Many of the world’s biggest companies were founded not by one entrepreneur, but by two or more partners who shared the same vision: Warner Brothers, Hewlett Packard, McDonald’s, Apple, Google, Ben & Jerry just to name a few. Of course, all of them had to overcome rough patches along the way, these examples show that two heads are better than one and that a business can accomplish great things if it’s ran by partners who complete each other.

If you’re an entrepreneur with a big dream, you shouldn’t feel at a disadvantage because you didn’t happen to meet your business partner in childhood and you didn’t go to college together. In many ways, hiring a right hand to help you run things in your organization is better, because you can look for traits that indicate they are the best possible match:

Experienced

It’s not impossible to succeed in the business world without prior experience, but the few success stories we can give as an example are actually quite scarce. In most cases, lack of experience leads to costly mistakes and you might not get a second chance to apply what you’ve learned from them. An experienced business partner can help you avoid them by providing valuable know-how, advising you on fiscal matters and providing market insight.

Supportive

Business partners should have each other’s backs. The right hand you are looking for has to believe in your talent and support you along the way because this is the key to achieving success. According to psychologist Sherrie Campbell, a partnership based on support increases trust boosts motivation and helps you stay positive in spite of setbacks.

Patient

In business, success rarely comes easy. It might take years of trial and error until you manage to develop that brilliant product or until you find your first customers. The person you choose as your right hand has to be patient and stand by your side for as long as you need. There is nothing wrong with wanting to work quickly, but this shouldn’t come at the cost of compromised production or rash decisions.

Dedicated

No matter how many qualifications a person has, they won’t help you if they don’t believe in your goal and aren’t dedicated to seeing it become a reality. Look for commitment in your business partners and you won’t regret it.

Visionary

The world’s greatest inventions were created by people who were visionaries and had the courage to think outside the box. Find yourself a business partner who isn’t afraid to think upside down and challenge the status quo.

Hard-worker

Success often comes at the cost of countless sleepless nights, never-ending brainstorming sessions and hours of pitching over the phone. Your partner has to be willing to do all this and work harder than every other employee when the situation calls for it.

Communicative

The way you communicate with your business partner is essential. Not only do you have to be open to each other’s ideas, but also accept positive and constructive feedback. Without communication, you won’t know what’s wrong and you will not make the most out of your collaboration.

Kind

In the business world, the power of kindness is underrated. Contrary to how popular media pictures executives, you don’t have to be ruthless and cynical to succeed. A partner who cares about the needs of employees as much as for the needs of the business is really valuable, so score that during the interviews as well.

Proactive

Proactivity is the trait of people who anticipate change before it happens and know how to react to it. Proactive people are those who have initiative, adapt in challenging situations and have a results-oriented attitude. Instead of having a passive mindset, where they wait for things to happen and then sit back as idle observers, proactive people try to anticipate and prevent problems and when they occur, they actively try to solve them.

Integrity  

And last, but definitely not least, your right hand should act with integrity in all business matters. Associating yourself with someone who acts by unorthodox practices and is willing to cut corners for the sake of profit is very dangerous and could put your business at risk.

No matter what you are looking for in a right-hand person for your business, remember that the two of you should be compatible. Finding the Steve Wozniak to your Steve Jobs might take a while, but you should never rush your decision and you should only go with someone you can trust. Whether you are choosing an SEO agency or hiring an employee, integrity is paramount. 

About the author

Brandon Stapper is the Chief Executive Officer of Nonstop Signs & Graphics. a Los Angeles Signage Company.  At 20 years old, with no formal education and only a few hundred dollars, Stapper turned a $400 custom decal machine in a garage into a printing powerhouse. Nonstop Signs & Graphics has made the Forbes Fastest Growing Companies Award 4 years in a row and services 10,000 clients yearly.

Are you planning your content marketing strategy?  If yes, SEO is the primary objective. Expert marketers work in a way that’s something like this –they have an SEO plan, a list of premium keywords, they start to blog actively and have the website optimized. There’s also a plan for on and off page SEO. The majority of marketers don’t find this to be a problem.

Time, however, is a concern. Also, the weekly tracking often makes you guess, cross your fingers, pray and also consult informative blogs to learn about the advanced SEO trends and tricks. Maximizing leads and high-end website visits are essential. Hence, your content marketing plan requires some help. Also, if you get to see that your competitors and other market players are ranking above you, then there’s work that you need to do.

