Archive for November, 2009
Some Groomsmen Gifts that Your Bridal Party Will Enjoy
The countdown has begun and there are only a few weeks left before the wedding and you don’t want to forget about securing gifts for your Groomsmen! You might be asking yourself, what do I get them, how do I know what’s appropriate, should I gift individually? Not to worry, by following a few simple steps, you can have that idyllic gift that all will welcome.
A generally accepted practice of gifting a bridal party is to give a heartfelt personal gift to the best man and something universally practical for your groomsmen. The most common gifts are wallets, cuff links, watches, etc. Which are by no means unworthy or unacceptable groomsmen gifts to give, however, why not consider something extraordinary for your groomsmen that they will appreciate more, could be easily personalized and would be exceptionally affordable without considerably stretching your budget?
Finding a gift that has significance for both you and your groomsmen deserves special consideration. You will want your groomsmen to treasure and enjoy this unique gift for many years after the wedding. There is nothing worse than giving a groomsmen gifts that is not truly appreciated, a gift that sits in a drawer forgotten or on a shelf collecting dust. Some essential points to consider when making this important decision are the personalities of your groomsmen, the usefulness and quality of the gift, and the most essential, your wedding budget.
In order to find something unique yet universal, you must consider your groomsmen’s individual tastes. To do so you will want to ask yourself some vital questions about each of them. The following are a few inquiries you might want to pose to significantly pin-point their interests: What do they take pleasure in doing? Do they enjoy listening to music? Playing billiards? Do they like hiking and camping? Are they businessmen, sportsmen, collectors, travelers, etc.?
Make a list for each groomsman; find their commonalities to narrow down the choices for gift ideas. You will then want to select no more than five items that correspond with their similarities that are within the allowed budget. Once the selections have been made, ask yourself if one these choices will be utilized in the manner in which is meant, is it something your groomsmen are sure to appreciate and is it ultimately memorable. Lastly, allow yourself a couple of days to ponder your groomsmen gifts choices and select the one that best suits all your groomsmen’s tastes.
As we who have planned a wedding know, the weeks and days before the event can be very stressful, exhausting, filled with numerous details that can drive any person to distraction. By following this straightforward procedure, you can rest assured your gift will make an incredible impact that fits your groomsmen’s personas, have a positive, lasting memory of your big day and be a cherished gift for those special men in your life. So give yourself and your budget a much needed break with affordable shopping and give yourself plenty of time to make an unforgettable choice of gift.
Tags: art, business, gift, party, plan, skin, sports, stress, travel, wedding, welcome
Reciprocal Linking is Bad for Your Business Website Health
As small business owners, we need to find traffic for our websites from wherever we can get it — assuming, of course, that the source is relevant traffic. Irrelevant traffic actually HURTS your website rank in the search engines so we don’t want that. For that reason, we are not fans of reciprocal linking schemes, link farms, etc.
Case in point. I recently met with a new client in Los Angeles who needed to market their small business website. They had previously enjoyed a Page Rank of 5 for their website. Over the past two years, it has dropped to a Page Rank of 3. This was due to a number of factors, but chief among those was the fact that they had been forced into a reciprocal linking arrangement with an unscrupulous vendor. It benefited the vendor tremendously, as they were able to show the search engines that their site was being ranked to from a PR5 website; it made the vendor’s site more “buoyant” (it made it rank higher) in the search engines. The moral of the story is, be very careful if someone offers to do you the “favor” of creating a link to your site, in exchange to linking from yours. It could be detrimental to your website’s Search Engine health.
Nevertheless, you should look for opportunities to receive links from relevant websites whenever possible. It might not seem fair to “take” a link without giving one back, but there are other ways you can help the linking website. If they have a satellite website, you could consider linking to that in the body of one of your posts — relevant topic / contextual link / deep link to the satellite site. Just be careful that the link partner understands that directly linking from the satellite site to their main site will not be nearly as good as if they link in a broad circle of 10 sites before returning to the main site. This is somewhat sophisticated SEO / linking strategy that we’re sharing, so it’s not for everyone to implement on their own. It also implies that you have up to 10 web properties that are all somewhat related that can be daisy chained together… Again, not for everyone. But definitely for businesses that want to insure being on Page 1 on Google. 
