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We are often asked if professional SEO (search engine optimization) can be done effectively utilizing in-house talent. Despite our obvious self-interests on the subject, our answer is always a qualified “yes”- you can achieve professional SEO results using existing talent. However, for every company we have known that has met with great in-house SEO success, we know of many more that have seen their in-house efforts fail. We have also discovered the companies that have succeeded share some common traits.If your company is considering doing SEO in-house, there are some critical questions that you should address before you proceed.

Do I have the proper resources at my disposal to achieve professional SEO results?

Search engine optimization takes time, and your internal SEO expert will need to have a great deal of it at his or her disposal – especially at the project’s outset when target audiences, keyphrases, and optimization schemes are first being established. Even after the initial optimization effort, the nature of SEO will require this person to spend ample time keeping up with industry trends, monitoring campaign progress, performing A/B testing, and expanding the campaign as new product and service areas are added.

Perhaps even more important than time, achieving professional SEO results requires a unique set of aptitudes. The person responsible for your internal SEO initiative must possess the ability to learn quickly and to look at your website from a macro-perspective, marrying together the needs of sales, marketing, and IT. He or she can not be an aggressive risk taker, as this is often a surefire way to get your website penalized and potentially removed from the major search engines. These gifted people exist in many companies, but given the unique attributes that these individuals possess, their time is often already spent in other crucial areas of the business.

Without enough time to invest in the project or the right type of person to execute it, an internal SEO initiative is likely doomed to fail.

Do I know which departments of my company should be involved, and will they work with an insider?

As mentioned above, professional SEO, by necessity, involves marketing, sales, and IT. The SEO expert must work with marketing to find out what types of offers and initiatives are working offline to help translate them effectively online. He or she must work with sales to identify the types of leads that are most valuable so that you can target the right people in the keyphrase selection process. And, finally, your SEO expert will need to work with IT to determine any technical limitations to the SEO recommendations, learn of any past initiatives based on a technical approach, and get the final optimization schemes implemented on the website.

Sadly, in many businesses, these departments have a somewhat adversarial relationship. However, it is the duty of the SEO expert to act as a project manager and coordinate the efforts of all three departments if you are going to get the most out of your campaign. No professional SEO project can be completed in a vacuum. For whatever reason, it is often easier for an outsider to get adversarial departments on the same page, in the same way that a marriage counselor might convince a woman of her undying love for her husband while the husband is still grimacing from a well-placed knee in the parking lot.

Will someone be held accountable for the results?

This may seem like a small consideration, but it can have a tremendous impact on the success of the campaign. If you have added this responsibility to some poor soul’s job description with the direction that he or she should “do the best you can,” you’ll be lucky to make any headway at all (especially if the person is not enthusiastic about SEO). Whether SEO is done in-house or outsourced, someone will have to take responsibility for showing progress, explaining setbacks, and continually improving results. Without this accountability, it is very common to see an initiative fade as the buck is passed.

Can I afford delayed results based on a learning curve?

It’s a reality – professional SEO expertise has a steep learning curve. While the information on how to perform the basics of optimization are freely available on the web, much of the information out there is also contradictory, and some of it is actually dangerous. It takes time for someone unfamiliar with the discipline to sort the SEO wheat from the SEO chaff (on a side note, a “quoted” search of Google reveals that this may actually mark the first occasion in human history that the phrase “SEO chaff” has been used – we’re betting it’s also the last). Simply put, if the person you are putting on the job has no experience, it will take longer to get results. This may not be a consideration if you aren’t counting on new business from SEO any time soon. However, if you are losing business to your competition due to their professional SEO initiatives, time might be a larger factor.

Will it cost me less to do it in house than it would to choose a professional SEO firm?

Often, companies will attempt this specialized discipline in-house in order to save money, and sometimes this works out as intended. However, accurate calculations of the cost of in-house labor that would be involved versus the price of the firm you would otherwise hire should be performed to make an accurate comparison. When making this calculation, also factor in the opportunity cost of the resource – the tasks that your in-house people are not able to perform because they are involved in SEO.

