First, let’s look at how to use social bookmarking; then we will take a closer look at how to use it to benefit your projects.

There are hundreds of social bookmarking websites out there, but most people stick to the most popular ones – such as Delicious, StumbleUpon, BlinkList, Google Bookmarks, Simpy, Diigo, and many others. While it can be useful to have hundreds of links, you’ll find that the vast majority of traffic comes from these top sites.

What is Social Bookmarking?

Have you ever saved a webpage to your browser’s “favorites menu,” so you can look at it again later? Social bookmarking is essentially the same thing, but your saved pages are saved in your own online account in the social bookmarking website. If you chose to, you can make your saved bookmarks (favorites) publicly viewable. Others can see which websites you thought were worth looking at or referring to and they can check them out, too. Social bookmarking websites usually allow you to become friends of other members who share similar interests to you, so that you can more easily share the websites you recommend. If your friends also like them, then they may save those same pages, so that their friends can see them . . . it’s a rapidly expanding circle of exposure.

If you go to a social bookmarking website such as StumbleUpon, you can choose either a category, or a person, to look at. Let’s say you know that Fox100 is someone who always finds great, informative sites on your favorite topic. You can add this person as a friend, so that you can see what he votes for and shares. Others can also add you as a friend, and of course, the more friends you have, the more people will see your bookmarks.

Alternatively, you can go to a specific category, such as “Humor,” and find out what other people shared or voted for in that category. Most sites let you vote on selections, up or down, which has an impact on how much traffic that link will get.

Using Social Bookmarking for Your Project

What does all this mean for you? Well, you can bookmark your own content, or have someone else do it, to gain more traffic. If you write a blog on your current projects, then each post can be bookmarked socially, which makes it available to many more eyes than just your current blog readers. The same process works for press releases, videos, and just about anything you can put online.

The better the content on a page, the more likely it is to get shared. You probably won’t want to bookmark a bad website or one that seems primarily composed of ads, and even if you do, no one else will.

One’s first thought may be to run off and create lots of Social Bookmarking accounts, to bookmark their own websites. Well, you aren’t the first person to think of this, and unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as it sounds. In fact, so many people have tried this tactic in the past, that it is now looked at as spam and is frowned on by most Social Bookmarking websites. It is also very time consuming. There are services available to help you get your website listed in Social Bookmarking websites, but there again, some of these violate the terms and conditions of the social bookmarking websites and are spam tools in themselves.

There are a few reputable companies that provide this service in a more ethical fashion. One which I recommend is Social Media Science.

There are also free websites that allow you to add a link, as well as a description and some tags to help people search for the topic, so that the website can then  submit your link this to a large number of social bookmarking sites that you’ve already signed up for.  But again, if you use this to bookmark your own websites, you may come across as a spammer.

On the other hand, there is nothing preventing you from bookmarking other websites in your field which promote the same ideas and causes that you promote.  And this is an excellent use of Social Bookmarking websites.  In fact, you will probably find that you begin to make yourself and your own website more broadly known as a result, even indirectly.  People may visit your social bookmarking account profiles more often and see your website’s link or your organizations information in your profile section.  Other website owners who appreciate your bookmarking their websites may decide to bookmark your website in return.

Social bookmarking, when used correctly, can mean the difference between getting virtually no traffic and letting thousands of people know about your organization.  It’s a very powerful tool, and best of all, it’s completely free.

This post was originally published on The World Can Change at Using Social Bookmarking to Promote Your Cause.

So, what is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 refers to what is considered to be a “second generation of web design and development” which facilitates:

• Communication
• Secure data sharing (amongst the individuals or groups you wish to share the data with)
• Interaction amongst websites
• Interaction amongst individuals online
• Collaboration online
• Automated Data Exchange
• User-generated content (allows website visitors to create content for on that website.  This is what happens, for example, if you leave a comment on a YouTube video.
• The ability to mix content from several websites into new services and sites.

