Search engine optimization Articles & News - SEO Update

You've taken the time to finally build a website, and now it is online. Months go by. Maybe you get a few visitors now and again. Maybe you land on the search engines. Mostly though, it just sits there. Is the website you paid for pulling its weight?

A website is a tool and can be of significant help to your business. It can cut a lot of time you put into giving information to customers. It can answer questions and perform tasks for you. Find out where websites fail to perform and how you can figure out where to make it better.

1. Undefined Website Objectives

Some sites try to do way too much at once, or worse, they have no definable purpose. Many offer no clear objective. A site can do more than look good and flashy and have your contact information.

Websites can be informational, storing content and articles based on a topic. Sites can run eCommerce solutions that help you with your sales process. It can also generate leads, asking customers to fill out forms with their information and interests. It can also be a hybrid site, with mixed purposes, like offering a free ebook or free access to information (informational) in return for contact information (lead generation).

Defining the purpose of your website gives a clear direction to your customers. Where should customers arrive when they find your website? Where do you want them to end up? Using a clear path and clear objectives, you can lead them through your site, your products, and your information, depending on how you need to sell your products. Not all products or services can be sold directly in an eCommerce situation. Maybe you prefer just getting to know your customer a bit more, and being able to forward marketing materials, so a lead generation type of site might be more suitable.

Assign a secondary objective. Maybe after visitors sign up for free access, or an ebook, they are encourage to ask more by contacting your sales reps, or perhaps they can make a direct purchase online. Use clearly definable call to actions. "Email for more information." "Click here to sign up." Tell visitors where to go.

2. Unidentified Target Audience

Demographics have been used in marketing for generations. Marketers use the information because it works. Knowing who your audience is defines the purpose to your website more and calls out those who qualify and would be interested in your products. Marketing is the one area where discrimination is actually a good thing! You don't want to waste the marketing dollars that draw people to your site who won't need your products in the first place.

Get to know who your clients are. Are they male or female? How old? Where are they located? What do they do for a living? Habits, income levels, preferences, they can all be discovered with a quick email, phone call or have your current customers take surveys and help you figure out what your clients want.

3. Building for the Wrong Audience

Your site can have a purpose and a select audience, but if it doesn't appeal to audiences, they tend to go elsewhere. Finding preferences is only the first step. Once you figure out what your demographic is, it is time to find out what appeals to them, and use that to your advantage. It could be something as simple as site colors and images, to where and how they prefer to use navigation systems and the type of content presented.

Maybe you need simple content, easy to read and understand for younger audiences. Perhaps you need something a bit more technical for professionals. You can even see if you need to add features for those who are visually impaired. Paying attention to your demographic and their preferences can mean building your website around their likes and getting more responses.

4. Oblivious to Web Traffic Sources

A link on a Harry Potter fan club forum to your website can bring in traffic, but does it really bring in the right customers? If you're not directing traffic from sites relevant to yours or where a matching market exists, you might end up with empty hits to your website. It looks pretty on stat pages but it doesn't really do anything.

Refocus your efforts on search engine optimization and focus on keywords that do fit, not just what might be popular. You can plan the sort of traffic you want and focus your outreach efforts on that. Planning your search engine campaigns can make them more effective, bringing the right customers to you. You don't need 1,000 random visitors a day, when 100 qualified visitors will do.

5. Underestimating the Competition

Who says you can't grab ideas from your competition? Find out what they are lacking and draw customers to your site by adding more features and information. Your target audience is searching the web for your product. Don't let your competition become more appealing.

Understand your competition by observing their sites. Where are your competitors linking? Where aren't they? What designs do they use on their site? Does your target audience like that type of design or do they want something better? Figure out how to improve on your own site and make it better than your competition.

6. Poor Site Communication and Inconsistency

If you're building a website, is one page orange and another blue? Does one page have your logo and another doesn’t? People love consistency.
Does your content and images display the right message? Your website might have pretty pictures of your children, or a fun story about what happened to you last Christmas, but is it really what your customers want to know?

Skip the personal info, unless it's relevant and your audience wants to hear about it. You also need to make sure you present your brand in it's best light, and consistently give visitors the same presentation very time and on every page. Let your brand stand out.

7. Outdated and Antiquated Site Features

Out with the old. Checking your site over for old content and images and delete them. Remove old links that go nowhere too. Forget pop ups and old methods of keeping visitors around. Content is great, but if it's so old that it's irrelevant, you'll lose respectability and your expert status.

Stick to new information. Don’t be afraid to get rid of old articles and delete old images. Get an update on your site features, like navigation systems and contact forms.

8. Poor Overall Site Performance

You've plastered all there is to know about you on a few pages. Is this the right way to do it? Maybe not. Yes, you've given them something to look at, but you have to remember, your time to impress people on the Internet is limited to just a few seconds. Long passages of text, lengthy forms, even poorly constructed or confusing navigation can slow people down, which leads to people leaving.

Making your website flow is all about making your site easy to read, easy to browse and easy to find what you're looking for. Include a search function, highlight popular pages, and make it simple for people to give you their information. Start with short forms, only the essentials, and a few simple questions. You can get more info later.

9. Lack of Commitment

When was the last time you updated additional information to your website?

Remember those "Website Under Construction" images from the early years of the Internet? Over time, people have learned those images are pointless. Your website is ever evolving, ever needing updating. Your website is never, ever finished.

You must make a commitment to update information and to improve interest in your site from visitors. It could be as simple as updating a blog once or twice a week, or updating about sales and special events. Give visitors something to come back to, and let them turn into regular guests.

10. Not using an Experienced Web Firm

You do a good job with what you do, and a good business and website owner knows when to call for help. Maybe you're okay with writing content, but you need help with creating navigation and setting up forms. It's okay to ask someone else for help, either with a few pages, or for the entire site design, and leave it to a professional.

It also saves money and time getting someone else to do the complicated things for you. Are you spending weeks on figuring out a web page design set up when it takes a professional a few hours to produce? When you're in business, you consult with professionals who will help you build a better website, develop methods of search engine marketing strategies, and find out how to appeal to your target audience. You save time, money, and plenty of headaches.

By Gary Klingsheim Published Yesterday Search Engine Marketing

You may be visiting this blog from your living room computer thinking “My website has very little traffic and / or very low conversion rate. What the hell am I missing?” You’ve heard about that “SEO stuff” and you know that you need all the help you can get.

SEO is not a miracle pill that shows immediate results I’m afraid. But with patience it can be quite fruitful. And SEO begins with the little things.

Titles and the art of creating them

One of those little things are optimizing titles.

So many times you will read about the importance of titles. You will hear:

titles need to be catchy
titles need to be sexy
titles need to grab attention!
titles need to sell the reader
titles need to be relevant to the content
titles do not need to be relevant to the content
titles need to be expressive
title, titles, titles

But the fact of the matter is..we need to know who and what we are trying to get the attention of before we can provide that piece of art we call a title.

Just how do you suppose we do that?

3 things to consider when creating your titles:

Keywords
Target Audience
Fellow marketers

Only briefly I’ll say that from an SEO standpoint, our titles need to contain our optimized keywords. but since this post is in reference to the options that are available as you are awaiting organic results, that’s all I’ll address on that. If you are new here, I suggest you begin reading through my “Search Engine Compatibility” posts found here. This will better explain usefulness of keywords and a lot of other SEO goodies.

As a website owner/businessman you may not be aware of the power of your online social networks which may be trying to work for you even while you sleep. Places such as:

“In my sleep? What bologna is she talking about?”

Social Networks and bookmarking sites can carry traffic traffic traffic for sure. It’s “Word of Mouth” free advertising. You may even find it to be quite the goldmine depending upon the worthiness of your content. (product and / or services)

So what kind of titles appeal to your target audience in a social atmosphere?

Each environment is different. You will find yourself making friends with persons of multiple interests. Hopefully you are there to have mutual friendships with the benefit of promotion of your content to boot.

