7 Tips for Paying Off Your Credit Card Before the Holidays

By Kimberly Palmer

Saving up before the big bills roll in can protect your bank account. 

You should start with a plan to pay off your credit card debt, and then tweak your lifestyle so you don't live beyond your means.

Credit card debt can be stressful any time of year, but it's particularly burdensome around the holidays, when the pressure to spend is greater than ever. A November survey of 1,000 adults from Bankrate, which aggregates financial rate information, found that for the third year in a row, Americans' biggest money goal is to finally get caught up on their bills, with 22 percent of respondents citing “paying down debt” as their top financial priority.

As we head into the holiday season, many Americans have not saved up in advance to cover the costs of gifts, travel and other celebration-related costs. Almost half of those in the Bankrate survey said they are most worried about getting on top of their bills and 10 percent mentioned the extra burden of providing financial help to family members and friends.

If you’re among those trying to get on top of bills and debt just as the pressure to buy gifts and decorate the house mounts, here are some ways to pay off bills before the holidays without ruining the celebration:

1. Make a plan. Financial experts generally recommend either paying off credit card bills in full each month or at least figuring out how to pay down the balances with the goal of eventually paying them off. That approach will also help protect your credit score, which can suffer if you carry a high balance relative to your credit limit on your credit cards. It also means that when a real emergency comes up, such as suddenly needing to buy new car tires or pay an unexpected health care bill, you can more easily cover those costs.

2. Save more. It’s a simple but vital strategy ahead of the holidays, when spending tends to go up. Saving up in advance, so you can buy gifts and make travel plans without going into debt, will make it much easier to start 2015 on the right foot – without a massive credit card bill. Studies generally indicate that Americans are saving slightly more in the wake of the most recent recession. In the Bankrate survey,17 percent of respondents named “saving” as a top financial priority.

3. Stop charging. Instead of making debt a habit, identify fundamental changes to your lifestyle that will allow you to live below your means. Perhaps that means moving to a smaller home, giving up cable or cooking more from scratch – whatever helps you stay within your budget each month.

4. Earn more money. If you’re currently spending more than you earn, you can increase your income, decrease your spending or pursue some mix of both. One option is taking on a part-time job in the retail industry, which hires many temporary workers during the holiday season. You can also explore the many e-commerce sites, like Fiverr, to see if you can offer your services to others and make a profit doing so.

5. Think more positively. To be good with money, we have to believe we are good with money – at least many people say that a healthier mindset helps them make smarter financial choices. Consider lighting an abundance candle alongside your other holiday decorations, meditating on wealth or setting aside a peaceful hour to sort through your financial paperwork.

6. Celebrate your success. Instead of constantly beating yourself up over how far you still need to go, consider recognizing your past success and current progress. If you pay off even a small debt, celebrate with your favorite (frugal) treat; if you open up a new savings account, do something to recognize the achievement. Even small steps can represent strides toward a smarter way of taking care of your personal finances, and taking time to celebrate them can help reinforce your new, healthier habit.

7. Be your own creditor. Consumers who have emergency funds stashed away so they can rely on their own money – not credit cards – when unexpected expenses pop up are better prepared to weather financial storms and avoid racking up more debt over the holidays. Aiming to save 10 percent of your income (on top of retirement savings) for a post-tax savings account can provide a healthy buffer all year long.

Love Biking? How To Choose Tattoo Designers For Your Biker Tattoo?

If you love biking and going cross-country on your stylish hog, then one way to permanently symbolize your devotion for biking is by getting a biker tattoo.

Biker tattoos are more than just representations of a person's love for motorcycling; they can also denote freedom and the open road. To get these meanings accurately depicted in your biker tattoo, then you need to choose a great and talented designer. So how would you know if you have come across "the one?" Here are several tips that can help you choose the perfect designer for your biker tattoo.

Time is of the Essence

If you want to get a beautiful biker tattoo, do not be in a hurry and take your time. If you want to have a design you will not regret, then take your time in browsing the market for the best designer to draw your biker tattoo.

Go Round and Round

If you want to have the best ink design, then you need to have an ocular visit of the tattoo parlours near you. Check the artist's works, and ask him personally about his design philosophies, brainstorming processes, among many others. More importantly, do a research about the feedback of his former clients. You can search his feedback through websites such as Yelp or Trustpilot, if he has an account in any of these websites.

