Social Media OptimizationPosted by capri nits Wed, June 23, 2010 20:06:12Nice article, I have come across few days ago.
Using Social Media To Boost Your SEO Campaign - By Jon Hines
Social Media is big, how are you using social media for your business? Are you utilizing it for SEO in linking campaign, local search, or to increase your brand? Whatever the answer all of the above is fine. Where social media shine is the use of the popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, and FourSquare to name a few.
Before we get into the meat of social media marketing, I'd like to break down some good and bad points about social media.
• SEO - using social media for search engine optimization for organic placement is not a good approach. Now this works fine if your company is a name brand like Apple, Dell, BestBuys, etc.. Your brand must be trusted thru the eyes of Google. - So best approach for a brand new business like Seattle Construction Attorneys is to join communities within the Twitter, Facebook. and engage with others. Key Points don't sell! not yet at least. You want to gain people awareness & trust of who you are. Once the shields have been broken down, and have great rapport with many then tell them about your special boat paint or that Luxurious carpet showroom in Redmond. Another thing to note you don't have to join 20,000 social media sites, just focus on 1 or 2, and you guessed it use facebook and/or twitter. As they are the most popular and they are the 800 lb Ape of the Internet.
• Local Citation - use social media to increase your exposure thru engagement with people, offer advices and if they ask for more solutions - thats where you step up to the plate - in essences with engagement is the rapport that you build up with others & they will reference you - this is the digital way of word of mouth
• Think Outside the Box - Using social media has to be innovative to get people to respond - here's an example from Dickson Legal thru the use of Gowala (4square for mobile) , let's say a prospect client needs some assistances in loan modification with their default mortgage - well they find Dickson Legal via facebook - and the law firm has xy% discount on the 2nd legal consultation and a free cup of mojo. But they have to go to Krispy Kreme 2x to document that they were at the location via gowala with their mobile phone.
So does the example sound far fetched? No Way, there's a mini Van (meal on wheels that specializes in Awesome soft tacos) that roams Los Angeles, wherever they go they Twitter where they will be. Last an ecommerce site that promotes epoxy paint can use Facebook to notify all of DIY and Paint Contractors that there's free shipping on Mil Specs paint from 2-4pm.
Bottom line is engage with your friends and prospects then slowly point them to your product or service, and always think outside the box to use Social Media. I can assure you if you do what is suggested you will cover the word of mouth form of digital marketing that can transends into the offline world & your SEO efforts. Any more questions leave a comment.
Search Engine OptimizationPosted by capri nits Wed, March 31, 2010 23:40:00Google technically differs 'www' and 'non-www' versions of the website. Most webmasters tend to ignore this, as most often it does not pose any issue. However, you need to better check it before it does.
For e.g You need to see which version has more pages indexed. Which version has a better page rank. Which version has more incoming links etc. If they are the same, no problem but with time, it might differ.
Canonicalization is the process of picking up the best url from several different versions of the website, and usually refering to the home page.
Like, 'www', 'non-www', /index.html etc.
These are canonical URLs and the process is canonicalization.
Once you find the version, that Google prefers, make sure you redirect other versions to this one. Well, /index.html is usually default. Mainly, it is for the 'www' versions. Giving a 301 redirect in the beginning, to the URL version of your choice is better than waiting for Google to choose. But its never late.
A real small step but an important one. If you have signed up for webmaster tools or analytics, this step becomes still more important.
Search Engine OptimizationPosted by capri nits Wed, March 31, 2010 23:21:01You might be wondering inspite of submitting your sitemap versions to Google and other engines, your site is not visited frequently by the robot. And because of this the indexing the site also would take time.
If this i s the case, its time to review your website/blog etc. Google usually looks for great content. But more importantly it looks for updates. Yes. Google actually visits websites on regular or random intervals to see if there are any updates. And if yes, it certainly crawls and indexes the content. But if it does'nt see any change for a certain period of time, it automatically reduces its frequency of crawling as it assumes your site content is not really updated.
So, here is the key. You have to keep your website/blog live. That is, make it happening. Frequent updates, new content, postings all this will make Google to come back to your site frequently.
When you sign-up for Google webmaster tools, you will be able to track the visits weasily. If you are not able to see any updated data for your site on this tool, that means, Google bot is not really visiting your site frequently.
According to Google:
We're always working to increase the update frequency for your verified sites' data, such as crawl, index, and search query stats. Much of this data depends on the content of your site, and is a close approximation of the status of your site. Our internal systems are always changing, and the web itself is an ever-shifting ecosystem. In addition, there may be a lag between when the numbers are calculated and when they are visible to webmasters - although data gets published in intervals, we are continually collecting it. If your content doesn't change very often, or if you're not getting new links to your site, you may not see updates to your data every time you sign in to Webmaster Tools.
Webmaster Tools provides data based on site visits and links to your pages. You need to get the word out about your web site to get more people visiting and naturally linking to it - that is, of course, after you've built a web site that people will want to visit and link to. The more links to your site on the web, the more likely it is that Googlebot will stop by for a visit. Once Google starts crawling your site more often, you'll notice that Webmaster Tools will begin to show more detailed data, and that this data is updated more often.
Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=96568&hl=en
Link PopularityPosted by capri nits Tue, March 23, 2010 20:57:44We normally think of submitting site to thousands of directories in the hope of getting good backlinks. But the truth is not even 10 percent of these links count as backlinks. They are simply lost somewhere. So all the hardwork is wasted specially if you are doing it manually. And even worst if you are doing automated submissions, because they simply do not add value.
Although your links are accepted and placed in the directories, there seems to be no use of it. You can't really assess the effectiveness of such directory listings.
