Thursday, July 29, 2010

No social media presence? What are you waiting for, SearchEngineWatch.com asks


No one has to tell you how important it is to have a social media presence these days. Yet there are always latecomers to the party. If you’ve been putting off social media until now, Kevin Gibbons at SearchEngineWatch.com has “10 Top Tips to Secure Social Media Success.”


Step 1: Get going, Gibbons says. Social Media doesn’t make itself.

Step 2: Prepare. Be your own online reputation strategist. Be open to client comments, complaints and concerns.

Step 3: Blog. It’s good for SEO because it encourages inbound links and fresh content.

Step 4: Tweet. Alert your Twitter followers to new blog posts and other additions to your site, as well as interesting things you’ve read elsewhere.

Step 5: Get some perspective on what you want your social media presence to do for your business.

Step 6: Talk. Have online conversations with your readers and your customers. Have an opinion on things and listen to what others have to say.

Step 7: Be realistic. Don’t sell; inform. Your social media interaction can’t be commercial.

Step 8. Get active and stay active. Once you start contributing to your social media efforts, you can’t stop or you’ll lose momentum, rankings and potentially, sales.

Step 9: Practice makes perfect. Provide new, original, entertaining content. Make people want to read you and link to you.

Step 10: Get motivated and stay that way. Nothing kills a social media campaign faster than apathy.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Website Magazine Reports: Bing Improves its Webmaster Tools

Bing apparently is taking a page from the rental car business – when you’re number two, you try harder. Mike Phillips reports in Website magazine that in an effort to keep up with Number One (which would be Google), Bing’s New Webmaster Tools represent an almost complete overhaul of their previous offering. The changes are based on suggestions received from users. Among the requests included more crawling and indexing transparency, more optimization help and more content control.

Writing on his Blog, Bing’s Senior Product Manager Anthony Garcia reported that the redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools are more intuitive. They focus on three key concerns: crawl, index and traffic. Garcia said that Bing also added some extra useful features, including Index Explorer and Submit URLs. Index Explorer provides the user with more access than ever before to the Bing index. It is now extremely easy to see where your sites are included in directories and other pages. Submit URLs lets you tell Bing which sites you want it to index.

Additional new features include: Crawl Issues, which details problems when you’re crawling sites; Block URLs, which prevents designated pages from appearing in your Bing SERPS. In all, Garcia says the new changes should drastically improve the transparency and control you need for optimizing your sites for Bing. People already using Bing Webmaster Tools have already been upgraded.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

John Hargrave: A 10,000% Increase in Backlinks is yours – By Doing Nothing

Everybody can use more links. Now John Hargrave, writing for Search Engine Journal, explains “How to Get 10,000% More Backlinks in Google, Without Doing Anything.” The secret, he says, is Google Caffeine, the search giant’s latest indexing system. Available since June, Google calls it the “largest collection of web content” it has ever offered. Caffeine exercises deeper and more frequent indexing in an effort to provide more up-to-date, real-time results. The backlink increases can be seen in the “Links to Your Site” section in Google Webmaster Tools.

Using his own clients as an example, Hargrave reports an average 10,000% increase in Google-reported backlinks. While this is an average, he provides a partial list of sites surveyed and the changes in backlinks recorded. Increases range from 394% to over 56,000%. This particular instance showed an increase from 5,900 backlinks to nearly 3.5 million backlinks, all in a little over a month.

The real secret here is that previously, Google admitted that it displayed only a fraction of indexed backlinks with Webmaster Tools. Now, with Caffeine, they are able to show a nearly complete list of backlinks. Not surprisingly, Hargrave says, Bing has increased the number of links it reveals to site owners to the 1,000 most high quality links leading to your site. This is a clear step above Google, which includes literally all sites (including spammers) that may be linking to you.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Own a Small Business? Mashable Serves Up Five Problem –Solving Sites

Mashable.com’s Ben Parr owns a small SEO-related startup business – namely, Mashable.com. Like any small business owner, he’s often faced with decisions that he’s never encountered before. What’s more, his mentors and co-workers frequently have no answer either. This caused him to do what millions of entrepreneurs do when they need a question answered – he turned to the internet. Then he compiled “5 Online Tools for Answering Your Small Business Questions.” The five sites he finds most helpful for answer his own questions (and believes you’ll benefit from them too) include:


  • Quora – A Q&A tool that allows users to ask primarily technological and startup-related questions. It’s particularly known for being the place to reach prominent CEOs and technological experts online. You can also read posts grouped by topic.
  • OnStartups Answers - As the name implies, this site caters to founders of startup businesses and the particular problems they may have getting and keeping the ball rolling.
  • Hacker News. This is a friendly “startup-centric” community. Its members are very open to questions and frequently go out of their way to help get something answered.
  • Twitter: This social media staple could be your immediate access to advice from other entrepreneurs you are following online.
  • OPEN Forum: The active discussion areas at this American Express site allow you to ask questions and get them answered quickly. While it’s not Parr’s first choice, as he says, “it can’t hurt to ask.”

