Monthly Archives: April 2020

The Surprising Benefits of Playing Word Games

There’s this common misconception in the world that games are bad for you. However, the term “game” can cover a large range of different activities. To some people, a game could be something like a sport that you play with friends. To others, it could mean home video games on the PlayStation or tablet. There are many definitions of what a game is, but to say that they’re all bad is a huge generalization.

In fact, instead of thinking that games are bad for us, we should flip the narrative and start looking at the benefits that games can provide. So in this article, we’ll be covering a popular type of game that is fun for the whole family; word games.

Word games can stimulate your mind

Word games can be challenging enough to provide plenty of mental stimulation. For instance, word games like Scrabble force you to look at your letters to try and make words of different lengths. If you find it too difficult to make up long words, or if you just want to see what words you could have made, then tools like WordUnscrambler.net can be a great help. Word games can even be considered as puzzle games which stimulate your mind and can improve your concentration. Even if you only play a few times a month, it’s a great way to keep your mind fresh and improve your memory and concentration.

 

Word games can help improve your vocabulary

Have you ever had a conversation and wanted to explain something but lacked the words to convey those feelings? That’s something that improving your vocabulary can help with. Whether you just want to have more meaningful conversations with people or if you’re a writer looking to expand their horizons, word games are a fantastic way to learn more about not just English, but virtually any language that you want to improve at. Of course, you’ll need to try and experiment with new words and play with others to discover new words, but it’s a great way to enhance your understanding of a language.

 

Word games are a fun social activity

While there are plenty of word games you can play alone, especially when it comes to mobile word games, they can also be a really fun social activity with friends and family members. It’s a brilliant family activity for game nights and can even help your kids learn more words and improve their understanding of a language. You can even play online with multiplayer word games over the internet.

 

Word games can offer enjoyment and relieve stress

One of the biggest reasons why we play games in the first place is to relieve stress and get a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment. Word games are a great way to achieve this while also providing a plethora of other benefits. As a style of game, word games are a fun and quick way to get some enjoyment either on your work lunch break, during your commute to work or at home with your friends and family members.

 

When You Google Your Business, What Do You See?

Before trusting a company, many consumers like to do their online research. This often involves searching the company on Google and seeing what results come up. For this reason, it can be important to Google yourself now and again – it could give you an idea of how people initially perceive your business. This could allow you to improve you online image and offer better first impressions to customers.

Below are just a few of the questions to ask yourself when analysing your Google results and what you can do to improve them.

Where do you rank?

When searching your company name, your company website should ideally rank at the top. This may not be the case if your company name is a popular or generic word, but if you’ve got a unique brand name it should ideally rank highly on the first page. High rankings will make your company look more important and reputable and will encourage more people to visit your website. You can improve your rankings via a strategy known as SEO – this involves using tactics such as incorporating keywords into your site, removing broken hyperlinks, encouraging inbound hyperlinks and improving the loading speed of your site. An SEO agency will have the resources and skills to help you with these tactics.  

Is your meta description engaging?

The meta description is the text found underneath your search listing. This can be just as important for generating clicks and for giving people a first impression of your company. The meta description is usually the first fragment of text found on your homepage, although you can change it without changing the text on your homepage by going into your site’s code and adding a meta tag. Ideally you want something descriptive and engaging that lures people in and builds trust in your company. This guide at Moz offers more information on adding meta tags. You can use the help of an SEO company if you don’t feel confident doing this yourself.

Are the listings all positive?

If you’re a fairly well-established company, there may be multiple results that come up related directly to your company. This could include social media pages, news articles that you’ve featured in and possibly blog posts that may mention your company. You should make sure that all these initial results are positive in tone. If a negative news story shows up, it could create a bad first impression.

With the help of a PR agency, you may be able to build up positive news coverage that may be enough to then outweigh any negative publicity. You’ll find PR companies catered to all niches such as this agency Elite Lawyer Management that caters to law firms. The right agency will have all the best media contacts and may be able to help secure coverage by finding the best angle.

Does your company have positive reviews?

The likes of Google now display reviews of companies. Listings for review sites like Yelp, Trip Advisor and TrustPilot may also show up in your search listings when searching your company. These reviews could have a significant impact on the way you are perceived and your online reputation as a whole.  You can encourage positive online reviews by asking every happy customer you work with to leave a review. Many customers will be more than willing to leave positive feedback. Never write your own reviews – not only is this dishonest, but it could get you in trouble if you’re found out. Almost all businesses receive negative reviews and there’s little you can do to once these are published. Most review platforms allow companies to respond to reviews – by publicly apologising, you may be able to improve your reputation somewhat. The best option however is to simply drown out these reviews by encouraging more positive reviews.