Practice Management Tip of the Day
Practice Management Tip of the Day
4 Ways Any Business Can Benefit From Social Media
Social media is all the rage right now. You see it in blog posts everywhere. You see Twitter feeds on news shows. In the last month my mother and several uncles joined Facebook! Simply put, social media is all over the place. But is it useful for the average business?
While not all businesses will use social media the same way, I am convinced that all businesses can make good use of social media. Here are 4 ways any business can benefit from using social media.
1- Get to Know Your Audience
About a year ago I went to Blog World Expo, and one of the points that really stuck with me from that conference is this: use social media to find your audience and then hang out with them. Social media is full of groups, fan pages, and other things that make it relatively easy to find an audience that is already interested in your topic or industry.
But with all of the different social media sites, how do you find out where your audience is hanging out? Here are a couple of resources you can use:
Use search.twitter.com to see what people are talking about that relates to your topic/industry. See what they’re linking to and mentioning. This can lead you in the right direction.
Get a Facebook account if you don’t have one already and look for relevant groups and fan pages. Watch for multiple groups/fan pages for the same topic, and also watch to see how engaged the members are.
Forums are more old school, but they can be great for finding other sites that people are using to hang out. In the end it may be the forum itself is the hangout, or they may direct you to other places.
Once you’re confident that you’ve found the popular hangouts for your industry start engaging with your audience. For many businesses Twitter and Facebook are great places to start since they are so universal, but you’ll also want to look for the niche hangouts.
2- Managing Your Reputation
Social media is a great way to keep an eye on the conversations that are happening online and respond to them. In fact, many companies have employees dedicated to watching the online conversations about their company and addressing them.
Here are a few tools you can use to monitor your reputation online so you can take any appropriate action:
Once again, you can use search.twitter.com to keep an eye on any conversations going on in the world of Twitter that relate to your brand.
For general monitoring of sites, news, and blogs you can always set up Google Alerts for your brand and main keywords to see what is happening online.
For monitoring blogs specifically, you can use Technorati or Google Blog Search. Both can help you monitor what bloggers are saying about your brand or industry.
If you’re really serious about tracking your reputation you could get an account at Trackur. Their pricing isn’t bad and it can be a great solution for companies looking to check in on the conversations happening online in a quick and easy way.
Watching and managing your company’s reputation is one way that every company can and should use social media. If you notice negative conversations happening you can respond and put out any fires before they get out of control.
A great example of this is Comcast’s use of Twitter. They have turned their Twitter account into another extension of their customer service division. For some great stories about this just do a Google search for ‘Comcast twitter’.
3- Promotions
Promotion is nothing new to the internet, but it hits new levels with social media. If you push the right message through the right channels you can reach a lot of people.
The key here is that you have to already have a lot of connections, especially with people that are willing to push the information to their followers as well. Twitter’s Retweet (RT) feature is very useful for this. If someone finds a story, blog post, or promotion interesting, they can just pass it on by doing a simple Retweet.
To be successful in promoting things through social media you have to have a plan and connections. Just sending out a tweet to your 30 followers won’t cut it.
Here’s another great article about using Twitter for advertising: Is Twitter Really an Effective Internet Marketing Tool?
4- SEO and Traffic Benefits
Being that we’re an SEO Company I naturally have to talk about the SEO and traffic benefits of being involved in social media. Social media can be a great traffic generator. Admittedly, it doesn’t always generate the kind of traffic that will convert into a lot of sales but it does increase buzz, recognition, and authority for your site.
Social media is also a great way to have a lot of links built to your site. As a page is promoted on different networks people are going to be linking to it. These links will include tweets, bookmarks, and even blogs. All of these links can help improve the authority of your site and lead to higher rankings in the search results.
Putting it All Together
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, not all businesses will use social media the same. But the fact is that all businesses can take advantage of social media in one way or another. Here are a few places to start:
If your site doesn’t have a blog, you should start one. Blogs are where you’ll generate the content to be promoted on the social media networks. It is also a great way to interact with your customers.
Start a Twitter account. Having a Twitter account will give you a place to interact with your audience and also promote the articles from your blog and from other sources that you find interesting. You don’t want to be a Twitter Spammer just pushing your own stuff. Show that you can be part of the community.
