rating for these two was scarcely above "none by any stretch of the imagination."

What's more, the disappointment rate for our pioneers is deteriorating, worse. The Conference Board announced that CEO residency has declined since 2000. Counseling firm Booz likewise announced higher CEO turnover rates among the 250 biggest organizations. The Center for Creative Leadership reports inquire about that shows 50 percent of pioneers and administrators are "evaluated to be inadequate, clumsy or a mishire." A study by 14,000 HR experts discovered just 26 percent revealed the nature of initiative in their organization as great or great.

SEO basics: 22 essentials you need for optimizing your site

Here we’ll take a look at the basic things you need to know in regards to search engine optimisation, a discipline that everyone in your organisation should at least be aware of, if not have a decent technical understanding.
One of our most popular articles of all time is a post entitled SEO Basics: 8 Essentials When Optimizing Your Site. It still does the business for us in terms of traffic, however it was first published in April 2013, so you can treat this as its long overdue and expanded update.

What is SEO?

Quite simply, SEO is the umbrella term for all the methods you can use to ensure the visibility of your website and its content on search engine results pages (SERPs).
The methods vary from technical practices you can achieve behind the scenes on your website (we tend to refer to this as ‘on-page SEO’) to all the promotional ’off-page’ approaches you can use to raise your site’s visibility (link-building, social media marketing).
For the purpose of this article, when we talk about visibility, we mean how high up the SERP your website appears for certain search terms in the ‘organic’ results. Organic results refer to those that appear naturally on the page, rather than in the paid-for sections…

 

Paid search is also a large part of search engine marketing. You can read more about this in our recent beginner’s guide to paid search and PPC.

Why do you need SEO?

Building a strong site architecture and providing clear navigation will help search engines index your site quickly and easily. This will also, more importantly, provide visitors with a good experience of using your site and encourage repeat visits. It’s worth considering that Google is increasingly paying attention to user experience.
When it comes to how much traffic is driven by search engines to your website, the percentage is substantial, and perhaps the clearest indicator of the importance of SEO.
In 2014, Conductor suggested 64% of all web traffic comes from organic search, compared to 2% from social, 6% from paid search, 12% direct and 15% from other referral sources.
This tallies with our own data, with approximately 70-75% of SEW traffic coming from organic.
Of all organic traffic, in 2015 it was found that Google accounts for more than 90% of global organic search traffic. So obviously you need a strong presence on Google SERPs, but how strong?
Well, according to this study from Advanced Web Ranking (which I’ve trotted out before when discussing how to dominate Google) shows that on the first SERP, the top five results account for 67.60% of all clicks and the results from six to 10 account for only 3.73%.

It’s therefore vital that your site appears in the top five results.
How are you going to achieve this? With the following tips, which I’ve split into two categories: what search engines are looking for and… drum roll… what they’re not looking for.

What are search engines looking for?

1) Relevancy

Search engines try to provide the most relevant results to a searcher’s query, whether it’s a simple answer to the question “how old is Ryan Gosling?” (the answer of which Google will likely provide without you having to leave the SERP) to more complicated queries such as “what is the best steak restaurant nearest to me?”

How search engines provide these results is down to their own internal algorithms, which we’ll probably never truly determine, but there are factors that you can be certain will influence these results and they’re all based around relevancy… For instance: a searcher’s location, their search history, time of day/year, etc.

2) The quality of your content

Do you regularly publish helpful, useful articles, videos or other types of media that are popular and well produced? Do you write for actual human beings rather than the search engine itself? Well, you should. Latest research from Searchmetrics on ranking factors indicates that Google is moving further towards longer-form content that understands a visitor’s intention as a whole, instead of using keywords based on popular search queries to create content.
Basically, stop worrying about keywords and focus on the user experience.

3) User experience

There are many SEO benefits for providing the best possible user experience. You need an easily navigable, clearly searchable site with relevant internal linking and related content. All the stuff that keeps visitors on your webpage and hungry to explore further.

4) Site speed

How quickly your webpages load is increasingly becoming a differentiator for search engines. Google may soon start labelling results that are hosted on Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) so this may possibly be the ‘mobilegeddon’ of 2016. Speaking of which…

5) Cross-device compatibility

Is your website and its content equally optimised for any given screen size or device? Bear in mind that Google has stated that responsive design is its preferred method of mobile optimisation.

