Author: Gina Jaaskelainen

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The Mystery of SEO

Published by Gina Jaaskelainen

The acronym SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and—besides your specific area of expertise—it is possibly the most important concept for today’s small business owner to understand. “Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the act of getting website pages to rank high in search engine result pages (SERPs) for targeted keywords,” defines Aaron Agius of Louder Online in Sydney. Whether your clients find your business on the internet depends on how well you have managed your SEO—or whether you have managed it at all. If your business is online—and in this day and age it should be—it’s time to get familiar with the way search engines work. When we talk about search engines we’re really just talking about Google. While there are other internet search providers—such as Bing and Yahoo—they are still marginal compared to Google. What follows, then, is a short introduction to the internet as Google sees it, and as it wants you to see it. According to Aaron, SEO can be divided into two broad categories, On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. Simply …

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Business in the Cloud

Published by Gina Jaaskelainen

There you are, waiting for your third coffee of the day, a million ‘to-dos’ running through your head, and suddenly you hear the calm-looking guy in front of you say, “Yeah, I run my entire business from the cloud.” Somehow, he looks more organised, more streamlined, more everything than you—but is it all a big bluff? And what is this ‘cloud’ thing, anyway? Laurel Grey of Get Digital Flow in Sydney gives us a weather forecast. “The reality of running your business in the cloud is that, eventually, you will have to get there,” says Laurel. “The even harsher reality is that the road to effectively running your business from the cloud might not be as straightforward as many IT gurus would have you believe.” Laurel warns that it is easy to get carried away thinking that your business is going to earn you money 24 hours a day on complete autopilot with just a few cloud-based tools. Getting to that point takes months and years of dedication and time set aside to get things …

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The Doctrine of Signatures: Healing Foods

Published by Gina Jaaskelainen

In ancient Greece, physician-philosophers were struck by how many plants looked like a body part. They wondered if nature was trying to tell them something. From this observation, they developed the ‘doctrine of signatures’—a claim that certain plants could heal the organ that they resembled of an illness. It may seem like nonsense, however, says nutritionist Jane Hutchens of Lemongrove Road Holistic Health in Penrith, it’s not so far-fetched. Two thousand years ago there was no division between the sciences as we understand them today and other areas of enquiry such as medicine, philosophy and astrology. Early physicians like Dioscorides (40–90AD) and Galen (129–200AD) knew that plants had medicinal and health properties. They understood that prescribing the right plant for the right ailment was a task made easier by the appearance of the plant—the ‘signature’ (distinctive mark) of the illness or organ could be matched to the ‘signature’ of the plant. “For example,” says Jane, “plants with yellow flowers, like gentian and dandelion, would be used to treat conditions that caused jaundice (yellowing of the …

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Office of Your Dreams

Published by Gina Jaaskelainen

It’s the place we spend all our working lives, which, for many of us, is more hours of the day and more days of the week than we spend at home. And yet, while we take care that our homes are comfortable, practical and attractive, few of us think of making our offices equally ‘liveable’. Rachel Morse, principal consultant and interior stylist at Colour on Location in Leura has some great tips for creating the workspace of your dreams—whatever your budget. American interior designer Albert Hadley said, “Make your home as comfortable and attractive as possible and then get on with living.” “Hadley’s advice could just as easily apply to a work space,” Rachel says. “Make your office as comfortable and attractive as possible and then do what you are there to do.” Having an office that makes us feel like we are ‘in our element’ is an easily overlooked part of the workplace environment. We might have thought about desk ergonomics to make sure we don’t injure ourselves just sitting at our desks, we …

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Life Time: A Better Burger

Published by Gina Jaaskelainen

We all have the intention to eat healthy, right? The knowledge is there, the healthy options are available, the consequences of failure writ large in the obesity statistics… but what do we do when we’re short on time and inspiration —and just in need of something comforting and quick? Penrith-based nutritionist Jane Hutchens at Lemongrove Road Holistic Health asked her typical Aussie male partner that question. “Tell them to buy better burgers,” he said. Be thankful—there is such a thing as a healthy burger! Burger purists will tell you that a hamburger is a single 100% beef patty sandwiched in a soft bread bun, typically with lettuce and onion, and with optional (and much argued over) condiments, like tomato or barbecue sauce or mayonnaise, pickles, cheese, bacon or tomato. Australian purists might also insist on a slice of beetroot—a thing that would horrify most other nations’ purists. Non-purists will happily add almost anything else to the basic recipe—and experiment with all kinds of non-beef patties like chicken or fish, and veggie options like falafel, lentil …