Create a Facebook fan page. Facebook is one of the giants in the social media sphere, so you need to have a company presence there as another way to promote your content and interact with your audience.
Set up profile pages on a few social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, and Delicious. This will give you a place to create links to your content. Make sure you also bookmark other content from your industry. Also make sure to create links back to your site in your profile.
There is always more that can be done, but these are four places to get started. For additional reading, here’s a great case study from Business.com on how they have been using social media: B2B Social Media – The Business.com Case Study
Jim Vincent
jim@web7media.net
www.Web7Media.net
What Are They Saying About Your Website?
Your Website Visitors Are Talking to You
Continuously improving your Web presence to increase ROI should be the goal, right? OK, but how do you get your potential customers to talk to you so you know what to improve? If you are willing to dig into a little data, you can find out how people interact with your site and where the problems are that need attention. Here are a few pieces of Google Analytics data that you can use to interpret what your visitors are trying to tell you.
Bounce Rate
With a high bounce rate, the visitor is saying, “This site isn’t relevant to me – I’m outta here.” The bounce rate number is just the percentage of single page visits, meaning that all those people left your site without looking past the page they landed on. It’s possible that this means your landing page just isn’t interesting. More likely, it means the people landing on your site were led to believe they would find something different when they clicked on your paid advertisement or organic search listing. If you are getting a high bounce rate, look at what your ads are promising. Make sure your landing page fulfills the promise in the ad.
New vs. Returning Visitors
A high number of returning visitors says, “Your site is engaging enough that I think I’ll come back for more.” New visitors are a good indicator that more people are finding your site, but getting them to return is the part that takes work. Ask yourself what you are putting out there that will bring people back again and again. A really good blog is one great way to do this.
Time on Site
A higher time on site tells you your site keeps visitors from leaving. This could mean you offer plenty of things to explore. But be careful. When I logged into analytics on one of my sites this morning, I found most people were staying for three minutes or so. Then there was this one visit that lasted for three hours. I’m guessing that somebody left their browser open on my site while they left the house for a while. So I obviously didn’t give that visit much attention.
Pages Per Visit
This says, “The first point of contact was interesting enough to make me want to look around.” If you have high average page views, you have done a good job of sending the right people to the site and presenting the information in an interesting way. It might also mean you have created a page structure conducive to further exploration.
Traffic Sources
This is very valuable because it shows you the ways customers come to your site. If they are all coming from Google, then your Search Engine Optimization campaign is working. If you see a huge influx of WebsiteTraffic from a partner site, you could look into ways to increase your visibility on that partner site.
Content
This is where your visitors tell you which content they like best. You are also able to see how they interact with their favorite content by looking at bounce rate, how many of them left the site from that page, etc. If you notice a certain topic always trends to the top, it should probably be a main focus of your content.
The best companies are those that listen to the customer. Google Analytics provides all this wonderful data to help companies do just that. We just have to be willing to dig in a little.
Jim Vincent
Web 7 Media.net
801.554.1620
What Does Google Social Search mean for SEO?
What Does Google Social Search Mean for SEO?
Surprise, surprise, they've done it again. That's right, the genius minds over at Google have come out with an interesting service called Social Search.
In a nutshell, it takes a logged in user's personal connections and searches through them to find whatever they're looking for. The results are incorporated right into the results of a normal Web search in the way universal search incorporates images, videos, and other content.
This is Google's response to the hyped vertical of social search, already started by companies like Aardvark (which is now owned by Google). The idea behind social search is basically to get the input of your friends, rather than anonymous Web sites. This tends to fit into certain types of searches, such as "What's a good restaurant to take my wife for our anniversary?" rather than "How many light years away is Alpha Centauri?"
Google can search through several social areas, including Gmail accounts, Google Talk transcripts, subscribed RSS feeds, Picasa, Flickr, FriendFeed, and Twitter profiles you follow.
Social Search essentially ramps up the impact that personalized search or search wiki has had. Like those services, results are tailored to your specific profile. However, unlike those services, one can likely expect this to have a bigger impact on search listings.
There may be a sizable number of users who see social results above your top 10 listing. Social Search results are usually placed toward the bottom of page one, but that will probably depend on relevance.