Internalize the Work

If you are lucky to stumble upon a collection of an artist's works, then go through the whole set with a scrutinizing eye. Do not just settle on just one work; make sure you see his other designs. He can have one great style, and the others might be flopped - you do not want to deal your chances with that. If the tattoo designer has a generally good portfolio, then you are one step closing to finding the artist who will create your biker tattoo

Talk to Your Friends

Do you have pals who are tattoo enthusiasts as well? One way to hire the best tattoo designer is to ask for their advice. Based on their experience, you can ask them "Who is the tattooist who has managed to give you your favourite tattoo?" You can compile their answers - if one artist is leading the pack, then it means that he is probably the greatest choice for your biker tattoo.

Search the Web

If you do not fancy any of the tattooists in your region, then try to browse the web to look for exceptional tattoo artists in nearby regions. Like what you did before, go through their works and look up the comments and feedbacks of their previous customers. While you might have to spend additional money to fly to the tattooist's place, you can be sure that you can have a unique biker tattoo you will not regret.

A biker tattoo is a sign of your devotion to the craft - do not let just any tattoo artist create the design for you. Follow these techniques in choosing a tattoo designer and you will be able to have the greatest ink design ever.

Kristen Dunn is a tattoo enthusiast and professional tattoo designer who has created thousands of thought provoking, elegant, and funky tattoos for her clients. She has a vast collection of custom designs to her credit. Winner of several awards and accolades, Kristen is now a founding member of the world's largest custom tattoo design community at CreateMyTattoo. View her tattoo collection here.

Ranking a Website With No Backlinks: It Worked!

In a previous post, I discussed ranking a website with no backlinks.  This was something that I had always wanted to test and finally I have the evidence to prove to you that it is possible.  First, if you did not read my previous post, you should go back and read it.  I did include some general rules I was going to follow for this test.  Here are the following rules I followed for this particular niche site:

• Find a keyword with at least 1000 searches per month: This is low enough to keep things less competitive but high enough to get some traffic and hopefully some income.  In addition, I want to pick a keyword which provides me further options for other secondary keywords.
• Pick a domain I have already register or one that has been registered for at least a year: I, and you should not want to spend $300 on an aged domain name unless you are really invested in making it an authority website.  Here, I am simply trying to rank this website without any backlinks.  Now, the reason I do want a domain already registered is because it, if parked or with some content, already has some traction.
• Create 20 high quality articles of 800 words or more focused on similar keywords: The goal here is to create excellent content without going overboard with 100 or more articles.

Niche Website Details

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was not and am not going to disclose the domain name for this website.  The reason for this is that I would inherently get backlinks.  Obviously that would completely void any progress I have made.  Nevertheless, I do want to provide you with some details in hopes that you can replicate this process.  It was not easy but I ended being able to do it.

Keyword

I spent a lot of time doing keyword research on domains I currently have.  I honestly have a lot that I am just sitting on, but for all of them I followed my outline for researching a niche.  Going over search terms and data could not have been done without using seomoz so I want to thank that group for a wonderful product.  Now, the keyword I chose was actually a phrase.  The phrase does include a term that is a fairly competitive term.  By way of example, a similar phrase would be “best dog beds” and the keyword that is competitive is “dog bed.”  The statistics for the term fit nicely within my first rule.  The phrase itself gets 1400 searches per month.  Now, I should note that the competitive keyword within the phrase gets over 20,000 searches per month.  The biggest issue here is that I knew the search time received over 1000 searches per month.

Sub-Keywords: Article Titles

Once I figured out the keyword I was going for, I used google’s keyword tool to find similar terms that were less competitive.  This normally included terms that received less than 300 searches per month.  I then used Keyword Magnet to find additional terms.  The problem with Google’s keyword tool is that it is limited.  In this case, I really wanted to go after those additional non-competitive terms for articles.  For example, if I used “best dog bed” Keyword Magnet was able to help me find “best dog bed for small apartments” and “dog beds for puppies.”  Once I had a list of 100 terms, I decided to sit down and search them on Google to see what was out there.  Often, the first three results were somewhat useful but because these are long tail keywords, often they were not competitive at all.

