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Best Facebook Tricks, Tips And Hacks 2017 (Latest)

2017-03-16T22:48:00.000+05:30

1. Create Single Name Account On Facebook.

Facebook does not allow to make single name account. Don’t worry here we are providing you amazing Facebook trick about make single name on facebook. By adding proxy to our browser manually and change our language to Indonesia we can create single name Facebook account. If you want to know step by step procedure then.

Read Here:- How To Make Single Name On Facebook.

2. Add All Friends To Facebook Group At Once.

If you want to invite your friends to your group one by one it is a time consuming task. This is really amazing in all Facebook tricks and hacks. It helps to invite all the Facebook friends to your group in a single click by running a script. If you want to know more details and procedure.

Read Here:- Add All Friends To Facebook Groups By Single Click.

3. Block Facebook Games and Apps Requests.

If you suffer from apps and games invitations then this Facebook trick is really for you. Facebook provide options for blocking that game or apps. You can also block a particular person or app. For more details.

Read Here:- How To Block Facebook Apps and Game Requests.

4. Invite All Friends To Like Facebook Page At Once.

This is really amazing in all Facebook tricks and hacks for user who manage pages. If you want to invite your friends to your page one by one it is a time consuming task. We provide you an amazing tip to invite all the Facebook friends to your page in a single click by running a script. If you want to know more details and procedure must read our post.

Read Here:- Invite All Friends To Facebook Page By Single Click.

5. Delete All Facebook Messages At Once.

You can delete all the Facebook messages at once by using our amazing Facebook trick. Facebook does not provide as such options. You can do it by adding some extension to your browser. If you want to know more about it then read our post.

At Here:- How To Delete All Facebook Messages At Once.

6. Disable Seen Option From Facebook Chatting.

Another popular Facebook hack regarding chat. It is possible to mark as not read but to remove seen option from your chat, Facebook do not provide options for it. This option allow your friends to see whether message send by them is seen by you or not. This is done by adding some extensions to your browser. If you want to know procedure then

Read At:- How To Disable Seen From Facebook Chat.

7. Accept All Facebook Friend Requests At Once.

It is possible to accept all friend requests at once instead of accepting it one by one. This is really most helpful in list of Facebook tricks and hacks for those who want to grow their account. Accept requests one by one is time consuming process. We provide you an amazing trick to accept requests at once by running a script. If you want to know then read our post

At Here:- How To Accept All Facebook Friend Requests At Once.

8. Mention/Tag All Friends In Facebook Status.

You can mention all friends in a status instead of adding them one by one. We provide you an amazing Facebook trick to tag all friends in status. You can do it by running a script and it will saves your time. If you want to know more about it then read our post.

At here:- Mention All Facebook Friends In Status By Single Click.

9. Change Facebook Timeline Color.

You can also change Facebook theme if you do not like the blue color of Facebook. In all Facebook tricks we think, this can be used to amaze other by changing color. Facebook do not provide option for it. We add up this in Facebook tricks for users who want to change Facebook theme color. They just have to add extensions into their browser. If you want to know the procedure read our post about.

At Here:- How To Change Facebook Timeline Theme Color.

10. Suggest All Facebook Friends To Another Profile At Once.

It is possible to suggest all friends at once instead of suggesting one by one. Suggest friends to our friend one by one is time consuming process. So here in all Facebook tricks we add up this process to solve this problem. For those to suggest all friends at once by running a script. If you know more details then read our post.

At Here:- Suggest All Friends On Facebook To Another Profile At Once.

11. Change Facebook Profile Name Before 60 Days Limit.

This is really important and recommended in all Facebook tricks and hacks. Facebook applied new restriction to reduce fake account. Now Facebook do not allow to change your name before 60 days after changing at once. Means You will be able to setup new name after the time period of 60 days. If you want to change your name before 60 Days we provide you amazing trick. To do this follow.

Read At:- Change Facebook Profile Name Before 60 Days Limit.

12. Download Facebook Videos Without Any Software.

Facebook does allow us to download videos directly from it. So we need third party application or software to this task. We can also download videos using IDM but some guys also don’t have idm or they are using trail version. Due to some circumstances they are not able to download. So here is the best to download Facebook videos online easily without any software. If you want to download Facebook videos then.

Must Read:- How To Download Facebook Videos Online.

13. Open Facebook Locked Profile Pictures.

Facebook provide more security and privacy to their users. So you can not see the profile picture of any user apply privacy to it. This is really amazing in list of Facebook hacks and tricks to view profile pictures. You just need to know the username of the user whose pics you want to see. If you want to know detail procedure then.

Read Here:- How To Open Lock Facebook Profile Picture.

14. Activate Login Approval (2-step Verification).

You can also secure your Facebook account from malicious users and hackers. You Can activate login approval for your account so when ever you login to your account you receive a code on your mobile and after code verification your account is open. To know about proper procedure.

Read Here:- Activate Login Approval On Facebook Account.

Source: https://safetricks.org/best-facebook-tricks-tips-hacks/

20 Facebook Tips/Tricks You Might Not Know

2015-02-23T22:12:00.001+05:30

If you surf Facebook on daily basis or occasionally, chances are you’re already familiar with regular stuffs like add/delete friends, update statuses, walls and profile, add and explore pages & applications, etc, but there’s more..

How to Place Facebook Chat On Firefox Sidebar
If you are using Firefox, you can place the Facebook Chat at the sidebar.
How to Download Facebook Photo Albums
FacePAD: Facebook Photo Album Downloader allows you to download your friends’ facebook albums, Events albums, and Group Albums, en masse, with the click of a button.
How to Share Flickr Photos to Facebook
Flickr2Facebook is an unofficial Flickr to Facebook uploader(bookmarklet) which allows you upload photos to Facebook from Flickr.

How to Update Facebook without Using Facebook
hellotxt and Ping.fm both introduced features that let Facebook administrators update Facebook Pages.
How to Schedule Facebook Messages
Sendible lets you schedule Facebook messages ahead of time so you can send messages to your friends, customers or colleagues in the future.
How to "Friend" Someone on Facebook & Hide It From Your Status Updates
A short tutorial on Makeuseof to guide you how to hide Facebook status updates and keep that fact confined to your closer friends.
How to Create a Photo Collage Using Pictures of Your Facebook Friends
Click on Friends tab. Proceed to More tab. From "Choose an option" dropdown, choose any of the dashes "—" . Your Facebook friends collage is right on your computer screen.
How to Know When Facebook Friends Secretly Delete or Block You
This service has been discontinued. X-Friends is a unique tool for tracking friends that disappear from Facebook.
How to Display Selected Pictures Only on your Facebook Profile Page
A little-known feature in Facebook that lets you decide who shows up in that Friends box. Click that "edit" pencil in your Friends box and type the names of your best friends in the box that says "Always show these friends"
How to Remove Facebook Advertisements
This Greasemonkey script – Facebook: Cleaner removes many of the annoying ads and updates that unavoidably appear on your Facebook pages.
How to Syncs Photos of Facebook Friends with Contacts in Microsoft Outlook
OutSync is a free Windows application that syncs photos of your Facebook friends with matching contacts in Microsoft Outlook. It allows you to select which contacts are updated. So you can update all contacts at once or just a few at a time.
How to Display Facebook Statuses on WordPress Blog
The following method make use of Facebook status feed and WordPress RSS widget to display Facebook Statuses on WordPress blog.. It will also work for self-host WordPress blogs.
How to Post Your Blog Posts to Your Facebook Wall Automatically
Wordbook allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall. Your Facebook “Boxes” tab will show your most recent blog posts.
How to Access Facebook Chat on Desktop
Gabtastik and digsby let you keep Facebook chat sessions open on your Windows desktop outside of your regular web browser, using minimal screen real estate and system memory.
How to Create Quiz on Facebook Easily
LOLapps provides quiz creator that can be employed to conjure up these popular personality quizzes that are so widespread in Facebook.
How to Hide Your Online Status on Facebook Chat from Select Contacts
Facebook has integrated friends list with Chat and you can also choose which of these list members get to see you online.
How to Get Facebook Updates on Email
NutshellMail consolidates your Facebook accounts through the inbox you use the most.
How to Update Facebook Status from Firefox
FireStatus is a status update utility for multiple social networks, including FaceBook.
How to Get Facebook on Your Desktop
Seesmic Desktop, Facebooker, Xobni, Facebook Sidebar Gadget, Scrapboy and Facebook AIR application are desktop applications that allows you interact with your stream just as you would on Facebook, but without the browser.
How to Delete, Cancel and Terminate Facebook Account and Profile
A simple guide to terminate, delete or cancel Facebook account, together with the Facebook profile easily.

