How to boost your SEO efforts with Social Media

On December 12, 2011, in Social Media Marketing, by GuestBlogger
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Everyone knows the importance that social media is playing within the freelancing world, and the opportunities provided to us via twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to enhance our networking reach, find new projects and handle client management with ease are undisputed. However, what you may not realize is the benefit that social media can have on your SEO efforts. Social media can aid your SEO efforts in two ways; as a tool to increase the reach of your blog and increase traffic, and as a way to ensure that the content that appears on your site or blog is shared through social media, thereby increasing the number of backlinks to your site and improving your SERP results. So how can you make social platforms effectively serve your SEO efforts?

What can social media platforms bring to your SEO?

Platforms such as twitter offer you the perfect way to connect with other bloggers on a flexible basis. Not only can you follow professionals in your field via twitter and receive inspiration for your own site from their tweets, but you can also connect with colleagues with ease. Twitter functions as a great platform to assist the development of your content and if you want to use your followers as a sounding board for your ideas then this is a great way to interact with your colleagues. If you are producing quality content on your blog on a regular basis, then make sure to auto-tweet your articles to maximize their reach, the better the article, the more chance that it is shared by followers on Facebook or re-tweeted on twitter. This “hype” ensures more backlinks to the original source of the article – your website.

But the key to SEO success on twitter is reciprocity. You absolutely need to re-tweet articles from your followers and engage with their debates, questions or polls. Social SEO is a two-way street after all. (more…)

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Boost Your SEO Through Blogging

On September 6, 2011, in Search Engine Optimization, by GuestBlogger
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To the outsider, it can seem that in order to have a successful SEO strategy you must first have a degree in programming or hire a freelance SEO expert. Sure, a lot of SEO focuses on the efforts to optimize websites and you’ll hear plenty of talk of URL structure, keyword density and crawling speeds. But these things only fall under the scope of Onpage SEO and fail to address the part of SEO that will actually improve your SERP (search engine ranking position) results through the creation of backlinks to your site – Offpage SEO. Additionally, most people who think of Offpage SEO think that it only focuses on creating backlinks through cheap forum comments and blog comment links – but this couldn’t be further from the truth. If you want to improve your SERP results whilst flexing your writing muscles and sharing your knowledge and expertise with others then listen to this:

The concept: Start focusing on blogs

The first step to developing a combined successful writing/SEO strategy is to choose a specific keyword that your website or services revolve around and start researching for bloggers who are writing on this topic. From a simple Google search, to doing a search on twitter or Google Plus and following the advice of colleagues in your field, there are many ways to find blogs with which you can start collaborating. The main point is that Google loves blogs due to their sociability, unique content and personal touch. The better the blog is, the higher the likelihood that many people have linked to it based on the strength of its content thus its value as a place to grant you a backlink increases. Focusing on blogs is also great because you do not have to generate hundreds of backlinks before you start seeing some results, typically you can start seeing a rise in your SERP results after a few dozen links from quality blogs. Plus with every article you write, you’re giving yourself a PR boost by marketing your services and skills through the sharing of your expertise. (more…)

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When Focusing On SEO, Don’t Forget About Humans

On December 21, 2010, in Search Engine Optimization, by Chris Edwards
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Everyone feels they are a SEO expert nowadays. Everyone knows the basics such as keyword rich content is king and that you should optimize your site for the search engines to locate you. The issue is, many have lost focus on why they are trying to have the search engines notice you, which is to get visitors to your website.

A number one spot on Google is great however many have failed to convert that spot into traffic. Everyday, webmasters strive to gain Google’s favor and get their website listed in the top spots. Webmasters get excited when they land that spot however their traffic does not increase as much as they expected. I want to talk about a few key examples I have seen. (more…)

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Making Your Site A DoFollow Site

On October 9, 2010, in Blogging, Social Media Marketing, by Chris Edwards
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First, lets start off by explaining what DoFollow is. DoFollow is actually a slang term that refers to websites that do not use the nofollow attribute in their links. Nofollow is a value added to the the rel attribute in a hyper link that instructs search engines not to influence rank on the link’s target.

