SearchMar Marketing Blog

3 Simple Tips to Become a Better Tweeter [del.icio.us]

2010-03-09T14:43:18-08:00

How To Optimize PDF Files for Maximum SEO Performance

2010-03-09T14:11:00.000-08:00

A PDF file can be in the form of an eBook, technical document or a brochure. Most of the search engines can read the content and index the PDF files. Currently, there are a number of well optimized PDFs which rank well and are a source of traffic for their website.

Listed below are some optimization tips:

1.    Use a Text Based PDF Creator: There are many PDF creators available online with Adobe Acrobat among the best text based PDF creator. Search engine robots cannot read a text file, so if a PDF file is made in an image based program, they will completely ignore it. If the PDF file is created using a text based creator like Adobe Acrobat, the search engine robots will read and index the text like any other web page.

2.    Update the Document Title: The title of the PDF is as important as the title tag of a web page. The title property of a PDF file tells the search engine robots about the type of content. The most important aspect of the title is that Google uses the text in the title field as the link in the results page. Thus, the title field should be keyword rich and should not contain random text.

3.    Complete the document properties: A PDF file contains many document properties apart from the title field. These are keywords, description, author info, copyright info etc. All the fields must be completed with relevant information. The keyword field should not be stuffed with keywords or remain empty. It has not been proven that the search engines give importance to the keyword field in the document properties. If in future they do, your PDF file will have an advantage over other web pages.

4.    Link to the PDF File from the Homepage: The Searchbots will not discover and index the PDF if it is placed too deep within the website. To ensure that the file gets crawled by the search engines, it should be visibly linked from the home page or any other page which gets crawled regularly. If your aim is to get the PDF in top search engine result pages, then you have to lead the searchbots to it.

5.    Optimize the content in the PDF File: The content in the text based PDF files is similar to the content in a website. This makes content optimization an important aspect in PDF optimization. The content should be relevant to the subject matter. Important text should be highlighted by increasing the font size and utilizing the bold and italics features. Keywords should be placed in the first few lines of the content.

6.    Place Links in the PDF File: When a visitor opens a PDF document ranking in the top search engine results page, there should be a provision in the file to link back to its original website. This action reduces the efforts of the visitor to hunt for the main website. Also, a link from the PDF text can be considered as a backlink by the search engines.

A PDF is similar to a web page in an assortment of aspects. It should be optimized with as much care as a web page to achieve high rankings.

How To Optimize PDF Files for Maximum SEO Performance [del.icio.us]

2010-03-09T11:23:19-08:00

StumbleUpon the Best Sites on the Web

2010-03-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

Relevancy search through traditional search engines can be a tiresome routine for users who have to wade through tons of sites to get a few quality content. In traditional search, a site can get to the first page of Google’s search results just by having very good SEO done on it, but not necessarily having good or relevant content.

StumbleUpon offers a unique new proposition that is fast becoming more and more appealing to social media users. Instead of a search result list, social media users are directed to quality sites immediately. The determinant of quality in StumbleUpon is the number of “likes” or votes though a user-driven rating process. Based on personal preferences, social media users are brought automatically to the best “liked” sites or quality sites voted by like-minded users.

As opposed to traditional search engine behavior which gives out a list of web sites for users to sift through, StumbleUpon social media users are freed from these tedious process and brought directly to a virtual cornucopia of good sites.

StumbleUpon’s voting process is so grass-root level that it is actually a refreshing search experience for both social media users and social media marketers. With StumbleUpon rising in popularity everyday, it is a site where social media marketing campaigns can flourish, using social media marketing strategies that can leverage the unique proposition that is StumbleUpon.

YouTube Experts, Customer Magnets

2010-03-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

Here’s a really ingenious way to attract social media users at YouTube: bring in the genius. It could be you, or an employee in your company, or an industry expert. Because if you’re in the tequila market, a video showing ten exciting ways to mix tequila is a marketing magnet that is sure to attract social media tequila drinkers in droves. Pretty cool, don’t you think?

Let this be a learning curve for social media marketers using YouTube. Self-promotional videos or blatant advertisements tend to get lost in a sea of product sales pitches. On the other hand, a subtle way to effectively market in YouTube is to satisfy user’s thirst for valuable information and practical learning.

You can see a lot of educational presentations and video documentaries mushrooming in YouTube, each imparting knowledge and skills to users. The social media video-sharing site is fast earning a reputation as a place where you can get an education about almost any topic under the sun. Social media YouTube audiences will certainly appreciate a how-to video where innovations are clarified by an industry guru, the company president, or even an ordinary Joe with great practical know-how.