6) Internal linking

We’ve talked about the benefits of ensuring your site has clear and easy-to-use navigation, but there’s also a practice that editors and writers can carry out when publishing articles to help push traffic around the site and that may lead to higher trust signals for Google: internal linking. (See what we did there.)
Internal linking has many advantages:

• It provides your audience with further reading options. As long as they’re relevant and you use clear anchor text (the clickable highlighted words in any give link). This can help reduce your bounce rates.

• It helps to improve your ranking for certain keywords. If we want this article to rank for the term ’SEO basics’ then we can begin linking to it from other posts using variations of similar anchor text. This tells Google that this post is relevant to people searching for ‘SEO basics’. Some experts recommend varying your anchor text pointing to the same page as Google may see multiple identical uses as ‘suspicious’.

• It helps Google crawl and index your site. Those little Googlebots that are sent out to fetch new information on your site will have a better idea of how useful and trustworthy your content is, the more they crawl your internal links.

7) Authority

An authority website is a site that is trusted by its users, the industry it operates in, other websites and search engines. Traditionally a link from an authority website is very valuable, as it’s seen as a vote of confidence. The more of these you have, and the higher quality content you produce, the more likely your own site will become an authority too.
However as the aforementioned Searchmetrics research suggests, year-on-year correlations between backlinks and rankings are decreasing, so perhaps over time ‘links’ may not be as important to SEO as we once thought.
There’s a good argument raging in the comments to this recent piece on links as a marketing KPI, which offers some diverse views on the subject.

8) Meta descriptions and title tags

Having a meta description won’t necessarily improve your ranking on the SERP, but it is something you should definitely use before publishing an article as it can help increase your chances of a searcher clicking on your result.
The meta description is the short paragraph of text that appears under your page’s URL in the search results, it’s also something you should have complete control of in your CMS.
Here it is in WordPress:

Write succinctly (under 156 characters is good), clearly and make sure it’s relevant to your headline and the content of the article itself.
There is more guidance found here: how to write meta descriptions for SEO.
Title tags are used to tell search engines and visitors what your site is about in the most concise and accurate way possible. The keywords in your title tag show up highlighted in search engine results (if the query uses those keywords), as well as in your browser tab and when sharing your site externally.
You can write your own title tag inside the <head> area of your site’s HTML:
<head>
<title>Example Title</title>
</head>
You should use a few accurate keywords describing the page as well as your own brand name. Only use relevant keywords though, and the most important thing to consider is that although you are formatting for search engines, you should write for humans.
There is a lot more practical guidance to be found in our complete guide to title tags.

9) Schema markup

You can make your search results appear more attractive by adding Schema markup to the HTML of your pages. This can help turn your search results into a rich media playground, adding star-ratings, customer ratings, images, and various other bits of helpful info
Schema is also the preferred method of markup by most search engines including Google, and it’s fairly straightforward to use. For more information, check out our handy guide to Schema.

10) Properly tagged images

Many people forget to include the alt attribute when they upload images to their content, but this is definitely something you shouldn’t overlook because Google cannot ‘see’ your images, but can ‘read’ the alt text.
By describing your image in the alt text as accurately as possible it will increase the chances of your images appearing in Google Image search.

 It will also improve the accessibility of your site for people using ‘screen reader’ software.

How to Bring Large Amount of Traffic to your Blog or Website

If you own a blog or a website it’s possible that on several occasions you have wondered what you can do to increase traffic to get bunches of targeted visitors.  This is a question that everyone must be prepared to have a plan for before they even get started.  Without a plan to drive new targeted traffic to your website you will have a slow start and quite possibly a blog or website that never actually gets off the ground.
   Plan your work and work your plan.  This phrase was drilled into me over a decade ago when I entered the world of high tech sales.  To be successful at most anything you need to plan it, and then follow through on your plan without getting sidetracked.  The same goes for internet marketing and increasing traffic to your websites.  There are dozens of ways to increase traffic to your site but if you try to use them all you will end up being a “jack of all trades and a master of none”.

Popular Methods to Increase Traffic

• Search Engine Optimization
• Article Marketing
• Blogging
• Blog Commenting
• Social Networking Traffic
• Youtube and Video Marketing
• RSS Marketing
• PPC or Paid Traffic

   All of these methods are very effective to drive targeted traffic to a website when done properly, but until you setup some type of automation and invest in some tools to help you do these it can be a wasted effort trying to do them all at once.  Each one of these methods is a separate skill in itself and can take months to learn the details and intricacies to succeed with them.  If you do a lot of different things ineffectively your overall result will show it and you won’t make any money which is a terrible return on time invested.