For myself, I enjoy hooking up with people that have similar tastes as me. It’s sometimes very much a playground of sorts. I spend a lot of time expressing my personality through the photos I submit, music I listen to, SEO/M posts I like best, childrens books I have found, etc..(no telling with me..I can be eccentric)

Others seem to enjoy my pages in my networks (especially Stumbleupon). I do not spend time submitting only my own pages. In fact I RARELY submit my own pages. This is considered to be spam by a majority of persons in these networks, so being unselfish and simply having fun with others is key. You’ll find that you grow as a person and a marketer this way.

In social networks, you’ll begin to learn what it is that thrills those that follow you. As you become less selfish and more focused on others desires, you begin to empathize with them. In essence, this becomes an analytics tool, so to speak.

This is when you’ll know what kind of titles are most attractive to the bulk of those that surround you in that particular network. As they find appeal in your content after you caught their eye with an appropriate title, they will pass it on to their friends by giving you a review, comment or other means of hand-to-hand depending upon what network you are using.

So your titles in essence, are determined by the personality of those that are in your own personal network.

Fellow marketers

Not to be neglected are those that you may be affiliated with as fellow marketers.

With these folks, you’ll quickly find that they do not presume your innocence without your first securing their trust. So no matter what title you give your posts / submissions, you are likely to be under scrutiny. Do not let this deter you unless you’re selfish scammer that’s trying to ‘work‘ or ‘game‘ them. Because if that’s what your intentions are, you are losing more than what you bargain for. You’ll be lucky to show your face again if you start off on the wrong foot. There’s more of them than there are you, so get your foot in the door by doing a lot of observing, reading, voting upon their submissions.

And don’t become a bullsh*tter…I hate that..and so do others. Although, if you want to be sucked dry, then there’s a few that will want you to tell them how wonderful they are on a regular basis, vote a thumbs up at every given opportunity, and pass their pages all over the place no matter how crappy the post might be. They’ll admit you as a ‘team member‘ for sure. But that’s not going to help your traffic because if they don’t have to support you, don’t think they will. They are marketers with busy schedules. They don’t like extra work any more than you do.

(Don’t worry..If they are worth your vote, they’ll find mutual enjoyment in a give and take relationship.)

Back to the point…

When submitting your post to a fellow marketers territory such as Sphinn, a marketer likes to see titles that speak to them.

Although the bulk of their support isn’t given to the title as much as it is given to the the support that is being reciprocated between you and them. Yet, they have personalities too and enjoy a marketable title as well such as:

“What Pisses Me Off About SEO Blogs” or

“Top 21 Signs You Need a Break From SEO (2007 version)”

Although for this guy, a title like, “Smarter Google Maps Would Add movement and Templates for Tasks” would give you an edge. (wink)

So there you have my two cents worth on the art of creating titles. Obviously I gave more weight to your target audience than I did your fellow marketers. Why? Maybe it’s because you are not targeting your fellow marketers to your suggested call-to-action. (sales, signing for newsletter, taking a survey, etc)

Until next time, have fun learning!

Article Source: http://learningseobasics.com/archives/308

By Vertical Measures on Tuesday, March 11, 2008

By Vertical Measures on Tuesday, March 11, 2008

We’re always talking about keeping links fresh and how important it is to keep up with your link building efforts. It’s great to talk about, but it can be daunting after months of trying to generate new and different links that will register well with the search engines. This week we thought we’d give you ten quick ways to add some links so that you can take a breather from the strenuous stuff and still feel good about adding real link value to your site. Each one should not take more than 5 minutes, a total of 50 minutes!

3 Internal Links: Go to your site right now and find three places where you can link your own content to content on another relevant page. This internal linking is often overlooked and is actually a great way to keep people digging deeper within your site. Look for a good keyword phrase on your homepage and link it to an inner page with more information so that readers will stay longer and explore further.

3 Free Directories with Value: In the past we’ve warned against indiscriminate use of directories, but there are some free directories that continue to show some value. Here are three that are consistent performers and that have all been seen in Google backlinks. So click on them and add your site right now.

2 places to Go Local: http://local.yahoo.com and http://register.local.com/free/update.aspx are both local searches that are ideal linking opportunities for small businesses. You get great links and you can draw some added local traffic from the many people who routinely use local searches to find local businesses. Yahoo Local includes customer reviews, maps and blogs as well. Local.com is a more straightforward listing, but does include business descriptions and you can search by zip code or city.

1 Link Site you should join is LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com. This professional networking website provides you with great access to thousands of other business professionals who are members of the network and allows you to connect with others through affiliations with companies, schools and universities you may have in common with other members. You can give and receive recommendations, discover business opportunities and create multiple links as a member. It’s free to sign-up and takes only minutes to get through the set up process. Look for me at my LinkedIn profile.

1 Blog Comment Right Here. Yep, all you have to do is add a nice little comment below and you will get a “do follow” link right back to your site. Maybe you can even suggest a couple other places to get a decent link in 5 minutes or less!

For some more great ways to quickly add links to your site, check out the link building tips at WIEP.

About the Author

Vertical Measures provides link building and website publicity services. Their team has more than 40 years of combined experience in the information technology field. Clients include major media companies, national career colleges, and SEM agencies. They also own and operate several websites where they put their experience to work in the real world. www.VerticalMeasures.com

Article source: http://www.linkbuildingbestpractices.com/link-building/10-good-links/

The number of social bookmarking sites has exploded in the last year, leaving someone new the space probably a bit overwhelmed at where to start. If you are new to social networking understand that each social networking site is different, it attracts a different audience with different interests. Thus what interests someone on Reddit might not appeal to anyone on Digg.

So who are the main players in the social bookmaking space? And what is the profile of the typical user of these social bookmarking sites? The answers below might surprise you!

Digg.com
Digg is the most popular and notable of the social bookmarking sites. Quantcast estimates that that Digg has about 25 million unique visitors a month. The audience is predominantly male (65%), between 25-34 years of age, with a household income between 30k and 100k. Digg’s demographics have changed as it has become more popular (mainstream). Not to long ago the Digg profile was male, under 25 who made less than 30k a year. Social media topics that do well on Digg include interesting photos, anything anti-Microsoft and lists (top 10, etc).

Propeller.com
Propeller (formely Netscape) is comfortable the second biggest social bookmarking site behind Digg with over 5.8 million monthly uniques, of which 3.6 million (62%) are in the U.S. Netscape also attracts a male biased audience (54) , that is slightly older (45-54 is biggest age group), and 55% of Propeller.com visitors have an household income over $60k.

StumbleUpon
Stumbleupon.com reports over 4.5 million members and Quantcast classifies it as a top 5,000 site that has about 1.5 million unique visitors a month from the U.S. The audience is male biased (56%) and between the ages of 45-54 (22% of visitors). The older demographic also skews the household income with 51% of visitors having a household income of over $60k.

Reddit.com
Reddit is becoming a very popular social bookmarking site with about 1.2 million unique visitors in the U.S., making it slightly larger than Del.icio.us. Reddit attracts a predominantly male (57%) audience that is between the ages of 35-44 (25%). With 65% of the audience having a household income of between $30 and $100k, Reddit is a mainstream social networking site. As a result, political, environmental, business and entertainment news does well with this audience.

Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is the oldest social bookmarking site and Quantcast classifies it as a top 5,000 site that gets about 1.1 million unique visitors a month from the U.S. The audience is male (53%) and about 47% of them are over 45. Similar to StumbleUpon, 51% of visitors having a household income of over $60k.

Newsvine.com
Newsvine is a top 10,000 site that reaches over 362K U.S. monthly uniques. The site attracts a slightly male slanted audience (54%) and 51% of the users have a household income under $60k.

Fark.com
Fark.com is a much more trafficked site than people expect. With 1,972,698 monthly unique visitors in the U.S., it is bigger than StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us and Reddit. The Fark audience is heavily male (69%), between the ages of 25-34 and a household income under $60k (52%). The Fark audience likes interesting, bizarre and amusing news stories, along with regular photo manipulation contests.