For additional information regarding the information in this article, click here.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Dustin Brady Reports on Building Links the Google Way


In his article “What Google Thinks about Your Link Building Efforts,” FathomSEO.com’s Dustin Brady addresses one undeniable fact: Despite what your SEO firm says is the most important link building strategy, Google has the only opinion that matters. “Google decides which links matter and which don’t,” he says, and with that in mind, he lists the best and worst strategies in the eyes of the search engine giant.

Among the best strategies, Brady suggests becoming an expert in your field and contributing to blogs and forums. However, you need to keep your content useful. Don’t spam sites or shamelessly promote yourself. This is because the best quality links come from developing relationships in communities. Brady also suggests publishing compelling content. This is a very broad category and can include tutorials, white papers, tools, videos, graphics or anything you believe will be linked to by other sites that are relevant to yours.

Brady also suggests using humor for an “immediate traffic bump.” We all know how well humor works in social media. Just make sure that what you post is truly funny, or it won’t get you any links at all. The worst strategies in Google’s eyes include reciprocal links and mass submissions to link directories. For the latter, Google much prefers submissions to relevant directories.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Van Iderstyne at SearchEngineWatch.com Knows Why You’re Not Getting Any Links

Nobody said link building was easy. But if you’ve been at the link collection game for your site for a while, with limited results, Jennifer van Iderstyne at SearchEngineWatch.com may know “Why No One is Linking to You.”

She says one of the most common reasons why your site may not be getting any links is that it doesn’t have any worthwhile content on it. In fact, it’s the most likely reason why you’re failing. These days, it’s simply not enough to have a company history, a product page, etc. Everybody has that. You need to add new, informative content frequently – content that people will want to link to. Coming up with that content may be hard, but link building wasn’t meant to be easy, she says.

Another reason why you could be sabotaging your link building strategy is that nobody knows you’re there. It’s tough to be noticed – and that’s why social media is as popular as it is today. It’s a great way to get exposure. Van Iderstyne recommends reading up on how to get a Twitter following or how to get more friends on Facebook.

Finally, Van Iderstyne cites “technical difficulties”. If your site has broken links, error messages, etc., no one will be interested.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Let’s Talk Dirty: Van Iderstyne Lists the Five Dirty Words of Link Building

Debra Van Iderstyne, writing for Search Engine Journal, says that while there are a lot of dirty words use to describe people in the SEO business, there are 5 dirty words in link building that she hears all the time– that is, they’re words that should never be used or said in polite company when discussing link building. The first one is “Hundreds” – as in buying hundreds of non-relevant links at once. Or “signing up for a few hundred links on ‘book marking’ sites.” “Hundreds” of links is a sure way to raise suspicion about your site.

Another dirty word is “Exchange – as in “link exchange.” The very phrase implies underhanded doings. The third dirty word is “Worthless.” Collecting “worthless” links on the gamble that they’ll be worth something to you in the future is a waste of money.

The fourth word is “perfect.” If it’s “the perfect site” to link to, there’s probably something wrong with it. Links can always be made better. Or as Van Iderstyne says, “Anyone who promises perfect links is perfectly full of crap.” The final dirty word in the list is “guarantee,“ for many of the same reasons that “perfect” is on the list. It can’t be guaranteed. No one can guarantee that any link building strategy will work.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Wake Up and Smell the Tweets: Writer Sounds Death Knell for Traditional Marketing

Old marketing habits die hard. But Abigail Rossbach, writing at FathomSeo.com, says that to make your marketing efforts work for you, the time has come to forget everything you learned about marketing in a pre-Facebook, what’s-a-Twitter world. Content marketing, Rossbach says, is where it's at and where it’s going to stay.

"Traditional marketing methods have officially lost their influence," Rossbach writes, adding that in a marketing world filled with blog posts, video portals, tweets, etc., businesses need to take an entirely different look at how they conduct business online. In short, they need to commit themselves to content marketing. This means producing and distributing, entertaining, relevant and informative content on a regular basis.

This content will attract potential customers and provide them with something of value. In so doing, it will also provide a constant boost to your link building efforts. Rossbach stresses that this new approach can mean resisting the urge to push for the immediate sale. This can be hard for many marketers to grasp but it’s the way of the world now. Educate the buyers about your product first, she says, and they will look to you as a trusted source when
they’re ready to buy.

If you’re wondering what general topics to write about, Rossbach suggests starting with a recent article by Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz.org for ideas.