The mindset for this strategy should focus on carrying a deep sincerity and conviction in delivering the message. Sincerity engages audiences, and makes them trust the message more.

More Marketing Mileage with YouTube

2010-03-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

At YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing social media site, marketers find a playground rich in potential customers. YouTube’s enormous user base comes from everywhere across the globe. Slices of this international populace are diverse and distinct from each other in some aspects, but have similarities in some other areas as well. This user composition is both challenging and promising to social media marketers. To capture even just a tiny portion of this population and turn them into customers is a big boost to any social media campaign.

So how do social media marketers use YouTube to increase customer base? Here are some very useful tips:

Create categorized channels attuned to audience preference. Segmenting videos in this manner refines the target audience. Social media marketers can create a communication package better-tailored to appeal to the particular audience group. Quite simply, it is sending the right message to the right group that gets the right response from them.

Be searchable by uploading and accumulating a lot of videos that utilize YouTube’s search rules appropriately. An accumulation of these searchable videos offer a higher chance of being frequently viewed by common-interest users.

Encourage video subscription to increase subscriber base. Subscription is only realistic when video content is unique, engaging, and useful to users.

Create multi-lingual videos to appeal to the international audience. This is guaranteed to increase the marketing coverage, reaching out to the non-English speaking and non-English-comprehending contingents in YouTube.

Business Growth Through YouTube, Why Not?

2010-03-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

Leaving no stones unturned, social media marketers who used to run the gamut of marketing strategies – Facebook, Twitter, email, etc. – turn to YouTube in the hope of getting an encore in their social media marketing strategies.

And why not? YouTube is the world’s largest online video-sharing community. It boasts of an international audience with a huge and diverse population. Every social media marketer gets excited to market on YouTube, because it has immense potential to widen the customer base and rack up sales.

But to tap this potential, social media campaigns should flourish and have staying power in YouTube. The primary secret to longevity in YouTube? Upload great content constantly.

Yes, the fine line that separates the flash-in-the-pan viral video campaigns in YouTube and the successful social media marketing campaigns is content. With video technology at its best these days, there’s no excuse not to create quality videos fast. So why do one-hit wonder campaigns sizzle and then fizzle in YouTube? It’s when brand owners or social media marketers don’t follow through with constant regular uploads.

To sustain the social media campaign in YouTube, companies need to create videos that offer refreshing perspectives, and do this on a regular basis. Sources of fresh content can come from the news and current affairs, or expert Q&A, or testimonials from users. Such useful content builds brand loyalty and confidence as time goes by.

Hot Duo: Twitter and Email Marketing

2010-02-25T11:00:00.000-08:00

Call it destiny. But despite the many differences between the Twitter platform and email as we know it, the adage “opposites attract” can actually work for both. Twitter’s all-text and 140-character-limited personality may complement email’s sky’s-the-limit-message-length and graphic-rich format, but all it takes is savvy email marketing to make the Twitter-and-email tandem a very effective business strategy.

Admittedly, email marketing practitioners need to make a little paradigm shift to market on Twitter, although it’s not an absolute wrench for the agile and talented email marketer.

How to make this possible? Here are some tips below:

1. Author valuable tweets that can make your followers and the whole Twitterdom take notice. Link the tweet to your website’s landing page, where the full version of the tweet is located. When the landing page comes up, you can either place an email sign up option, or you can have the users sign up first before they can get to the full version of your tweet. The latter sometimes has some negative implications to users (they don’t like to be forced), so be careful.

2. Create Twitter pages for each product or service that you offer. This makes for better organization of your email marketing campaign, because you can utilize a fine-grained segmentation of your client base, for better audience-targeting.

3. Create a Twitter account dedicated to customer support. Don’t forget to place qualified personnel to handle customers’ questions, requests, feedbacks, and email addresses, when they come in.

4. Expand the visibility of your Twitter account through multi-channel marketing. For example, place your Twitter account in email messages, or as footers in newsletters, or as a website link.

Twitter: Email Marketing with a Twist

2010-02-24T11:00:00.000-08:00

Traditional email marketing specialists may sometimes find it quite a chore to comprehend how Twitter functionalities can possibly be used for email marketing, and how it can possibly work even if they have managed to integrate their campaigns with Twitter. Even email marketing veterans may have initially found the Twitter environment strange and alien, given that it is totally different from traditional email systems that they are so familiar with.

What are these alien differences? Some of the most important elements of Twitter that screams “other-worldly” are below:

1. Twitter’s messaging system is different from traditional email systems (look, feel, functions).

2. Messages come in short 140-character tweets (with closer affinity to mobile text messaging), whereas email messages can be multi-paragraphed.