Blinklist.com
Blinklist.com is a top 10,000 site that reaches over 353K U.S. monthly uniques. The site appeals to a more male group (59%) who are between the age of 25 and 54. About 54% of the audience earns over $60k a year.

Clipmarks.com
Clipmarks reaches over 205K U.S. monthly uniques. The site appeals to a male biased audience (58%) with a household income of $30-60k. The site attracts almost equal amounts of people between 25 and 54.

Shoutwire.com
This site reaches approximately 70,742 U.S. monthly uniques. The site appeals to a more male (60%), younger audience (38% are under 24).

So what does the demographic data tells us? One is that the typical social bookmarking site user is male, between the ages of 35-54 with a household income of $60k or more a year. Is this your target audience? If it is not, then these are probable not the main social networking sites that you should be focusing on.

Note that Digg attracts more users than all the other social bookmarking sites combined. Similar to how MySpace dominates the social networking space (and gets the lion share of advertising dollars), Digg is the dominate social bookmarking site. If you are trying to reach this audience, then you have to include Digg in your marketing efforts, simply because the audience is so large, relative to everyone else in this space.

Article Source: http://social-media-optimization.com/2008/03/top-10-social-bookmarking-sites

Many companies narrowly define PR activities online solely as blogger relations when in reality, online public relations is so much more. To me, internet based public and media relations encompasses gaining editorial exposure on the web with sites like blogs of course, but it also leverages web based technologies, networks and platforms for developing and maintaining more efficient communication with the media. And by “media” I mean traditional media with an online presence as well as other influencers - be they bloggers, power social news users or social networkers.

Communication efforts might happen online, but the media exposure outcomes may be in print or the web. The question arises, if the connections are made and maintained online using online PR and social media tools, but the exposure is offline, is it still online PR? I say yes.

Earning editorial visibility on the web as a function of public and online media relations efforts is entirely congruent with the idea of optimizing content for better web visibility. For the most part, you can’t “manufacture” editorial based visibility and the commensurate traffic. You earn it.

An example of the disconnect is when companies demand specific traffic increases within defined time frames. Those situations aren’t typically good candidates for online PR and especially SEO. Certainly, there are some short time frame traffic possibilities with social media and viral content promotion, but specific traffic forecasting for a short time frame SEO project is unrealistic. Advertising is the most viable option for those that need traffic “yesterday”.

Anyone demanding traffic has a few other issues to deal with first anyway. Traffic is a proxy to other important metrics like leads and sales. The same goes for search engine rankings. The reason improvements in rankings and traffic are desired is to achieve another business outcome. Unfortunately, some businesses continue to get hung up on the” means to an end as the end”.

One of the big issues some bloggers and most journalists have is finding great story sources. In many cases, deadlines approach pretty fast and it can be difficult to find sources that fit the story angle. Optimizing news content knowing journalists are searching can be a very effective tactic as part of an Online PR strategy.

The key is to make it easy for consumers and journalists alike to find your message on the channels and in the format they prefer. This is true for content whether it’s text, images, video, audio or interactive. If it can be searched on it can be optimized. Read more about DAO or digital asset optimization for more info on that topic.

Rankings on search engines can carry just as much weight (or more) with online PR efforts as getting covered in a prominent blog or online publication. As a result, increasing numbers of public relations firms are making efforts to incorporate SEO into their offerings. I’m happy to say M&O-TopRank has been at this since 2001.

There are many ways in which SEO tactics can be used for PR outcomes and vice versa. According to a study by Bulldog Reporter/TEKgroup International, 64% of journalists report that they use either Google or Yahoo! news services and nearly half of all journalists reported visiting a corporate website or online newsroom at least once a week. Search is a significant channel for finding these news sources.

The fundamental benefits of optimizing news content include:

Makes it easier for journalists researching stories to find you
Expands company branding footprint on the web
Contributes to proactive search results reputation management
Helps fuel the sales pipeline

How is optimizing PR and news content different from optimizing content for lead generation or making sales? It has to do with the target audience. The needs of a journalist are different than a consumer. A journalist writing a story needs verifiable information, easy to find contact information, examples and any other information that will help them write the story. Consumers are typically focused (depending on their stage of the buying cycle) on finding information, solutions or purchasing.

Here are some of the different types of news content that can be optimized as part of an Pull PR program:

Press releases / news releases
Online op-eds / letters to the editor
Online news rooms and media kits
Corporate site PR content
Blogs
Reports / white papers
Webinars / demos
Email newsletters
Interviews (coach interviewee on keywords)
Podcasts / Internet radio shows

While the optimization of news content in conjunction with blogger and online media relations can be the one-two punch for an online PR program, it is the addition of social networking that serves as the knockout.

Social networks like LinkedIn / Facebook and increasingly, microblogging platforms like Twitter can be leveraged by journalists to find subject matter experts in a very short period of time. Here are articles by a TV reporter and a newspaper reporter on this topic.

That means companies need to invest in not only monitoring social media, but also developing profiles and participating on social communities. If you don’t give, you’re not going to get, so it’s important that any efforts at social networking with the media are transparent and give value.

Giving to get, transparency, conversation and participation are key concepts when it comes to an online PR program that involves not only blogger relations but also the search engine optimization of news content and engaging with social media/networking communities.

Article source: http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/03/pull-pr-seo-public-relations

7 Types of Advertising To Drive Sales

What Kind of Advertising Do You Do?
There are millions of ads online every minute of the day that are pounding your eyes and your pocketbook with messages to try and persuade you.

As an advertiser you have to decide how to get through all that noise and put the story of your product in front of potential consumers. Here’s a list of the different types of ads that people are using right now to sell their products. Some of these may be new to you, consider them, they may lead to the bulls-eye that you’re looking for.

Page Takeover Advertising – I love these! Myspace was one of the first large advertisers to really use these and they were highly effective. Gawker Media also offers these type of ads across all of their properties. So why do these ads do so well? – simple, they’re a brand play. In the advertising world, we like brand plays because they the simply need to catch your attention and make an impression on your to be successful. They cant be ignored unless you surf off of the site that you’re visiting, which may be a drawback, but again, if these ads are targeted well, they will do well.

Audible Advertising – These are some of the most annoying but the most attention gaining ads that you will encounter online. We’ve all surfed onto a site and within a few seconds we find out speaker blaring a song or an advertiser’s message. I would stay away from these ads since they tend to give users a horrible experience… unless you can find a creative way to use them. Yes, they may seen temping, but using audible ads is a really good way to have your end-user fire-up their ad blocker.

Animated Flash Advertising – These ads bring in a huge amount of revenue for advertisers, simply because they are so eye catching. But does that make these ads any less annoying than other ads such as audible ads? The ads that jump onto your screen and seemingly float around your browser are of course some of the most difficult ads to close or stop. Again, these ads can be very effective, but only if highly targeted and not intrusive.

Advertorials Advertising – These ads are really good for SEOs to consider. There has been all kinds of controversy surrounding paid links in the last few years, but at the end of the day, there are many companies that pay another company to feature content on their site. Yahoo Finance, for example partners with content providers such as Forbes.com and CNN.com. This is a large partnership, but there’s other opportunities out there to put your company’s story in-front of a site owner and have them write about your site and give you several links. Yes, you may have to pay for it, donate a few $s, send them a product or 2, or other tricks, but at the end of the day, these are really good ways to promote your brand and company.

Video Advertising – This growing market is basically going straight up. Since Google bought YouTube, advertisers have been itching to get into video ads and content publishers are answering their interest. Video ads have 2 different types, pre-roll or interstitial ads. Yahoo uses a lot of pre-roll ads whenever you click a video on their network, while the CW TV network uses a lot of interstitial ads when you watch old episodes of your favorite TV show. There are also text ads that are starting to show up in videos. Google announced in February that advertisers can now do AdSense with ads. Launch participant Brightcove said in a release that “Publishers and content providers can control which videos get which ads and when the ads play in each video.”