For SEO, consider implementing the following to expand your real estate in search results:
- As if you hadn't heard about it enough, you need to have your Twitter account actively posting updates. Use keywords just like on your site, and boost your subscribers as much as possible.
- Your company's other social profiles also need to be highly subscribed, actively updated sites with good content. Long-term, consider everything from Google Buzz to Facebook.
- With the inclusion of Gmail, it makes sense to start thinking about optimizing e-mail newsletters. Newsletters can be posted online, or found through desktop search, so optimizing them has multiple benefits. This means no more newsletters that are one giant image.
- Here's another case for full-text RSS feeds: a subscribed feed containing just the first paragraph or so of complete articles will have fewer opportunities to rank and drive traffic.
Not to sound like a spokesperson for Google, but you can sign up for this experiment in Google Labs and start trying it out today. It's simple to use, which means this service should take off.
There's no need to tell Google anything if you use Google Reader, Gmail, Profiles or other Google services. Also, there's no need to use a separate search service to do social searches – the results will simply start showing up one day in your old standby Google. With a little effort, hopefully some of these results will belong to your sites.
Powerful SEO Content: Understanding Breadth of Coverage
Powerful SEO Content: Understanding Breadth of Coverage
Nearly every SEO has been on this end of a conversation: "The keyword we really want to rank number one for is [enter impossible keyword here]."
I often tell people they need two things to achieve these impossibly unrealistic rankings:
- Proper breadth of coverage (BOC).
- A time machine set to 1996.
Since the time machine requires a hefty retainer most clients are unwilling to pay, I often set my sights on obtaining BOC that will enable realistic rankings now, with the possibility of long-term growth in the future.
What is BOC?
The term "breadth of coverage" originally stems from Google patents filed in 2003. In the patent, the search giant claims that BOC is one of the factors used to heuristically solve for the most qualified news article. However, the notion of BOC extends far beyond the news algorithm and consistently impacts site rankings in the organic algorithm.
BOC is the total number of qualified web pages in a domain that are thematically/semantically relevant. More credible pages means more authority. More authority means there's a greater opportunity to rank for competitive "head" terms.
Here are four ways of demonstrating BOC to search engines:
1. Create a Logical Keyword Hierarchy
This is especially important if your website attacks multiple themes. Typically, the most general and competitive head terms used within a site should be reserved for the home page. This should make sense, as the home page is likely to have the most inbound links, making it the strongest page. Because inbound links pass rank, think of a hierarchy as a way to trickle down PageRank in a focused, keyword relevant manner.
2. Internal Linking
This is crucial in connecting the dots for Google. If your website has 50 pages of content about the Super Bowl but is unlinked, how does this benefit the user? Simply having the content under the hood of your website isn't enough; however, interconnecting that content creates a web of authority that can be easily understood by both users and search engines.
Be sure to assign each subpage a maximum of one or two keyphrases. Every time this phrase is used sitewide, send a link to that corresponding page using varied and keyword rich anchor text. Remember, the most valuable links are within the body of the text and above the fold. Footer links (especially sitewide) are frequently de-weighted.
If each page serves as a keyword representative, make sure it's reflected in the title tag, H1 tags, anchor text, alt text, and content (and yes, the meta keyword tag is dead).
3. Avoid the Need to Create a New Domain for Every Product/Service
I once worked with a Fortune 500 client that had a penchant for creating brand new domains instead of building within their massively powerful infrastructure. The reason was simple: the content publishers took their awesome domain authority for granted and figured it would magically extend to a new domain. There are perfectly rational motives for starting a new domain; it just means starting the arduous authority building process from scratch.
Working within the infrastructure of your most powerful domain can greatly expedite the ranking process while eliminating the time and resources it might normally take to rank. This is also a more preferable long-term strategy as brand favoritism is a continued trend in algorithmic tweaks. Your website doesn't have to be exclusively dedicated to patio furniture to rank number one on Google, but it needs domain authority and breadth of coverage.
4. Create Powerful Content
This entire exercise is relatively moot if you stuff pages with low quality content. Authority documents tend to fare much better in search engines because they provide a full picture of a subject matter. Detailed, well-linked content is one reason Wikipedia thrives in search engines. Whenever you create content for a targeted keyword, focus on dwarfing your competitor in quality, depth, and scope.
