Secrets to Mastering the Vocabulary of any Field you Choose

Stop for a moment and do some self-assessment. What is your situation in life? What is your occupation? What are your hobbies? Who are your favorite associates?

Then ask what bearing each of these facts has on the language you speak, write, and read. Each of these pursuits, and every activity you indulge in, has a vocabulary of its own. And one of the best ways to become truly word- conscious and to make a list of words used in each of these activities.

Don’t burden yourself with too much of the apparatus of the formal dictionary – – abbreviations, principal parts of the verbs and the like. For your purpose, a simple list of interesting words and their definitions, a glossary, is all you need. Then compare your list with those your friends make up and combine them all into one master list of your very own language

Here is an example. I have an interest in Search Engine Optimization, so here are some words that I have learned that reflects this interest:

SEM: Stands for Search Engine Marketing, and as the name implies it involves marketing services or products via search engines. SEM is divided into two main pillars: SEO and PPC. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the practice of optimizing websites to make their pages appear in the organic search results. PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, and it is the practice of purchasing clicks from search engines. The clicks come from sponsored listings in the search results.

Backlink: Also called inlink or simply link, it is an hyperlink on another website pointing back to your own website. Backlinks are important for SEO because they affect directly the PageRank of any web page, influencing its search rankings.

PageRank: PageRank is an algorithm that Google uses to estimate the relative important of pages around the web. The basic idea behind the algorithm is the fact that a link from page A to page B can be seen as a vote of trust from page A to page B. The higher the number of links (weighted to their value) to a page, therefore, the higher the probability that such page is important

Anchor text: The anchor text of a backlink is the text that is clickable on the web page. Having keyword rich anchor texts help with SEO because Google will associate these keywords with the content of your website. If you have a weight loss blog, for instance, it would help your searchrankings if some of your backlinks had "weight loss" as their anchor text.

Title Tag: The title tag is literally the title of a web page, and it's one of the most important factors inside Google's search algorithm. Ideally your title tag should be unique and contain the main keywords of your page. You can see the title tag of any web page on top of the browser while navigating it.

Meta Tags: Like the title tag, meta tags are used to give search engines more information regarding the content of your pages. The meta tags are placed inside the HEAD section of your HTML code, and thus are not visible to human visitors.

SERP: Stands for Search Engine Results Page. It's basically the page you'll get when you search for a specific keyword on Google or on other search engines. The amount of search traffic your website will receive depends on the rankings it will have inside the SERP5.

Keyword Density: To find the keyword density of any particular page you just need to divide the number of times that keyword is used by the total number of words in the page. Keyword density used to be an important SEO factor, as the early algorithms placed a heavy emphasis on it. This is not the case anymore.

Web Crawler: Also called search bot or spider, it's a computer program that browses the web on behalf of search engines, trying to discover new links and new pages. This is the first step on the indexation process.

Canonical URL: Canonicalization is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a "standard" canonical representation. A canonical URL, therefore, is the standard URL for accessing a specific page within your website. For instance, the canonical version of your domain might be http://www.street.com instead of http://street.com.


Get the picture?

Leave your comments below.

Learn the 10 Business Success Attributes

In my article, "For Personal Development and Productivity - Start with Managing Your Time",  I discussed the three culprits that destroy personal development and productivity efforts. 

Here I will reveal the 10 Business Success Attributes and ask that you will score one for each attribute that you possess. 

Managing your time is one of them, but all are equally important:

___ Strong-Willed Survivor           ___ Opportunity Seeker
___ Fluent Communicator            ___ Information Gatherer
___ Methodical Planner                ___ Astute Money-Handler
___ Disciplined Action-Taker         ___ Self-Motivator
___ Personable People-Mover      ___ Precise Time Manager

A score of 8 or more means that you can be reasonably confident that you are a good candidate for starting and succeeding in your own business. 

Read my article on 10 Strategies for Managing Your Time Effectively after completing this.


What do you think of these 8 attributes? Leave your comments below.

10 Rules in Reading for Personal Growth and Development

If you are like most people, you have to read a tremendous amount of material, at home, at
the office, or at school just to keep from getting buried in paper.

Considering all the reading materials you get just in the course of a day, if you read all this information word for word, you'll wind up spending all your time reading and not have time for anything else. These

Ten Rules in Reading for Personal Growth and Development will help you to experience reading, not as a chore to be put off as long as you can, but as an enjoyable and satisfying skill.

1. Take at least one minute to review the material before reading it. First, skim to get a feel of what the piece contains, then the introductory material, section and chapter titles, index, and any other signposts. Next, treat the body of the text as a series of paragraphs, each paragraph being a self-contained unit with his own message to convey.

2. Read by paragraph. As soon as you have grasped the message, move immediately onto the next paragraph and repeat the process.

3. Become an active, rather than a passive reader. Instead of reading individual words, actively search out the important, descriptive, and meaningful ideas. Don't get bogged down in details. Move rapidly over the material.

4. Develop the knack of concatenation (linking two things together). Stop reading one word at a time and develop the habit of joining several words and repeating them as one unit. Learn to read by thought units rather than by individual words. You should take in between four and six words in a single glance.

5. Don't linger or reread words, phrases, or sentences. As difficult as it may be to break this non-productive habit, doing so will pay tremendous dividends. One way you can do this is to place a small slip of paper over the lines you have just read.

6. If your time permits, read at least one hour every day. Break it up into 15 minute segments, if necessary, and both select your reading materials carefully and read at optimum speed. Get rid of distractions and concentrate on what you are reading.

7. Eliminate poor physical habits such as sounding out the words in silent reading.

8. Watch for the signpost in reading. Signposts are words or phrases which tell you in a split second whether there's going to be an abrupt change in the author's trend of thought or whether, on the contrary, the writer is really going to add more details to what is already been said.

Some of the common turn about signals are: but, despite, on the contrary, however, nonetheless, yet, and rather. When you see these words you know instantaneously that the author is about to introduce a thought that is in opposition to the one he has just stated.

9. While you shouldn't sacrifice comprehension for speed, make a conscious effort to increase your reading speed. Still, make sure you understand what you are reading.

10.Reinforce what you read. At the earliest opportunity, think back on what you learned in your last reading session. Review the important points and any related information relayed by the author.

To make it easy, here are five questions you can ask yourself about what you read, What was the piece about? What important information was presented? What, if any, opinions did the writer present? What is your opinion of the piece? Name one element of the piece that makes it stand apart. This procedure helps to firmly implant the information in your memory.

Do you think that these tips are helpful? Leave your comments below.