   That doesn’t mean you need to learn everything about something before even attempting it.  On the contrary, you must begin a plan to gain experience.  When you analyze the things you did wrong you learn from it very quickly and you will progress in your internet marketing skills.  There is a lot to be said for experience in just about anything.  Experience will teach you things that they don’t teach in textbooks and will allow you to innovate your own methods and ideas while coming to an understanding of how the base foundation of all this works.

Which strategies are best to increase website traffic free?

Search Engine Optimization

   It is very important right from the start to learn best practices with search engine optimization.  Once you understand how the web crawlers work you will be able to apply these skills to be more effective at article marketing, social networking, and video marketing.  YouTube is the second most used search engine in the world next to Google.  If you plan on using video marketing you will need to understand how text is read through your video submissions so that you can rank high for the targeted audience you seek.  The same goes with social networking.

   There are now hundreds of social networks and news aggregators and bloggers are crawling them for new content.  You’ll even see Twitter results showing up in Google now in a special news feed.  Search engine optimization is a critical foundation point to begin with.  There is so much to learn though so just get started learning the basics and apply it to what you are doing so that you can get that experience you need. When you master search engine optimization you will increase website traffic from all different sources because you will have solid fundamentals to work with that will carry on into all of your web marketing efforts.

Article Marketing to Increase Traffic

If you aren’t sure what article marketing is just take a closer look at this article.  If you are reading this right now you are seeing how effective article marketing can be to gain an audience.  Getting good information out on the web about your niche is a good way to establish yourself as a leader and someone that people can trust whether you are selling a fitness product or any type of service.

   The great thing about article marketing to increase traffic is that it can help to get traffic in several ways.  First off your articles will be out there and the visitors that read your article may click on your website link in the resource box if they like what they read.  The second thing about article marketing is that you can gain backlinks to your website to increase your search engine rankings.  Make sure to use the keyword you are targeting in the anchor text of the URL.  Unless you want to rank high for the term ‘click here’, avoid using that as the anchor.  Adobe already has #1 and #2 wrapped up for that term and it is unlikely that anyone will ever pass them (and there really isn’t any reason you would want to rank high for that is there?)  If you are putting the work into article marketing then you must maximize your efforts and use it to gain meaningful backlinks that will allow you to rank higher in search engines and to increase targeted traffic to your websites.

   Here is another benefit of article marketing that many people overlook.  Make sure to get your RSS feed from your writers profile and submit it to the RSS directories.  Your articles may get picked up and syndicated on blogs or even TwitterFeeds.  Get yourself out there enough and your information will spread across the blogosphere helping to increase traffic to your sites.

How to boost your Blog to Google's First Page of Search Result

As a Blogger who surfs the net a lot, i know you have heard about keyword optimization and also received different opinions about it.But now,lets see some truths about keyword optimization.

First and foremost, what are the best keywords?
You can get your keywords from a simple tool such as Google Suggest. It is now inbuilt within the Google search engine itself. Type something relating to your niche and along the way it will give you some suggestions. These are the suggestions that you have to pay attention to,the suggestions that will bring you your desired traffic and pageviews.

How frequently do you have to use these keywords in your article body?
The right answer for that is between 2% and 4% of the total matter of content on the website. Less than that is too less and more than that is keyword-stuffing. Now,here are some keyword related factors that you should definitely make sure you have on your web page if you are looking for good traffic, pageviews and hence good conversions:-

- Your domain name should have the keyword in it. This is really mandatory.

- The URL of the website must have the keyword in it.

- Your titles must have the keyword in it. If possible, try to wedge in your keyword in every subheading you use as well, provided they are not too many. Specifically, use your keyword in all the H1, H2 and H3 tags that you use.

- Your keyword must figure somewhere in the first and last sentence of the article.

- Use at least one outbound link to a page within your website where your keyword works as the anchor text.

- Use at least one outbound link to an external page which is trusted.

- Use your keyword to a density of 2% to 4% through the webpage.

   Employ these easy-to-understand factors and you will see that your website really rank well on Google !!! Easy to understand and easy to use, but almost 80% of the websites on the Internet overlook these simple yet critical factors. Hope This Helps !!!