It requires a lot of time, attention and planning to implement a 10-site daisy chain strategy, and we encourage you to go into that with plenty of forethought. Take the time to not only analyze and eliminate any chance of reciprocal linking or neighbor linking possibilities in the chain, and also insure that whomever in your organization will be managing your website network understands this strategy. A small business SEO Policy is a very smart investment in resources. It takes relatively little time for a website to fall in page rank, and a significantly greater amount of time to gain rank — especially after it is lost.
The underlying issue of Page Rank has been said to be overrated, and it’s largely a symbol of the site’s overall bouyancy in the search engines… it’s not necessarily a goal for a web owner to achieve a particular page rank; it’s more of a barometer or guideline than a definitive benchmark or landing point. The website owner with a page rank of 0 would certainly agree that a page rank of 5 would represent that his/her traffic has achieved more traffic (visitors), more conversions and more leads & sales. That’s really the benchmark we’re aiming for.
Tags: art, business, car, cat, health, plan
Life Policies Especially For Vegetarians
Summary
An interesting new product has been developed by Animal Friends Insurance (AFI). The new insurance plan offers cheaper premiums to vegetarians, based on evidence that they are at a reduced risk than their carnivore counterparts of developing certain medical conditions. It remains to be seen whether other insurance organisations will follow the new policy marketed by Animal Friends Insurance .
A not-for-profit insurance business has introducd an insurance plan which offers fish-eaters and vegetarians a reduced cost critical illness .
The offer, considered to be the 1st of its type, is being brought to the market by Animal Friends Insurance (AFI). The firm is offering vegetarians a seven per cent lower priceon mortgage life insurance premiums
The organisation said that vegetarians ought to pay less for the insurance cover, which pays out if the plan holder dies, because they were less likely to suffer from a range of very serious illnesses, including cancers.
Sheils Hatline, the managing director of AFI, claims that the risk of veggies being diagnosed with certain cancers is reduced by up to 42 per cent and the danger of them suffering from heart disease is cut by up to 30%, but despite this they have, until now, had to pay the same insurance premiums as customers who eat meat.
She says that Animal Friends Insurance believe this is patently unfair and says the insurers should acknowledge the fact that being a veggie can make have a big influence on life expectancy and reduce its monthly premiums accordingly.
A normal plan is also on the market for non-vegetarians. Both insurance policies are underwritten by LV=, which used to be known as Liverpool Victoria.
In common with standard life cover, a range of things contribute to the cost of the premiums including whether the applicant smokes, their sex, weight and age.
At the moment, AFI is carrying the six per cent discount itself from the money it gets from LV=. In the future, however, the firm’s aim was to offer lower premiums on specialist plans. In offering the deal the organisation is hoping to sign up enough veggies to make it economically worthwhile for LV= to underwrite yet another insurance policy that takes the vegetarian’s diet into account.
Indeed there are significant savings to be made, a 42-year-oldnon-smoker wanting £300,000 worth of cover might potentially save £393.60 over a twenty year period.
Where critical illness insurance is concerned, AFI considers that life insurance companies should begin to treat those that like meat and people that don’t eat meat in ways that are similar to the way they view those that don’t smoke and those that do. We hope that that other companies in the insurance industry will take the same initiative.
Some senior executivesin the insurance industry are dismissive that there is proof that vegetarians live longer, and how any life insurer could prove that people who had certified that they were veggies did not savour the occasional rump steak.
It’s true that when it comes to smoking there are GP records - if you do smoke it’s possible that your Doctor will know. But this isn’t the case when it comes to eating meat, an said a spokesperson from the insurance industry.
But some veggies contend that they are not worried about people falling off the veggie way of eating and suggested that once a veggie has become a veggie, they do not go back to meat-eating, that is unlike smokers who tend to drift out and back again into their old smoking ways.
Tags: animal, art, business, car, disease, friends, money, plan