Wikipedia sets a high bar in demonstrating breadth of coverage
The most robust content contains powerful text, images, and video -- all working in unison. When writing, be sure that content:
- Has keyword rich headlines.
- Is at least 250 words.
- Is logically chunked out with headers and bullet points (wink wink).
- Has links to other relevant content.
Make sure each piece of content has enough beef to be authoritative and link worthy. Writing content takes time, effort, and willingness to fail, but it can generate relevant traffic for years.
Can Facebook Drive Great Traffic To Websites?
As usual, there's been a lot of talk about Facebook lately, So I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at Facebook traffic to see what could be ascertained through Experian Hitwise data.
For the month of April, the largest downstream site visited after Facebook was Google. OK, so no shock there.
What about the second most visited site? MySpace? Really? Just over 9 percent of Facebook visitors in April stopped off at MySpace directly after checking out their Facebook accounts.
To put that in perspective, only 0.7 percent went to Twitter (although that doesn't count those who use Twitter clients, only those who use Twitter.com).
Now, 19.48 percent of MySpace users head to Facebook once they're done on that site (making MySpace the fourth highest upstream site from Facebook, behind only Google, Yahoo, and Yahoo Mail), so there's absolutely a good degree of back and forth between the past social media champion and the reigning champ.
The third most visited site after Facebook is another Google property, and shouldn't be a surprise. Yes, it's YouTube, with 6.44 percent of visitors heading over there to watch the latest in viral videos. Again, there's reciprocation, with 9.35 percent of YouTube visitors heading over to Facebook once they're done watching Miley Cirus blend an iPad or whatever they've been viewing.
Further down the list, in 19th place, 0.32 percent of visitors went to ESPN, and 0.31 percent went to Plentyoffish.com. For ESPN, the data shows that as being 12.93 percent of their incoming traffic, 1.3 percent points higher than their Google traffic; for Plentyoffish, that's their second highest upstream site behind Yahoo, with 15.26 percent of traffic, 6.11 percent points higher than their traffic from Google.
Why does ESPN get such huge numbers? Having more than 446,000 people who 'like' their Facebook page doesn't hurt. From looking at their page, it seems they do a good job pushing out content that their fans like, as well as interacting with their Facebook fans by asking questions where they solicit responses.
So do these numbers show that Facebook can drive great traffic to a site? Maybe. Without access to individual site analytics, we can't see bounce rates, sign-ups, conversion rates, pages consumed, or whatever other metric we'd like to view to assess the quality of the traffic. The numbers look good, however, which says that maybe sites don't need to be as beholden to the big three search engines as we may think.
Reputation Management and SEO
Using SEO for Reputation Management
First, to understand how negative press can get to the top of the search engines results pages (SERPs), let's take a trip down memory lane and revisit the old urban legend of Pop Rocks and Coke. Amidst all the excitement around the popular fizzy candy, in the late 1970s stories began to spread around school playgrounds that, when mixed with soda, Pop Rocks could cause a mini-explosion in your stomach. Teachers overheard and passed on to mothers. The worried mothers then escalated the news to the press, and soon General Foods, the creators of Pop Rocks, had a reputation problem on their hands.Even after many years of clean business practices, a single negative event can stain your brand image in the public eye for a long time. Simple things like a negative product review in a blog can be detrimental to your brand, especially when competitors are standing close by to snatch up customers. One way to combat that threat is through a reputation management strategy, which can begin with search engine optimization (SEO).
This telephone game of word-of-mouth is replicated online via link-building. First, someone publishes negative comments about your company. As others read the comments, more people start linking to it in blogs and discussion groups. Friends forward to friends, who forward to friends and so on. Next thing you know, the bad press is at the top of the search rankings.
Back in the Pop Rocks days, General Foods responded to the Pop Rocks fiasco with full-page print ads, letters to school principals around the country, and even sent the Pop Rocks inventor door to door to attest to its safety. But what could they have done had they lived in the today's digital world?
Begin by Examining Keywords
If an online reputational tragedy befalls you or a friend, the first step in the repair strategy should always entail keyword selection. You don't want to continue optimizing the same keywords that are used for existing marketing purposes. Different keywords come into play in this case. Since it is likely the negative press is showing up when consumers search under your brand name or product name, you will want to focus your SEO efforts on those specific keywords. The goal is to drive brand-friendly hits up in the SERPs, while pushing the negative press down.