3. Tweets are text-based in the past, text-based in the present, and most likely text-based in the near-future. Old-world, when compared with graphic-laden email messages.

4. Subscriptions in Twitter are the followers/following system.

5. Messages in Twitter are exchanged instantaneously, unlike the longer communication cycles in email messaging systems.

The instantaneous or real-time nature of Twitter messaging is one of the core differences that can impact any email marketing campaign. To tap into Twitter’s actively responsive customer base, email communications must be instantaneous or real-time as well. This unique characteristic spurs email marketing specialists to take on this lively, active, and two-way channel of communication. In this context, Twitter is more suitable for relationship-building with customers, rather than the parking-messages-in-inboxes nature of traditional email marketing campaigns.

Have Twitter, Will Market

2010-02-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

A recent post from the official Twitter Blog tells us something that the entire planet – and, of course, every self-respecting email marketing specialist -- already knows about. That in the recent years, the number of daily tweets over at Twitter has grown to stratospheric heights. From a measly 5,000 tweets daily in ancient 2007, to a sudden leap to 300,000 the following year, to a huge 2.5 million messages in 2009. The bottom line in today’s reckoning: an average of 600 tweets every second are sent and received at the busy hive called Twitter!

The blog post did not go into an in-depth breakdown of the figures. Every email marketing practitioner would have loved to get a conclusive explanation of that sheer tweet immensity. Be that as it may, email marketing campaigners are left only with very basic figures that invoke the reasoning: if the law of statistics and probabilities do not exempt Twitter, then this social media giant is by all accounts an incredibly rich goldmine of potential costumers just waiting to be tapped by fearless and savvy email marketing specialists.

It’s actually not logic-defying to think in this mind set. After all, everybody in the whole wide world uses one form of social media or another – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter. It’s an easy next step for email marketing experts to integrate their campaigns with these social media platforms.

Twitter should be no exception. With some considerations of Twitters’ nature, such as its 140-character text limit and barely-functional applications and integrations, Twitter is decently capable of becoming a playground where email marketing pros and rookies can wage their respective email marketing campaigns.

Email Marketing: Get Your Subscribers Back

2010-02-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

Active email marketing subscribers receive, open and read their email subscriptions. They take actions like responding to the email marketing campaign, or even better, buying the product. Increasing the number of active subscribers is what drives email marketing specialists into eliminating list fatigue and lure inactive subscribers back.
While re-capturing inactive subscribers may be what’s good for the email marketing campaign, it is not often an easy task given time and monetary constraints. But instead of redesigning the whole email marketing campaign, there are some simple ways to engage subscribers once again:

1. Keep sending emails with fresh and interesting content.

Coaxing subscribers to buy your product need not bore them into insensibility. Continually seek creative ways to package and re-package your email marketing message. A bit of news, a dash of humor, maybe a piece of legislation that affects your product or business? Useful information combined with a tactful reference to your product, goes a long way in engaging subscribers.

2. Understand your subscribers.

It won’t hurt to study the demographics of your email marketing list. Pinpoint the preferences of recipients, and use tools to identify a trend or a pattern. Analyzing your subscribers enable you to come up with well-calibrated email marketing messages that are totally responsive to the needs of your subscribers.

3. Update your email list regularly.

A certain amount of list fatigue is unavoidable – you will often lose subscribers and won’t get them back. Try to replenish the list and increase new subscriptions to maintain a healthy-looking email list.

List Fatigue: A Matter of Cause and Effect

2010-02-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

List fatigue in your email marketing campaign means that subscribers have ceased to summon the interest and energy to open and read your emails, but are also so disinterested as to even unsubscribe. This is a two-edged sword. Why? They may be disinterested and you are in danger of losing them, but since they are still IN the list, you still have the chance of re-engaging them back.

To combat list fatigue, email marketing campaign specialists need to analyze the cause of this phenomenon. Below are some possible causes:

1. An overload of advertisements and promotions

Aggressive email marketing can take its toll on your reputation in the eyes of your subscribers, and consequently, can lead to dissatisfaction with each email you send. Subscribers are turned off by blatant promotional campaigns. And the monotony of constantly sending out ad after ad can get on their nerves after some time. The result, they may ignore your messages altogether, or worse, park your emails to the deleted or spam folder.

2. Overdoing the email sending frequency

Be careful not to stretch subscribers’ patience to the very limits, with emails that are sent as regular as clockwork. If the message is repetitious and frequent, there is danger of being tagged as spam, or left unopened. If users are irritated enough they may even unsubscribe.