From a purely technical viewpoint, Web 2.0 refers to a type of technology which allows to websites to automatically interchange or “mash” data together.  It allows automated data exchange.  This same technology is what allows the above-mentioned points to take place.

For example, if I wanted, I could set up a sidebar on another blog to show the most recent posts of this particular blog.  Every time I add a new post to this blog, its title and description would show up on the other blog.  That is a simple example of Web 2.0.

If you see a map from one website embedded on another website, this is Web 2.0 (for example, when people use Google Maps to show the location of their business, by embedding a small section of a Google Map on their website. 

Web 2.0 technology also allows us, as individuals, to organize, share, recommend, and categorize data.  We do this, for example, in certain types of website which allow us to vote for, recommend, or bookmark links to web pages we like.  An example of this is a Social Bookmarking site such as Delicious.

How does a Social Bookmarking site work?  You sign up for a free account.  Every time you find a website or webpage that you find interesting, which you want to come back to later or recommend to others, you can “bookmark” it.  You simply enter the link and click a few links to tell the website that you want to bookmark this page.  Later on when you are trying to remember where the page is, you visit the social bookmarking site and log onto your account.  Every page you have bookmarked will be categorized and recorded, easy for you to find.

Social Bookmarking websites typically allow us to assign tags (descriptive words) to the content we are bookmarking.  Different Social Bookmarking sites have different options and different rules.  A few examples of social bookmarking sites are:

• Delicious
• Simpy
• Diigo
• Stumble Upon

As we bookmark, tag, recommend, and share information, our computers learn from us.  When we tag images or web pages, computers learn from us about what words we associate with those web pages.  When we recommend or bookmark web pages, computers learn from us about which web pages we consider to be important.

Billions of times per day, someone clicks on a link or visits a website. 

When people share, trade, recommend, tag, network, and collaborate online, our computers learn from us.

The following video says it well.

If you are still feeling a little bit fuzzy on this, I recommend the following simple exercise:

1. Visit the Delicious website.
2. Register for a free account
3. Find a webpage you like (maybe this one?)
4. Bookmark that webpage in Delicious
5. Add a description to your bookmark, which says what you think the webpage is about.
6. Add a few tags (descriptive words) which you think apply to that web page.
7. Do this with a few pages.
8. Now go to your Delicious account and see how you can find the data you bookmarked.  Try searching for it in a few different ways.  Experiment with other features if you like.

This should serve to give you a bit of a better idea on this.  I hope it helps!

This post was originally published on The World Can Change at What is Web 2.0.

The sources of this traffic can be broken down into a few basic categories:

1. Search Engines – People type in certain terms in a search engine, and websites connected with your cause come up as search results.  Example: A person types “how can I help African children” into a search engine, and one of the Shoes-for-Africa entries comes up as a result, with a web page explaining how their donation will help get shoes to African children.
2. Direct referrals from other websites – Example: Another charity which provides food to poor children has a website called www.food4all.org, (another made-up name at the time of this writing) which has a page with links to other charities.  One of these links leads to to www.shoes4all.org. A person visits www.food4all.org, arrives to the “links” page, and clicks on the link to www.shoes4all.org .
3. Word-of-Mouth and Offline Advertising – This includes offline referrals, where people tell friends and contacts to visit the Shoes For All website, people emailing each other about the Shoes for All movement, people passing around business cards or flyers with URLs of Shoes for All websites, and notices and billboards which advertise and give the address of the website, and even bumper stickers, T-Shirts, or coffee cups with the website address printed on them.
4. Direct Traffic – This would occur if a visitor directly types in the address of < strong>in his or her browser, in order to reach the website.  This usually would occur when the person already knows about the website and remembers its address, or when the person is being referred through an offline channel as in point #3 above.

The first method – search engines – is possibly the most important one because of its potentials to reach anyone and everyone who might be interested in the Shoes for All movement (even if they have never heard of the movement before).