Source: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/20-facebook-tipstricks-you-might-not-know/

7 Important Wordpress Tips for Beginners

2015-02-10T22:15:00.002+05:30

1. Your sidebar isn’t your hall closet

You know that hall closet you’re afraid to open because all the stuff shoved on the top shelf might come tumbling out and hit you on your head?

That’s what a lot of WordPress sidebars look like.

They’re stuffed with your ads, your social media icons, links to your most recent tweets, photos of your Facebook fans, and on and on. Buried among all that information might be a link you’d really like your site visitor to click on, but if they can’t find it, you might as well not have it there.

The solution? Pare down your sidebar to the absolute essentials.

Go into Appearance & Widgets and remove everything except the widgets that actually do something for your business or your cause.

If a widget doesn’t add people to your list, put money in your bank account, or get someone to take an action you’d like them to take, remove it.

2. Make it easy to find what’s in your library

If you own a library of books, does it make sense to house the books in separate buildings by the month they were acquired?

Of course not. You’d end up walking from building to building, searching for the book you wanted.

Your Media Library in WordPress is the same way. Creating one integrated folder where you place all your media makes it easy to search: just plug in a keyword and you’ll have the file you’re looking for in no time.

To set up your WordPress site so all your media files go into one folder that you can search by name, go to Settings & Media and uncheck the button next to “Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders.”

3. Clean up your permalinks

You work hard to create compelling content for your site, so you want Google, Bing, and Yahoo to find it. Make it easy for them by using short “road signs” that point to your information.

How do you do that?

You want to take a little time to learn the basics of SEO Copywriting (it’s not as hard as you might think). One quick improvement you can start making immediately is to use the built-in WordPress permalink field at the top of the editing page to revise your links before you publish them.

Eliminate unnecessary words, and make intelligent use of keywords in your description.

Don’t stuff it with keywords — make sure the end result is pleasant to read for a human being.

For example:

yoursite.com/7-ways-to-choose-the-best-tires-for-your-vehicle

becomes …

yoursite.com/choosing-tires-tips.

And this:

yoursite.com/the-copywriters-guide-to-getting-more-clients-than-you-can-handle

becomes …

yoursite.com/getting-copywriting-clients.

The idea here is to create a compact permalink that tells search engines what your post contains in a glance, and helps you rank for a keyword you’d like to be known for.

4. Maximize impact with targeted titles and descriptions

When you share your posts and pages on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn, these services pick up a page title and description to go with the link you share.

And when your page turns up as a result in a search engine, the title and description are what people use to decide whether or not to click on your link. Page titles are also an important element for search engines.

That makes the title and description some of the most important text on your page!

To get better control over what appears in these results, use SEO optimization software like Scribe to edit the page title and description.

Remember, descriptions are mainly for readers. Don’t try to cater to Google robots with these — instead, make them enticing, elaborate on the promise made in your headline, and use a strong call to action to encourage clicks.

5. Put your images to work for you

Images add beauty and interest to your pages. They can have a search engine optimization job to do, too.

Every time you upload an image to your website, you have the opportunity to add a keyword in your image title and alternate text fields.

What are those, you ask?

The title tag for your image generates the helpful little text that appears when someone hovers over that image.

And if for some reason the image is unavailable — or your reader is using an assistive device to view your web page — the alternate text tag is the text they’ll see in place of your image.

Again — they need to make sense. If it’s a story about tires and you’ve used an image of a muddy tire, don’t just call it “Tire.” Call it “Best Tire Brand for Muddy Roads,” or some other text that describes what people will find in your content. And make sure the alternate tag accurately describes the image you’re showing. This isn’t a place to stuff random keywords, it’s just another way to make it crystal clear what your site is about.

6. Focus attention and spark a response with a landing page

Want to get your site visitors to take action? Remove distractions and focus their attention with a landing page.

Many premium themes — including Prose from StudioPress, my favorite theme of all time — have a landing page template built right in. It produces a page with no navigation menu and lots of white space to work in.

This focuses your visitor’s attention on the one action you want them to take, and increases the chances they’ll fill in that form, click that Add to Cart button, or follow that one, single link you share.

If your theme didn’t come with built-in landing pages, the Premise landing page software for WordPress can help. And even if your theme does have a landing page template, Premise can help with the copywriting advice and an extensive library of images that will make your page effective.

Premise creates versatile landing pages and gives you complete control over style and content without knowing a single line of code, and it works with any WordPress theme.

7. Don’t forget the lowly footer

Down at the bottom of your WordPress site is the sometimes-forgotten footer area.

It’s where you can include a copyright message, a link to an important page, or information about who owns your website.

Many premium themes allow you to expand this area into a full-fledged content section where you can include a short bio, an opt-in to your email list, links to popular posts or pages, and more.

Remember, people scroll down to the footer to see who’s behind a site, so give them what they’re looking for and continue to engage them in this important space.

Source: http://www.copyblogger.com/new-to-wordpress/

Report: Google Will Get Access To Twitter’s Firehose Again

2015-02-06T21:16:00.003+05:30

Three and a half years after cutting off the flow, Twitter is turning the tweet pipeline to Google back on.

Bloomberg Business reported Wednesday night that Twitter has reached a deal with the search giant to provide access to Twitter’s firehose data stream. That will give Google the ability to index tweets immediately after they are posted. The report, citing unnamed sources, said Google and Twitter engineers are already working on the project and that it will be switched on in the first half of 2015.

A Twitter spokesperson had no comment on the report. A Google spokesperson didn’t respond to an email.

The reported agreement marks a rekindling of a relationship that ended in 2011, when Google killed Real Time Search and Twitter cut off access to the firehose. Since then, Google has had to crawl Twitter to index tweets and finding specific Twitter updates via the search engine has been spotty at best. Twitter, aiming to monetize its logged-off audience, has been working to improve its position in search results. It made a change last year that produced a 10-fold increase of traffic to Twitter by logged out users.

Read more about the deal on Marketing Land. And for more on the history of the Google-Twitter search relationship, read this by Danny Sullivan: Three Years After Breaking Up, Twitter Wants Back The Google Search Love It Once Had.

Add Comment Count To Post Header Titles in Blogger

2015-01-31T00:44:00.002+05:30

You noticed the number of comments displayed in comments section inside each posts. It is placed under the post. It is not noticeable to visitors. Do you want to add it to header to inspire your visitors to comment. The visitors only see the comment count when they reach at the end of the post. if the visitor not scroll to footer part , the comment count will not see.

Do you think about displaying comment count on the top of post will be better? Then here we are showing a technique to add comment count with beautiful backgrounds to the header part of the post, not only inside the post but also it will display to homepage.

After adding his trick the comment count will be displayed with post titles , if more comments on the post, it will encourage the users to comment and also helps to jump to comment section.

How to add Comment count to Post Header

Sign In to Blogger Dashboard
Go to Template -> Edit HTML
Find (Ctrl+F) ]]></b:skin> and copy the below code above it

.comment-count {
float : right;
width : 48px;
height : 48px;
background : url( IMAGE URL );
background-repeat: no-repeat;
font-size : 18px;
position:absolute;
margin-top : -15px;
margin-right : 2px;
text-align : center;
}

Choose the comment count background

Copy the URL of image you want by right clicking and select Copy image Location or Copy Image URL.
Replace the RED marked portion above with the image URL

Add Comment count code

Find the following code

<h2 class='post-title entry-title' itemprop='name'>

class='post-title entry-title'

Add the following code below it

<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
<a class='comment-count' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><data:post.numComments/></a>
</b:if>

Save Template

Congratulations you have done. Check your blog and get more comments. If you liked this article please like and share this blog.

Why Most Of The Web Owners Should Choose Social Media?

2015-01-24T01:36:00.004+05:30

In a very simple word SEO termed as a process to develop the image of your website or blogs where later on when you search a related keyword of your website into any search engine, especially on Google, Bing and yahoo then you find your website on the top of the website that has done just because of SEO. It’s both technical and easy either.

Now let talk about the usage of SEO and what Search engine optimization exactly is all about. As you know the basics of marketing that until or unless someone know about your brand, company or shop you barely will get attention of them. So, to get rid of this you require marketing and in this way after being adapting the method of marketing it becomes easier for someone to let other know what you actually have. To a certain extent SEO techniques also are involved with marketing but social marketing is just a part of SEO.