One thing that you should also consider is going through an audit – you can even use a free SEO audit tool. That will help to keep you on the right track during this process.

So, do you want to improve your website ranking and outshine your competitors? If yes, you can refer to the seven useful SEO tips discussed below.

1. Carry out a competitor analysis

The strongest SEO tactics to increase your website ranks is conducting extensive competitor analysis and research. The first step is to recognize the principal competitors, either through geography, industry, keywords or any other essential aspects. An in-depth analysis will enable you to discern areas where your competitor is doing better than you. It will help you know your weakness. Any competitor analysis that you conduct should include the following activities:

• Keyword analysis
• Content analysis
• Link building analysis

Additionally, tools such as Ahrefs, SpyFu, and SEMrush are useful in website optimization.

2. Evaluate your back-links

Back-links are an essential aspect of a sound SEO strategy. But not every back-link is equally created. Few links will naturally perform better than the rest. Hence, managing performance is essential. It is useful in narrowing down on many other kinds of back-links that are important. Alternatively, you can also understand the websites that are essential for generating high-end traffic.

Are there a few links that are not adding value to the search ranks? If yes, then it is essential to do away with these links. You can use tools such as Aherfs and Majestic that are useful in conducting an in-depth back-link analysis for the website. Want to get professional assistance on this? You can reach out to names like LA SEO Kotton Grammer if you are in Los Angeles and others, to have access to expert guidance.

3. Mobile optimization

The mobile search market is expanding rapidly. Also, marketers have been anticipating for long that mobile might become more impactful than desktops. Back in 2017, mobile took the lead. Today, it records for over a half of global web traffic.

There have been several criterions for mobile development. It is not just essential for websites to look decent. Sites also need to load quickly; else the online visitors will bounce off to other websites. Opting for a stripped-down version of HTML, Google asserts that the AMP optimized web pages generally load 85% faster. Hence, if your site is not optimized for mobile, it’s crucial that you do it today.

4. Make use of a safe HTTP

When you shift to Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) for encryption, you automatically witness many advantages. Some of them are listed below:

• Privacy and security: By securing communications between servers and users, the scopes for third party damage or interference reduce significantly. The outcome is high trust from both web browsers and users. And you get to see the warning signs when you browse through the non-HTTPS sites.
• Enhanced rankings: With the growing trustworthiness, the majority of websites that have shifted to HTTPS will witness an increase in their search ranks. You can also expect to see a vast number of traffic and referrals gradually. Google recommends secure sites more than the others.

According to statistic, after mid-2017 about 31% of web domain has shifted to HTTPS. And this number has been increasing ever since. It is because secure communication protocols are becoming significant around the globe. Right after you shift to HTTPS, there might be a dip in the search result performance and site rank. It is because of the modifications you make to the URL base. It is for a short span of time, and you’ll witness increased website ranks soon.

5. Optimize the web page speed

The internet speed has increased. Hence, there are high expectations concerning the website performance from all the mainstream users. Based on a study by Adobe, about 40% of the users are going to move away from a website if it takes excess time to load.

Want to boost the website loading time? There’s a lot you can do for the same for example choosing the fastest web hosting provider out there so that your server-side related loading speeds are top notch. And the majority of this is easy to implement. For instance, resort to high-compression for your pictures to minimize the load time. You might also want to make use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which enables your global users to have access to your web content.

6. Voice search optimization

As you attempt to optimize mobile devices, incorporating a better voice search functionality is a smart call. The primary objective of the same is to concentrate on the voice search that is the source for “Featured Snippet” as Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa that will read out data from the sources.

7. Making use of structured data

The website crawlers have gotten more advanced and gained expertise over the years. However, what is apparent to a human user is entirely vague to a machine. The outcome is, occasionally, the site crawlers might make mistakes or overlook a data when your website is indexed. The solution, therefore, is to make use of structured data.

Making use of structured data is formatting your site code to an identical layout. When the search engine crawlers index your website, they will be able to gather precious information. It is because it got designed in the expected format.

The online market space is getting flooded with new companies and brands every day. Every company wants their brand to outshine the other market players. Everyone wants to experience increased website ranks. And to be able to witness this consistently needs serious work. You can opt-in for the above-discussed SEO tactics that are tried and tested and are meant to enhance the website rankings.