Your goal is to have your organization’s websites come up as often as possible in search results, whenever people search for related keywords.

There will be a few principle keywords that result in traffic to your site, and there will be some variations of those keywords.  For example, your site might receive traffic from these main keywords:

A bar graph of these keywords would look like this:

Why am I showing you this? So I can explain an important term which I will be using in this book. That term is Long Tail Keywords.

Long tail keywords are the variations of keywords which can be used to find your organization’s websites, when each variation in itself does not get a large volume of searches, but all combined, they get a considerable amount of traffic.

Why are they called “long tail keywords?” Look at the bar graph above and imagine that it is a picture of a blue animal, perhaps a dog, with the left side being the head, and the right side being a long tail. All of those keywords which make up the “tail” of our bar graph are called “long tail keywords.”

Good. Now that that is out of the way, I can use the term “long tail keywords” and have some confidence that you know what I am talking about.

My point right now is that you will want your organization’s websites to come up as often as possible, when people type related search terms in to Google or other search engines.

Why do People Search?

One could consider that, when people type in a search term, they are stating a problem or a question. They are looking for a solution or an answer.  When your website appears in the search result, it should give the solution to that problem or the answer to that question, as often as possible. Searchers may have never heard of your organization before. All they know is that they are looking for information on something, or they are trying to solve some kind of problem.

If your organization has a solution or an answer to that problem, it should come up as a result when people type in those search terms.

That seems obvious but it is far too often overlooked.

When a person types in “charity for children” your organization should be amongst the search results, as it should be when they type in “shoes for children,” “help Burmese kids,” “donate to charity in Ecuador,” or whatever the case may be – providing that the organization has branches in those areas and runs programs which help solve those problems.

If you work for the organization in question, or if you are the webmaster of one of their websites, its important to understand this.

But what if you don’t? What if you are simply a member of the public who supports the Shoes for All movement? Where do you come in? Can you make a difference in the SEO of the Shoes for All movement? 

Yes, you can.

In fact, you can make a big difference, and with far less technical knowledge than you might think. 

The reason for this concerns the subject of my next post in this series.

This post was originally published on The World Can Change at How People Find Your Organization on the Internet.

What is a Search Engine?

A search engine is basically a computer program which helps people find information on the internet.  If you go to www.google.com, enter the word “dog collars” in the blank, and hit “enter,” you will get a long list of links to websites.  The program that provided that list for you is the search engine which belongs to Google Inc.

Strictly and technically speaking, Google itself is not a search engine, but a company which owns a search engine (among other things).  However, in day-to-day use, people use the term “search engine” to refer to the companies which run search engines, and the websites where visitors can find search engines.  Therefore, one would say “Google is my favorite search engine” as opposed to saying “my favorite search engine is the one run by Google.”  It’s much simpler to refer to it this way.

The Purpose of a Search Engine

When you go to a website like Google and type a word or phrase into the search engine, you probably are hoping to find results which are:

• Relevant
• Good Quality
• Helpful
• Informative
• Useful
• Varied

Imagine if you went to a search engine and typed in “dog collars,” but then got results such as the following:

• Links to websites about coffee cups
• Pages written in unclear English with bad grammar, which are difficult to read, and uninformative.
• Links to same website appearing over and over in the top 10 positions, instead of links to a variety of different websites with information on dog collars
• Or, even worse yet, pages of incoherent gibberish which simply have the word “dog collars” repeated over and over in their text.

You would probably feel that search engine was not very useful, and you wouldn’t use that search engine again. You would look for a better one.

The people who run search engines, and who write the programs that operate them, are aware of this fact. They want their search engines to provide results which are as useful, relevant, and high-quality as possible. This will make people want to use those search engines more.  The more people use their search engines, the more money they make (from advertisers).  And its also a point of pride to give a good service.

On the other side of the coin, there are people who work against the search engines.