So what is the solution?. Well, to begin with first directory submissions need to be done carefully and only to the selected few. Niche directories can help the most. Another best way is to check out your competitor's backlinks, and find any directory listings that are counted as backlinks on Google, Yahoo etc. and then submit to those as well.
Also, do not forget DMOZ. It takes quite a long to get accepted in this, but its worth. Submit here and forget it. Additionally, there is no harm in submitting to search engines especially Google, Yahoo & MSN, including XML sitemap versions of the site.
Finally, make sure the link codes you use for submissions are brief and include keywords in the link title.
Search Engine OptimizationPosted by capri nits Fri, March 19, 2010 22:30:54When you submit an article to article sites, most of the time you observe that although article is published, the page does not have a page rank as these pages are dynamically generated as & when the article is published.
However, over the time, some published article pages do attain page rank, so in a way it contributes to your own site, if you have included a backlink in the article.
Article submission is quite a good practice, as it not only helps in content syndication, backlinks but also increases the chances of improving page rank of your site.
Make sure that the article directories you submit your article to, generates the published article page with your article title as the URL. This will get the page ranked faster.
For e.g articlebase.com
Link PopularityPosted by capri nits Fri, March 19, 2010 22:23:15Yahoo backlink counter also gives a fair idea of the site popularity and is also equally important in assessing the site. Also, the best part is yahoo considers blog comment links (usually which are nofollow), forum post links in the backlink counter apart from the usual incoming links from article resource box etc.
So, in a nutshell, do not overlook the importance of blog comments or forum postings. Here again, a very important point is the comments or posts should not be vague but should be a genuine participation. Simply writing 'nice article' or something similar, does not solve the purpose. To build reputation as well as backlinks, genuine posting is important.
Link PopularityPosted by caprinits Tue, January 12, 2010 22:21:05I have come across so many webmasters who believe that submitting link & content to hundred's of directories, article sites, forums helps in building link popularity, which unfortunately is not true. If it would have been so, I guess everyone would be having thousands of links for their websites. If you are still browsing web for how to attain backlinks for your site, that means you current strategies are not working.
All the while, you must have read about quality links are better even if less in quantity. But how to attain these quality links. I will give you some few useful insights on this.
1. Choose few or just ONE: Instead of choosing thousands of sources to submit your content or link, choose few powerful. If you are just starting out, I suggest you choose just one.
2. Get hold: ONE web directory, bookmarking site, networking site, blog, forum, relevant website, article directory, press-release directory. Find niche-related as far as possible. You will get one for sure. Get hold of ONE and explore it inside-out.
2. Explore: Once you choose this ONE source from each possible field, become a member and first get knowlege of this resource completely. Read 'about us', 'guidelines', other content, popular content, other members profiles ofcourse in ur niche, everything you can know about the site. Become an expert on how you can get the most of this site.
3. Make your first move: First of all, introduce yourself. If its a forum, post it in intro thread, if its a article site, write an article about ur niche. Caution here: Don't market yourself directly on article sites, bookmarking sites and other content-dominating sites. Make sure you have read the guidelines of contribution thoroughly.
4. Don't forget author links: Yes, make sure you include your website as a signature link/author bio link/profile link. Also make sure that you do not use more than 1 or 2 links in your main posting content. They do contribute in your backlinks count and also traffic.
5. Connect with your readers and fellow members: Make genuine contributions and connect with your readers. Comment/Reply/Vote. Your content should be worth-while that you get others to sit up and take notice. How to do that?Well, give some tips/secrets/intersting news/contests/ask for opinions etc.
6. Be regular: Don't just sign-up and forget. Make sure to be regular on it. If you are a member one or few, I am sure you can manage to be regular. You need to build a reputation, a relationship and show that you are really a member not just a spam poster. Over the time, your involvement will reap unbelievable results. The best part is without even your knowledge you will build a brand image. Backlink will just be an additional gift for you over the time.
7. Link to the best to get the best link back: Once you are a known face on these sites, start using the best content on your blog, website, bookmark it etc. and give a linkback to them. Make sure they are aware of this. You can do so in comments/votes/replies etc. With time, ask for a link back but here you have to be really really tricky. Think of the ways of asking. You might not get any initially but work hard, you will surely get one.
8. Lastly, be patient: Website marketing is all about working hard, contributing even harder, being active, and finally being patient. Don't expect over-night results. Instead of spending time submitting site to thousands of directories/article sites etc. use your time wisely which will ensure you definite results and also that will be growing. Focus on quality content while contributing.
You will have to agree quality is anyday better than quantity. Be passionate about what you are doing. Don't be mechanical.
In my next post, I will give you the list of best ONEs to start with.
Social Media OptimizationPosted by caprinits Mon, January 11, 2010 23:41:37You must have heard these terms 'social media optimization' or 'social media marketing' more often. Not only this, when you see people using this media to promote their sites, its even more intimidating. But actually you know you must have observed, how exactly a site is promoted. When I open digg.com, I see all the news, articles, information which simply belongs to very different level. It really does'nt appear that these articles are used for promotion, but are only meant for giving you a piece of information/news/article. Here lies the key. If you want to really try social media optimization, then you should first forget about your site promotion.
Once you remove this block, you have won half the battle. Creation of your online presence is the key here. Next is you need to create good content which people will view. For this, first see which content you find good. Which content you would like to see from your industry if you were a customer. Bookmark this content. Yes, in social media world, first give if you want to take. First be the reader, be the commentator, be the voter, be the analyzer and only then you will be a qualified writer.Reason, you have to go through these levels to understand what a reader wants. Finally, in a nutshell I give you few handy tricks to rule the social media, first establish yourself, become a regular part of the community, then throw out some really powerful compelling content that users will not help but view it. Another important thing, if you are a starter, just choose one site for your social media campaign. Digg.com is a good one to start and is the most popular. In my next post I will talk about social networking and more about social media marketing coming up.