Here we’ll only discuss about SMO and the remaining one will be discussed in the later upcoming blogs. So, SMO termed as a social media optimization, this technique is used for social marketing of your content, blogs or website. You would have seen most of the big brands also are active on these social sites, not just to be social but to update their users or consumers about the prospects, about the price, quality and other things which a customer should be aware of their brands, goods and services.

You must be thinking about why social media and not other methods, then let me tell you that Globally most of the educated person do use phone, tablets, laptops and computers which means there are a large probability that must be using internet. And in today’s time you can get almost every person using social media which makes easy access for these promoters to let these people know about their brands, products and services.

At the last what I would like to add here that through social media a person is connect with his or her other friends so in case if a person comes to know about a product or service which he might feel is better, then the probability is that he’ll go for it and also will suggest their friends through the same media connection or may be personally and in this way the chain goes further, further and further. This is just a part of benefits which any person can get Via SMO. So, in my next blog I'll tell you why Facebook has been on the priority side for most of the marketers and SEO specialist.

Source:http://rkkant.blogspot.com/2014/12/usage-of-social-media-in-todays-world.html

11 Effective Ways to Use Social Media to Promote Your Content

2015-01-10T02:41:00.000+05:30

You’ve spent hours researching, analyzing, and finally creating compelling content to help you reach whatever content marketing objective you have. Just like authors who write a book, you’ll probably need to spend as much if not more time promoting the content than the actual writing of it. Where better to promote your content than where we spend more than 25% of our online time: Social media. 80% of marketers are already promoting their content in social media – but are they doing it effectively? Now it’s time to take your social media promotion to the next level.

Here are 11 effective ways to use social media to promote your content that you might not already be doing enough of.

Embrace the visual

We all know that tweets with images get more engagement. We’ve known for awhile that photos on Facebook get more engagement. Even images on LinkedIn get more engagement. Three of the “newest” social networks, Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat, are based entirely on the visual. So why aren’t you leveraging the visual when promoting your content? Create not only a branded “featured image” to share with your post, but also create separate images for each of the main points in your content so that they can be shared when you repeatedly post them to social media (see below for more on that point).

Headlines matter

You’re writing great content, but are you writing a title that is worthy of grabbing someone’s attention in social media? If not you either need to

Create better titles that will allow your posts to be more effectively promotable in social media or…

Create a new title that you will use to share your content in social media. Don’t just settle for one title: Because you should be posting your content multiple times, you should be creating multiple titles and even doing A/B testing to see what types of headlines are more effective to promote your content on what social networks. You might also want to use a tool like BuzzSumo to help you research effective titles for the same type of content per social network.

Customize for the platform

When sharing content, take advantage of the customizable posting features allowed on the social media platform being used. This includes the headline, image and a description of the content you are sharing. Every marketer and social media user is competing to catch the user’s eye, so the more optimized your post is for that particular platform the more effective your social media promotion will be.

For example, if you shared a link via Facebook, you have the opportunity to create a post that truly will stand out amongst the rest; all you need is an attention-grabbing headline, a clean, relevant image that piques interest which might be different from the featured image used in your content, and a short, compelling description.

With this formula, you can entice readers to click on your content. In the same manner, appending your content with hashtags can help make your content more discoverable for those social networks that support them.

Share at the right time

Though this tip may seem like common sense, most content marketers get too caught up in other aspects and overlook this simple concept. Because you want the content you are sharing to reach as many people as possible for maximum engagement, you have to go where the crowd is and when they are most likely online and active. Then, you can compile a posting schedule and make it a habit to post during a certain time of day.

Keep in mind that different social media platforms may not have the same peak times. While there are many infographics that will tell you when the best time to post in social media is, some of it simply comes down to both understanding how users engage on each social network and experimenting. Some social media platforms have features designed to aid you in this process, such as Facebook Insights. In addition, there are 3rd party tools such as FollowerWonk that can help estimate the best time for some platforms.

Don’t be afraid to post multiple times

There are numerous data studies that suggest you can be more effective by promoting the same content multiple times in social media. Now that you hopefully have multiple images and multiple headlines for your content, you can engage with your social media followers without them even knowing that the link is going to the same content you posted earlier. In fact, since social media users don’t see most of your social media posts on any given day anyway, consider posting multiple times to social media as a way to ensure that your audience has a chance to see your content.

Ask questions

Don’t just drop links. Drive social media users to communicate with you – and increase the chances that they engage with your content – by asking for questions and feedback. Because social media was made for people and not for businesses, you should always be striving to create a human connection with social media users.

The beauty of social media marketing is that it can be used to improve both your public relations as well as content marketing by simply asking for a response. To generate feedback and promote engagement on social media, include a question with the shared content that compels readers to respond. Better yet, create questions for some of your headlines and test the waters. Questions are a great attention-grabber, and will help foster a community of connection that will result in more effective social media promotion.

Share on the right platform

With so many new social media sites sprouting up vying for attention, it can be hard to keep up. Just when we thought we knew everything with the emergence of Ello, now comes Tsu. While having accounts on these various sites can be advantageous for fostering innovation and staying creative, it can be difficult to choose which platform to post your content to.

Since different sites serve different purposes and audiences, it needs to be repeated that it’s important to get familiar with the major social media platforms used by your target audience. Avoid redundancy, and simply “dumping” content across all channels. Concentrate on the platforms where you have the highest chance to engage with your audience. Use this list of content promotion tools to see which platform will best fit your needs.

Once your social media promotion is successful on these platforms, use what information you have gleaned to start embarking on a new platform. Don’t forget to share your multimedia content to social networks like Slideshare, iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher and, of course, YouTube.

Pay to play

Why do you pay for Likes or Follows when you can promote your content to a micro-targeted audience in social media? Paid Social is now mainstream, with paid promotion of content into the news feeds of social media users where you are guaranteed visibility from a relevant audience. If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to start shifting your budget to experiment in this area, whether that is on Twitter, Facebook or another network.

Maximize your brand advocates

Does your company have an employee advocacy program? Even if you don’t have a structured program, having more employees or partners that might already be sharing your content do so more regularly can only help promote your content in social media. Fortunately, there are many tools that have been created that make it easy to manage and measure social media sharing by brand advocates.

Leverage communities

An employee advocacy program is one way of leveraging communities and utilizing the strength in numbers approach to promote your content to more social media users. However, you first have to have a community in order to do so. There are already literally more than two million communities that exist within LinkedIn alone, not to mention additional ones in the form of Twitter chats, Google Plus communities, shared Pinterest boards, and even Facebook Groups.

Joining and becoming an engaging member of relevant communities will give you the chance to promote your content to a very targeted audience of social media users that could be in the hundreds, thousands, or even more! The largest LinkedIn Group has more than one million members! (There’s even a community to talk more about content marketing & content promotion, called The Content Marketing Forum)

Experiment with content creator communities

I saved this for last because it is not everyone’s cup of tea, but there are a number of communities such as Triberr, Social Buzz Club, and Viral Content Buzz that exist outside of social media for the sole purpose of bringing together content creators and enhancing your social media promotion. If the content you discover on one of these sites is something you would considering curating, then this might be a good site to consider promoting your own content on.

What’s Next

When it comes to promoting content, social media is one of the most powerful tools available; however, most content marketers fail to truly maximize its potential. By utilizing one or all of these 11 ways to promote your social media content you will be well on your way to generating a lot more traffic from social media for your precious content.

SOURCE: Curata

Hyphens v.s Underscores in URLs for Better SEO

2015-01-07T23:53:00.004+05:30

Most of us like the way Matt Cutts (head of Google Webspam team) discusses all the SEO Tips that apply to Google and removes each and every misconception and myth that is being wrongly propagated by both Off page and On page SEO. I am really proud to introduce that Google surely has a great customer service. You and I all write titles while writing any post. You should know that these titles are 88% responsible for driving the traffic towards your blog from the search engines.
Many of us actually don't realize that every character in the post title has its own significance and plays a great role in attracts decent traffic if wisely chosen. Titles are surely one of the important part of on-page SEO. So today we are discussing about a great topic on seo whether to use hyphens or underscores in urls.

What is an Optimized Title?

A title can only be known as an optimized title only if it has the features stated below,

Title should only contain 66 characters.

Title should containing simple daily used words. You don't need to use complex Vocabulary and no need to consult a Thesaurus for writing titles. Average internet user always go for words that sound familiar in search results page.

Select choice of words from Google Keyword Tool. Ignore the word Tracker.

You can use the following symbols frequently: - : ! ?

Use the following symbols rarely: . & % # |

Never use the long Dash or Underscore i.e. _

To write a perfect post title, read this tutorial: How to Place Post Title Before Blog Title For Better SEO in Blogger?