Product development and design are essential for ensuring that you can actually produce and sell the products you make. Oftentimes, products are designed and produced in a way to maximize quality. In order to achieve that, tight tolerances are focused on during the development process. What exactly are tight tolerances in product development? Tolerances are variables in the design, usually concerning the dimensions of a specific product.

In layman’s terms, it’s a plus or minus here and there that are allowed in product design. Tolerances influence the overall design of the products, as well as its manufacturing and quality control. In some cases, tight tolerances are absolutely necessary to ensure that the product can perform appropriately. However, strictly leveraging tight tolerances isn’t mandatory in every case. What’s more, they will only increase the production costs. Therefore, here’s how increasing design tolerance can actually cut costs.

Determine the functionality of a product

The functionality of a product determines how it will be designed and produced. In some cases, tolerances of even a single decimal can mean the difference between a functioning product and a failed one. That is only the case if product functionality depends on tight tolerances. However, materials used in the manufacturing process also play a role in determining acceptable tolerances in product design. In other words, not every part of the product needs tight tolerances, but in most cases, the entire product is based on strict requirements.

For instance, a product with a certain number of components requires a tolerance of ±0.001 because there’s a specific way component must fit together. But, a separate part is also automatically specified using the same tolerances, even if the part does not interact with the others or may not need the same tolerances. That’s why it’s important to determine the functionality of the product and which component – if any – requires a tight tolerance to function.

Consult with a manufacturer

Creating a product design eventually comes down to tolerances that are numbers on paper. You may think that those tolerances are absolutely necessary, even if that’s not the case. Tolerances are influenced by the materials used in production, how they’re made during manufacturing and the sensitivity of product features to variations in design. That’s why it’s important to have an experienced manufacturer on board that can help you determine if there’s room to increase the design tolerance or not.

For example, if you’re developing a design for electrical components, you should consult with an electronics manufacturer. That way, a manufacturer can go over your design and help you determine the acceptable increases intolerances to help you cut costs. Electronics are produced by the IPC (Association Connecting Electronics Industries) standards which allow certain tolerances in product design. Your manufacturer will know how to best implement those tolerances, without compromising the product’s functionality and quality.

Understand the costs of tight tolerances

As mentioned before, product developers and designers focus on tight tolerances in order to ensure product quality. The reality is that tight tolerances do not always influence quality, but they are always expensive to implement. You need to consider these costs before insisting on tight tolerances. For example, tight tolerances require more precise tools and higher grade materials, which cost a lot more. The tighter the tolerance is, the more it will cost you. In addition, tight tolerances require more processing, which increases the costs of the machinery used and labour.

Moreover, you need to pay for a close inspection to determine whether the tolerances are within the acceptable range. What’s more, if you cannot implement tight tolerances on your own, you may need to outsource the process, which will cost you more. In the end, you end up paying for precision that may not be required. That’s why it’s important to actually determine if tight tolerances are mandatory for your products. If you don’t need such tolerances, you should take the opportunity to implement more appropriate variables and greatly reduce the costs of product development.

Don’t relax tolerances too much

In an effort to cut costs, increasing the design tolerance is quite beneficial. However, relaxing the tolerances too much involves certain risks. For example, the product components may not fit well together if tolerances are too extreme. In addition, your customers may disapprove of increased tolerances, if you haven’t consulted with them beforehand. Also, you may need to repeat the manufacturing process and redesign your products if you’re not careful with tolerances.

That will only skyrocket your costs. Instead of focusing on tight tolerances or relaxing them too much, you should focus on implementing quality assurance and tolerance analysis. That way, you’ll be able to determine exactly which variables are acceptable for your product design. In addition, you’ll know exactly where to apply strict tolerances and, of course, how much you can increase them to cut costs.

Product design is important for the manufacturing and quality of the products. However, ensuring product quality doesn’t always rely on implementing strictly tight tolerances. Tight tolerances are only required when there are specific needs and functionality requirements. Other than that, you can consider relaxing the product design tolerance and save yourself a lot of money during the development process.

About the author:

My name is Raul, editor in chief at Technivorz blog. I have a lot to say about innovations in all aspects of digital technology and online marketing. You can reach me out on Twitter.