Everybody remember this sign on Highway 101 in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, California, the beloved and famous Yahoo! billboard which was full of neon lights and oft-changing funny messages. It was like a neighbour to all inhabitants of this area.

It is hard to imagine anyone shedding tears over the loss of a billboard, but a lot of San Franciscans found their eyes watering up the day it has been taken down. Before being removed, many people fought against the loss of this icon of the dot.com era thanks to petitions and Facebook groups like “Save the Yahoo! billboard”.

The creators of this sign, Steve Stone and Bob Kerstetter (from the ad agency Black Rocket) thought it would be up only for one or two years and finally stayed for a decade. They both also remember the best messages on the sign, their favourite ones are “You look cute today” and the guy who proposed his girlfriend in the message space.

Apparently, Yahoo! did not want to pay the monthly sum (between US$ 65,000 and US$85,000) to keep this panel and prefer to focus on new and more innovative communication.

Many people say that the abandonment of this billboard testifies the decline of the company.

Many people do not really understand why Yahoo! didn’t continue its communication through this billboard because it had a lot of success and gave a good image of Yahoo! during this hard period for the company. Yahoo! had shown a negative image those last years. In 2008, the shareholders of Yahoo! neglected two major proposals: one on censorship, another one on Human Rights … In 2007, a mother of a Chinese journalist who has been sent to jail “thanks” to the information provided by Yahoo! China, filed a complaint against Yahoo!. This case poisoned the reputation of Yahoo! for many years. Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, was sentenced to ten years in prison in April 2005 for “revealing state secrets” to be transmitted abroad for official instructions to the Chinese media on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. During his trial, it has been discovered that Chinese police had been traced back to him through the information provided by Yahoo! the e-mail account of Shi Tao, yet registered with Yahoo Hong Kong and not mainland China.

Then, in 2006, Reporters Without Borders tested at the time the various search engines present in China: Yahoo! won handily the censorship tests, beating Google, and Baidu …

Now, it seems as though San Francisco will lose something that most people forget soon after they pass by, but which will always have a place in their hearts.

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Turning your study into a home office is an excellent way to demarcate a specific part of your home to only be used for work. Unfortunately, if you do not properly organize your home office, it can quickly lead to chaos – and you will soon find that non-work related items creep back in. The good news is that you don’t need real estate advice to set up a remote office, all you need to do is follow the simple tips outlined in this article.

Get Organized

It might seem like a daunting task to transform your relaxed study into a super-efficient office space. Once you get yourself organized, however, even if it takes the whole weekend to get it done – you won’t have to waste cycles rummaging around through piles of paper trying to get to that all important file you needed 15 minutes ago.

When you start running your business from home, or working remotely for your employer, it becomes increasingly crucial to stay on top of where everything is. You will find that your days are less stressful if you get everything in order before you start working from home.

Stay Healthy

When you work remotely you become responsible for your own health and safety. Getting organized will reduce stress but there are other things you can do to help you healthy. Keep the place clean. You will end up spending several hours at a time in your home office. Real estate advice might suggest that you build a little extension to your house, but a well maintained office space will suffice. Dust regularly and remove any office clutter. Asthma and allergies can be aggravated by the germs and insects that thrive in messy environments. Even if your office is in an otherwise untidy household – and you don’t have the budget for an extension – make sure this area is maintained at a high standard.

Now that you are starting to focus on your remote office it is a great time to check that the supplies you do have are in order, and purchase anything that you think you will need in the near future. Have a clear out. Check every pen in your study to see if it still works. Throw out any that no longer work. You may be surprised at how much you have held onto over the years. Giving yourself a fresh start will save you a lot of time in the long run. Pick out a handful of pens that you like using, and store the others somewhere safe. As soon as one of these pens runs out replace it from your stash. You could purchase yourself a tray for all of your stationery. It can be enjoyable getting these sort of things organized, just make sure you don’t get a little too obsessive-compulsive about it

It is likely that you agree you will not need to remodel your home, or get substantial real estate advice, when you want to turn a study into a remote office. Organization is key; but you might also want to get a lock for the door…

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1)      Presenting informative content: There is no substitute for filling your web pages with the content which is very relevant to what the users would be looking for. Beside this, several websites would come forward to provide a backlink or accept it if they believe that you have the unique and most relevant information on your website. This further helps the search engine ranking of your web site go up.

2)      Research on the key words: Search on the internet for the most common keywords that your target customers are using and looking for. Zero-on the best ones and use them in your web pages.

3)      Content format and usage of keywords: Keep in mind that it is only the web pages, but not the websites that the search engines rank. So, please fill each page with relevant content and good keywords. Use keywords in a variety of places like image titles, page titles, web links, etc. Do not repeat them in every page as this will make your content to be considered as spam by engines.

4)      Dynamic Content: Do not stick to particular keywords blindly only because they worked for a particular span of time. Research continuously, as the search trends change rapidly, like the social ones search engines do have updates in it frequently.

5)      Advertise on Social Media: Create a profile for your business and allow people who like it to follow and share it. Use pictures of your products followed by beautiful content to lure the visitors to your site.

6)       Design a smooth page-to-page Connectivity: Ensure that the visitors move from page to page with minimum effort and ensure that they find relevant and intelligible content. This brings more traffic even to the sparsely visited areas of your web site.

7)      Maximum number of links pointing to your site: The Google Page Rank algorithm considers many parameters to rank a page, but one of the main constraints is the number of links that point to your web site. There are several directory sites where your web site can be submitted. Also, if you own a blog, you can create links not only for your web sites, but also for others from whom you can get your pages pointed to as an exchange of favour.

8)      Creating a sitemap: A site map makes the navigation of your web site easy. Place a link for it from where the visitors can find all the pages in a hierarchical manner.

9)      Keep Track of the Statistics: Constantly keep an eye on several stats like number of visitors, popular pages in your site, backlinks, visitors from a particular platform, bowser, etc.

10)  A good ‘About’ page: Any visitor who visits your site for the first time will be curious to know what exactly you offer in your web site. So, create a solid ‘About’ page then clearly describe all other contents and also the purpose of your web site.

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