Pay Per Click Advertising – these ads are the bread and butter of Google’s market share and there’s a reason that they are – its because they work! PPC ads can be some of the most targeted and trackable ads online. My company offers PPC Management as one if its services, and with that service you get an entire team of people optimizing your campaign. One of the nice things about PPC ads is that they can be tested and tested and tested. I’m talking about all kinds of things such as…GEO targeting, broad keywords, negative keywords, A & B testing, landing page optimization, arbitrage and many other strategies that can lead to your success.

Affiliate Advertising – This is an amazing concept…take your product and give it to 100s of people who want to promote it and then give them a small percentage of the sales that they bring in. Now, that’s a powerful concept and its one that is a win-win situation for the advertiser and the affiliate. Granted, there are ways to inflate affiliate earnings ( I just did a quick talk about this to a company in Oregon last week!) but if managed correctly, you can minimize your risk by using an affiliate program to have other people promote your product. Affiliate programs shift the risk and the capital ($) investment that would normally be spent on an advertising campaign.
Lots of Options!
I hope you have some ideas brewing in your head after reading this post. More than anything, I just wanted to get my readers thinking about how to tap into the consumers that need their products in a different way.

ARTICLE SOURCE: http://www.scottfish.com/online-advertising-strategies/

one of the most overlooked but important keys to success on social news sites is commenting (expressing a personal opinion or belief).

One of the biggest draws for many social news sites is that you can interact with fellow members and the submitters through comments. Many users go to the major social news sites (such as Digg or Reddit) mainly so that they can voice their opinions on stories and carry on the conversation that the story starts. As such, the comments on any particular story are vital to its success.

Many people believe that a major key to Digg's algorithm is the number of comments that a story has. As a result, many people who attempt to game its system think that all a submission needs is comments. So we get stuck with crap like this:

If the submitter of that story and their cohorts cared to really find out what how people on Digg actually communicate, they would know those comments are not helping them at all. To many people on Digg or Reddit look at commenting this way: bad comments = suspicion. Lots of bad comments = spam.

When the community sees multiple comments exclaiming the virtues of something - they are doing to downvote those comments and your story to bury land. This is in their blood and they are usually right. Many sites that pay people to vote on sites also have these users leave comments. Many forums where you can do "vote exchanges" ask people to leave a comment so they can easily be identified. As such, social news users are rightfully wary.

The problem with this is that overly eager (or even overly positive) people can get lumped in with spammers and become an accidental by-product. When that happens, those comments get down-voted and your whole story can wind up getting flagged as spam. Here's how to keep that from happening.

Think quality not quantity. This is foundational to all good social media marketing. If you are really contributing something of value, it is more likely to be successful. If you are just on there to churn and burn - you probably aren't going to have a long shelf life. 3 quality comments on your story will go much further than 13 junk ones.

Be real. If you are asking someone to comment on one of your submissions - tell them to be real. If the content is junk this might not work and you might want to think about why you are submitting junk. Here's what a real comment looks like:

Don't be overly positive. If your only contribution to a story you liked is "Awesome!" then refrain. Your positive vote already voiced that for you. Since most spam comments are extremely positive and basically filler, try to refrain from things that are overly upbeat unless you are just as prepared to speak your mind when you do not agree with something.

Have an opinion. Don't forget what defines a comment. It's a statement that has a personal opinion. State your opinion on the story. Kick off or continue the conversation.

Use humor. This should only be done if you truly know what the particular network you are on likes. But a comment that uses an inside joke or something topical the right way can give a story the extra juice it needs to put it over the top. Like this:

Be wary of the tone. If comments on one of your stories start heading south, take control of the situation. Use the guidelines above to contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way. If you are asking for someone to help, be sure they are following the same guidelines. If you don't agree with someone's comment on your story, feel free to vote them down.

When dealing with social news networks, the comments can mean the difference between a home run and a strike-out. The more that you understand the culture and what works - the better off you will be. Get involved and provide value with your comments and make sure that people you are sending your stories to do the same.

Chris Winfield is the President and Co-Founder of 10e20, a specialized social media marketing company. The Let's Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land

When done correctly, forum posting can be one of the most efficient ways to increase your site ranking. With the ability to spread your knowledge across the board, target specific keywords and get your name out on the internet, forums are extremely beneficial for increasing your traffic volume. However, it is vital that you are aware of the difference between promoting your website and spamming the forum.

Every forum has their own rules to what can be posted and what can’t. If you abide by these rules there will be no problems, but disregarding them in any manner can result in a lifetime ban from that forum. Not only can you be banned from the forum, but you will also put out a bad name for yourself and your business.

It is important that you take the time to either ask in the forum what type of advertising is allowed or check the rules. Some forums may allow you to simply put your website link in a post and promote your website. Other websites have variations to ways you can advertise. For instance, some forums have an advertising forum within the forum that allows you advertise all you want without spamming everyone.

If you really want to increase your site ranking with forum posting, the secret lies within the signature file of each post. By including your website link within your signature and putting your signature with your post, you are guaranteed to increase the number of backlinks coming towards you. The more times you post in the forum, the more people will become accustomed to seeing your website link.

As mentioned above, forum posting is a great way to share your knowledge on whatever topic your website is based off of. Across the internet there are thousands of people changing words and phrases around with content and claiming it as their own. If you can come up with fresh and enticing content to entice readers within the forum, you will intrigue people to check out your website. Everyone is looking for fresh ideas to increase their knowledge, and if you can provide it to them you will increase your site ranking quickly.

With all this said, there is no way you can increase your site ranking by posting in forums once a week. In order to get the full effect, you have to be willing to drop a post in every forum that you’re associated with at least three times a week. Every day is ideal, but it can be difficult remembering to every day.

So, is forum posting an efficient way to increase your site ranking? The answer is most certainly yes as long as you do it correctly. By avoiding spamming forums and taking the time to post fresh and enticing content a few times a week, you will notice a difference in the amount of traffic you are receiving and over time you will find your site climbing in the rankings.

Article Source: http://www.bigfreearticles.com

About the Author:
Written by: Tom Dahne and Paul Martin Website:www.linkdirectory.com and www.prolinkdirectory.com Tom Dahne and Paul Martin are the owners of the very popular directory called Link Directory which is 100% SEO friendly and Human edited, and it accepts free and paid submissions for any quality website so feel free to submit your website today for inclusion.a

Blogs: Read articles from some of the leaders in Search Engine Optimization and learn how you can improve your website.

www.seomoz.org/blog
www.seo-scoop.com
www.mattcutts.com/blog
www.seroundtable.com
http://blog.outer-court.com/

Search Engine/SEO News: Stay up-to-date with the latest search engine and SEO news.

www.seomoz.org - Top SEO firm. Their site has a lot of articles and tools
www.searchengineguide.com
www.pandia.com/sew/index.php
www.searchenginenews.com
http://searchenginewatch.com
www.seo-news.com
www.seoproject.com
www.sitepronews.com
www.webproworld.com
www.seoresearchlabs.com Free SEO E-Book
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=webmasters - Search Engine submission tips
www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors - Seacrh Engine ranking factors.
http://download.alexa.com/index.cgi - Alexa toolbar
www.google.com/webmasters - Google webmaster tools
www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm - A chart of search engine relationships
www.searchenginecolossus.com - A listing of search engines by country

Forums: Communicate with other designers about SEO-related topics.

http://forums.spider-food.net
www.highrankings.com/forum/
www.ihelpyou.com/forums/
www.seorefugee.com

Keyword Tools: Improve your rankings by targeting and optimizing for the right keywords.

www.wordtracker.com/
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal - Google’s keyword tool.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ - Overture’s keyword suggestion tool.
www.seotools.kreationstudio.com/keyword/
www.yooter.com/keyword/