How to Add SEO Friendly Custom Permalinks for Blogger Posts

  It’s been a while now that Blogger introduced another new and very useful feature – which is the custom permalinks for blogger posts. With this new feature you can now use Search Engine Optimized friendly custom URL for blogger posts. The interesting part is that this new feature doesn’t have any character limit.
    To create your own URL for a specific post, simply click "permalink" and select "Custom URL", and enter your Custom URLin the field given. If you are writing the post today for example, today is October 9, 2012 therefore your new URL will look like this:

http://YOURBLOG.com/2012/10/customURL.html

   Note that the red colored bold area is the portion of the URL that is customizable and you can insert your preffered text there but if the custom permalink you entered already exists, Blogger will attempt to find another one for you.At present, the characters allowed in a custom URL are limited, they are : a-z, A-Z, 0-1. The only special characters available are underscore (_), dash (-), and period.

   Hope this post help, you can share this interesting post with others using the share button and stay tuned to receive our free future update.

How to Know if a Link is Do-follow or No-follow

Recently, There are some terms being used when it comes to Blogging/Web Designing which many Newbie Bloggers might find a bit difficult to understand, what exactly it means and how it works. Although there are so many of such terms but we'll be looking towards the link aspect tonight where we have No-follow and Do-follow. These terms are always used when talking about backlinks hence No-follow links and Do-follow links.

• Briefly, the two type of links mentioned above are different from each other because the No-follow link from a website A to B is simply telling bots that rank websites / blogs on Search engines that - I know website B but I don't know if it is safe & secure so I can't really vouch for website B. On the other hand, Do-follow link from website A to B is simply telling bots that I know website B and I am sure it is safe & secure so I can vouch for it thereby Do-follow link helps the website/blog its pointing to, to gain trust provided that the referring website/blog is already trusted and well ranked in Search Engines, this is where Pagerank comes in (Pagerank will be explained fully in one of our future posts). Since we are not discussing fully about No-follow and Do-follow links in this post rather we're discussing on how to differentiate both, I hope the short illustration above is enough to show you the overview of what No-follow and Do-follow link means. Now, How would you know if a link is No-follow or Do-follow ?
  
  1. Highlight the link you'd like to check and right click on the highlighted link
  
  2. Click on view selection source and a new tab will be opened
  
  3. Now, view the highlighted text and URL in the new tab
  
  4. If there is something like rel=nofollow in the text then it means that the link is No-follow
  
  5. But if there is nothing like rel=nofollow in the text then the link is Do-follow
  
  Note - There is no attribute for Do-follow links, a link is automatically Do-follow once it doesn't have the rel=nofollow attribute in the link tag.

Health and safety risk assessment

 

Assess the health and safety risks in your business

You must manage the health and safety risks in your workplace. To do this you need to decide whether you are doing enough to prevent harm. This is known as a risk assessment.
A risk assessment is not about creating huge amounts of paperwork, but rather about taking sensible measures to control the risks in your workplace. You are probably already taking steps to protect your employees, but your risk assessment will tell you whether you should be doing more.

How do I assess the risks in my workplace?

• A good starting point is to walk around your workplace and look for any hazards. A hazard is anything that may cause harm.
• Then think about the risks. A risk is the chance, high or low, of somebody being harmed by the hazard, and how serious the harm could be.
• Think about how accidents could happen and who might be harmed. Ask your employees what they think the hazards are, as they may notice things that are not obvious to you and may have some good ideas on how to control the risks. Focus on the real risks - those that are most likely to cause harm.
• Consider the measures you are already taking to control the risks and ask if there is anything you should do to make your workplace safer.
• Once you have identified the risks and what you need to do to control them, you should put the appropriate measures into place.
• Then record your findings. If you have fewer than five employees you don't have to write anything down but it is good practice to keep a record. An easy way to record your findings is to download the risk assessment template .
• Take a look at Health and Safety Executive (HSE)'s selection of example risk assessments . They show you what a completed risk assessment might look like for your type of business. You can use these as a guide when doing your own. 
• You can get more help and ideas on ways to control your risks  from HSE. 
• Few workplaces stay the same and sooner or later you will bring in new equipment, substances or procedures that could lead to new hazards. It makes sense to review your risk assessment on a regular basis. If anything significant changes, check your risk assessment and update it.