3. Lackluster content

Subscribers appreciate interesting content all the time. Albeit, you need to market a particular product. Subscribers understand that. But they don’t relish a lack of creativity with emails that look like they were copy-pasted from the previous ones.

Bring Your Email Marketing Back to Life

2010-02-16T11:00:00.000-08:00

As an email marketer, it’s often not a good sign when your email list is thinning out and the people in it are dropping out for one reason or another. An email list that behaves this way is often a sign of an email marketing campaign gone sour.

So, if your email marketing campaign is going south, you often look for the cause, in the hope of revitalizing it. The causes can be classified into two: those that you have no control over, and those that you can still do something about.

The first group is a common bane of email marketing campaigns. Spam filtering policies on the subscribers’ side can block your email from coming through. When this happens, you lose a lot of recipients irrevocably. Dormant accounts, often coming from free email services such as Yahoo!, Google and the like, are also lost causes for your email marketing campaign.

The second group is, fortunately, within your control to rectify. When email subscribers stop opening and reading your emails, but do not completely unsubscribe, these inactive subscriptions still have the chance of being activated. They constitute a slice of the list that has become fatigued by your email marketing campaign.

Between losing subscribers to spam filters and account dormancy, and losing subscriber’s interest in reading your emails because of list fatigue, only a small fraction of your list is actively opening and reading your emails. This is a fraction to small. The obvious course is to perk up the list-fatigued group, and bring them back to the active list again.

Beat the Doldrums with Multimedia Tweets

2010-02-11T11:00:00.000-08:00

Social media users at Twitter are separated only by a very faint line. This line is drawn by the differences in users’ opinions on why they are at Twitter, which consequently affects the way they use this giant microblogging service. The line is thin indeed, but it is also very important, because it is what differentiates the good tweeter from the mediocre one.

Good social media users have a reason for signing up at Twitter. They also deliberate on the purpose of their every tweet or retweet. They have a rationale for why they follow the people they follow, and what relationships they establish in this social media service. Most importantly, they always seek out creative ways to transcend the 140-character text limit imposed by Twitter’s “What’s happening?” update box.

To add variety to their tweets, social media users are unafraid to use Twitter applications that allow the upload and sharing of multimedia files. Got a bunch of pictures that are eye-candy material for your business? Upload them with Twitpic. A video of yourself humming a new composition? Tweetube can help.

Going multimedia relieves the monotony of all-text tweets. Social media followers will definitely perk up at the pleasant distraction from a long stream of endless text messages. A regular mix of text and multimedia uploads will slowly build up a good image as an interesting tweeter, one with a steady source of useful materials. This gain in reputation increases the possibility of being retweeted, capturing more audiences and followers in the long run.

Retweets that Rock!

2010-02-10T11:00:00.000-08:00

Who says that to be good tweeters at Twitter you need to be good at constantly churning out original tweets? Social media tweeters can attract a huge following, rise in status in the Twitterdom, and achieve whatever goals they have set for themselves – with carefully selected and yet completely-not-their-own tweets.

Albeit, the ability to create interesting and original tweets must be the basic foundation of a good social media tweeter. But social media users at Twitter should also not hesitate to scout the web for good materials to share with others. Retweets, and good ones at that, are good for a lot of things:

1. Add variety to your tweeting

2. Put a different perspective or slant to your social media campaigns

3. Serve as a good fallback if you temporarily run out of original ideas to tweet

4. Open yourself to new ideas from other sources

5. Be appreciated by the original creators of your retweets

6. Attract more followers

Retweets can come from articles, multimedia files, and even content of other websites. When followers find the retweet valuable, they may retweet it to their followers. The result is an increased standing among peers, followers and the creator of the original material.

The key to retweeting is to read and research the material carefully. This is because bad retweets can also be damaging to your carefully-cultivated social media image and reputation.

Better Tweeters and Tweets that Count

2010-02-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

What makes a good tweeter in the giant microblogging and social media site Twitter? Relevant tweeting – this is one of the thin lines that separate the good tweeters from the run-of-the-mills. Which one are you? Let’s find out based on how you tweet.

First and most important, good tweeters have a goal-driven mindset. This means social media users don’t just hang around at Twitter, they have a purpose. Either to conduct a business or cultivate a career, or to become better persons by exploring new things and meeting new people.

With a goal in mind, social media users make every tweet count. They tweet useful and interesting messages that are a far cry from the inanities of the “I ate a cold pizza for breakfast” or “It’s windy in Wall Street today” variety.

The reality is that Twitter can bring in so much more benefits if only the social media user cares enough to ask for each potential tweet: “Is it worth my time and the trouble to type this message?” Or, “How would I or my business look to my followers and others if I send this message?”

