The Benefits of House Sitting in San Francisco

San Francisco is a highly sought-after city for both homeowners and renters. For both parties, owning or renting a house in the Bay Area is definitely not cheap. San Francisco is one of the most costly cities to reside in the U.S.

For this reason, house sitting in San Francisco offers great benefits for both traveling homeowners and temporary renters.

How, you might ask?

Below we share the benefits of hiring a San Francisco house sitter for homeowners.

The Benefits of Hiring a House Sitter in San Francisco (for Homeowners)

Depending on how long a house is left uninhabited, San Francisco homeowners can benefit from hiring a house sitter in many ways.

• Pets can be cared for in the comfort of their own home. Additionally, this eliminates the cost of having them cared for by pet lodge or kennel.
• A house sitter serves as an added layer of security. Depending on the neighborhood in San Francisco, this can be important ensure peace of mind.
• In the case of emergencies (such as natural disasters or sick pets,) a house sitter can address the situation while keeping in close contact.
• Mail, newspapers, and package deliveries can all be handled by the house sitter, minimizing the need to put a temporary stop on these deliveries.
• Gardens and house plants can be watered and cared for.
• For extended periods of time away, good house sitters will perform basic upkeep, such as dusting and vacuuming.

Finding highly experienced house sitters in San Francisco is not always easy, but the search can be very advantageous. With the home, pets, and belongings all being watched over by a trusted individual, traveling homeowners can rest assure knowing their assets are safe.

There are many different resources out there to find trusted house sitters in San Francisco, for instance SanFranciscoHouseSitting.org is great online resource that offers free house sitting services in San Francisco and throughout the Bay Area.

Other popular online resources include HouseSittersAmerica.com and TrustedHouseSitters.com. However, the latter two website are more general and not specific to individuals looking for San Francisco house sitting gigs. There's also CraigList.org, where many interested house sitters will post listings of their services.

How Employee Appreciation Gifts & Praise Can Empower Your Righteous Business

Whether in the form of creative gifts or constructive reinforcement, showing employee appreciation is an crucial acknowledgement that must be exercised by business owners, managers, CEO's, and other parties involved in the human resources of a company.

In this post, we share a few reasons why showing appreciation to employees, whether through gifts or praise, can empower your company in many ways.

Employee Loyalty

When you show appreciate to employees, help the feel valued and important to the company. This helps to establish a sense of loyalty, which in turn can enable them to put forth more effort into their daily tasks. Expressing employee appreciation via customizable corporate gifts (depending on the nature of the workplace) is very powerful to increase loyalty amongst employees. Creative gift ideas really show home much your company cares.

Employee Satisfaction

Whether via positive reinforcement or the latter mention idea of custom corporate gifts, showing employee appreciation helps gives workers a greater level of satisfaction in their job. This can result in greater service output, production, and overall positivity in the working environment.

Increase Employee Retention

Parallel to loyalty, employees who receive gifts and praise will appreciate the sense of care and consideration put forth by the business. As a result, employees are more apt to retain their position with satisfaction. Employee appreciate gifts and praise can help increase employee retention while minimizing turnover. This investment can be well worth it in many different respects.

Improve Corporate Image

Companies and corporations who support valued and trusted employees generally operate better in many respects of business. By giving employee thank you gifts, or custom appreciation cards during the holidays, the message can extend beyond the employees who receive them. Even the overall public image can enhance for the brand. This can help enhance a brand's reputation while generating positive outcomes in more ways than one.

Any type of business or corporations that want to get the most from its valued employees should show honest and consistent appreciate. Even if custom appreciation and thank you gifts are too much, verbal reinforcement can also contribute to positive well-being and attaining the objectives of the company. If you have not been appreciating the people you work with, it is high time you implement employee appreciation program. The cost and time spent on the program will be nothing compared to the benefits you will get.

Employee appreciation can be expressed in many ways. Employee appreciation and thank you gifts are ideal for the holiday season. And praises is another simple way that can be used to appreciate and thank employees who have done excellent work for the company.

Tips to Defining Your Company's Website Optimization Strategy

Website optimization is an Internet marketing strategy that goes beyond traditional practices of SEO (like on-site keyword optimization and off-site link building) for greater search engine exposure. Website optimization also focused on aspects of conversion rate optimization (CRO).

So in addition to SEO, your company's website optimization strategy needs to focus on creating an intuitive interface, providing optimal usability, and performing smoothly and efficiently - all in an effort to maximize the value and potential of visiting traffic.