You do this by creating more good press and optimizing around those selected keywords. Links embedded within press releases will give sites a ranking boost while the news is fresh and the press release is at the top of the newswire. When you're embedding the links, don't just hyperlink your corporate domain every time. Instead, ask yourself, "Which links are most important to our situation at this time?"
Experiment with different hyperlinks to different sub-domains, and measure the results to determine which ones will drive your news up the ranks. Always make sure that links are embedded on top of, or near your brand name.
Banish Negative Press through Link Building
The second step is link building. After all, if the negative press elbowed its way to the top of the SERPs through link building, you can do the same with positive press. It is an SEO ace in the hole, and it should be a major part of any SEO strategy. To counteract the negative press, build links to optimize brand and product names.
Think outside your corporate domain. Sub-domains, including news sites, corporate blogs and other pages outside your website, can be key SEO weapons in your arsenal as they take up more shelf space in the SERPs. Optimize these through link building, and make it a practice to ensure that the content on these sites is constantly updated and is as fresh as possible.
Lastly, go directly to the source of the negative press and request they also include rebuttal links. Ideally, they will publish an additional link on that post or page to your response (on your site) to the issue in question, so that your positive messages are given more platform.
When it comes to the Internet, information is a constantly flowing stream, and it flows fast. The only real news is what's up at the top of the search page, so use something that you know works to manage, control and shape those messages that you care about. SEO has a pivotal role in reputation management, as it can remove negatives and enhance positives on the first page of results, which is usually the only page that matters.
Where To Show Up On The Internet?
I love it when the competition says Google is not the only Search Engine. Yes they are right because Bing and Yahoo are there and deserve some recognition BUT we all know where most of your time should be spent. That is just coming from a company that struggles with Google.
Dont let your company only SEO Market a few or even 10 or 15 keyword phrases. I have most of my clients showing up under over 150 to 250 keyword phrases! Wherever anyone looks they SHOULD find you!
10 Link Building Strategies For New Website Or Business Owners
10 Link Building Strategies For New Website Or Business Owners
Believe it or not, all SEO’s were newbies at one time or another. Launching a website can be a very exciting event for an individual or new business owner. However, that excitement can quickly turn to disappointment when the site owner finds out that they are getting little or no traffic. If they are getting traffic, it is most likely coming from family members or friends who they notified through an email or Facebook.
Being involved in SEO and marketing in general, I am usually bombarded by family members and friends with questions about marketing their website or their future website on the Internet. Because of this and my willingness to help just about anyone I know, you can usually find me in a small dark corner at a family party (it has to be small and dark because my wife gets ticked when I’m not up and socializing with everyone), on the phone in the car, or answering an email, Facebook message, or Twitter message about SEO and other internet marketing tactics.
I was on a call yesterday with one of my best friends from high school. Our conversation was focused on general Search Engine Optimization principles and link building tactics that could provide a good foundation and hopefully, if he does them right, some strong rankings in the search engines. One thing I emphasized is the fact that what ever he does, he needs to build links naturally. A natural link building campaign is crucial for success in SEO.
A natural Link Building Campaign is one that is just that, natural! Getting 50,000 links within the first twenty days of your website’s existence is definitely not natural. Getting a slow trickle of links coming into your website and then building up looks much more natural. Also, getting 50,000 links pointing to your home page with the same anchor text is not natural. Vary your anchor text and include long tail versions of your keywords. You should also build links to other pages of your site in addition to your home page. All of these things help with building a natural link campaign.
In terms of links, there are two types of links you can get for your websites, external and internal links. Both are very important and can make a huge difference in your search engine rankings. I want to discuss in detail, ten ways to effectively jump-start your link building campaign.
Friends & Family Members
When beginning a link building campaign, one very natural way of obtaining links is from friends and family members. I just opened up our family blog and counted all of the friends and family who we have added in our blogroll. The grand total… 41. How hard is it to simply call up (recommended – it’s more personal) or email your family and friends who have blogs or other sites, and ask them for a link to your new website? Not hard at all! In fact, because they are your friends or family members, they will probably do it without hesitation. You can do the same thing with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.