What Does Google Say About This?

Matt Cutts, the Head of Google Web spam team and webmaster help suggests that Underscores should always be avoided because the Underscores are normally used by programmers while they are writing algorithms and it often confuses the search robots. He suggested that dashes are much better to act as separators.

SOURCE: My Blogger Buzz

China Cuts Access To Google Search & Other Google Properties

2015-01-03T21:06:00.001+05:30

Many are reporting that China has blocked access to Gmail, as well as other Google properties.

Google Search has been severally impacted by the Chinese in this latest censorship attempt. If you check Google’s transparency report specifically for Web search access within China, you will see that traffic for that property is about half the normal usage since after December 25th.

A Google spokesperson told us, “we’ve checked and there’s nothing technically wrong on our end.”

Some users in China who try to access Google web search are being blocked completely. Some users are able to be redirected to Google Hong Kong but about half of those users are being cut off.

You can see the traffic drops from Chinese users in this interactive report.

SOURCE: Search Engine Land

Your Guide to Creating a Successful SEO Link-Building Campaign

2014-12-31T00:48:00.000+05:30

Years ago, it was easy for companies to make their way to the top of search results by manipulating the system. With a large number of spammy inbound links using keyword-rich anchor text, anyone could trick search engines into making their site appear important, credible, and relevant, thus manipulating their way to higher search engine rankings and traffic.

However, the days of creating large numbers of links without regard for quality have faded away, and this tactic no longer works. Search engines have made it much more challenging to gain search visibility, because search engine users demand quality search results. This is why search engines have placed a larger emphasis on detecting and removing content from search results that doesn’t deserve to be there.

With this in mind, it’s become important for site owners to not build, but earn valuable inbound links. A successful link-building strategy is no longer a manipulative effort; instead, it now revolves around quality content publication that attracts inbound links like a magnet. In this article, we’ll discuss how to create and implement a quality, successful link-building campaign.

Anchor Text Best Practices

Anchor text (the clickable words in a hyperlink) is a critical element of inbound links. Years ago, the commonly cited "best practice" for anchor text was to use your desired keyword as the anchor text. Google put a stop to that, using it as an easily identifiable signal of manipulation when it launched its Penguin algorithm update in early 2012. Including keywords in your anchor text can be strategic for establishing topical relevance of the linked page, but over-use of keyword-rich anchor text can backfire if Google determines it’s manipulative.

These days, anchor text should be natural, relevant, and value-adding. Anchor text shouldn’t be wielded as a tool for increasing your search engine rankings, but rather providing insightful information or resources to your audience. Branded anchors are growing in popularity and effectiveness, as are links that use the title of a cited article as anchor text. For an in-depth breakdown on the topic, see my article, "How to Properly Include Links and Penguin-Safe Anchor Text in Your Guest Blogs."

Guest Blogging

I’m a huge proponent of guest blogging as not only a way to build links, but also to build your brand. Guest blogging is one of the few tactics remaining where you can truly "build" links by being proactive rather than publishing content to your website and then waiting (and hoping) that it attracts inbound links.

Guest blogging has many benefits beyond just link-building, but not many people realize it. I believe this is due to the mass exodus from guest blogging after Matt Cutts’ blog post seemingly condemning it. But most people misunderstood what Cutts was saying, leading him to revise the article days later to clarify his stance on guest blogging. Cutts isn’t against guest blogging; he just condemns its use as a tactic solely aimed at link-building.

Guest blogging gives you the opportunity to align your brand with authoritative publishers and brands, and gains you access to a new audience.

Content Strategy: The Foundation of a Link-Building Campaign

Earning or attracting inbound links starts with publishing truly amazing, quality, value-adding content. Quality is often defined differently depending on who you ask, but this sums up how search engines and people define high-quality.

The most common mistake I see business owners make is publishing low- or average-quality content. Such content usually only hurts your brand, and won’t attract any inbound links. Infographics, videos, and in-depth research articles are fantastic types of content that attract inbound links.

If you are engaging in a content strategy, evaluate whether the content is truly link-worthy. If you aren’t engaging in a content strategy, it’s time to get started. A content strategy lays the foundation for a link-building campaign, providing link-worthy content while also strengthening your brand’s authority and credibility, along with conversion rates.

Measuring Your Efforts

Metrics are critical to ensuring that your link building strategy is providing positive ROI. There are several tools that can help you measure the value you bring to the Web and your site through your links. Here are some tools to consider:

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a valuable tool to anyone who is interested in SEO to any extent. Its offerings make it a one-stop shop for everything link and keyword-related. Some of its assets include traffic reports, SEO results according to Google, mobile traffic information, and in-page analytics. Use it to measure your organic search traffic, which should benefit from your link-building campaign.

Majestic SEO: Majestic SEO offers a wide variety of services, but its value to link builders comes in the form of a backlink checker. This feature can help individuals determine the number of backlinks detected by Web crawlers. Registered users of Majestic SEO can compare up to five URLs at the same time.

Google Webmaster Tools: Another essential tool for any SEO campaign, GWT allows you to view and download a list of inbound links detected by Google, along with the date the link was first discovered. Use this tool to determine which links are being counted by Google’s algorithm and when they were first detected by Google.

Screaming Frog: This SEO website crawler has a handy "list mode" that allows you to crawl a list of links (for instance, a list you download from Google Webmaster Tools). The output contains just about every piece of data you could ever dream of, relating to each link.

Whether you use free tools or pay for extra insights, gauging the performance of any marketing campaign is essential; and this this true for link-building campaigns, too. Deciding on a definitive way to assess your campaign can help you determine where you need to make improvements.

Creating Goals and Planning Ahead

It takes trial and error in order to determine which strategies work best for your particular niche/industry and audience in terms of attracting high-quality links. Use the information from your tools to assess trends. Which links and anchor texts seemed to be popular or attract the most referral clicks? What items were most clicked, and at what times of day were people visiting your site? It’s this type of information that can help you refine your strategy for the future.

Having a critical eye can help ensure that you’re always working toward improving the ROI of your efforts. As Google and other search engines continue to evolve, your strategy may need to change, but one thing’s certain: Google will never penalize or suppress quality content from its ranking algorithm. Start with quality, and design your link-building campaign from there.

SOURCE: Search Engine Watch

Worldwide Most Clickeded Keywords on Google

2014-12-27T20:56:00.001+05:30

Do you know the most searched keywords on Google in the world ? If no then read this post. We can easily find out the most searched keywords with the help of Google Trends. I also searched for this and I was surprised after seeing the result. If you read this article till end, I promise you will also surprise.

1- Facebook : Facebook is the most searched keywords on Google this year. Facebook is biggest social networking site and continuously growing everyday.

2- Youtube : YouTube is 2nd in this list. Even a child can understand why YouTube is rank 2. YouTube is the biggest video sharing site and some videos are reaching about 1 billion views.

3- Google : Now 3rd position is the most surprising name in this list. 'Google' is 3rd in the most searched keywords on Google. Can you believe it? People are searching for 'Google' on Google.com. I never believe this list if I did not see the list on Google.

4- Hotmail : Hotmail secured 4th position in this list. Now question is Hotmail is more famous than Gmail?

5- Free : Free is 5th in the list. Free really makes sense as I also search for digital contents on Google which are free and I believe you too searched for it.

6- Yahoo : Next is Yahoo which is 6th on rank. OMG! people are searching the second biggest search engine name on Google. This is the power of Google.

7- You : 7th most popular keyword in the worldwide. Yes, You! I was also surprised after seeing the word you in this list. Probably this is YouTube and because of our laziness we are just typing you instead of YouTube. I think after sometimes we will start typing only u and it will replace the position of you.

8- Mail : Now mail is the 8th most popular keyword. I do not know why people are searching for this on Google.

9- Games : Games is on rank 9 in this list. Games is always one of the most popular keywords for some years. It makes sense if we see the growing market of games in modern days.

10- Gmail : Gmail is bottom on this list and currently on rank 10. Gmail is the most popular free mail site and almost everyone has at least one gmail account.

How To Develop A Twitter Marketing Strategy

2014-12-26T01:44:00.001+05:30

The good news regarding Twitter is that although it went public in 2013, it didn’t jump the shark as many had expected. Instead the network has continuing to grow, with an magnified sophistication of its advertising platform. Let’s explore some tips for how to do that.

Why is this important?