Why Do Sites Use nofollow?

The simple answer is to reduce spam.

Now that we gave you a quick and simple answer, lets expand. Incoming links to your website or blog with the nofollow value added will not pass along page rank to your site. This means these links coming in will not help as much in all SEO aspects of your site. This rel value was created by Google back in 2005 to try and reduce the amount of comment spam that spammers posted on blogs trying to increase their search engine rank. (more…)

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Why Your Small Business Should Have a Blog

On July 23, 2010, in Blogging, Business Website Tips, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, by Chris Edwards
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Many small businesses as well as large companies are starting to create business blogs. You may be asking yourself if your small business should have a blog. The answer is almost always “yes”.

First and foremost, the blog is to compliment and not replace your business website. A blog will help your business website grow in both viewers and in creditability.

One of the main reasons to create a blog is to show that you as a small business owner knows your industry and your product. It shows that you also have passion for your business. Blogs are more personal as many are written in first person. When your customers see you blogging about your industry, they realize that you are the real thing. This gives you one up on your competition showing that you are ahead of the curve and a true authority in your industry. (more…)

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Search Engine Friendly Navigation

On July 22, 2010, in Search Engine Optimization, by Chris Edwards
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Many web designers want to create a spiffy web site with flashy navigation. This is great on the user’s end but when it comes down to search engine optimization, this will kill all of your efforts.

Search engine spiders crawl the web following every link they can find.  Most spiders can not read complex flash menu systems. If you are using one of these types of menu systems then its possible search engines can not find your sub pages.

To solve the issue of menu systems you can do one of two things. The first thing you can do is create a separate navigation that is based of text links. This should be listed somewhere on your homepage such as at the bottom of your page. You can also just place a text link to a site map that list links to all the sub pages within you site. Although this will help all sub pages be found I highly discourage the use of any Flash menus. (more…)

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Coming Up With Keywords

On July 22, 2010, in Search Engine Optimization, by Chris Edwards
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I have learned that coming up with keywords is the most difficult part of doing search engine optimization. There is no way for me to teach you how to come up with the best keywords on the internet but I will try to assist you.

The first and easiest part is coming up with the obvious keywords. These would be the keywords that are related to your site, product, service or anything else you have on the site. With this information it will be easier to develop the rest of your keywords.

Once you have picked out the keywords that aver obvious then its time to do the related terms. These related terms are important when trying to theme your site and also when you are trying to work with link popularity and link relevance.  Related terms should be words that are similar to your website. This may not be your main content but may be something your site touches on. Going back to our “Lava Lamp” example, you may want to include in your related terms “novelty lamps”. This term is similar to your site. Be sure not to forget to develop some content around these related terms. (more…)

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Search Keywords That Work

On July 22, 2010, in Search Engine Optimization, by Chris Edwards
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There are different types of keywords I would like to cover. I will cover these in the order of importance. Keywords are the main meat of your website. You can have all the pictures in the world but without keywords your site will not show up in the search engines. A common mistake I have found with many of my clients if they want to focus on the design and pictures in a website and not on textual content. The truth is pictures will help to sell your product but only after someone finds your site. Since search engines run off text searches, you must use text to be found by the search engines.


Major Keywords

I wanted to point out that the title says “Major Keywords” and not “Major Keyword”.  The reasons for this is you don’t want to make one of the most common mistakes, using only one keyword. The reason to use multiple keywords is so that your site is not based off just one keyword. If you build your keyword strategy off just one keyword you will actually be limiting your potential visitors and buyers. Most websites offer several services and you want to push all of your services. I would suggest around 5-7 major keywords. If your site is large and offers many different services you may want to push a few more but I would recomened not to exceed 10. Your major keywords should be single words or very short phrases. On average when someone performs a search they do not search for more than 2 words. (more…)

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