The idea is to send out messages that can be of use and be appreciated by others. And while on this unselfish attitude, why not tweet replies to questions from followers? Reply tweets indicate a sincere effort to communicate on your part.

Lastly, if you find yourself at a loss of what to tweet, think that silence is way better than haphazard and careless tweeting, which can potentially detract from your good tweeter reputation.

4 Apps to Experience with Twitter

2010-02-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

Tired of tweeting about anything and everything? If the excitement of regular tweeting has waned for you, fear not. The social media experience at Twitter is about to deepen. Thanks to Twitter’s integration with cool Twitter applications and websites, social media activities have gone beyond the 140-character tweet limit.

Social media users are social beings. That goes without saying that Twitter should be able to provide an environment for intense socialization to take place. Like Facebook, users should be able share everything from files, to music, to images. In short, the whole multimedia array essential to the personal existence of social media users should be available.

But how to share these files over a service that accepts only 140-characters all the time? Here’s some of the ways Twitter made this possible:

1. File-sharing

FileSocial and FileTweet allow social media users to send and receive files through the Twitter service.

2. Music-sharing

Blip.fm integrates seamlessly with Twitter for share music online. Another tool, TweetUrMusic, allows social media users to share the songs they are listening to, using the Play.me community.

3. Photo-sharing

TwitPic, TweetPhoto, and Flickr are on at Twitter, giving social media users the freedom to share photos and images.

4. Video-sharing and online gaming

TweeTube and TwitVid are perfect for video sharing, while games like TwitBrain, Twivia and WhoseTweet give social media users the needed icebreaker from monotonous tweeting.

Twitter Tools and Applications You Can�t Live Without [del.icio.us]

2010-02-03T15:28:02-08:00

Activism and Advocacies – Twitter-Style

2010-02-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

Make your tweeting matter by utilizing micro-blogging social media giant Twitter as a medium for change. Social media users mature in stages over at Twitter. From non-stop and giddy tweeting of random thoughts and feelings (its ok, many of us passed this phase), many social media users transcend and become concerned in saving the planet. So be an advocate of change using some really effective Twitter tools.

1. act.ly

act.ly is a very powerful tool and a major push for many causes and advocacies espoused by social media users. One very effective use of act.ly is the ability to directly petition any organization or personalities, for them to act on the matter accordingly. A recent tweet from one social media user was directed at NASA, asking them to permanently stop any radiation-filled experiments.
2. Congressional140

Congressional140 is a tweet aggregator dedicated to listing the recent and most updated tweets of lawmakers in the U.S. Congress. Since Congress people are also social media users, ordinary and concerned citizens can access the Congressional140 website and browse through the tweets from these personalities, to get familiar with their thoughts and opinions on matters that count.

3. TwitPay to raise funds

Many humanitarian and advocacy initiatives involve the raising of money to benefit charities and causes. As with commercial businesses, social media users can send donations as payments using TwitPay.

7 Simple Truths of Twitter Lists [del.icio.us]

2010-02-02T11:49:14-08:00

At Your Tweet’s End on Twitter?

2010-02-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

If you find yourself tweet-tired and at a loss of what to do at the micro-blogging and social media site Twitter, fear not. When social media users get past the diligent and non-stop tweeting, that’s when they are ready to move on to the next level of experience, one that is even better, more satisfying, and – to some – more lucrative than before.

Social media users can keep busy at Twitter cultivating businesses or careers. Seamless integration with many cool applications makes it possible to sell products, goods and services at Twitter, and actually get paid for it! The groundbreaking tool for this is TwitPay, a payment system using existing Twitter accounts. TwitPay interfaces with PayPal to process transactions made at Twitter.

Another interesting tool is TwtBizCard, which gets the data from your business’ Twitter profile by default, and with some customizations, creates professional business cards that can be sent to new contacts and clients as part of your social media marketing campaigns.

What better way to increase social media mileage than with TwtQpon, which creates online coupons that can be tweeted to clients and followers. And together with TwtFAQ, businesses can improve their social media customer support by addressing the questions and requests of clients-cum-followers, all in 140 characters, of course!

Looking for a career change or greener pastures? Or are you an employer looking for fresh new talent for the company? TweetMyJobs connects job hunters and head hunters with each other, with thousands of job tweets instantaneously sent daily.

10 Do’s and Don’ts to Avoid SEO Mistakes

2010-02-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

With so much misinformation out there, along with a lack of knowledge about how SEO works, you could end up getting your website banned from the search engines. Learn how to avoid common mistakes with these 10 simple do’s and don’ts.