Various Tools

www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/whoischeck-bykeys.pl - Checks age and Yahoo backlinks of the top 100 domains in Google under your specified Keyword or phrase
www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/index.htm - Checks your backlinks and the anchor text used in those backlinks.
www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/ Meta tag analyzer. See how search engine spiders view the meta tags of your website or other websites.
http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/ - Spider simulator
www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php - Spider simulator
www.webceo.com - Web CEO
www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/ - The PageRank Search tool allows you to search Google using any keyword(s) you wish. It will then return, in order of Google relevance, the sites associated with those keywords. Each result displays a graphical bar with the PageRank of that particular site.
www.seochat.com/?option=com_seotools&tool=10 - Page Rank lookup.
www.dead-links.com/ - Find dead links on your website.
http://validator.w3.org/checklink - Dead link tool from W3C
www.linktiger.com - Another free dead links tool
www.recip-links.com/ - Reciprocal links checker
www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php - Keyword density checker
www.webconfs.com/anchor-text-analysis.php - Anchor text analyzer
www.stargeek.com/code_to_text.php - code to text ratio calculator
www.seologic.com/webmaster-tools/link-popularity-check.php - Link popularity checker
www.seologic.com/webmaster-tools/search-engine-saturation.php - Search engine saturation checker
www.seologic.com/webmaster-tools/meta-tags.php - Check the meta tags of a page
www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/link-popularity/ - Another link popularity checker
www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/ranking-reports/ - See where you rank in various search engines for specific search terms
www.trafficzap.com/keysug.php - Keyword generator
www.trafficzap.com/metagenerator.php - Meta tag generator
www.selfseo.com Provides a variety of free SEO tools
www.digitalpoint.com/tools - A variety of SEO tools from Digital Point
www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php - Google Rankings ultimate SEO tool
www.keyworddensity.com - Checks your keyword density
www.webuildpages.com/tools/default.htm - Several different tools from WeBuildPages

www.marketverticalpartners.com/tools - Website SEO Checkup
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword - Keyword Suggestion Tool
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-list - Keyword List Generator
www.seochat.com/seo-tools/code-to-text-ratio - Code to Text Ratio Tool
www.seochat.com/seo-tools/indexed-pages - Indexed Pages Tool
www.seochat.com/seo-tools/url-rewriting - URL Rewriting
www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php - Similar Page Checker
www.webconfs.com/domain-stats.php - Domain Stats Tool
www.seoadministrator.com/log-analyzer.html - Log Analyzer

Article source: http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/links/68-essential-seo-resources-and-tools/

Building the reputation of your blog is one thing, but it’s a blogs author who is creating the content and really matters. When I was 16 I started this blog and made all the biggest mistakes. Now at 18 and having achieved a dream job through blogging I think that I’m in a pretty good position to share my advice on how you can start to build your name online.

I’ve seen a few people grow into ‘names’ in my short time online, I remember the first post over at SEO 2.0 and seen how Tad has networked online and wrote great content and came away with a reputation as another knowledgeable person in this industry. You can do it too.

Let’s Go…

1. Use an Image on Your Blog

Think of all the people you ‘respect’ online but haven’t met in person, do you know what they look like? If you are like me the majority of the people you are thinking of will generate their picture in your head. Knowing what someone looks like is definitely a sign of trust and can also lead to people recognising you if you ever attend and industry conferences.

2. Write Posts with Your Full Name

I used to be afraid that people would be able to ‘find me’ online, especially my friends at college (I’m not at college anymore). I quickly got over that and found people much more willing to get in touch and talk to me after finding out what I was called. People like to have someone to relate too when they read your content, so along with an image this really works well.

After doing this on my own sites I found myself being quoted a lot more and subsequently linked too from other blogs in the niche.

3. Guest blog on other sites in your industry

I’ve wrote a guest post on the biggest blog in the search industry, search engine land. I’ve wrote on an up and coming blog named blogstorm, did my first ever guest post at EMoms and I have many more up and coming guest blog opportunities. The reason I do this is not for the links or solely for helping others add content to their site but partly because it gets my name out there to a completely new readerbase.

It takes the average person 8 times to a remember a name / company, guest posts can help you start to reach that number.

4. Network with those who have built up a solid reputation

Networking doesn’t have to be meeting people in person, it can simply be chatting to niche authorities online. In fact, I chat too the top Digg users, a number of CEO’s at the biggest marketing companies and the best minds relating to SEO and SMM…all via Instant Messenger.

Building up relationships with people helps you have someone you can trust to offer services too if you aren’t taking on any more work, people you can discuss ideas with that others wouldn’t understand, and even people to talk about a new product or service you are offering.

5. Comment on Blogs with your Full Name

When I first started engaging in blogs I used a fake name, but I guess you have to have done things badly to see the benefits of doing things properly. Not only will people notice your name and follow though to your site but they will see you being active in the community and start to build an image of you as an authority and networker in your niche.

6. Get Involved in Niche Community Sites

If you are involved in the internet marketing scene you have probably participated in or at least heard of Sphinn. I’ve found a lot of great new blogs to read simply because their authors have been active and approachable via the site. There are many niche news sites you can get involved with, Square Oak has a great list with 83 of them.

7. Get in touch with others via Social Networking Sites

Social Networking sites are a great way to get in touch with those who may not be active in the niche sites or just allow you to get in touch with people on a more personal level. I prefer using Facebook and regularly chat to not only my friends but CEO’s, Internet marketing professionals and a few consultants because that’s the industry I’m involved in.

Not only can you get in touch with people on a personal level but you can also find others with the same interests and build up your network of connections. If you can get the authorities talking about you, you start to become one.

8. Write things that are original / unique

Don’t copy what everyone else is talking about, people want to read what is unique to you and your experiences. Looking back on the first posts of this blog is so embarrassing because I was writing, short direct posts that had no personal mention - I was missing the words ‘I’ and ‘me’.

For example my guest post at Search Engine Land was covering what I taught others that were new to Social Media Marketing. If I do research into something like the top 50 SU users then I share what I’ve learnt and have some unique content in the process. People like content that ’stands out from the crowd’ and it helps build credibility for whoever wrote it…you.

9. Keep it Going

Nobody became well known in an industry overnight. I’ve been writing since July 2006 and I wouldn’t say I’m hugely thought of as an expert in my niche. Darren Rowse didn’t suddenly become the problogger to go to and Brian Clark didn’t suddenly become known as an awesome writer by hundreds of thousands of people.

What these two men did was shared their knowledge on a regular basis, constantly producing content people want to read. Figuring out how to do that is the easy part, keeping it up and doing it is the hard part.

Article Source: http://www.viperchill.com/blog/9-ways-to-build-your-reputation-as-blogger/

Facebook top of social networking tree, but you won’t find new friends or a job - 29/02/2008
Facebook is still the most popular social networking site among students and graduates, and clearly ahead of Bebo and MySpace when put head-to-head according to Milkround.com’s student and graduate database. But users claim none of the major three offer enough help finding new friends or a job.

Graduate recruitment site Milkround.com asked its student and graduate users about their usage of online networking websites such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace. Of more than 500 responses, a huge 97 percent use Facebook – way ahead of MySpace with 44 percent and Bebo on 23 percent. Just a handful use other sites such as Hi5 and Friendster. When asked which they prefer, 93 percent said Facebook, establishing it as the clear favourite.

Facebook is top-rated social networking site
The survey also asked respondents to rate leading networking sites Bebo, Facebook and MySpace out of five for staying in contact with friends, sharing photographs and videos, meeting new people, arranging social activities, networking for jobs and general entertainment.

Bebo ended bottom of the rankings, averaging 1.7 across the categories, with 70 percent of respondents giving it the lowest score of one for finding work and 51 percent awarding it a one for arranging social activities. MySpace was given a better average rating of 2.3, scoring 3.0 for staying in contact with friends, meeting new people and general entertainment, but also getting a 1.0 for job hunting.

