To improve the optimization of a page for search engines, among other things you have to do is also to include images in the text you create. The image file name should target, if possible, the keywords targeted on that page and used in titles, text, subheadings and other elements.

When you insert an image the proper tag should look like this: <img src=”path/image-name.jpg” alt=”descriptive name of the image”>. The ALT property is the only property of the HTML img tag that matters to SEO.

The ALT property is used to display text instead of your image if for some reason the reader has enabled to see only the text from the page. As a best practice use the ALT property to offer a short description of the photo. It’s also best to include in the ALT property the targeted keywords for that page.

Tip: try to place to surround the image with text that also contains words related to the name of the image.

Post your thoughts and questions by using the comments bellow. Thanks for reading!

LinkedIn Launches Company Follow Button (How to Add It Now)
LinkedIn made it just a little bit easier to generate company followers with the launch of its new follow button. Like Twitter’s follow button and Facebook’s like button, LinkedIn’s version makes it simple for your website visitors to follow your company’s LinkedIn page with just one click. No navigating to the LinkedIn website required!

Flickr Enables Users to Block Pinterest Pinning
Pinterest is hot right now and even though it’s in beta testing it already has over 13 million users. Flickr has implemented a site-wide update that allows users to easily install the “nopin” code by simply changing their Privacy Settings to no sharing. Read more about it.

10 Content Ideas To Improve Organic Visibility
The article is just what it says: 10 content ideas. Everyone that is blogging hits a block from time to time. Keep your mind fresh and open to new connections.

What’s Coming Up In 2012 — Social Media
Now that we’re a couple of months into 2012, it’s more important than ever to assess your business plans for the year regarding online marketing to ensure you are hitting the high points and prepared for problems that may crop up along the way. To help, some of our top contributors have looked into the future and shared their vision of what will be vital to focus on for continued success.

Tracking Micro Conversions with Event Tracking for Improving SEO Campaigns
Conversions. The one metric we all know we should be focusing on, and yet it’s the one thing that gets overlooked the most. So many of us focus on just one main conversion point, and forget how many other types of visitor engagement exist on our sites. These other engagement points, or less-important conversions are what experts call “micro conversions.”

Stop Paying for Stupid Clicks: Negative Keywords for Positive ROI
One of my guilty pleasures is looking through the search query reports (SQR) of an AdWords campaign for the cringe-worthy search queries that led to someone clicking on a PPC ad. Really Google? You felt that goat transportation cost was related to my keyword of freight costs? Or that a babe cam search should show my ad for digital camera? Sadly, these matches and worse can happen if you lack proper negative keywords.

The Complete Guide to Setting Up the New Facebook Page Design
Facebook is giving page administrators the chance to preview, tweak, and publish their new design immediately, but the new design won’t be forced on you until March 30, 2012. In other words, you have until March 30 to play around with the new design without publishing before it must go live.

Guest Blogging Strategies – Whiteboard Friday
Guest blogging can be a great way to help build up your brand, earn recognition, and even get some great links back to your site. When guest blogging it’s important to study your audience so that you can produce the best content possible.

Link building the fun way: Let’s use Twitter!

There are numerous ways to build links but today I’ll focus on using Twitter for this task. Now, before we begin there is one more thing to mention: track your actions or record it in some way. In many cases I just use an Excel table to help me keep things organize (nothing fancy, just a simple table)!