10. Don’t Use Flash for SEO. Flash websites are very eye-catching but search engines cannot read or index this type of content. If it is impossible to avoid a Flash-centric website and you need search engines to index it, you will have to offer an html version too. Search engines don't like Flash sites for a reason – a spider can't read Flash content and therefore can't index it.

9. Don’t Use too Much JavaScript. Searchbots are not designed to read and understand JavaScript code. If a website contains a few lines of text in the JavaScript code, chances are that searchbots will ignore the entire block of code along with the text. This is true in the case of JavaScript menus. Try to keep the use of JavaScript to a minimum. Alternatively, create an external JavaScript file if it is unavoidable.8. Do Implement a Robots.txt File. The primary purpose for using a robots.txt file is to gain complete control over the data indexed by the searchbots. Implement a Robots.txt file only when you want to prevent unwanted web pages from being indexed. A robots.txt file is always placed in the root folder of the website where the searchbots can access it easily.

7. Do Target the Correct Keywords. Targeting the wrong keywords is a common mistake many optimizers make and even worse – veteran SEO professionals do it. Marketers select keywords that they think are explanatory of their website but the average searcher does not think in those same keyword terms. Picking the right keywords can increase or decrease traffic to your SEO campaign. A first-class keyword suggestion aid, for example the Google search-based keyword tool will help you find keywords that are appropriate for your site.

6. Do Include Long Tail Keywords. With a million websites competing for short tail keywords, it can take more than 6 months to rank in the top 20 for a competitive keyword. In this case, long tail keywords come in handy. Long tail keywords are more specific and can contain the name of a specific product, brand or city. Ranking for long tail keywords is comparatively easier and the rate of conversion is better than that of short tail keywords. Do include keywords in the title tags.

5. Do Maintain a Uniform URL Structure. If your website is dynamic, then you need to modify the URL structure of the web pages. This maintains uniformity and helps searchbots to understand which page it is indexing. It is very easy to maintain the URL structure in dynamic websites. Blogging platforms like Wordpress provide an option for permalinks. Customized dynamic websites can use URL rewrite in the .htaccess file for the same.

4. Don’t Link to Low Quality Websites. Link building is a very crucial aspect of search engine optimization. Search engines consider the number of incoming links to a website as an indication of their popularity and give them priority rankings. Many beginners fail to realize that it is links from authoritative and quality websites that are important and they mistakenly link to low quality websites for higher rankings. This tactic can cause the credibility of the website to go down with search engines and in some cases, the website may get banned.

3. Do Perform Competitive Intelligence. Before starting your search engine optimization program, visit the competing websites in the top results. Research these types of questions:

A.    How many websites are competing for the same keyword?
B.    How old are the websites in top search engine results pages?
C.    How many back links do the top ranking websites list?
D.    What type of social media is used by the competing sites?

2. Do Take Advantage of Google Analytics. 2009 was the year when web analytics gained momentum. Google Analytics came up with advanced metrics and intelligence report features which revolutionized free analytics tools. Companies realized the benefits of using web analytics tools to extract their relevant data. Implement Google Analytics to analyze data and build a 2010 plan to increase traffic and rates of conversion.

1. Do Create Fresh Content. Search engines are famous for penalizing a website for publishing duplicate content. With plagiarism on the rise and availability of content checking tools such as Copyscape, marketers have become more cautious. Yahoo is considered to be among the harshest of all the search engines with regard to this penalty. Add fresh content to your website to help build visitor interest and credibility with the search engines.

These 10 simple do’s and don’ts can help you to avoid making potentially dangerous seo mistakes and ensure your site is indexed and boost rankings.

10 Do�s and Don�ts to Avoid SEO Mistakes [del.icio.us]

2010-01-31T14:53:26-08:00

Make Your Business Shine on Flickr [del.icio.us]

2010-01-29T14:51:34-08:00

5 Tips on How To Use Google Sidewiki Efficiently [del.icio.us]

2010-01-29T13:38:39-08:00

5 Tips on How To Use Google Sidewiki Efficiently

2010-01-29T13:03:00.000-08:00

Google launched Sidewiki on 23rd Sep 2009 as a part of its toolbar. Google Sidewiki appears as a sidebar in the browser and allows visitors to comment on any webpage. Its main aim was to collect useful information on any webpage from people around the world and therefore lead to better user experience.

For example, a person searching for a local restaurant can see its review in the sidebar by the previous diners.

Google Sidewiki comprises of an algorithm which pulls out the most useful and valuable comments from its database. This ensures that a visitor will see the most relevant comments on a webpage. Listed below are 5 steps for using Google Sidewiki efficiently.