I decided on 20 keyword phrases to go after when writing my articles.  This really helped me get the traffic I needed though.  If you can find 20 keyword phrases that get 200 searches per month that equals 2000 searches per month.  If you can rank in the top 10 for each of them then you will certainly get some clicks.  At least that is and was my general thought.

Domain Name

As I mentioned before, I used a domain I previously owned.  The biggest reason was that I was trying to rank for a search term with no backlinks and I did not want a new domain name to hurt my chances.  However, I am interested to see if this would work with a brand new domain name.  To be clear, the domain I have is a .com and it is the exact phrase of the primary keyword.  For example, it could be www.bestdogbeds.com.  This allowed me an excellent chance to rank for a keyword with 1400 searches per month.  If you are looking for domain names, use Bustaname, it is an excellent website and a great resource when deciding though.  I actually debated about using another domain name and keyword because I found a less competitive search term but ended up using a domain I had registered 2 years ago.

Building the Website

I followed the tutorial I wrote on building your website and used a theme from DIY Themes.  Bear in mind, that I only wrote the mandatory pages such as a contact us or about page along with the 20 pages which were the articles discussed previously in this post.  The point here is that I did spend time building a fully functional niche site.  This was not something I just threw up there with some articles.  I believe this played a role in my success because this is actually a useful website that visitors enjoy!

Results!

Now, I have had this website up for about 3 months.  Within the first month I was finding my website in the top 10 for a few of the articles.  Within the second month, I main homepage was ranked in the top 10 of Google.  Keep in mind that my main page has 1000+ words and articles discussing the primary topic.  Here are my results below:

No Backlinks Proof

Now obviously some of you may believe these sites showing the statistics below are not the same.  Sadly, without revealing my domain name, it would be impossible to prove.  Take my word for it though, IT IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE.  Why take my word for it?  Well, I have spent a lot of time trying to help others and quite frankly, this site has been built to help people understand that Google wants quality websites.  The site I created, in my opinion, is an excellent resource.

Statistics – Per Month

• Search Terms Getting Me Traffic: 289 according to Google Webmasters Tools
• Impressions (the number of times people see my website in search results): 14,532
• Clicks Per Month: 1,198
• Ranking for Main Keyword: 7
• Ranking for Next Competitive Term with 900 Searches Per Month: 3
• Visits (Past 30 Days): 1,604
• Google Adsense Revenue: $35.32 Last Month ($72 total)
• Pages Visited Per Visit: 3.51
• Bounce Rate: 1.31%

The craziest thing here is the bounce rate.  My website is an excellent resource and this means only 1.31% of visitors visit the site and leave without clicking to another page on my website.  Meaning, 98% of visitors visit other pages on the site!

Lessons

To me, the biggest lesson I learned is that Google really does reward value.  This website, currently, has no backlinks at all except internal ones.  I researched the necessary terms and developed articles ranging from 500 to 1200 words.  All of these articles I wrote and I spent time really trying to help others understand an important issue.  Never let anyone tell you that it is not possible!  My goals for this niche site are to further monetize the site and hopefully continue to grow without any backlinks.  Everyone says you need backlinks and I fully believe that this is a major portion of how Google works.  However, if you have something that is not competitive and something that people find useful, Google recognizes this.  If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.  Until next time!

Get weekly advice on growing your online business and... it's FREE!

Can a Website well Without Backlink

Backlinks are one of the most high-risk, high-reward aspects of SEO. On one hand, you have the reward; a high ranking in Google that’s nearly impossible to dislodge. A site, once it has reached the stage of trusted authority, becomes a permanent fixture among the top results regardless of what changes around them. On the other hand, you have the risk; if you make one false move in building your backlinks, you can find your entire ranking site-wide dropped off the first page or worse. The worst part is, you don’t always know what constitutes a bad move. Google changes the goalposts regularly, so what might work today may be a spam technique next year.

With all that in mind, is it possible to build a site and rank well without putting anyemphasis on backlinks? The answer is yes, but you’re going to have to work harder for it.