175 million tweets are sent every day.
20 percent of internet users in the U.S. use Twitter. Of them, eight percent are active daily.
Top Twitter users typically come from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, France, Indonesia, Iran and Ireland. If your business is based in any of these locations then developing a Twitter marketing strategy will likely grow the reach of your brand.
Twitter does not pass link juice but your Twitter mentions benefit you as social signals for your website’s SEO.

Tip 1: Know the Followers in Your Niche

Planning a strategy for your brand’s Twitter marketing is easier and better organized when you get to know the followers in your niche. These may be your own brand followers or the followers of your competitors.

Use the following tools mentioned below to track the followers in your niche:

Followerwonk.com: Gives an extensive comparative analysis of followers, and those followed by your competitor sites. Sign up with your Twitter account and follow them or tweet about the tool in exchange for free sign up.
Mentionmap: Is a free tool that will help you track twitter users that mention particular brands/keywords. It also shows other followers in their network.
TweetBeep: Gives you hourly updates of conversations that mention your brand/keywords.
TweetReach: Lets you check the top contributors to your competitor brand mentions for free. This tool also gives you a timeline of tweets that shows how your competitor’s followers mention them on Twitter.

Tip 2: Gather More Followers

Having a large number of followers on Twitter suggests high authority in your niche. It also helps spread your tweets to a wider audience, thus bringing in more traffic. This may also lead to more sales.

Here are some ways to gather more Twitter followers:

Create a good first impression: Upload a high quality picture of your logo as the profile picture of your Twitter brand page.
Optimize your Bio: Use the Twitter bio section to describe your brand and add a link to a blog or an external bio, if you have one.
Promote your Twitter Brand Page: Display links to your Twitter brand page in all your emails and offline correspondences.
Cross Promote your Twitter Handle on Other Channels: Mention your Twitter handle in places such as forums, guest blog posts, blog comments and on other social brand pages like Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google+.
Share Content to Get Retweeted: Share valuable and inspiring content. People might be encouraged to follow you when your content gets retweeted.
Reply Publicly: Reply publicly by using @username in the tweet, or click the option Reply under the tweet. This shows others that you are a social brand. See screenshot below:
Optimize Twitter for Local Business: If you are a local business, mention your location in your Twitter page bio and mention your location with a hashtag (#) in most of your tweets. Follow other local businesses that are not your competitors, such as news sources or charity organizations, and mention them in your tweets when relevant.
Follow Industry Influencers: Follow major influencers in your industry. You can find them using the tools mentioned in Step #1.
Tweet a Comment: Instead of commenting on a blog, tweet about it on Twitter with the mention of the author’s Twitter handle. You can even strike up a conversation with others who mention the author’s name.
Incentives for a Follow or Twitter Mention: Offer discounts or organize contests in return for tweets and retweets with your brand mention, or a Twitter page follow, as shown in the example below:
Do not forget to announce the winners in a tweet publicly and always abide by the Twitter contest rules.
Filter your Followers: Filter your twitter profile with the free tool ManageFlitter. Find out how many users you have followed but are not following you back. If any of these users are unrelated to your niche you can have them removed. This will comparatively increase your number of followers versus the users you follow. Twitter users tend to follow those with a higher number of followers compared to the number of those they follow.

Tip 3: Optimize your Tweets

Plan what and when you will tweet.

The following are some quick tips on tweeting for business:

Plan the number of tweets you want to deliver on a regular basis. Tweeting too much risks looking like spammy behavior, while tweeting inconsistently may make your profile inactive. Once daily is recommended.
Post tweets that are worth sharing. Blog posts, photos, videos, events and company announcements are some of the things that must definitely be tweeted.
Start a conversation or ask a question.
Respond to tweets containing customer feedback, both negative and positive.
Keep your tweets short.
Do not overuse hashtags. Keep it to one or two hashtags per tweet. Check WhatHashTag for hashtag suggestions based on your keywords.
Retweet useful and positive messages for your audience.
Tweet special promotions, offers and discounts.
Make it a routine to tweet a business-related tip to your audience once a week. Highlight online news stories about your brand.
Peak traffic on Twitter is generally from 9 am to 3 pm. Avoid tweeting after 8 pm. It has been found that tweeting for business is not effective during weekends unless it is a holiday-related tweet. Schedule the time of your tweets accordingly.
Although posting tweets manually is preferred, it may not be possible for all businesses to hire a dedicated social media manager or in-house social media staff. In such cases, use third-party tools to schedule and automate your tweets, such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite.

Tip 4: Measure the Reach of Your Twitter Marketing Strategy

Measure your brand’s performance on Twitter using the following online tools:

WooRank Website Review Tool: Woo Rank’s Website Review gives you a quick preview of the backlinks you have earned from Twitter, details of your Twitter account and the most recently earned tweets. The screenshot below shows Twitter backlinks data.
Twittercounter.com: This free online tool gives you Twitter statistics on followers and tweeting data for three months prior to your start date. You can even compare your Twitter statistics with two other brands.
Wildfire Social Media Monitor: This is a simple yet effective tool to quickly compare your Twitter performance statistics with two of your competitors.
Socialoomph: This is a free tool that gives you Twitter statistics along with other social media data.

Twitter continues to be a powerful social media powerful tool. It’s important that marketers take more advantage of it because it’s used in many ways for your business.

SOURCE: Blogger Sentral

Why Google Not Crawls and Indexes Your Webpages ?

2014-12-24T02:32:00.001+05:30

In the Game of SEO, There are many of Bloggers and SEO's who Facing the Google's Crawling and Indexing Problem with his websites or Blog. So Here are the Reasons Why Google Not Crawl and Indexes Your webpages. Quick Sprout can Explain in a Simple Language that How Google Crawl and Index our Webpages So we Improve Our Search Engine Optimization and Gain Organic Traffic From Google.

Source: Quicks Prout

3 Essential Local SEO Strategies To Use Post-Pigeon Update

2014-12-23T21:13:00.000+05:30

Global SEO updates like Panda and Penguin changed fundamental ranking processes across the board, but one of Google’s latest changes, deemed the “Pigeon” update, has made an impact on a much more local LOCM -0.46% level. The Pigeon update, designed to give users a better search experience when looking for local businesses, has put a stop to some old local SEO tactics while paving the way for a handful of new ones.

Google now favors the information found on local directory sites, such as Yelp, with more weight, and uses more offsite information to generate immediate local search results. If you’re running a local business and you want to stay ahead of your competitors, start implementing these three new local SEO strategies:

1. Ensure Data Accuracy and Consistency Across the Web.

Now, more than ever, Google is cracking down on local businesses whose information is inconsistent or difficult to verify, and rewarding local businesses with clear, concise, and easily-available information. Your first and most important tactic should be to peruse the Web for mentions of your business and claim new profiles on local directories. Mentions of your NAP (business Name, Address, and Phone Number) are becoming major local ranking signals, so the more instances of that information there are across the web, and the more consistent that information is, the better.

Your first step is to claim your local profile pages on every local directory you can find (or at least the ones that are relevant for your business). Google+ and Yelp are must-haves for almost any business, while other sites like TripAdvisor and UrbanSpoon are dependent on your specific niche. Most of these sites allow you to claim your local profile for free and take charge of updating it with accurate information and images. Yext provides a tool to easily check many of the major directories, and also shows you how your NAP information appears on each one, highlighting any inconsistencies.

Quantity is significant; the more instances of your data appearing on the Web, the better. But the more important factor here is consistency. Google notices when your NAP information is in the same format, and it will reward you if that format is exactly repeated across each platform. However, any discrepancy—even changing the word “road” to the abbreviation “rd”—could register as an inconsistency, and weaken the impact of your efforts.

Once you’ve completed an initial round of claiming and cleanup, you can start your regular ongoing efforts. Once a month or so, do a routine check of your local profiles and see what other opportunities there are for you to update your information or claim new profiles on up-and-coming platforms. It’s also a good idea to include your NAP (consistent, as always) on other forms of external posts, such as press releases and guest blogs.

2. Drive Your Customers to Google+ and Yelp (and Similar Local Directories)

The Pigeon update did more than just boost rankings for sites with consistent information across the web. Possibly in response to an accusation that Yelp pages and reviews were not treated favorably in Google’s algorithm, Google updated their ranking structure to improve Yelp page ranking positions. For some small businesses, Yelp review pages actually started ranking higher than the company’s website.

This new ranking system has been seen as interference by some business owners, diverting traffic away from their companies’ webpages. However, it also represents a key opportunity. If more people are visiting Yelp to help make purchasing decisions, and Google wants more people to go to Yelp, all you have to do is spend more time getting people to go to your specific Yelp page.