1.    Get Started With Google Sidewiki. Sidewiki is available in the options tab of the Google toolbar. Simply download the Google toolbar and select the option to integrate Sidewiki using the checkbox. It appears as a blue sidebar in the browser which slides open when you click on it. Google Sidewiki works perfectly well in Firefox. Although, Google’s own browser, Chrome seems to be having some issues in integrating Sidewiki.

2.    Add Comments on Useful Webpages. Adding comments in Google Sidewiki is extremely easy. You need to log in to your Google account and click on the “Make an Entry” link which appears at the bottom of the sidebar. Enter your comments and publish. It is advised to add something which ads more value to the content. If your comment is relevant to the topic, then it can be placed on the first page of Sidewiki for that web page, unless you are the website owner.

3.    Claim Your Position At The Top Of All Comments. If you want to place your own comment at the top, you need to verify ownership of the website by using Google Webmasters Tool. If verified, as the page owner your entry is placed at the top entry for that page. The top slot can be used to leave a note for anyone who is yet to comment.

4.    Share Your Comments With Everyone. Each comment in Google Sidewiki has the option of being shared on Twitter, Facebook or emailed to any user. This enables everyone to read the Sidewiki entries without using the Google Toolbar. This option is very useful if your web page has received some great comments from visitors. Sharing these comments will pull readers from others streams like Twitter and Facebook onto your website.

5.    Flush Out Negative Comments By Blocking Sidewiki. Google Sidewiki does not provide an option for blocking or deleting negative comments on a webpage. Many users have expressed their displeasure with Google for not providing an option for this purpose. If your web page is inundated with negative or irrelevant comments which are harming your website, you can block Google Sidewiki. This can be done by switching from normal http:// to secure https:// pages.

Google Sidewiki is not the first of its kind. One of the first commenting add-on, Third Voice was launched way back in 1999. AddATweet and Kutano are plug-ins which can be installed on your browser and let you tweet comments on a webpage.

Despite many competitors, Google Sidewiki has risen to become the most popular commenting tool of its time. Start your week by experimenting with this comment tool.

View and Manage Twitter Lists Effortlessly

2010-01-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

Social media giant, Twitter, is bringing the group functionality to their social media service with the introduction of Twitter Lists. Playing on social media users’ tendency to organize their people list into convenient groups, Twitter Lists is a sure hit to social media users.
Accessing and Viewing Twitter Lists
The Twitter main page for each user sports a “Lists” link that when clicked will bring up all the lists created by that user. Clicking on any of the lists will bring up the tweet stream for the particular list. For example, a social media user clicking on his or her “News” list will display all news-related tweets, maybe CNN or maybe a local newspaper. Following the lists, rather than individual users, is tantamount to filtering the tweet stream and viewing only closely-related or relevant tweets at any given time.

Lists Management

Managing the lists also begin with the “View list" link. Although other social media users can view the lists that the user has created, only the creator can modify or delete the details of the lists, as well as change the security settings.

Removal of social media users from the lists is a matter of unchecking the person’s name from the list. Users are also free to de-list themselves from any listing (who'd want to be on the "uncool people" list?), by blocking the list creator from their respective profiles. This effectively removes their enrolment in the creators’ list.

Easy Twitter Lists Creation

2010-01-27T11:00:00.000-08:00

Social media users of the Twitter service is warming up to the new Twitter Lists functionality, welcoming the freedom it gives them to organize their following and followers list, and make some sense out of their previously jumbled tweet streams.

The Twitter Lists looks like it’s the one functionality that can really enhance the users’ experience of Twitter’s social media service. Gone are the days of having to scroll through tons of tweets daily in a single tweet stream that pains the eye, not to mention the fingers. With Twitter Lists, social media activities are easier to perform with grouped listings and grouped stream viewing.

Creating Twitter Lists

The Twitter main page now comes with a "New list" link visible to social media users when they access their Twitter accounts. It leads to the list creation page that asks for the name of the list and the security settings preferred for the list – either public or private. Public setting means the list will be accessible to all social media users of Twitter, while private means the list is only visible to the user who created the list.

User enrollment to Twitter Lists

The "Create list" button will create the list and a URL of the form “twitter.com/twitteruser/new-list-name.” A maximum of 500 social media users can be added to the list. Another way to add people is via their personal profile pages, or from the following and follower page.

Nice Realities about Twitter Lists

2010-01-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

The Twitter Lists feature is live and changing the way social media users receive the Twitter experience. Has it made social media activities at Twitter better, or worse? Let’s find out.