A Perfect World

In an ideal world, this is how it would go. Websites, both personal and business, will post content. That content will be indexed and sorted by some omnipotent entity, capable of parsing the content and reading the quality of that content, as well as perfectly reading the subjects it relates to. This entity would then serve up the objective best results for any query, among what is indexed. This any user would be able to find the best content to answer their question, knowing with absolute trust that what they see is the best resource there is.

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world. Google does everything it can to become that omnipotent entity, and has created the Algorithm, a complex, almost AI-level computation that takes in hundreds of factors about a piece of content and ranks that content by them. This includes backlinks, and the content quality, and keywords, formatting, site load times, domain name and much more.

Google does not have absolute control or absolute trust. It must rely on its algorithm and work to refine that algorithm. On the other side of the field are the webmasters, who do what they can to reverse-engineer the algorithm and come up with a list of those factors and ways to optimize them. The result is content that looks in every way like the best authority, even if another better resource exists. Google is constantly fighting to find a way to improve clarity of content, while webmasters constantly fight to be the best in the easiest way possible.

Thankfully for anyone looking to rank well in this imperfect world, Google is coming closer than ever to its ideal. Many techniques that used to work to artificially inflate ranking no longer work. Meanwhile, the best path to being the best is to actually be the best resource. Other factors don’t quite matter.

Focus on Content

To rank highly in this imperfect world, you need to focus on your content. Backlinks aren’t necessary, any more than any other SEO factor beyond the basics of non-terrible hosting and a responsive server. The only parts of SEO you need to consider are those parts that lead to your site being discovered; beyond that, let your content do the talking.

You might like:

• Does Google Think Manual Link Building is Unethical?There is much argument about link building in the SEO…

• Do research and write valuable content. Content typically comes in two forms; the evergreen resource and the timely commentary. For evergreen resources, you need to do everything you can to compile every possible bit of useful, actionable advice. You need to write it in a clear and concise manner. The goal here is to answer as many related questions as possible in as little space as possible, so users always refer to you as a guide. For timely content, you need to watch trends and news for current events and comment on them. Your commentary should be insightful and interesting, published as quickly as possible. When in doubt, add more value and delay publication; Google puts a preference on value over time.

• Format your content appropriately. Keep paragraphs short and use frequent subheadings. Use bulleted or numbered lists when appropriate. Use bold formatting for key points, so readers can pick out value easily.

• Link internally to other pages. You may be avoiding the manual backlink, but you can certainly link to other related internal content. If you’ve written in detail about a subject related to the subject of your current post, link to that past article. There’s no reason to rehash what you’ve already said and every reason to promote your own content.

• Include a compelling title. A title is how users decide what your post is about. It’s important to hook them with the title. Unlike with novels, web readers judge posts by their covers.

• Don’t forget images and their meta data. The web is not a print medium, and it benefits greatly from imagery and pictures. Include relevant images that enhance your post. More importantly, optimize the alt text for these images to include more value.
• Encourage social engagement. If you aren’t building backlinks, you need to build an audience somehow, and the best way to do that is through social media. Social media allows you to build an additional factor you don’t get on your site; authority. You can establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and use that authority to promote more content over time. This builds as you have more valuable content, helping all of your content rank higher than it otherwise would.

One Factor Out of Many

In the end, backlinks are just one factor out of hundreds that go into creating the ranking of a given piece of content. The thing is, they are one of the most important factors. When we talk about ranking content without backlinks, what we really mean is ranking content without putting the time and energy into creating backlink opportunities.

It’s nearly impossible to rank a piece of content without any backlinks at all. That’s because users will, naturally, on their own, link to content they like. These are natural, organic backlinks and they promote your content with no risk to you. It’s only when you start going out and looking for ways to add backlinks that you run into the possibility of Google penalties.

In the perfect world, backlinks are only organic. There would be some form of verification or validation process for a backlink, confirming that yes, you do want to link to this site because it’s a good authority on the subject. The issue in our imperfect world comes from sites that earn backlinks by paying for them, or through reciprocal link exchanges, or through another form of bypass that gets rid of that assurance.

A Word of Caution

Backlinks should not necessarily be avoided. Google likes to trust sites, and only sites with a high degree of trust will rank easily and highly. One factor in trust is backlinks from other trusted sites. If your content fails to earn any of those, regardless of your effort spend in obtaining them, you’re going to have a hard time finding the success you want