In addition, if worse comes to worst and your in-house SEO expert is led astray by some of the more dangerous “how-to” guides available, it can cost even more to repair the damage than it would have to hire a professional SEO firm to perform the optimization from the outset. And an internal SEO campaign gone wrong can cost even more than the stated fee – websites that violate the terms of service of the major search engines (whether intentional or not) can be severely penalized or even removed, costing you a lot of lost revenue when potential customers can not find your website for a period of time.

Do I believe that the end result I’ll get in-house will be equal to or greater than the results I would have gotten from a professional SEO firm?

Search engine optimization can create huge sales opportunities, and slight increases in overall exposure can have not-so-slight increases in your bottom-line revenue. If you believe that your talented in-house resource will, given enough time, achieve results equal to or greater than those that could have been achieved by the professional SEO firm you might have chosen, it may make sense to do it internally.

However, in addition to a better knowledge of industry trends, one clear advantage that search engine optimization firms have is the benefit of the experience and macro-perspective that comes from managing many different websites over time. Professional SEO firms can watch a wide range of sites on a continual basis to see what trends are working, what trends aren’t, and what formerly recommended tactics are now actually hurting results.

This macro-perspective allows professional SEO firms to test new tactics as they appear on a case-by-case basis and apply those results across a wide range of clients to determine what the benefit is. It is harder for an individual with access to only one site to perform enough testing and research to achieve optimum results all the time, something that should also factor into the equation.

Do I have at least a slight tolerance for risk?

Neophytes to SEO can make mistakes that can lead to search engine penalization or removal. This happens most commonly when they have an IT background and treat SEO as a strictly technical exercise. We are often called in to assist companies who have had an internal initiative backfire, leaving them in a worse position than the one they were in before they started. The simple truth is that you cannot perform effective SEO without marrying your efforts to the visitor experience, but this is not something that is intuitively understood when people approach SEO for the first time.

However, professional SEO firms are not perfect either. Some firms use those same optimization methods that violate the search engines’ terms of service and can get your site penalized. So, if you do decide to outsource, educate yourself on SEO and do some research on the firm. Know the basics of the business, find out who the firm’s clients are and how long they’ve been in business, and ask for professional references – just like you would do with any major business purchase.
If you have considered all of the above questions, and your answers to all seven are “yes,” your company may be uniquely equipped to achieve professional SEO results in-house. If you answered “no” to any of the first three questions but “yes” to the rest, it does not necessarily mean that you can’t perform SEO in-house – just that you may not be in a position to do so at this time. Taking the actions required to get you in the right position to answer in the affirmative might be worth your while. However, if you answered “no” to any of the last four questions, you may want to consider outsourcing the project to a professional SEO firm.A professional SEO firm has the resources, the time, the expertise, and, most importantly, the experience, to launch an SEO initiative for your website that will have a positive effect on your bottom line. Whichever option you choose, it is important that you fully embrace the channel. A half-hearted initiative, whether done internally or outsourced, can be as ineffective as taking no action at all.