Facebook was the top performer with an average score of 3.5 out of 5 and top marks for staying in contact with friends and sharing photographs and videos. Like MySpace and Bebo, it was rated 2.0 for meeting new people, suggesting as popular as social networking sites are, few users get the chance to make friends beyond those they have in real life. Facebook also received a two for networking for jobs, another aspect that could be improved across the board for these sites.

Milkround.com spokesman Mike Barnard said: “Despite suffering its first drop in traffic following 17 months of successive increases since July 2006 in January, Facebook is still immensely popular among students and graduates. It’s clearly ahead of its competitors in terms of staying in contact with friends and sharing files online, Bebo and MySpace will need to improve their usability to come close to toppling the Facebook dominance. However, all of the major three sites would benefit if they could encourage users to meet new people or even think of ways to help users find a job.”

“One way student and graduate Facebook users can get round this problem is using applications such as Milkround.com’s “My Dream Job” which can be set up to display the latest internships, graduate jobs and schemes on user profiles matched to unique job hunting preferences. Since we launched the application in October last year, the number of users has increased tenfold.”

Users heed security fears of social networking
The recent security concerns of social networking sites and news of employers using them to screen potential candidates seems to have had an impact on the privacy settings students and graduates use. Some 82 percent place controls on who can view their profile: more than two in five (43 percent) keep their profile as private as possible while another 39 percent mask aspects of their choosing such as contact details.

This is unsurprising given the content most users have on their profile. According to the survey very few students or graduates even consider using their online persona to look for work, preferring to share what they do in their leisure time including potential embarrassing photographs of nights out. A total of 91 percent have a profile for social networking only, with just six percent using social networking sites to hunt for work as well as communicate with their friends.

The survey also asked online networking Internet users about how they might change their preference of site. Three in five would follow whichever site their friends were signed up to and 19 percent would choose whichever site had the best features. Popular reasons why users would not switch include half saying they have already spent a long time building up a profile and 19 percent claiming it would take time for a new site to get popular. Some 18 percent simply wouldn't want to have to encourage their friends to join a new site.

Mike Barnard added: “Although there has been a downturn in traffic to Bebo, Facebook and MySpace, the good news is half of users will remain loyal to them once they have set up a profile. Clearly the majority of users are aware of all the hype surrounding recruiters accessing their online profiles and are taking steps to secure their online image.” www.milkroundonline.com

Article Source: http://www.onrec.com/newsstories/20582.asp

It’s no secret that building links to your website will help drive more referral traffic as well as increase your rankings in Google and the other major search engines. In previous ProBlogger posts Aaron Wall and Wendy Piersall have talked about it. Darren has also been known to create a post here or there on the topic.

Today I wanted to share with you how I built 22,938 links to my website and how you can do the same:

Before getting started on the tips, it’s important to know how to check the number of links Google recognizes. Most people know about the link:www.YourDomainName.com command that you can type into Google. This function, however, will only return a sample number of links to your site and does not show the complete picture.

To find out how many links Google actually sees you need to create an account at Google’s Webmaster Tools. It’s free to sign up and the information you will receive is of vital importance if you are trying to improve your Google rankings.

If you already have an account, simply go to the Dashboard, click on your domain name, click on Links on the left side bar, and then select the pages with external links option to see how many websites are really linking to you.

7 Ways To Build Links To Your Website

1) Pick a Niche and Own It With Quality Content

Darren has blogged at length about the importance of having quality content if you want to stand out as a successful blogger. Quite simply, if you aren’t writing material that is new, different, and offers an interesting perspective, you won’t get readers or links to your blog. Just as important, I believe, when you’re getting started is to pick a niche and dominate it. If you’re not making money online yet, don’t write a blog about how to make money online! There is too much competition and you don’t have valuable content to add.

Find a topic that you are passionate about and that isn’t too competitive yet. As an example, I chose famous entrepreneur stories. I now have the largest collection of stories of famous entrepreneurs anywhere online and get linked to as a resource. I’ve since been able to expand beyond the famous entrepreneur stories but it’s important to first start with a niche and get known as an expert in your field.

2) Get Involved In The Community

Once you have picked your niche, get involved in the community surrounding it. No matter what topic you pick there are blogs and forums already discussing it. Join the conversation! When I first started my site I listed the top 10 blogs and forums where entrepreneurs hung out. I commented on the blogs, helped people in the forums, and answered questions as they came up. The bloggers appreciated my valuable insights and the forum members loved the help I gave them.

I always included my website in my signature and pretty soon I was generating traffic and links from the community sites. Because I was getting known as an expert I also had people link to me from their sites without me having to post a comment or forum entry on theirs! People link to Darren because he’s the best in the world at helping bloggers turn their blogs into businesses. What are you going to be the best at?

3) Get Press

Another strategy I used to create awareness and build links was to get media attention. I put keywords relating to my niche into a Google News Alert (a free tool that lets you know when a new story comes out around a particular keyword) , found news stories that dealt with the entrepreneurs I was profiling and contacted the reporters to congratulate them on a great article. I also offered them my insights and added them to a media list that I created in Excel. From then on I would send them a press release every two weeks that dealt with a new famous entrepreneur story on my website.

I also submitted the stories to free online PR directories and did some research as to how to write an effective press release and experimented with different headlines. This led to articles being written about my website in the New York Times, Globe and Mail (Canada’s most respected daily newspaper), the Dallas Morning News and countless other publications. It also led to television and radio appearances. Each time I gave them great stories as well as promoted my website. Always remember to ask for a link back from the media outlet. They are usually very highly ranked and the link can help drive your search engine rankings.

4) Social Networking Sites

Social networking is all the rage now but it’s more than just hype. An effective social networking campaign can help drive tremendous amounts of traffic as well as build links to your site. I haven’t personally gotten much from sites like Facebook and MySpace but the news and bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, and del.icio.us have been fantastic traffic and link generators for my website. The key I’ve found is to start off with quality content and then get the community to help you promote it.

For example, at the end of last year I compiled a list of the Top 50 SEO Posts of 2007 (Darren’s Secret Confessions of a Link-A-Holic made the list). It was a list that brought genuine value to people and saved readers a lot of time. Instead of having to dig into each blog themselves we did the work for them to find the best posts on SEO of the year. Once we finished the top 50 we let everyone on the list know about it. Many of them blogged about it and linked back to us, others submitted it to StumbleUpon and other social networking sites. In the first week of the list being out StumbleUpon alone sent me over 5,000 visitors to that one page!

6) Directories, Craigslist, Wikipedia

When I first started the site I submitted it to all the relevant directories that I could find. In all honesty I didn’t get many hits from them except from Business.com, but I viewed it as a link building exercise that would eventually pay off. If you run any kind of events, you need to also put them on Craigslist. We run a number of offline events for entrepreneurs and Craigslist helped send us a decent amount of traffic. Their pages also rank well and you can include a link back to your site from the postings you create.

Wikipedia is another excellent source worth checking out. Like every other webmaster, before Wikipedia put nofollows on their links I was trying to get all my pages listed as external links on the famous entrepreneur related pages. The result? The editors quickly removed my links and wrote an email to me warning me to stop. I did stop posting but was surprised to find out that I kept getting traffic from Wikipedia. It turns out that a number of my readers had used my articles as references for different famous entrepreneurs. As a result they included a link and it was driving traffic! It again all comes down to being the best at something and dominating your niche. If I didn’t have good content then I would not have received the links from Wikipedia.

7) Give People An Incentive To Link to You

As wonderful as it is to get bloggers and other website owners to link to you on the merit of your content alone, sometimes they need a push and an incentive to do so. As a result of building a popular website I began recruiting other experts to write for my site. Once you build up credibility in your niche you will have people who want to be associated with you. As an example, I wonder how many people are trying to guest blog for Darren while he’s gone?