10 Tips to create a link building strategy by using Twitter

1. Search on Twitter for people that need help (related to your market of course)
   Once you identify them place them in a list and check if they have business websites in their profiles. If they do you can then contact them telling them that you already have an article on how to solve that problem. Maybe they want to tweet it, share it on Facebook, Google+, link to it from their site or post it on their site with a link back to you.
2. Once you identify people with a certain problem see if you can organize some kind of contest for them. To participate they need to write about the problem on their website/blog and post a link to your contest (create a contest name that will include your keywords since many people will link with that name). Think about it: if they have a broken video camera you can organize a contest and the award would be a video camera (maybe the example is a bit expensive J but you can do this with any kind of object – or problem that can be solved with one of your products)
3. You are a wedding and portrait photographer? See how many people talk about their wedding and having concerns that they’ll not know how to pose at the photo shoot (contact them, tell them that you have an article on Top X Tips on posing and ask them to share it in their social networks or link to it from their blogs if they’ll find it useful). See how many people are unsatisfied with their wedding photo albums, or portrait session album (you can also land a job here and also get a link back). Offer to retouch a photo of them (portrait or wedding) for free in exchange for a share of your website in their social network (Twitter, Facebook and so on)
4. You are a home builder? See how many people have mold problems, for example. If they have personal blogs you can then contact them because it happens that you already have a complete article on this topic. Ask them to share their thoughts and share it on their social networks. Also, if they apply your advice and works ask them to be so kind and write an article on their blog and post a link to your article (this way all their friends will eliminate their mold problems). You can do this with any kind of home-problem
5. You are a dentist? Look for people with teeth or gums problems. Point them to articles on your own website that talk about how to keep the health of your mouth intactJ. Ask for a social share or maybe a blog article on their websites with a link back to you. Check for unsatisfied customers and see if you can solve their problems in an easy 3 step solution. A social share of your article will go a long way
6. You are an architect? There are many people talking about decorating their houses. You already have some articles with tips on interior design. Point them to your articles and you can also offer them a personalized quick suggestion. In exchange don’t be afraid to ask for a tweet or a share on Facebook
7. You are a car dealer? Many people have problems with cars. Offer them tips on how to maintain their cars by directing them to your articles. Ask for a share and in some cases (where they might need for example to follow some steps) ask for an article with a link back to your website describing the experience. If you’ll narrow the search to your location then you can also land some deals
8. You are a church? The possibilities are endless here. As a church you deal with matters of soul and there are so many people out there with problems. You don’t need to try and convert them. You can find them on Twitter and then hold a free online seminar where you’ll talk about how to tackle their problem. They’ll tweet about it, share it with their friends maybe. You can also create a step-by-step program and ask the participants to blog about it with a link to your website. They’ll say that they participate in a free program called “………” and link to your website (so create a name that will include your keywords)
9. You are an independent fashion designer? Search for people that have to go to an event. Offer them a free dress in the form of a contest. To participate they’ll need to share their experience on their social networks and the winner will also write a blog review about the dress and link back to you
10. You are an independent makeup artist? Just like in the case of the independent fashion designer you can apply it to make up

What are your ideas?

It’s your turn now. Let me know what you think about these methods to create links to your website. Let me know if you have suggestions or questions in comments bellow!

Go for a Facebook Page

To create a Facebook Business Page you access the Create Page link from your account. If you can’t find it just visit any other page and on the top right corner you’ll see a Create Page button.

Technical aspects to keep in mind:

1. The name of the page can’t be changed if you exceed 100 fans so choose wisely
2. You can have a URL like facebook.com/yourbrandname (this cannot be changed once you’ve selected one; make it simple to spell)
   1. You can do this by going to Edit Page (the top right corner button from your page)
   2. Go to Basic Information  (from the left side links)
   3. Set your Username
3. You can add more admins for a single page. You may want to do this if there is more than one person that manages the page. Steps to do this:
   1. Go to Edit Page button from top right corner of your page
   2. Click on Manage Admins from the left side links
   3. Click Add another admin
   4. To remove an admin you’ll need to confirm it by entering your account and password
4. Don’t publish an empty page. Add some content and then from Edit Page > Manage Permissions uncheck the box Page Visibility: this will publish your page and make it visible to all Facebook users
5. Add a profile Picture from Edit Page > Profile Picture. After you upload the image don’t forget to click on the link from under the image that says Edit Thumbnail. From the new tab click and drag to adjust your icon. You can go with square or vertical profile images

Build as many fans as possible

A Facebook page without fans is nothing. So here are some of the basic things you can do to get fans for free (you’ll always have the chance of running a paid campaign on Facebook to acquire more fans but for a start you can try some of these tips):

1. Invite your friends (from Facebook or other social networks) to join and help you spread the word
2. Go to Edit Page > Resources > Use Social Plugins and chose a way to advertise your page by adding Subscribe box on your own website
3. Have your page linked in your email signature, website and any other electronic document your business produces
4. List your page on business cards
5. Aim to determine people to hit the Like button on your posts or place a Comment. Placing a comment is better but both actions will be visible on their profiles so their friends might decide to check it out
6. Search for Groups on Facebook that are related to your business. Post there (as a user) and ask people to Subscribe to your page if they find your content useful (or you can directly share the content from your business page)

Original content is still king

What to share on a business Facebook page: things related to your business and your market. Remember that this is a not a place where you can broadcast only your links (this is most valid for small brands that are just rising). Aim to create a community where people engage with your content, comment on it and share it.

Here are my suggestions on what and how to post it on your business page:

1. Your own links (but ask for their opinion in the comment section from your page)
2. Original images created especially for your page: you have to give people a reason to subscribe to your page, like content that you post only there
3. Videos created by you or by others
4. Start discussions on different topics related to your business. The more interesting the better (you’ll get comments). Controversial issues will gather more comments.
5. Post about the latest news in your market and try to make people discuss about it. Usually everyone has an opinion about the latest news
6. Ask people about their problems related to your market and try post quick solutions. This is a nice way to get people from Twitter, for example, to subscribe. Identify major questions posted on Twitter (or any other social network), post a quick solution on your Facebook page and then contact the person and tell them about it (maybe ask to Subscribe)

What are your ideas?