In essence, developing a cohesive website optimization strategy for your company respects both SEO and CRO. However, every website optimization strategy is unique. Members of the company need to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the website, which will help to define the purpose and objectives behind the company's website optimization strategy.

Usability & User Interface

The user interface (or "UI") and usability of your company's website is the foundation for success. Optimizing both the UI and usability of the website lays the groundwork to ensure visitors have a meaningful (and hopefully memorable) experience on your website.

UI centers on the design and layout of the website. The color scheme, graphics, logo placements, images, and other design elements should be parallel to the company's brand. Additionally, these elements should also be aligned with other marketing materials and advertising campaigns, such as print media.

The usability of you company's website focuses on the navigational structure and overall experience users have while on your website. Usability emphasizes the logical and even psychological aspects of how users interact with a website. For this reason, usability testing is often an ongoing project in website optimization. Some of the most common test (also used for UI) includes multivariate testing, A/B split testing, and eye-tracking studies.

Optimized Conversion Funnels & CTA's

To make the most of your website's traffic, it's important to define certain conversion funnels along the with calls-to-action (CTA's) that help facilitate those funnels. For instance, if you have page on your website that's ranking well and receiving a lot of organic search traffic, you'll want to implement the CTA's and desired funnel in which you want users to take to convert.

This will often depend on the nature of what your company has to offer. If you're operating an ecommerce store, the "Add to Cart" button along with other incentivizing offers like discount codes, free shipping, and the price of the item all need to prominent on the product page. However, if you're offering consulting services, you'll need to prove your company's value with exceptional copywriting and insightful content like case studies, articles, and white papers.

Website Performance

An often overlooked aspect of website optimization is the speed in which pages load on the website. Slow loading pages can result in poor usability and high bounce rates. As a result, a website could be losing potential conversions because of its choppy rendering.

Slow website load speed typically stems from cumbersome HTML coding structures and robust media files. For instance, huge image and video files, robust nestled tables, and Flash media (which is also bad for SEO and website crawlability,) can lead to choppy rendering. An HTML web developer, technical SEO and website optimization company are all sources that can pinpoint these issues and help offer solutions to overcome them.

How Walz Scale Has Diversified its Business of Industrial Weighing Equipment

The industrial weighing equipment of Walz Scale offers an impressive display of solutions for many situations and operations the demand accurate payload weighing. Utilizing the most advanced technologies in calibration and weighing components, Walz Scale systems are often custom designed for various capacities and weighing operations.

Spanning from trucking and shipping operations to large-scale farming and mining sites, Walz Scale has progressed the diverse industry demands for industrial weighing equipment. Below we highlight some of the markets in which Walz Scale has tapped.

Weighbridge Scales

Weighbridges, otherwise known as full-length truck scales, are typically stationary (or fixed) scales that accommodate trucks of 30' - 70' long. Upon driving a truck on a weighbridge scale, the operator can determine the weight of the truck's payload (often via an electronic display that's integrated on the scale.

Walz Scale weighbridges for sale offer a maximum capacity of about 200,000 lbs and provide very accurate and consistent weight measurements, even in the harshest of conditions. Additionally, Walz Scale weighbridges as well as many other of its truck scales are integrated with printers directly on the system for ease of operation.

Walz Scale has developed a wide range of weighbridges to meet various needs. The have evolved the technology and overall efficiencies of these truck scales by enabling operators to collect, store, and analyze data via payload management software. This software can be synced with today's smartphones and other digital devices, enable operators to manage payloads from remote locations.

Agriculture and Farm Scales

The the various styles of farm scales, or "ag scales," offered by Walz Scale address a variety of needs for farmers.

One type of farm scale is used for grain dump trucks after a harvest is extracted. With a grain dump scale, farmers can simultaneously load and unload the harvest while the weight is being calculated. Walz Scale, grain dump scales come in various widths depending on the vehicle and help to improve the throughput of the dumping operation (while also minimizing safety risks involved.)

Similar to grain dump scale systems from Walz Scale are dump pit truck scales. These are also common in other applications, such as heavy-duty mining trucks.

Another scale system that Walz Scale offers (and is also used for mining sites) is the belt scale. Ideal of stationary conditions, belt scales are designed to weigh payloads and harvests while the operation is in motion (and thus further improving throughput.)