How and why would they do that? Well, usually these are people who own websites. They want their websites to rank well in the search engines, but they don’t want to work too hard to get them there. So they try to short-cut the system, and cheat their way to the top.

It’s okay to practice SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in order to try to get to the top. But proper SEO includes building high-quality and useful websites which will provide useful and relevant information to the people who are searching for information online. When webmasters try to trick the search engines into giving them higher rankings, or more traffic than they deserve, this is called “black hat SEO.”

In an effort to combat black-hat SEO and to maintain the integrity of their search results, search engines are continually modifying and improving their algorithms.  (An algorithm is basically a set of instructions given to a computer, which tells a computer what to do an how to do it.  Search engine algorithms tell computers how to decide which search results to offer up, when an internet user enters a search query.)

Every time someone comes up with a new trick about how to get around the algorithms, the search engine companies come out with a new algorithm in response – and so it goes.

For the most part, search engines keep their algorithms a secret, in order to make it harder for people to try to shortcut them.

Therefore, search engine optimization is an interesting field.  It is an area of constant change, some mystery, occasional or not-so-occasional guess-work, and lots of room for opinion.

At the same time, there are many key basic facts that you can learn and apply, successfully and ethically, in order to get more relevant traffic to a website or websites. 

Most importantly, keep in mind what the purpose of a search engine is – so that you can work with it, and not against it.

Good website content and good SEO go hand-in-hand. Together, they are a highly powerful combination.  One without the other is not.

What does this have to do with your message or your cause? If you want to help support and promote a cause, you may or may not own a website about that cause. But most likely, someone else does.

Did you know that you yourself have an incredible amount of power to help improve the SEO of websites which do not belong to you?  And that you can do this ethically, honestly, and very easily?

Simply by improving the SEO of websites which promote your cause or message, you are helping to get more visitors to those websites – which means more traffic, more support, and more members for those organizations.

And possibly most importantly, it means that more people will view, read, or hear the message you want them to get, and then spread it even further.

In future posts I will discuss what you can do to help improve the SEO of websites that don’t belong to you.

This post was originally published on The World Can Change at Search Engines.

This applies whether you own your own website or not, whether you are a professional Internet Marketer or a complete novice to the net.

For the sake of example through this book, we will imagine that you are promoting a fictitious organization which has the purpose of supplying shoes to children in poor developing countries. Let’s say the name of the organization you support is “Shoes for All” and its principle official website is located at www.shoes4all.org (a made-up domain name at the time of writing).

Your organization might have other chapters within it, such as Shoes for All in Africa, Shoes for All in India, etc. Thus, there might be several related websites for each of these smaller organizations.

In addition to the official websites of the Shoes for All organization, there would ideally also be websites and pages put up by supporters of Shoes for All. These pages would be created by individuals who support the Shoes for All movement. They would not be official pages, and they would not belong to the official Shoes for All organization.

Some of these pages might be dedicated to promoting the Shoes for All movement and some of them might simply mention it, discuss it, link to it, publish videos about it, etc. This can be considered a kind of a grass-roots promotion and support of the Shoes for All movement. Besides the fact that this type of promotion brings more traffic to the Shoes for All website, it also lends credibility and authority to the Shoes for All movement. It has a “branding” effect.

When people see the name and logo of the Shoes-for-All organization in numerous different places on the web, they begin to think of it as a respectable, popular, and professional organization. When they do eventually happen upon the Shoes for All Official website, or encounter the organization offline, they are likely to have more respect for it and more interest, than they would have had if they had never heard of it before that time.

In short, when people see this organization mentioned and talked about in a good way, in different locations online, they begin to become familiar with the name and logo of “Shoes for All,” and they think of it as a good thing. But we will go into that a bit more later.

As I write this series, I will refer to Shoes for All in my examples. As you read, and when you come to these examples, imagine how this would apply to you – to your organization, your non-profit, your charity, your message, or your cause.

This post was originally published on The World Can Change at Promoting a Cause.