I would like to keep this article open for suggestions, ideas and thoughts on this topic. Feel free to share what you want to say in the comments section bellow.

Why Every Business Blog Needs Evergreen Content
Evergreen content stays useful season to season, year to year with little or no need for upkeep.

Lessons Learned by an Over-Optimizer
This article is from SEOmoz and will show you a real example of what too much SEO can do. Sometimes we need to think more to our real readers and less to search engine bots.

Imagine an Online Life in the Offline World
Wouldn’t that be great? Having all those web features in real life would be like a superhero. Check out this fun article from Search Engine Guide.

22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue [Infographic]
Here is a cool inforgraphic from Copyblogger that show some interesting ways to come out with fresh content when you reach the writer’s block.

Never Fall In Love With the Medium
Chris Brogan is one of my favorites. I think the best line from this article is this: “Is Pinterest The New Amazing Network? It will be, for those who use it to build a relationship that goes beyond the pins”. Check out the article.

The Math of CRO – Whiteboard Friday
CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimization. The video shows the value behind CRO and how you can show its value to your clients/bosses.

How to Do Keyword Research [Infographic]
The information in this article is basic but it’s something that every web business owner should do. Finding the right keywords for your website represents the starting point of a strong online campaign.

It’s Our First Pandaversary!
I think this article from SEObook contains one of the simplest and clearer infographic that speaks about the Panda update from Google, its effects and ways to deal with it. Definitely worth checking out!

I this article I’ll briefly talk about the big No’s in social media and how to use different social media websites to leverage your business.

The Big No’s in Social Media

No to self broadcasting: many people use social channels to just send links pointing to their own website. This is wrong. In real life this person would start every sentence with „I …” or „My …” – nobody likes a bragger

No to only broadcasting: some people use social media channels to just send links. Why this is a No: it makes you look like a robot

No to spam: there are some people out there that think that sending direct messages on Twitter or replies with their links will benefit them. How many of you clicked one of those links?

Conclusion: every action that a social media friend will take will be as a result of trust and authority. If you mange to develop a trusted account then people will trust your words. Just like in real life social media is all about the term “social” – it screams for interaction!

NOTE: this is just a brief overview of different social media channels usage

How to use Twitter for business

The big benefit of Twitter is that is real-time: this means your tweets are seen as you write them. Your Twitter account should be named as your brand/business. Create a unique and personalized background for your account. Check to be sure that you’re not auto Direct Messaging every person that starts following you. Find out who are the top Twitter users in your market. Follow them and see how they’re using the platform. Interact with people following the top influencers and establish relations.

Search for people that tweet about problems related to your market. Use this to start a conversation.

How to use Facebook for business

Create a Facebook Page to promote your business. Facebook pages have the advantages that are indexed by search engines and show up in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Pages should contain content that is relevant to your market: use text, video and image sharing. Again the key thing is trying to build interactions.

The main thing about a Facebook page is to build fans and then to determine them to interact. Facebook will not bring you right-away customers. The platform will help you build awareness and trust on the web.

How to use LinkedIn for business

LinkedIn is a social network of professionals from all sorts of markets. The easiest way to build a strong account here is to have a complete profile and to be active in Groups, Subgroups and on LinkedIn Answers. Helping others and answering their questions or participating to their discussions is the simplest way to start interacting.

How to use YouTube for business

Next to Google, Youtube is the second website used for topic searches. Why waste such an opportunity. Create a Youtube channel and use video to talk about your business and how your services can solve different problems. You can develop a weekly/daily show to talk about the news in your market or just create viral videos that present your market/business/services in an original way.

How to use Pinterest (but more important: Why)

This is one the new things in social media. The idea is to share images that you pin from different sites. The big thing is that the image is linked to the page so if your followers see the image you’ve pinned and click it they’ll go the page where that image is included. Pinterest is a great place to build a strong account and a high number of followers (to help you repin/spread your shared content).

Let me know what your thoughts are and if you have questions in comments bellow.

The advantages of blogging as a way to do business are highly discussed on thousands of articles. In this article I break the main actions you should take when starting a new blog. These actions are the first things you’ll do: even before doing keyword research for your SEO strategy.

Establish your Goal

First of all you should establish a Goal. This is something that you want to achieve. It may be: I want more customers to my business or I just want to increase the trust factor of my business.

Set your objectives

Objectives are small steps that you’ll have to achieve in order to complete your Goal. Examples of objectives would be: reach 1000 subscribers in the first 6 months of blogging, increase traffic coming from your keywords, increase the number of comments on the blog, increase the social sharing of your content, create more diverse content.