For my own site, if the articles my guest authors submitted were relevant and valuable, I put them up. I then wrote to my authors and told them that if they linked back to my site from theirs I would give them even more exposure on my site and list them as Premium Partners. The incentive worked for many of them and I quickly built even more backlinks to my site from reputable experts. It sometimes takes thinking outside the box, but if you can find a way to help another webmaster in return for them linking to you, the extra incentive can make the difference between getting and not getting that all important link.

Additional Link Building Tips

Try to get links to your internal pages and not just your home page. The more you have to your internal pages, the better those pages will rank. For example, I have 22,938 Google-recognized links to my site but only 8,075 of them go to my homepage. The rest all go to internal pages on my website.
Get as high a Page Rank link as you can from the websites who profile you. A link on a Page Rank 1 internal page versus a Page Rank 5 homepage will make a big difference to your site. Just because two pages are on the same domain name, it doesn’t mean that they carry the same link value.
When getting a link, don’t tell people what anchor text to use (the blue text that is underlined). If all your links have the same anchor text you can get banned from Google for that keyword. I always ask my link partners to use anchor text that they feel best describes what my website is all about.
As soon as you get a link, tell Google about it through their Add URL page. It’s another free tool that Google offers and the sooner Google knows about the links to you, the sooner you will rise up in the rankings.
Don’t give up! Link building is an ongoing process and requires patience. It’s better to work for 1 hour a day for 24 days than to work for 24 hours straight and burn yourself out. If you keep working at it, the links will come!

Good luck and happy link building!

Evan Carmichael is the owner of www.EvanCarmichael.com, the Internet’s #1 resource for small business motivation and strategies.

Article Source: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/02/28/how-to-build-22938-links-to-your-blog/

SEO News Sites

You have to read every day! If you do not like reading, then I recommend you walk over to your boss right now and say “I quit.” It is important to stay updated on what is going on in the industry, because it is always changing. (The Google Gods get bored and like to play with us like puppets. Don’t worry, you get used to it.)

For the latest new in Search Engine Marketing:

For some great tips on Social Media:

If you refuse to read or can multi-task, then try some Podcasts and Videos:

Chat it up. No question is stupid. It is very important to get active in Forums:

Now you may be wondering, “How the hell am I going to keep track of this all?” Lucky for you, there are RSS Readers:

Blog Lines
Net Vibes (My Favorite - and no, they did not pay me to say that)
Google Reader

SEO Tools

Now that you are up to speed on what is going in the world of search, let’s arm you with some SEO Tools.

First off, download FireFox Internet browser and never open Internet Explorer again.

Then download these plugins:

SEO for FireFox - Enables you to get site information with a click of a mouse. (I use this every day)
Google Tool Bar

Spider Test Tool - Great tool that simulates what a search engine spider picks up on your site.

Keyword Research Tool - Very simple and straightforward.

Keyword Trends - Google’s version and MSN’s version

Competitive Research - Compete, Quantcast, SEODigger (Freaken Rocks), SEOmoz Page Strength

Back Link Checker - Check out what anchor text people are using to link to your site.

Keyword Density - Do you have the right amount of keywords on your site?

Duplicate Content - Don’t let Google Bot find duplicate content on your site.

301 checker - Make sure those redirects are true 301 redirects.

Google Data Centers - Check your rankings from various data centers. They could be different.

Quick Snapshot - Collects a large amount of information

Domain Research - Domain Bots, Whois Checker

Site Functionality - Find out what people are clicking on!

MSN Lab center tool kit - Way too much to mention, but useful.

PollDaddy - Need a poll on your website?

Site Maps - Great tool for making sitemaps.

Hopefully this points you in the right directions. Good luck, and most importantly remember to have fun. If you stop having fun then change your career. I recommend becoming an accountant. I hear they have all sorts of fun.

Article Source: http://www.evisibility.com/blog/newbie-guide-to-seo-where-do-i-start/

In my opinion Social Media Marketing rules can be summarized into just one sentence: Act in social networks as you would act in life (or as you would like other people to act with you). It is really like that, on social networks you interact with other persons and most people often forget this, social media users like and dislike exactly the same things the people you see on the street like and dislike.
In case you need more detailed rules of how to be successful on social networks, I wrote a list of things you definitely have to remember:

Complete your profile: many people don’t even think of this, but by completing everything in your profile, you are showing people that you are a real user and that you actually care about the social network.
Be Generous: always think of helping others first, if you help them, they will probably help you later in return for your help, and if they don’t help you, they will probably remember you for another situation.
Get involved: everyone must see you are really engaged with the community and that you spend time on it to make it a better place for everone.
Don’t expect immediate results: most people starting into social media marketing think they will succeed with their first try, although this is not impossible, don’t expect it to happen, be prepaired to fail as many times as necessary for learning more about how to have success.
Remember users are real people: don’t do things real people won’t like, think what would happen if you do that thing you want to do to someone you know, that will give you the answer.
Don’t try to sell: never sell anything directly on social networks, what you should do is submit something that will make people go to your site and check what you are selling.
Don’t Spam: submitting content that no one likes and that is submitted just because you want to get benefit won’t help you to be successful at social networks.
Don’t get enemies: getting anyone to be your enemy on social networks can make your life impossible, imaging someone that convinces 5 friends to bury everything you submit.
Analyse the community: check what makes it to the homepage and what doesn’t, try to do some research to see what kind of contents people will like and what they will dislike.
Get as many Friends as you can: as in life, getting to know as many persons as possible is something important. Whenever you need some help, you know they are there to help you and that you can count on them.

Article Source: http://www.estebanpanzera.com/

Extending Your Reach from Blogger to Influencer: 12 Practical Tips

Posted: 18 Feb 2008 06:39 AM CST

Many top bloggers are not just seen as bloggers. Some have been able to transcend the role of blogger and have become icons of their industries that have significant impact and influence on others. A successful blogger may be able to attract readers and make money through their blog in one way or another, but an influencer’s reach will extend well beyond their own blog into the niche as a whole.

Common Characteristics of Influencers:

Large Audience - The size of a blogger’s audience can be an indicator or influence, but this is not always the case. Not every blogger with a large audience truly is an influencer, and some bloggers with comparatively smaller audiences are in fact influencers. In general though, the size of a blogger’s audience is one of the measuring sticks of influence.

Vibrant Community - Every influencer will have a very active and enthusiastic community around the blog. The community is really what dictates a blogger’s influence.

Actions Are Followed By Others - An influencer by definition will have an effect on the actions of others. Other bloggers may try to imitate the habits and tendencies of influencers, plus their recommendations will be trusted by a much higher percentage of the audience than a typical blogger.

Mentioned Frequently On Other Blogs - The names of influencers will appear regularly on other blogs throughout the niche. This is generally a pretty accurate gauge of which bloggers are most influential in a specific niche.

Reasons for Aiming to Become an Influencer:

Improved Overall Success - As an influencer, you will basically be securing the success of your blog. Others will want to read what you have to say and they will trust your opinions. Additionally, any new blogs or other projects that you start will be extremely easier as you will already have an established audience and reputation from which to build.

Improved Credibility - While average bloggers are struggling to build trust and credibility, the influencer has already accomplished this, and it will affect almost everything that he or she produces. In the competitive world of blogging, credibility is invaluable.

Increased Ability To Help Those That Are In Your Network - As an influencer, you will have a tremendous ability to offer help and assistance to your friends and contacts. A simple mention and link from your blog could make a world of difference for your friends.

Security - Are Darren Rowse’s subscribers going to unsubscribe if ProBlogger has a few lower quality posts? I don’t think so. An influencer’s reputation is enough to increase the security of a blog.

Word of Mouth Referrals and Links - Influencers benefit greatly from referrals that come from their readers. As an influencer, you will generally receive a lot more referrals and inbound links than other bloggers.

Tips for Becoming an Influencer:

1. Be Patient - Becoming an influencer takes a considerable amount of time. Don’t expect to launch a blog and gain a huge influence on your niche right away.