Running and building up a yoga studio requires coordinating scheduling, marketing, accounting, class registration, class attendance, sales and credit card processing, inventory, payroll, staff management, documents, and so much more.When you started teaching yoga, you wanted to teach yoga. Sure, you knew running a yoga studio or teaching classes involved administration, but perhaps running your yoga business is taking over your life.Ask yourself:How many software applications are you running to keep it all together? Are you using a fleet of spreadsheets?The fact is there is some pretty cool software options available specifically designed for yoga studios that take care of all your yoga studio administration needs in a central, online location.3 Fundamental Elements of A Great Yoga Studio Software Service:Cloud computing capability (web-based software); and
Comprehensive, all-in-one yoga software that centralizes all your yoga studio administration operations.
Automation – the more the better. Typically this is easier with comprehensive, all-in-one software.1. Cloud Computing Yoga Studio Management Software is Where It’s AtCloud computing is web-based software. You simply log-in to your account and manage your entire yoga studio on the Web. Stop with the downloads, installations, networking, and upgrades that plague desk-top software applications. Seriously consider putting your entire yoga studio software management needs on the cloud.2. Centralizing Your Yoga Studio SoftwareIntegrating separate pieces of software is a never-ending headache. When one application is upgraded, it then doesn’t sync with other applications. What you get is a mish-mash of software that more often than not malfunctions. Instead of saving you time, you burn up time trying to get it all working together.If you can, get yoga studio software that is comprehensive and meets all, or as much of your computing needs as possible.3. AutomationThe more you automate, the more time you save which lets you teach more or take more time off. The fact is, running a yoga studio is managing a large number of variables – students, staff, teachers, schedules, inventory, sales, etc. The goal is full classes and regular students. Automation helps you take care of the menial tasks so you can put your mind and time to activities you enjoy and that let you build your yoga business (and take a vacation).Yoga Business Software Features to Look ForNot all yoga studios have the same needs. The remainder of this article sets out yoga studio software management features available. Go through them and see what it is you need.1. Yoga Class SchedulingOnline class scheduling – this is an extremely customer-service friendly feature for your students. Consider the following functions you might want:Wait-lists: let your students add their name to a waitlist. With software, save yourself the time of managing these lists. Let the software do the heaving lifting.
Student self check-in: spare your students standing in line waiting for you. Let your students scan their ID card and get to class. You also get time to set up and prepare for class.
Printable sign-in sheets: maybe you prefer physical sign-in sheets. Get software that offers a print option with sign-in templates. You can load the data later… or not.
Equipment and room rental scheduling: do you rent out rooms and/or equipment? Why not automate the process and make it easy for your yoga clientele to book your rooms and equipment themselves.
Recurring bookings: nothing builds a business like recurring customers. Make it easy for yoga students to book multiple classes and commit to your classes.
Class attendance statistics: You only know how your business is going if you can measure results. Software that produces easy-to-read reports on class attendance statistics gives you tools at your finger-tips to assess your money-making classes and classes that may not be worth having.2. Scheduling EaseDrag and drop functionality for booking is a real luxury. In fact, drag and drop anything is great. Make it easy for your clientele to book classes and appointments with you.
On the Cloud (web-based): Not only does cloud computing save you networking costs, upgrade hassles, and installation nightmares, but you can access your entire yoga business anywhere.
Multiple schedule views: daily, weekly, by name, service, gender and more. Birds-eye views of your schedule can be very handy when looking at the big picture.
Color coding scheduling: sure, you must memorize the colors, but in time the colors will speed up your viewing of your schedules.3. Yoga Studio Enrollment OptionsPerhaps you offer more than just yoga classes. If so, look for yoga studio management software that has the flexibility to schedule all types of events such as:Courses: still a popular yoga class structure – a series of classes building on concepts.
Seminars / special events: do you ever have a speaker or teaching events? Make it easy for people to sign up and a breeze for you to manage the scheduling.Plus software that enables:Payment plan processing: yoga studios usually offer a variety of pricing packages. Make it easy to sell packages (without the hand-held calculator) by considering software that tabulates and accepts payment for yoga packages.
Payment status information: every business has some customers who owe money. Yoga studios are no exception (generally). See at-a-glance who owes you money (and how much).4. Payment ProcessingCredit card integration. Some yoga software includes credit card processing “on the cloud” sparing you the hardware to pay for and set up.
Link payments with services. This way you can produce financial statements any time to see the financial status of your business.
Membership cards (i.e. swipe cards for signing in) and ID tag capability: Lose the paper and look professional with swipe cards enabling self-check in and much faster client tracking.5. Online Store for More RevenuesIf you sell retail, why not create an online store? It’s simple to do with the right yoga studio software. There is software that includes e-commerce capabilities so that not only can you track your in-studio retail sales, but you can actually start selling off your website.In fact, you could consider partnering with yoga and health products suppliers to provide you products to sell on your online store. You can carry inventory or enter drop-shipping arrangements. The sky is the limit.Moreover, with e-commerce, you can sell gift cards, yoga class packages, event tickets, etc.6. Yoga Gift Card Selling OptionGift cards are BIG business. Why not sell your own gift cards? You’ll earn revenues and get more students in your yoga studio. Some yoga studio software has the capability to provide gift cards and program them with the software so that you can create them, sell them, and track usage. Other considerations when implementing gift cards for sale include:Prepaid gift card options.