Discover your methods

Methods are ways to achieve your objectives. Here are some examples:

Objective: increase the traffic from a set of keywords
Methods:
1. check the on-page optimization for every page that targets one of those keywords
2. see what other related pages you have on your website and link to the pages that target those keywords
3. work on a link-building plan to increase rankings for those pages
4. work on a plan to increase social sharing of that content

Objective: increase the number of subscribers
Methods:
1. create more interesting titles for your articles
2. experiment with different calls to action
3. have an easy to subscribe method clearly and visible posted all around your website

Objective: increase social sharing of your content
Methods:
1. Identify what social websites to use
2. start developing strong connections on social networks
2. develop a posting plan for social networks: don’t just broadcast only your own content but also try to interact and offer your support to people having problems related to your business
3. ask your social networks to spread your content. Once you have a good network (by this I mean people that you communicate with) you can ask them to retwitt, repost, share, like or repin your content

Positive Attitude

In the end of this article I would like to tell you to have a positive attitude. Blogging will not get you right-away-benefits. It will take a while but do it consistently and with a positive and pro-active attitude and the results will come.

Pro-Active attitude means to always fight for something positive not against something negative.

Let me know what you think. Share your ideas and thoughts in comments bellow!

People who know what they’re talking about…
Seth Godin is one my favorites writers when it comes to marketing. He presents his ideas so crystal clear. Read this few words article and tell me it isn’t so!

Tracking Social Media with Google Spreadsheets – Part 1
This article shows you how to track individual links you share on social channels like Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and so on.

10 Advanced SEO Tactics That Will Increase Your Blog’s Traffic
The article talks about the impact of social activity on your traffic. Of course that this kind of approach is time consuming and the results don’t appear over night but being social active is the thing right now. Really worth reading this article

Be Careful Using AdWords for Keyword Research
A really good article from Rand, as usual. The fact that the Google Adwords Keyword Tool that so many people use doesn’t show you all the suggestions means missed opportunities. So if you have an idea for a keyword type it to check the average search volume and don’t rely only on the suggested keywords.

11 LinkedIn Marketing Gems You’re Missing Out On
This is a great article from Hubspot and it can be the starting point of your marketing efforts on Linkedin. We already know that LinkedIn is much more efficient in sending leads than Facebook or Twitter so why not leverage that!

The Inside Scoop to Finding Link Building Opportunities with Free Alerts
Another great article from Neil Patel on link building techniques by using different alert web tools like Google Alerts, Social alerts, Twitter and Facebook alerts.

7 Rookie Social Media Mistakes From Big Brands
I think this is a really useful article: see how big brands can make some big mistakes when it comes to social media campaigns. This article from Hubspot is really worth reading.

The way to do it is by using Campaigns in Google Analytics

Here is how it works. Let’s say for example that I want to track a link of mine on Facebook. Here is the link: http://www.optimizingtheweb.com/improve-your-traffic-by-ranking-through-association/. The idea is to add some parameters to this link so that Google Analytics can track it. By adding these parameters the Campaign is automatically created. You won’t see the result right away: you’ll have to wait until next day since Google Analytics it’s not real-time.

How to add the parameters

The easiest way is to go to Google Analytics Configuration Tool. In Step 1 you enter your full URL. At campaign source you use Facebook or Twitter or Youtube or whatever site is your referrer (this is the website where you’re going to post your link). At campaign medium you use social for example if you post our link on a social website or you can also use for example banner (if you want to track clicks on a banner posted on another website) or email (if you’re going to send this link through email). The campaign name is up to you.

Create your own Campaigns in Google Analytics [INFOGRAPHICS

Hope you got it and you find it useful. Don’t forget to comment and/or subscribe to my blog.

Why you would want to do that, you might say. I mean if someone is searching for a particular news then he or she clearly has no other interest: correct. BUT if you write a good article there’s a chance that among all those people some will return and you’ll also offer a new and interesting perspective on the subject.

The main advantage is obtained by the way Google ranks the news. When a search query refers to news then the usual ranking algorithm doesn’t apply anymore: it’s time to QDF (Query Deserves Freshness). This means that the fresher the news the higher will rank. If you manage to catch the rising trend while is rising then you have a good chance to receive lots of traffic and let people know about your business and also you can have your most competitive keywords up there to display.

For example this technique was largely used these days because of the Super Bowl. Tell me how many articles related to the Super Bowl have you seen that weren’t about the super bowl and more about marketing or advertising for example.

I would like to hear your ideas on this topic and to discuss some more in comments bellow. Let me know what you think, your pros and cons.