The long-awaited and often-requested group features finally arrive at social media giant Twitter in the form of Twitter Lists. This functionality gives users a very easy way to organize their followers and following lists into groups, and even people whose tweets they are interested to view but not necessarily follow. In the dark-ages (read: pre-List days) of Twitter, people have to laboriously scroll through their main tweet stream to sift through tons of tweets coming from everyone.

With Twitter Lists, how social media users organize their following/followers list into groups is limited only by their imagination. Personal lists can include family and friends, and people with common hobbies and interests can be categorized into common-interest lists. Work-related listings can include co-workers, and even the bosses.

The group features is a very important functionality in social media services, because people always want to organize their friends and associates into categories for easy access and viewing. Twitter users welcome the Twitter Lists feature for the very same reason. A simple click on any categorized list will bring up only the tweets of that group, making the tweet streams uncluttered. The lists can also be recommended to other Twitter users, instead of having to recommend individual users tediously.

Is Your Business Ready to Shine on Flickr?

2010-01-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

Even when yours is only a small business or a neighborhood cafe, your photos can be a powerful tool to attract customers and make a big success out of your email marketing efforts. All it takes is a few simple steps to make your business ready to shine on Flickr:

1. Build up a visual feast of photo portfolio. Keep in mind that many Flickr users have an eye for taste and quality. The success of any email marketing effort lies critically on how good your photos are. Organize these photos into themed collections for more convenient user access.

2. Give a good first impression with attractive thumbnails. From your photo collection, select the images that look good when cropped into thumbnails, which can lure users into looking at the rest of your portfolio.

3. Maintain fresh photo content regularly. Email marketing efforts succeed when you have built up a reputation of being a source of frequently updated content, and increases your chances of being liked, and linked to, by blog sites and web sites that need fresh content regularly.

4. Tag for easy searching. Use descriptive keywords to tag your images. It doesn’t hurt to conduct keyword analysis, to study the search patterns of Flickr users and modify your tags accordingly.

5. Socialize, and join relevant groups in Flickr. The relationships that you build in these groups widen your email marketing coverage.

Photo Marketing at Flickr

2010-01-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

Being one of the most popular photo-sharing sites in the Internet, Flickr has become a promising venue for email marketing campaigns. It may seem like a long stretch to ordinary observers (how can a photography site have anything to do with marketing, anyway?), but email marketers think otherwise. Here’s why:

1. Flickr has taken off from being a mere hangout for photography buffs – amateurs and professionals both. Ordinary people with a decent camera and a mind to capture the moments of their lives upload their photos to Flickr. This vast camera-toting populace is the potential customer base to marketers.

2. Flickr demographics cover almost everybody in the planet. Everyone with diverse interests, preferences, hobbies, and, of course, spending and buying habits -- interesting to email marketing practitioners out to capture their target audience.

The only rule in Flickr, however, is to produce good quality photos. Any email marketing campaign in Flickr is worthless without standout pictures that rise above the rest. Remember that Flickr is also hosting tons of family photos. For this reason, effective email marketing in Flickr requires outstanding imagery that is a cut above the run-of-the-mill variety, to be noticed by the Flickr community.

Here’s some options on how to produce these standout marketing photos:

1. Hire a photographer, if you have the budget for it.
2. Buy a good camera, and let technology drive the quality of your images.
3. Capture images based on interesting and powerful concepts, because Flickr users are often grabbed by “real” and fresh-perspective photos.

Flickr: A Shining Business Proposition

2010-01-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

Pondering on which direction to take your email marketing campaign this year? Go back to the basics, think about the age-old principle of marketing – wide market coverage to realize sales and profits – and look around at what’s online. Enter Flickr, stage left, to translate the “wider coverage” principle into action.
Photography can be a powerful tool in business marketing. Look no further than the full-blown and often high-profile advertisements strewn in billboards, glossy magazines and newspapers. So successful is the power of visual persuasion in sales realization that huge amounts of money are spent annually by many businesses to launch these visually-tantalizing ad campaigns.
It is therefore inevitable that when the Internet became technologically-equipped to host photographic content, image-sharing sites like Flickr became a playground for email marketing campaigns.

How is email marketing possible in Flickr? Here are three things:

1. Flickr is to photo-sharing as Facebook is to social media – a juggernaut with a huge user base that can be tapped as potential customers.

2. Flickr’s environment – architecture, infrastructure, and live community – cultivates an atmosphere just right for email marketing campaigns.

3. Flickr is as effective as the traditional print ad campaigns, yet definitely less expensive.

The key ingredient to email marketing in Flickr, however, are good quality photographs. As with all things in the Internet, content is everything, even in Flickr.

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