There’s one key strategy that can simultaneously improve your company page’s ranking, improve your Yelp page’s rank, and give more honest information to your potential customers that could influence them to pursue your business: Encouraging more Yelp reviews. There are several ways to do this, but one of the easiest is to get some promotional material that asks customers to post a review directly. You can include these as stickers on the walls of your establishment, or as leave-behinds when you first meet a new customer. You can also post about it on social media, encouraging your current or past customers to post about their experiences. Positive reviews are, of course, better than negative reviews, but don’t be afraid of seeing some negative reviews. It’s just a part of doing business.

Of course, this strategy works for more than just Yelp. More positive reviews on Google+ is also an important local ranking factor, and positive reviews on other local directory or local information sites will only boost your rankings further. Encourage your customers to leave positive reviews wherever they can—just don’t pay for positive or fake reviews, or else you’ll suffer a penalty instead of gaining a boost. Also, never discourage your customers from leaving negative reviews.

3. Include More High-Quality Images and Videos.

The Internet is evolving into a format that favors more visual experiences than written text. As a result, Google is favoring local businesses with more high quality images and videos available for customers to view. For example, let’s take a look at the “local carousel”—the strip of local business entries that pops up immediately under the search bar. These are populated with brief descriptions, reviews, and images of local businesses relevant to the search query, and are formatted in a way that draws the eye of the person searching for them. While the exact algorithmic factors that generate these results are as secretive as the rest of the Google algorithm, it’s possible to optimize your business to show up in the banner. The first step is to include as many high-quality images of your business as you can on your Google+ profile (and other profiles around the web). Include images of the interior and exterior of your business, as well as your signature products (if applicable). It’s also a good idea to update these images regularly.

Next, upload videos to YouTube that feature your business. YouTube is owned by Google, and it therefore receives some extra weight in search rankings. People will have the ability to see your official videos immediately from the search results page, and you can include your exact location to increase your local relevance. The secondary benefit of including so many images and videos is that your online visitors will have a window into your business, and they’ll feel more comfortable choosing your business after having that virtual online experience.

While the Pigeon algorithm caused some major shake-ups in the world of local search, its biggest changes resulted in key opportunities for local business owners. By adapting to Google’s newfound preference for local directory sites, you’ll be able to increase traffic to your own site while engaging new potential customers directly on your review pages. And by ensuring accurate information and high-quality images across the web, you’ll make it even easier for new customers to find your business and make an informed purchasing decision.

The fundamental principles of quality SEO have remained the same: give your users a great, informative online experience. The only difference is what platforms work best to give them that experience, and what strategies you need to execute to accomplish it.

SOURCE: Forbes

How to Optimize Images for Better Search Engine Rankings

2014-12-23T02:53:00.000+05:30

When search engines start indexing the pages on your site, they don't just focus on the writing. Web crawlers employed by services like Google and Bing shuffle through your site's structural code looking for any relevant information that they might offer to their customers. Some of the information includes things like backlinks, tags and even images.

Images make up a big part of any website. They help to excite the visual senses of readers and offer a little extra entertainment value. What most blog owners don't realize is that all of the photos that they upload to their site aren't confined to their site alone. Crawlers make sure that these images also show up within their respective search engines sites.

Image searches can have the effect of drawing in large numbers of new readers that were just looking through content in Google images. You can benefit from this traffic and increase your average subscriber by practicing image optimization.

Image Optimization Tip #1: Alt Tags & File Names

Visitors may love images, but computers don't. Computers are designed to do what you tell them without violating any of the parameters. When web crawlers come across images on a website, they really don't know what to do with it because they are made to collect information, not interpret it. The solution to this problem is to optimize images and appropriately label your alt tags so that they display the correct content when someone goes to look for it.

For example, let's say you upload a picture of your dog, and label the "alt" tag by the dog's name, 'Frank'. The web crawler is going to read the alt tag without ever realizing it's a picture of a dog; therefore, the crawler will come to the conclusion that it needs to display the image when someone run a search for 'Frank'.

The minor word choice mistakes may not affect the operations of your website, or how your image is displayed, but it will affect the search results of others and the traffic that comes into your website. Whereas you may have been able to attract the dog lovers in the world using image optimization of your dog tagged 'dog', you are now drawing in crowds searching for their uncle "Frank".

To include the alt tag, simply add alt="this is your alt text" to your image tag. Here's an example:

<img src="pug-dog.jpg" alt="frank dog" />

But you don't have to touch the html code of the image. Once the picture is uploaded, click on it and you will see the "Properties" setting. Add the alt text inside the box and hit OK:

This goes the same for file names on a website. You need to optimize images and file names on everything that you decide to save to your website directory so that this information can be appropriately indexed and be used as a search term. You could name the file of your dog Frank, "pug-dog.jpg", which would encourage the search engine to add Frank into searches being performed with the phrase 'pug dog'. Alt tags and file names play an important interpretation role between you and the machine that makes your blog possible.

Image Optimization Tip #2: Add A Caption

After uploading your images, you should always add a caption to the image, so that average browser understands what they're looking at. This gives your website a more professional appearance and will help to keep people on your page.

Not everyone that comes across your picture using a Google Image search is looking for your blog. Maybe they just want to download the image, and that's all you'll ever get from them. The important thing is that they found your photo relevant to their search, and decided to navigate to your site in order to save it for their own use.

The longer those users stay on the site, the better it looks for you because it plays a role in the "bounce rate". Bounce rate refers to when someone clicks on a link, realizes it's not what they're looking for, and then immediately goes back to the search engine. If you can reduce the number of times that this happens by providing captions and intriguing content that will make people want to stick around, your SEO ranking will improve.

Image Optimization Tip #3: File Size

Improving your bounce rate can be tough because the attention span of the everyday Internet user is incredibly short. It may be as short as 8 seconds. High bounce back rates and slow loading sites can be the death of most blogs because no one wants to wait for the content to load. By the time your website finally loads with the content that you need, they could have easily visited two or more sites and found what they need from someone who was better prepared to handle their traffic.

Optimize images so that you are able to keep the file size as small as possible while retaining the quality of the photo. Images taken from DSLR camera - although they may look great - can be up to 1.4 MB in size if you take them directly off your camera and upload them on your blog. This type of space is massive for any everyday blog, and will hurt your SEO ratings.

Use Photoshop or one of many online services like Google Picasa to rescale your images or reduce the file size. Two services that can perform this ability for free and do a great job are Yahoo's Smushit and Kraken. When you access either site, they will allow you to upload the picture on the site and download the new image optimization versions for use on your Blogger site.

Putting It All Together

At the end of the day, the quality of your site and overall SEO ranking isn't just about what you have to say. It's the entire package of what you have to offer. Optimize images every chance you get and use the strategies discussed above. Now that you know that you might have been neglecting images all along, you can make necessary adjustments and start to see even better results from all your hard work.

Source: Helplogger

5 Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn for Reputation Management

2014-12-22T21:07:00.000+05:30

When it comes to online reputation management, most people head right to Google for solutions. They look for keywords that could harm them, or articles that contain negative information about them, and they come up with new content that will rank just a little higher in Google search results.

While that could be a winning strategy (particularly for companies under attack), there’s another tool individuals can use to kick up their online cred: LinkedIn.

At the moment, this site has well over 107 million users in the United States alone, according to official LinkedIn statistics, which makes it one of the biggest social media sites out there. That simple fact might make it a good target for reputation work.

But, LinkedIn also has specialized tools that make it ideal for those who want to boost their good name (or those who do rep work for others). Here are five steps to make the site work best.

1. Optimize Your Entry With Keywords

LinkedIn works much like a search engine: Users type in sets of keywords, and the site spits out results accordingly. Using the right keywords makes a profile a little easier to find. And, the right keywords could also help someone to seem a little more professional or credible.

Consider this: A sales professional could include keywords like “honest” or “reasonable” in order to make the job seem a little less slick and a little more palatable. Or, a doctor could use words like “experienced” or “good listener” to help bring in nervous patients. Those keywords help the pros get found, but they also attach a good attribute to that person’s name. Win-win!

Keywords could go anywhere, but as some bloggers suggest, keywords work best in high-impact spots, including:

Headlines
Company names
Job titles
Skills

Putting key phrases here is a smart strategy.

2. Do a Little Bragging

It’s hard to write a natural-sounding blog entry or social media post about an award you’ve won or a compliment you’ve received. Plus, posts like this tend to have very little impact, as few people want to read blogs full of boastful comments.

But, LinkedIn actively encourages boasting. There’s an entire section of each profile devoted to awards and recognitions you’ve won. Loading that up with real data could be an excellent way to suggest that you’re good at what you do, and that you can be trusted with future work.