 

Conveyor belt scales help save time and money in various operations. The robust design of conveyor belt scales offer precise results in tough conditions and can meet the needs of various farming applications.

Train/Rail Scales

Rail scales, also referred to as "train scales," are utilized in many operations that involve rail ways, such as agriculture, recycling, and mining operations. Walz Scale rail scales can integrated on railroad tracks to effectively weigh a train cars when they pass over the scale system.

Walz Scale specializes in a wide range of rail and train scales. Some of which include: "NTEP-approved" rail car scales (for onboard weighing,) in-motion rail scales, and railcar axle scales. Of the most interesting and unique of these designs are in-motion rail scales.

In-motion rail scales can effectively measure the payloads on train cars as they pass a given point on a railway. Designed mostly for farming/agriculture, mining sites, and various other large scale operations, rail scales provide accurate weight measurements of the loads that are being shipping and transported on train cars.

As you can see, Walz Scale has diversified it's offering of industrial scale systems and weighing equipment into various niche applications. By tapping into the agricultural and mining industries, Walz Scale has positioned itself as leading provider of more than just truck scales, but industrial weighing equipment for all types of needs.

Top 3 Directories for Ecommerce SEO Projects

Inbound links remain to be the most influential factor in determining keyword rankings. For uber-competitive ecommerce SEO projects, attaining quality inbound links is a must.

However, link building for ecommerce SEO is not easy. Link sharing is sketchy, and guest blogging poses many limitations for ecommerce sites. But then there are always directory submissions. Ah yes, directories, the classic source of building some inbound links for SEO.

Nowadays, it's very important which directories you choose. Some are down-right risky and can raise a big red flag for Google to come and penalize you. However, some directories are credible, trusted, and very SEO-friendly.

If you own or do marketing for an ecommerce site, then here are the top 3 directories to help your ecommerce SEO project:

DMOZ! Directory

Okay, so there's not actually an exclamation point after "DMOZ," but I personally think this directory deserves one (and it also sounds cool when you say it with such emphasis.)

When it comes to classic SEO, this is about as classic as it gets. Dmoz.org has been around for a long, long time, and it's a highly trusted and authoritative directory (homepage is PageRank 7 [and many category-level pages are PageRank 3+]). Additionally, the link you can get is a succulent DoFollow.

Find the most relevant category for your ecommerce site. Once you've pinpointed the most precise category in the DMOZ directory, click the "submit a site" option in the top right. In time (and assuming your ecommerce site is legit,) you can have an awesome, natural, and SEO-friendly link pointing to your ecommerce site.

Elib.org International Directory

At Elib.org (another righteous, PageRank 5 directory for ecommerce SEO,) there are 3 different kinds of submissions: Basic, Express, and Sponsored. The sponsored submission is pretty sweet if you're doing ecommerce SEO, because you can create five additional "internal" links in the description of your site's profile. However, all require some form of payment.

The other two options are fine as well. Like DMOZ, search through Elib.org to find the category the best matches your ecommerce site. You'll also need to go through the process of finding the precise location of your ecommerce business (found just below the product categories).

Once you have narrowed down both the location and the most relevant product category, you'll then see the "Add URL" link. Now you can get to business and build your directory listing.

Yahoo! Directory

So Yahoo! Directory (yes, the exclamation point after "Yahoo" is supposed to be there,) is a doozy. In addition to Google, it has also been known to uplift keyword rankings even further in Bing and Yahoo search. In short, Yahoo! Directory is wickedly authoritative and offers a top-quality inbound link for your ecommerce SEO project.

The down side is the price for a directory listing on Yahoo!. It's $299 per year, which to some companies is a bit out-of-budget. But if your ecommerce marketing budget does allow for this investment, it's one of the best links you can get.

Visit Yahoo! Directory's retail section and in the top right you'll see the option to "Suggest a Site" (a bit misleading considering they take you directly to a page with a price tag.) If you got the funds, get it done. If you provide ecommerce SEO services, then this is one you'll definitely want to use for your clients.

So that wraps up this post on the top three directories for ecommerce SEO. There's definitely more options out there, but do proceed with caution. There are numerous web directories that are sketchy as all get out (whatever that means.)


This article was contributed by Tyler Tafelsky, lead ecommerce SEO analyst at Click Centric SEO, a full-service ecommerce SEO company that offers a wide spectrum of marketing solutions for ecommerce sites.