Add A Blog To Your Domain
Google loves blogs! Google loves fresh content! Google loves internal links! Internal links from other pages of your website are a guaranteed way to help you increase your rankings in the search engines. Adding a blog to your domain is a great way for you to easily add new content to your website on a regular basis. In most cases, adding a blog to your main domain is rather simple and can be done in as little as three clicks of your mouse. Web hosting companies like myhosting.com, Hostmonster, & Bluehost offer one click installations of blog platforms like Wordpress or b2evolution as does Web 7 Media.net
Adding a blog, posting to it at least once daily, and linking back to your home page and other important pages of your website with keyword anchor text is a great way to gain a lot of internal links. When blogging, you should also link out to other websites that interest you and websites that are in similar industries. You might also consider adding images, videos, polls, etc. Mix things up! Make it look natural! Most important, have fun!
Local Organizations
Just about every city in the country has a local chamber of commerce; mine would be the Sandy Area Chamber of Commerce. Joining a chamber of commerce will not only get you a very good link back to your website, but also provides networking opportunities with other local businesses. Most times, depending on your business, you can generate new leads rather easily by getting to know other individuals and businesses in your area.
Local News
Developing relationships with local newspaper writers and always making yourself available for comments on news stories that involve your industry is a great way to build awareness about your company and get links back to your website (if the newspaper is published online).
Help A Non Profit Organization
You would be surprised how many non-profit organizations are operating in your city and your state. Every one of us has been given talents and certain things that we are good at. I guarantee that there is a non-profit organization that could use your help, whether it is with designing their website or painting the conference room of their new office building. If you offer of yourself and your services freely, you can most likely ask for, and get a link to your website from theirs.
Submit Your Site To Local & Industry Specific Online Business Directories
Anyone studying SEO can usually find a blog post about submitting your website to directories on the Internet. Yes, this is a valuable link building tactic, but before you go crazy and start submitting to thousands of directories, seek out local directories and directories that are specific to your business. Submit to these first and take your time filling out all of the information that they ask for. These will be some of your most valuable links since they are so relevant to your website and business.
Social Bookmarking
You have probably heard the term social bookmarking. You have probably heard that social bookmarking is a great way to build links. Well, it is and it isn’t… You can waste a lot of time social bookmarking if you are submitting to the wrong sites. I limit my social bookmarking to Mixx, Propeller and sometimes Kirsty. The trick to social bookmarking is to not only bookmark your website, your blog posts, and other things related to your website, but bookmarking lots of different things that interest you. This will make your bookmarking profiles look much more natural to both viewers and the search engines.
Write An Article And Submit To Article Directories
Writing articles and submitting them to sites like Ezine Articles, Article City, and Go Articles, also known as article marketing, is a great way to get links back to your website. Take time to write a very detailed article about your industry and submit it to a few article directories like the ones I listed above. You will get links back to your website by properly using the author resource or bio box at the end of the article. You should tell a little about yourself and your company, while adding keyword rich anchor text links pointing back to your website.
Write And Submit A Press Release
Writing press releases and submitting them to places like PR Web or Web Wire is a great way to generate interest and buzz about your business and also to get links back to your website. This method of link building is a little more difficult than other links that you can get for your website. Writing a press release takes skill… a skill, which the average person, like me, does not have. Press releases have certain requirements that must be met, a certain format that must be followed, and in most cases, need to be super interesting. Not having any of these elements can almost guarantee that your press release will either be outright rejected or not distributed to other news related websites.
Build A Hub Page Or Squidoo Lens
Building a Hub Page or Squidoo Lens is a fun way to get links back to your website. To date, I have built 73 Hubs and 25 Lenses for my own personal websites and hundreds for clients that I have managed. The most effective Hub Pages and Squidoo Lenses are those that have at least 450 words of text about a certain topic or subject, videos, pictures, polls, and other gadgets that are easy to add. You want to make the page as interactive as possible so it provides value for anyone who happens to read it. You are allowed two links to other websites from your Hubs and a handful of links (be conservative, don’t spam) from your Lenses.
Building links isn’t pretty. But, in order to rank well in the search engines, it is absolutely necessary. These are ten excellent ways for new companies or new website owners to start building links to their websites. There are many others and I encourage any of our readers to add to this list by commenting on this post.
4 Ways your Business can Benefit from Social Media!