It’s important to resist the urge to lie as you type, however, as LinkedIn also makes it really easy for your contacts to report inaccuracies. By filling out one little form, your enemies could torpedo your attempts at profile dominance. So it’s best to be honest.

3. Make Real Connections

Plenty of bloggers suggest you can connect with “anyone” on LinkedIn, even if you don’t have an in-person relationship, and that doing so could help to kick up your career. The thinking is that reaching out to those you don’t know quite yet is a form of advanced networking that could come in handy, in case you need another job down the line. Connecting could also be handy for reporter types, who need plenty of contacts in order to get good sources on a tight deadline.

When it comes to reputation management, however, I think connections should be limited to those you actually know. Why? Because attempting to connect with people you don’t know personally is sometimes seen as a personal affront. Just ask a Cleveland woman who wrote a scathing response to a stranger who attempted to connect with her on LinkedIn. Fury doesn’t even begin to describe her feelings. This isn’t the kind of response anyone needs when they’re in cleanup mode.

But also, LinkedIn connections are designed to assist with profile building. The people you’re linked to provide endorsements and written recommendations. They respond to posts and share them. They work as a supportive community. When the contacts are all fakes or strangers, that community doesn’t exist, and I think that dilutes the power of LinkedIn.

4. Join Professional Groups

Just because you can’t connect with strangers doesn’t mean you can’t network on LinkedIn. You’ll just need to use a different tool, and groups fit the bill quite nicely.

Groups contain professionals who all share the same kind of work or the same basic set of interests. Interacting with groups allows you to connect with others in the field, who might become connections in time.

But also, each group you’ve joined is listed on your LinkedIn profile page. That means these groups can also boost your reputation. Think of them like another set of keywords that describe what you do and what you’re passionate about. Choose wisely, and you could describe your good points with the right kind of membership.

Data from 2011 suggests the majority of LinkedIn users are in 10 or so groups. Even joining one is a start, but adding up to 10 could be a great way to make reputation work a little easier.

5. Consider Blogging

Earlier this year, a column on SEJ suggested most experts found the LinkedIn blogging feature helpful, particularly for people who work in the B2B sector. I’ve never written there personally, but it’s encouraging to think that this new blogging platform is really working for people who want to share content, and who don’t necessarily want to start a new blog to make it happen.

LinkedIn blogging does come with some dangers, however, as the entries can be shared quickly. That means anything you write here should be specifically designed to make you look good. No curses, no inaccuracies, and no offensive statement -it might be hard to repair the damage.

But even if you don’t blog on LinkedIn, you can use the site to share and amplify the content you’ve written for other sites. Links from a personal blog are easy to share on LinkedIn, as are links to guest posts you might write for other sites. If those posts are optimized with the keywords you’re fighting, and you’re looking for a way to drive more clicks on those posts, LinkedIn could be a great help.

Always Evolving

Setting up a profile and joining a few groups isn’t a winning long-term LinkedIn strategy. It takes ongoing work to really make the site tick. That’s when you get the endorsements, engagements, and credibility that translates into lasting reputation management success. It’s something that takes time.

But clearly, LinkedIn has a great deal of power, so it’s worth the effort to utilize all that the site has to offer. And by devoting just a few moments of time each day, it could become an invaluable tool in the fight against an attack.

Have any of you used LinkedIn, either as your own reputation management tool, or on behalf of a client who was facing a problem? I’d love to hear about it. Please share your thoughts in the comments section!

SOURCE: Search Engine Journal

8 Common Content Optimization Mistakes We Saw In 2014

2014-12-21T22:56:00.000+05:30

As content marketing involves influencing customer purchase decisions through content creation and distribution, most marketers understand the necessity for compelling content.

However, many often forget about the impact SEO can have on content marketing success. In addition to publishing high-quality, helpful content, your content and website must be well optimized in order to be found by search engines, and more importantly, your audience.

Unfortunately, with the amount of misinformation about SEO published online, marketers make many SEO mistakes without even realizing it, which could be costing their businesses traffic and search engine rankings.

In an effort to minimize the number of marketers making common SEO mistakes, I want to share the eight most common content optimization mistakes we saw this year:

1. Duplicate Content

Publishing duplicate content is a mistake website owners usually make completely unintentionally, and they often aren’t alerted to it until they notice a drop in rankings or website traffic.

Though most website owners know not to outright “double post” content, there are less obvious ways duplicate content can crop up, like secure HTTPS pages, URL parameters and CMS templates.

If you have detected duplicate content issues, you’ll need to tell search engines not to index specific pages through the Noindex, Nofollow tag or rel=canonical to preserve your rankings and traffic.

2. Bad Backlinks

Link building remains a crucial part of SEO, but not all links are created equal. There are good links and there are bad links, and too many bad links can cost you.

Bad backlinks include links from irrelevant websites, spammy websites, gambling sites, link directories and ad-heavy sites – links that look (and most likely are) unnatural.

Luckily, there are many tools, like Open Site Explorer or SEMrush, you can use to gather your backlink portfolio. Once you have your backlink data, you can attempt to remove bad backlinks by contacting website owners and using Google’s link disavow tool.

Though this process can be timely and difficult, it is necessary to sustain your search engine rankings and online reputation.

3. Keyword Cannibalization & Over Optimization

Though many businesses have a few target keywords that could be used throughout many pages of their website, putting the same target keywords on every page can severely hurt your SEO strategy. As a result, each page of your website content should be optimized for a specific keyword.

Search engines work to display the most pertinent pages for a specific search query. If there are a number of pages on your site optimized for the same keyword, how will search engines know which page is the most relevant?

Short answer: they won’t. In other words, you’re leaving the search engine no choice but to choose which page to return in the SERP for that specific search term.

Additionally, over optimization can be detrimental to your SEO success. You want each page to focus on a specific keyword and to use that keyword throughout the page copy and in page tags and descriptions. However, you don’t want to use the keyword too much, as that can result in over optimization. Confusing, right?

The 8 Most Common Content Optimization Mistakes We Saw in 2014- confusing Google

To avoid this, your target keyword should appear naturally throughout the page and within the title tag, headings, meta description, etc.

For example, say you’re a staffing firm, and your title tag reads as follows: “tech staffing services | tech staffing firm + company name | company name + tech staffing services.”

Though this may look nice as a title tag, it surely doesn’t look natural. You’ve over optimized by using the same keyword multiple times, which can look spammy to search engines and users.

4. Image Optimization

Optimizing images is often an afterthought for many website owners, though it certainly shouldn’t be. Image file names, titles and tags can affect SEO. Though search engines can’t “see” images, they can see the text and code associated with images. You can effectively optimize images by:

Saving the image with a descriptive file name, as that can provide context as to how the image relates to the rest of the content on the page (e.g. “funny-cat-pic.jpg” vs. “IMG10003.jpg”)
Utilizing the alt tag to serve as alternate text when an image is not available
Including keywords and phrases in image title tags to provide context when the image is scrolled over

5. Page Load Times

Search engines use page load time as a ranking factor, solidifying it as a significant factor in SEO. Additionally, page load time affects user experience, as just a 2-second delay can result in abandonment rates up to 87 percent.

Fortunately, there are many tools available to analyze page load speed and potentially diagnose what is causing the lag in load time. Additionally, you can preemptively optimize page load time by reducing the number of redirects used, using suitable image sizes, and avoiding excessive plugins, CSS and HTML.

The 8 Most Common Content Optimization Mistakes We Saw in 2014- search engine algorithm- page load error

6.Low-Quality, Poor Content

Yes, we still see it – a lot. Ever since Google’s first Panda update in 2011, search engines have been cracking down on websites with thin content and/or content that isn’t catered to the human user. Though you want your content to contain keywords and be optimized for search, content should still always be created for the end user first.

Your content should be useful first and foremost. If you’re writing content only with search engines in mind, you’re failing your human audience. Focus on speaking to customer pain points, answering frequently asked questions, and acting as a resource for your audience; optimize for search along the way.

7. Keyword Misfocus

When optimizing a page for a specific keyword, you must be sure to focus on the same keyword throughout the page to avoid keyword misfocus. For example, say you are optimizing a page for “blue polo shirts,” and use that keyword in the title tag. Then, throughout the page, instead of “blue polo shirts,” you just reference “navy polos.”

This can result in keyword misfocus and can be confusing for search engines and users alike. Whatever keyword you are optimizing for should be consistent throughout the title tag, H1 heading, page URL, page content, and image tags.