Able to track student account balances.
Loading gift cards with flexible amounts of money.
Selling your gift cards in your studio and online.7. Email Marketing for Your Yoga StudioE-mail marketing can give your yoga business a huge boost. If you get yoga studio software, see if you can find a product that integrates with e-mail marketing software. This way you can leverage your yoga studio software contact database with your e-mail marketing rather than having separate databases. Trust me – when you can centralize, it’s worth it.Not only can you use e-mail marketing to get more students or encourage regular attendance, but you promote sales, encourage referrals, sell products and yoga packages, promote events, send out class reminders, and more.When you centralize your yoga studio student database with e-mail marketing software, you can segment your students so that you send the most appropriate messages to each person.For example, if a student signs up online for a class, you can automate reminder class messages. This way you improve your class attendance, and in a worst case scenario, if the student can’t attend, they’ll be reminded to remove their name off the schedule opening up a spot for the wait list.Then your e-mail system will produce an e-mail to the wait list alerting them to the open spot. Imagine doing all this manually. Automation is key.8. Yoga Studio Inventory TrackingIf you sell retail, tracking inventory digitally can save you a lot of time. However, you need software that tracks the stocking and sale of items. Moreover, if you get software that includes inventory tracking, look for the capability to track in-store and online sales.Again, this goes toward centralizing your operation. By tracking inventory with your yoga studio management software, you’ll integrate inventory with sales which lets you produce up-to-date financial reports… not to mention save you time syncing inventory with sales and re-ordering.9. Yoga Student Account ManagementWhen you use cloud software, you can create accounts for all of your students – so both you and they can log-in to their accounts. This way you and your students can track purchases, their profile, class attendance, referrals, etc. This is very convenient for you and your students.Liability: What about the dreaded waivers. Necessary, but not a lot of fun. If you let students sign up online, be sure you offer an e-waiver for them to agree to. This too is available with some yoga studio software.10. Yoga Studio Staff ManagementWhether you love managing staff or not, consider saving yourself time and the ability to manage your staff “on the cloud”. Some yoga studio software enables you to do some or all of the following features:A staff dashboard portal where you can send instructions to staff and to-do items.
Individual staff log-in accounts for each staff member.
Permission levels to various portals of your software. Again, this is where centralization works for you big time.
Staff scheduling – lose the monthly printouts and create staff schedules online where your entire staff can access it anytime from anywhere. Scheduling staff with software is much more convenient than on paper. Beside, how often does the schedule change in a month? Save yourself a few erasers.11. Look for Payroll ManagementDo you know how much you’re paying out in wages, commissions, fees, etc.? It’s not so easy to track with a yoga studio business given the variety of remuneration options yoga teachers opt for. There’s hourly, commissions, flat rates, and combinations of these payment options.Again, a quality yoga software product will track all your pay-rates for all your staff – no matter how complicated. It makes tallying the amount you owe easy.Take for example, a yoga teacher that earns a flat rate plus a per student rate after a class attendance threshold is met. Okay, one class with one teacher isn’t too hard to track, but imagine 30 classes and 5 teachers.It gets complicated. Look for software that will track and tally all of this for you – all calculated with the swipe cards issued to your yoga students (if you opt for swipe cards – now you’re starting to see how beneficial swipe cards can be).Another payroll feature to look for is a punch clock for hourly employees. I’m not talking about a wall-mounted contraption. I’m talking about staff being able to quickly log into the cloud software and entering start and stop times at the touch of a button.Finally, you want to be able to export all this payroll data into your accounting software saving you reconciliation hassles come tax time (and saving you lots of money in accounting fees).12. Track and Measure – Look for Reporting CapabilityYou won’t know where your business is going if you don’t know where it’s been and where it’s at. This boils down to the financials – but not just the usual income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.I’m talking about in-depth class attendance, payroll costs, number of students per yoga teacher, yoga student and employee retention rates, no shows, product returns, and sales figures (past, present and forecasts) – to name a few reporting capabilities to look for.13. Scalability – Get Software that’s Priced to Your Studio Size and NeedsOkay, not every yoga studio wants to expand and build a huge business. That’s why yoga software that scales is key. What I mean by this is yoga software that accommodates both small and huge yoga studios – and is priced according to need.Look for software that offers different pricing packages so you can get a software package that serves your business as is – but has the capability to accommodate your growth – if that’s what you do with your studio.Where Do You Go From Here?I’ve covered a lot of ground. Sure, you may not want or need all that capability. That’s fine – but you might need more functionality in the future.One thing is certain, you want to choose your yoga studio software carefully. Why? Because you’ll spend a good amount of time implementing it and getting it going just right for your yoga studio. The time investment, with the right software, will certainly be worth it.

