Posted on: January 26, 2010 by Jordan Hardy
Small and larger companies have so many options in choosing a company or consultant to take care of their SEO that it can be dizzying. From consulting and running marketing agencies, I’ve seen a lot of what is out there.
It is not easy to find the best. Items to look for in hiring the best:
1. Client list – they should have worked with good clients in different verticals to have extensive experience.
2. They should be willing to show spreadsheets of work done and articles or URLs secured.
3. They should be able to analyze results in front of you and explain what is happening.
Posted on: June 26, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
SEO is a component of online marketing. Online marketing can include SEO, SEM, press releases, social media optimization, blogging, article writing, online promotion, website roll-outs, and more. SEO can include any of these items as well in my opinion, since almost any public change to an online website can affect SEO. Here are some examples below. In these examples, “you” or “your” stands for a random person I may have met here or there.
- A new version of your website rolls out. It is missing some pages or some code has changed. Search engines index the site differently based on better or worse coding and inclusion of pages.
- Blog entries are deleted. Google may have given your website a higher pagerank based on the dates and number of entries on your blog. Now things have changed and pagerank drops.
- People are talking about you on social media websites. Search engines note various information about this and include that in their ranking for you.
- Your website is coded with non SEO friendly elements. Your competitor has their website coded with well done SEO. Even if you are the better business, your competitor has a better chance of being crawled well by search engines and indexed better.
- You have a writer that decides to copy text and cut corners. Search engines find this and ping the website.
These are just a handful of examples, but they do show it is ever so valuable to have good SEO in place. I’ve done consulting as well as worked as an employee for companies, managing SEO /online marketing departments. To do it well is both an art and a science. It is necessary that one never tries to trick search engines, but rather understand what will help both users and search engines.
Posted on: April 27, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
For more than 15 years, I’ve managed teams, trained and hired, and done public speaking. In that time, I’ve managed teams of 2 vendors to over 50 employees at each company. I’ve often asked myself if I managed because I’m good at it or I love managing. I believe the answer is both.
To be a great manager, I believe it is important to:
- Have experience
- Be open
- Care about people
- Like being around people
- Be able to sell, whether internally or externally
- Read and take classes about leadership constantly
My view on ideal leadership of a team is to lead by example. It is not to worry about an employee ever moving up and taking your position. I believe in training employees, and most importantly letting them have great quality of life. In my experience, if an employee wants to work late or on a Saturday rather than having to do so from guilt, there is a huge difference in the quality of work just from their mindset. It is important to be clear on goals, their next steps to take, and expectations. Having employees that all feel they have been given the tools to succeed, balance their lives, learn, and grow can bring ideal results.
I feel the least effective form of leadership is one of insecurity. Letting employees feel they may be laid off any day, or that they cannot move up over time, can very much change their motivation. Not being clear on what needs to be done for a project, or playing games with employees, can hurt morale and just isn’t fair to do to them.
In the past, my leadership has built teams that help grow a business and also start work in the morning refreshed. This isn’t just something I can do, but rather something so many leaders out there do when they are secure in treating others well, with integrity.
Posted on: April 10, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
About Managing
When I was young, I had the opportunity at the age of 14 to manage staff members for my parents. Ever since then, I have been in leadership positions, managing anywhere from a couple of vendors to teams of over 50 people. Now that I’m in my 30’s and many years ago graduated from college, management and building of teams and strategy is something I’m very familiar with. In the last couple of years I have become a VP, a temporary consultant for other companies, and a temporary director to help other companies.
If you would like to learn to manage, I would suggest getting started somewhere by reading, taking classes, locating a mentor, and most importantly putting yourself in a position to learn to manage people. It may just be that you start by managing one person, and even that may help get your foot in the door to learning.
About Sales and Marketing
Before and during college I had many opportunities to manage staff, sell to clients, and work with customers. After college I was extremely interested in selling and marketing. To bring this to a new level in my 20’s, I spent a lot of time reading books and magazines from experts, taking extra classes at local colleges, and most importantly selling and marketing my own products and services. Within months of graduating college, I was hired by the world’s largest Orchid company where I then managed, trained, advised, wrote for trade journals, and gave seminars to the public to sell Orchids and teach. A few years after that I grew to another opportunity and kept selling, marketing, and managing.
Posted on: January 12, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
I’m often asked about my public speaking and training experience so thought I would just post the answers here. These are recent questions I’ve received in person, through email, and over the phone.
What is your public speaking experience?
When I used to work for Rod McLellan Orchid company, I gave over 250 talks over a few years to groups of 50-200 people. I was featured in books, newspapers, and live TV. I also did team trainings. After that, at Sybase and at Disney I did team trainings. In the last year, I have been doing public speaking for various companies, team trainings, and individual one on one trainings.
What is your team and individual training experience?
Training individuals and teams is truly enjoyable. One on one, there is the benefit of tailoring training for the employee. With team trainings, a lot of ground can be covered.
Do your think we should have you come in and teach our team? What is the benefit?
Hmm.. let me think… yes! The benefit of hiring me is my experience, patience, and clarity of throught in organizing the training materials. I think the benefit is that it can be quite useful to have a trainer who people can relate with and learn well from.