8. Indexability Issues

As I mentioned earlier, if your content can’t be found, you’re in trouble. This is especially true if you have indexability issues from blocked pages, missing pages and broken links. After all, your content needs to be optimized for search for search engines for your audience to find it organically.

If search engines can’t find and index your pages, your content may never even make it to the end user. Because of this, it’s extremely important for website owners to frequently check that pages and links are working correctly.

Overall, there are many SEO mistakes that can result in low SERP rankings, but the eight featured above were the most common offenders of 2014. However, these mistakes can be remedied; though some may be easier to fix than others, all must be repaired in order to achieve optimum SEO success.

SOURCE: Marketing Land

Google Maps, Yelp & Local SEO In 2015

2014-12-21T02:40:00.000+05:30

When it comes to digital marketing and SEO for your business, it’s important to look beyond just your website. For local businesses, a strong online marketing effort requires an investment in local directories, maps and review sites, too.

If all of your optimization efforts are spent on your site, you’re likely missing out on opportunities.

Google’s Pigeon algorithm update, released in July 2014, gave more prominence to local map and directory sites such as Yelp. In many instances, Yelp listings now rank above the business’ website.

For example, when you search on the query [bakery phoenix], you have to scroll past three map listings and three organic listings before you finally see a local business website listing. That first local business website is in position 7, essentially.

How many potential customers are going to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to find your actual website? Nowhere near as many as are likely going to click on the map or directory listings that are more prominently positioned at the top of the search results page.

Thus, it’s important to make sure you’re watching these listings on a regular basis and optimizing your presence in the map and directory sites.

Step 1. Set Up Your Google My Business Account

The most important thing is to make sure you’re listed and your information is correct. You can do this for Google maps via Google My Business. Google My Business provides an easy way for a business owner to create a listing or claim an existing one, allowing them to ensure that their information is accurate and complete. Best of all, it’s free.

If you were signed up and verified through Google Places or Google + Pages, you should automatically be moved over to Google My Business.

Step 2. Get Started With Yelp

Claim your business listing on Yelp. Once you’ve claimed your business, you can update information, respond to reviews, upload photos and more. Yelp is the most popular consumer review site, and as such, it’s important to ensure your information is present (and accurate) on their site.

Step 3. Optimize Your Listings

Once you’ve claimed your listings and verified that your contact information is correct, it’s time to optimize your business information. You can add photos, hours of operation, contact information, your URL, and other information to make your listing more robust (allowing it to stand out from the crowd). You can also create deals, respond to reviews and more.

Step 4. Gather Reviews

Gather great reviews on your listings. I know, that’s easier said than done; this is one of the more critical and more difficult tasks to coordinate.

There are a few methods you can use to generate reviews. Some will advise you to “just ask for them,” but honestly, that’s not very organic. Yes, you can ask people to write reviews or offer an incentive to someone who reviews your business; however, you should be cautious with that type approach, as many review sites (including Yelp) discourage review solicitation.

As with everything else, Google wants to provide the best information to their customers (searchers), and that means it wants honest, reliable information. If you offer great products, provide great service, and take care of your customers, they’re going to be inclined to review you on these sites whether you ask them to do it or not.

Step 5. Engage With Customers Online

Respond to reviews. It’s likely you will have a mix of both good and bad reviews on Google Maps and Yelp. That’s normal.

Unfortunately, customers are often more inclined to leave negative feedback than positive – that’s why it’s critical that you respond.

There will of course be some customers that can’t be satisfied, and in certain instances you may feel that you were in the right and they were in the wrong. However, if you have multiple negative reviews that all talk about similar issues, that might warrant double-checking the situation to see if maybe what they’re saying is true.

In any case, respond, acknowledge their concerns and try to make them right where you can. It’s not necessary to air the entire concern publically; rather, respond and provide an email address or phone number where they can contact you further to work to resolve the situation.

Final Thoughts

By now, you understand the importance of working with local maps and directories such as Google Maps and Yelp. In today’s post-Pigeon world, this type of site will often rank above your own website – as such, you must be present there.

Managing your business on these sites needs to be part of your ongoing SEO strategy — in other words, it is not a one-time task. This “set it and forget it” mentality could leave you with outdated information, negative reviews that are unanswered, and other issues.

It’s likely that more customers will be exposed to your business through these sites than your actual website, at least initially. By including these sites in your overall strategy, you will be able to build your customer base and, hopefully, grow your business.

Source: Search Engine Land

4 SEO Answers Your Development Team Needs in 2015

2014-12-20T23:53:00.000+05:30

As we move into 2015 we have a responsibility as SEOs to positively shape the outcome of any Web development project we’re a part of. That means providing answers to questions posed by stakeholders and the developers about the current state of search. It’s critical that we do everything we can to ensure sites in 2015 are built according to proper technical SEO standards, that the site is set up to drive traffic, and that site performance can be measured.

Here are four questions you need to be prepared to answer for your Web development team in 2015.

What Are the Basics of Mobile-Friendly SEO?

Designers have been preaching the importance of mobile-friendly websites for a long time, so you shouldn’t have to convince anyone that mobile-friendly from a search perspective is a good idea. But it’s not just about creating an aesthetically pleasing mobile site, however - you need to build a site that has a quick load time, proper technical setup (such as mobile sitemaps), and fits a number of other criteria in order to stay in compliance with Google’s mobile-friendly standards.

Your development team has enough they need to learn on their own; it’s your job to help them stay ahead of mobile trends in 2015. Google has tipped its hand regarding the importance of mobile UX, and it is only going to become smarter about how it rewards mobile-friendly sites for providing a better user experience. Your business’ goals are going to change as users become even more mobile. Stay one step ahead by understanding what your team needs to do to ensure it’s prepared.

That might mean educating yourself on new technology or updates as soon as they come out or learning more about app indexing if you don’t have experience in that area.

What Should We Do About Local Search?

With the Pigeon algorithm rolling out in July of this year, you know there is more to come for local search in 2015.

Local business websites can always be tricky, but your developers need to ensure that your businesses name, address, and phone number (NAP) appear in in HTML on your site so they can be crawled by Google. If you rely on local business and have a storefront, include NAP information in your business’ header and footer. You should also encourage developers to become familiar with setting up local business schema data, which can help your site provide better information, such as hours of operation and reviews, to search engines and users in search results.

Local search is tricky, but after years of making it tough on the little guy, Google is making moves that will benefit smaller, local businesses in SERPs, so take advantage of that and properly set up your site from an SEO perspective so you reap the benefits of the additional changes that are sure to come in 2015.

Local SEO will continue to be a major challenge, so it's vital that your development team builds a solid SEO foundation for any new website.

Should This Site Use HTTPS?

2014 was the year of the data breach, so you can bet that many websites will continue the switch to HTTPS in 2015. Providing users with a secure connection may not seem important for every page on your site, but adding HTTPS as a ranking signal is merely Google’s latest step in security for its users.

Sure, studies so far seem to show that HTTPS has not impacted rankings for sites, but this isn’t something that Google is going to backpedal on. You should keep yourself educated about Google’s perspective on HTTPS to be sure you’re helping your development team make an informed decision about whether or not a particular site should use HTTPS.

Though HTTPS should only minimally impact page load times, your development team will have to balance security needs against image compression to ensure Google doesn’t penalize your site for slow load times.

How Will We Track Results?

Hopefully you’ve answered this question in 2014, but the nuances of your response should continue to evolve in the coming year. It’s becoming critically important that sites are set up properly to track user behavior and conversions – if they aren’t, how do we know what we’ve built is working?

Your developers should absolutely know how to insert Google Analytics tracking code, but you should also emphasize the value of having a working knowledge of testing tools like Visual Website Optimizer so they can identify CTAs, forms, or other elements of a site that should be tested.

With Google Tag Manager knowledge, developers can set up tracking for things like page scroll depth and login errors – interesting indicators of a site’s performance from a design and development perspective. In general, a proactive approach to measurement and tracking is best in 2015. For example, if you know that the business you are building a site for will be utilize Google AdWords, be sure that call-tracking code is set up properly.

Marketers may be responsible for a website’s performance after it’s built, but it takes proper setup from the beginning to ensure we’ll get the data we need to make educated decisions about future iterations to a site.

SEO and website user experience have become increasingly linked, so 2015 should be a year where the marriage between SEO and Web development grows even stronger. By nature, people who work in technology are hungry for information and results; you can strengthen the relationship between SEO and development by having solid answers to the questions developers may ask you in 2015 (or, better yet, by answering for them before they have a chance to ask).

Source: Search Engine Watch