IntroductionWhat makes an F1 racing champion? Is it the car? Is it the technology that went into building the engines? No, it is the driver. The driver’s confidence around corners and patience in the face of daunting challenge by other drivers makes a champion. Similarly, it is the trader that makes the difference in stock and option trading. It is the stock or options traders’ confidence in their chosen methodology and their patience in the face of daunting price changes that makes a champion stock or options trader.Trading Confidence and Trading Discipline are the most important aspects of trading psychology that makes millionaire stock or options traders. They are also the main reason why so many stock and options traders fail and break their bank.Trading ConfidenceTrading confidence is a mental confidence banking account in every trader and trading discipline determines if you deposit or withdraw from it. Trading confidence is what enables every stock and options traders to execute trades according to their chosen methodology confidently and to stick to the game despite losses knowing that they will eventually make more wins than losses. Trading confidence is a banking account which you can either deposit to or withdraw from. Each time you lose money, you withdraw from your trading confidence and each time you make money, you deposit to your trading confidence. When your trading confidence is zero or bankrupt, you will find yourself hesitating before every trade while imagining the pain if the trade turns out a loser again. You will have sleepless nights and will rush out of trades at the very first sign of danger, making unnecessary losses. When that happens, it is the time to go back to paper and re-examine the way you have been trading. In fact, you do not have to break your trading account balance to have your trading confidence bankrupt and a bankrupt trading confidence always lead to a bankrupt trading account. Conversely, every time you win money with your chosen methodology, you deposit to your trading confidence bank, feel confident and happy when placing trades and do not panic when trades go bad.Factors Affecting Trading ConfidenceA major determinant of your level of trading confidence is the amount and nature of money that you have to trade with. The more money you can afford to lose, the higher your initial level of trading confidence. Stock and options traders whom can afford to lose only very little money would usually have very low level of trading confidence as every loss takes a significant bite out of their trading confidence bank. Again, you need not lose all your money to lose all your trading confidence. Some stock and options traders no longer feel confident enough to trade when their account go down by 30%, while some reach that level of confidence bankrupt only when their account go down by 70%. The nature of money you have to trade with also determines your starting trading confidence. If you are trading with excess money which you do not need, then your level of trading confidence would be very high. In fact, your trading confidence could still be high even if you lose all that money. Conversely, if you are trading with borrowed money which you need to pay back in installment and with interest, your trading confidence would be extremely low as every loss makes it harder for you to pay the money back.Alas, there is no objective and empirical method of calculating your level of trading confidence and most stock and options traders only understand it when it goes bankrupt.At this point, it is clear that you need to win money in order to build up a strong trading confidence banking account and in order to win money, you need to follow a proven and successful trading methodology. A losing method will bankrupt your trading confidence in no time no matter how much you start out with. Trading DisciplineOnce you are sure that you have a proven and successful method , you will need Trading Discipline to make sure you stick to the rules and trade only when entry requirements are fully met. Without trading discipline, you will end up spoiling any successful methodology, leading to a withdrawal of your trading confidence.Trading Discipline consists of Patience and a Calm, Objective mind.Every trading methodology trades only when specific setups or rules are met. Without trading discipline, you will not have the patience to wait for such setups or rules to be fully met before trading and every time you break the rules, you increase your odds of losing and every loss withdraws from your trading confidence. Therefore, do not make “fun” or “experimental” trades by compromising rules as losing under such conditions do withdraw from your trading confidence as well.Trading Confidence & ComplacenceA distinction must be made here regarding trading confidence and complacence. Complacence comes not from a high trading confidence but from a complete lack of trading discipline. Complacence always leads to a quick and complete bankrupt of trading confidence, so, be certain to understand the difference.Trading Psychology – ConclusionFinally, the relationship between trading confidence and trading discipline actually goes both ways. A strong trading discipline following a proven methodology builds strong trading confidence and a strong trading confidence also encourages the development of strong trading discipline as you experience the success coming from following rules. The Star Trading System is one such system. Only when you have both strong trading confidence and trading discipline will you have the trading psychology needed to make millions.