2. Be Consistent - In order to keep making progress towards becoming an influencer, you must be consistent and diligent with your blogging efforts. No one ever ascended to the role of influencer by sitting around and waiting for it to happen.

3. Grow Your Knowledge - Influencers are generally very knowledgeable on the topics that they cover, and you should never stop learning and growing. The more knowledge you have at your disposal, the better off you will be as a blogger.

4. Focus on Quality Rather Than Quantity - The quantity and frequency with which you post is far less important than the quality of your information. Never sacrifice quality in order to produce more content.

5. Be Original - Influencers are not followers. In order to stand out and show your value to others in your niche, make every effort to be original and don’t get stuck in the rut of following blogging trends.

6. Be Fair - Others in your niche must respect you in order to be an influencer. Always be careful about how you word things and how you come across to your readers.

7. Brand Yourself - All bloggers need to be working towards achieving a strong image in the eyes of readers. Influencers typically have been very effective at branding themselves.

8. Take Pride in Helping Others - Aim to meet the needs of your readers and those in your network. If you are able to help others to be more successful, you will be well on your way to becoming more influential.

9. Be Focused - Try to maintain a strong focus on your niche and stray off topic as little as possible.

10. Don’t Limit Yourself to Your Blog - In order to become an influencer you may have to increase your exposure by writing guest posts for other blogs, leaving valuable comments on other blogs, participating in forums, etc. All of these things can help you to reach new readers that you would not be able to reach otherwise.

11. Network Online - The network around a blogger is a huge factor in that blogger’s influence. There are a number of ways to network online, including social media, emailing other bloggers, commenting, posting in forums, etc.

12. Network Offline - In addition to networking online, most influencers have increased the strength of their contacts by networking offline as well. Conferences and seminars are just two examples of offline networking opportunities.

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Article source: Daily Blog Tips

There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.

Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.

For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.

The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!

Direct Methods

1. PPC Advertising Networks

Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.

The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).

The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engine) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.

List of popular CPC advertising networks:

§ Google Adsense

§ Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN)

§ BidVertiser

§ Chitika

§ Clicksor

2. CPM Advertising Networks

CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.

A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.

CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.

You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).

List of popular CPM advertising networks:

§ Casale Media

§ Burst Media

§ Value Click

§ Advertising.com

§ Tribal Fusion

§ Right Media

3. Direct Banner Advertising

Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.

The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.

Indirect Methods

22. Selling an Ebook

Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.

You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.

1. Take a notebook or binder with you wherever you go.

Sometimes during the day a great idea pops into your head for an excellent article topic or something you’d like to implement on your blog, but you have no way of remembering it and soon that idea is lost. So you never forget any ideas, keep a notebook with you at all times. Keep it beside you when you sleep, when you’re in the car, or during whatever daily activities you attend.

2. Have some backup posts ready for emergencies.

Sometimes tragedy strikes with no warning and there is nothing we can do. Whether you’re going to be away from your blog or the internet for an extending period of time, or whether a horrible case of writer’s block has plagued you, it’s always important to have some backup posts ready that you can publish without worry.

3. Create a weekly posting schedule.

For some bloggers it’s difficult to constantly have ideas for articles that need to be published the next day. Grab a piece of paper (or your notebook, as mentioned in point one) and make a chart that contains every single day of the week. Then think about which posts you’re going to publish on what days, and write it down. Jot down potential post titles and main points these articles might include. By planning ahead you can save several weekly hours of thinking and stressing over content.

4. Subscribe to your favorite blogs in an RSS reader.

Subscribing to the blogs you read can keep you organized and save many hours each week. Not only does it take at least two or three times longer to visit and read each site by going to it manually, but you might also forget to check up on a blog or two. By using an RSS reader, such as Google Reader, you can read many more sites in less time and keep track of them all without doing any extra work.

5. Use spam protection for your comments.

Some blogs can get dozens to hundreds of spam comments per day, and deleting them all manually eats up the valuable time you could otherwise spend coming up with new content. Instead, use the few extra minutes it takes to install and activate some spam protection that’ll do the work for you and save you hours in the future.

6. Quit checking your stats all the time.

Why do you check your blog statistics or earnings ten times a day? They’ll keep going on whether you look at them or not, so all you’re doing is wasting precious time. Limit checking your statistics to just once a day or every other day, and don’t get carried away. It’s still important to know how well you’re progressing, but your blog will only go downhill if all you do is check your stats.

7. Organize your priorities.

As a blogger, you obviously have plenty of tasks. You have to respond to all of your emails, comment other blogs, and log in to your social media and networking accounts. Believe it or not, you can spend all day doing these tasks and then look at the clock and realize you have no time to write a new post. Instead, learn how to get through all of your daily blogging errands quickly but sufficiently, and when you’re done at a certain site exit out of it so it won’t tempt you while you should be working.

The internet is a huge place, and it’s easy to get distracted and carried away from your blogging duties. Take some time to sit down and think about how you work best, and don’t be lazy and procrastinate. Get yourself and your blog organized, and then all you will see is improvement.

Article Source: http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/7-time-saving-and-organizational-blogging-tips/

Google Analytics is a great program that can do a lot more than most people realize. Here are a few features that you may not know about:

Capture internal search stats. This is a newer feature of Google Analytics and a very nice one. Not only can you see what a visitor put into your internal search box, but what page they were on when they made the search and what page they chose in the search results. Any internal search will work as long as it passes the search variable through the URL. Here’s a short video interview with Google’s Brett Crosby on some of those features.
Filter out domains. Let’s say your Google Analytics code somehow got on another site and your stats were getting tainted with irrelevant data. No problem. You can create a filter to not count anyone from specific domains you add in. Oddly enough, you can also filter out your own domain so your stats flat line. Not a good idea to do that though.

Track document downloads or specific links. Adding a small piece of JavaScript to any link will tell Google to track when someone clicks on that link. This works for PDFs, Word documents, email address’ and external links. It also works if you want to see which two links on the same page are generating more clicks. Even though they go to the same URL, you can tag one link as ‘link one’ and the other as ‘link two’ and Google will track the clicks separately for you. Bonus Tip: If you have a Wordpress blog, you can instantly tag all links across your blog with the Ultimate Google Analytics plugin.

Export to Excel. For any newbies, this is a time saving feature. Just about any report can have the data exported to a CSV file which Excel can open. You can now stop copying and pasting most data out of Google Analytics and into Excel and save yourself some time.

Filter yourself out. This feature is a must do for any company. Find your static IP address and then set up a filter so Google knows not to include traffic from your company network. This ensures that your stats are not inflated due to employee’s surfing habits. This also is something you should consider for any partner companies. If you have a web development, or SEO company who is constantly checking out the site, filter them out too.

Those are just a few of the features that I’ve used and haven’t seen too much written about. If you have some unique Google Analytics tips, please do share.

Article Source: http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/02/5-google-analytics-features/

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1. Undefined Website Objectives

2. Unidentified Target Audience

3. Building for the Wrong Audience

4. Oblivious to Web Traffic Sources

5. Underestimating the Competition

6. Poor Site Communication and Inconsistency

7. Outdated and Antiquated Site Features

8. Poor Overall Site Performance

9. Lack of Commitment

10. Not using an Experienced Web Firm

About the Author

Let’s Go…

Article Source: http://www.onrec.com/newsstories/20582.asp

7 Ways To Build Links To Your Website

Additional Link Building Tips

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Common Characteristics of Influencers:

Reasons for Aiming to Become an Influencer:

Tips for Becoming an Influencer:

Direct Methods

Indirect Methods

1. Take a notebook or binder with you wherever you go.

2. Have some backup posts ready for emergencies.

3. Create a weekly posting schedule.

4. Subscribe to your favorite blogs in an RSS reader.

5. Use spam protection for your comments.

6. Quit checking your stats all the time.

7. Organize your priorities.

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