For just $19.95 you can get a SUPERAntiSpyware Professional LIFETIME Edition license. The lifetime edition gives you free program and definition updates for the life of the product! This license normally costs $39.90 – you’d be getting it for half price!

Since this is a private sale that we’ve arranged with SUPERAntiSpyware just for friends of High Aspirations, Inc., you’ll need to use the PayPal link below to order. We’ll then send you the license code you need!

We’ve used SUPERAntiSpyware for a couple of years now and have recommended it to many of our clients. We’ve installed in on our own and family member’s machines. I think that tells you what we think of this software!

Private Sale ends Monday, November 16, 2009!

The recall affects the SurgeMaster Surge Protectors. The molding of the plastic 360 degree rotating plug can crack or detach from the plug assembly which poses a shock hazard to consumers. The recalled surge protectors were manufactured in 2003 with model numbers F9G930-10, F9G930v10, F9G930-10-W, and F9G930-10-SN. The model number and date of manufacture are located on the underside of the unit. Contact Belkin International Inc. for a replacement.

Visit the CPSC (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) web site for the complete recall notice which includes a product image.

As with all our games, it was tested and approved by my son David, the guru of games! This time he had help from his friend Tyler so it was two votes to one on whether or not the game made it to the High Aspirations, Inc. web site. I played the game while adding it to the site – for testing purposes only of course! My e-um "testing" got me a score of 17,577. Pretty cool, but don’t let David know I said that!

Monster Evolution is also available as a free download so you can play it offline whenever you like.

And on that note, I must return to paying clients. Happy Halloween!

• Linking Sites Overview which will give an overview of sites linking to your web site.
• Ranking Analysis which will show the position of your web site in the search engine results.

If you don’t currently receive any search engine reporting but would like to, just contact us.

While Marilyn and I have personally used social media sites for a while, we are happy to report that High Aspirations, Inc. is now on Facebook too! Please visit us there and become a fan so you can find out the latest happenings here at HAI and on our web design related blog Tech Talk. You never know what you might find, perhaps a Facebook only special one day!

High Aspirations, Inc. isn’t only on Facebook, we’ve also been members of LinkedIn for several years now. LinkedIn connects you to people you work with and their connections. They say "LinkedIn exists to help you make better use of your professional network and help the people you trust in return." I think it’s like six degrees of separation business style!

While all of this is very cool for us, I’m sure you are wondering what it has to do with you besides the possibility of a deal in the future by becoming our fan on Facebook. Hang on, I’m getting there…

Some of our clients have already begun to use social media sites for more than maintaining personal connections. Since they have, we’ve begun to offer services to help them do so as part of our continuing maintenance of their sites.

Some of the things we’ve done recently for our clients include:

• Added a feed for a client’s Twitter account to their site so even if a visitor doesn’t follow them on Twitter, they’ll see the latest happenings.
• Created a Facebook fan page for a client to add another option to announce schedule changes, upcoming events, etc.
• Post daily or weekly status updates to a client’s Facebook page.

As you can see, High Aspirations, Inc. continues to offer the services you need to promote your site on the net and social media is just another way. If you’ve been thinking about adding social media to your site’s list of SEO weapons, then don’t hesitate to contact us.

• Display your best-sellers with animated featured products that present up to 5 products per page.
• Give your store a more modern look thanks to new page layouts with 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns.
• Make moving around your store a breeze with expand/collapse-style product navigation.
• Make it easy for customers to scroll through your product line using more intuitive product associations with thumbnails.

And that’s just the beginning! Check out the updated Quick Shopping Cart today and then start selling from your best online store yet.

The Quick Shopping Cart is available for you Do-It-Yourself designers as well as those taking advantage of High Aspirations’ web design and maintenance services. Feel free to visit HAI Hosting for more information on the Quick Shopping Cart.

SSLs protect all data traveling to and from your web site. An SSL is a necessity for any web site that gathers any personal information at all, whether credit card numbers or simple names and email addresses. Check out the Why you need a SSL Certificate Guide for more information.

Any of our design or maintenance clients need only let us know and we’ll take care of ordering the certificate and installing it. Even if you haven’t taken advantage of High Aspirations, Inc’s quality web design services, you can still sign up for this as well and other great HAI Hosting services.

The sale ends October 31 at Midnight PST and is only eligible for new certificate purchases, not renewals.

We’ve covered aspects of social media and Twitter in the past, e.g., Jim Spencer’s great article "Twitter Is Not for the Birds" where he explained how to find people to follow as well as how Twitter can be a great business generation tool. Also my article "Are You Scared of Social Media?" where I talked about how social media may be something you’ve been using for years, but with a new name.

Today I’ll show you how to create your own social media monitoring and marketing strategy that complements your SEO campaign. While I’m going to talk mostly about Twitter, you can apply much of this info to other social media as well.

Social Media and Links

The first thing I want you to do is to take off your old-fashioned SEO linking cap that tells you, "It’s all about the links." This is the wrong mentality.

While you can link to stuff in your tweets, those links won’t directly gain you link popularity from the search engines. This is because links from Twitter and most other social media have the "nofollow" link attribute on them by default and therefore don’t count toward Google’s PageRank algorithm. We could debate whether there is still some link popularity benefit with other search engines or even perhaps some with Google, but I’ll save that for another article because links are not what we’re after today.

If Not for Links, Why Bother?

Your goal with social media is not to directly get links, but to be where people are already talking about your industry, participating in the conversation, and making them aware that you exist. It’s almost the opposite of SEO. With SEO, you try to make your website as relevant as possible for the words people might be typing into Google and hope they eventually find you there. With social media, you have the opportunity to grab their attention before they ever get to Google! They are no longer nameless, faceless searchers, but people looking to other people for advice, recommendations, and help.

How Can You Help?

First, you need to find out where the conversation is happening and who’s having it. The secret to this is the Twitter search engine. Twitter Search opens up a whole new world beyond your followers. It’s akin to the telephone "party lines" you’ve seen in old movies, where everyone could hear what everyone else was talking about.

Start searching Twitter for anyone with your main keywords in their Tweets. If they’re asking a question that you can answer, go ahead and @reply to them. You can follow them, but you may only want to if their Twitter stream seems to be of real interest to you. Many times people have one particular query or statement about something that relates to what you offer, but their overall Twitter stream may not. That’s fine – there’s nothing wrong with having a one-time communication with these folks.

Here’s a real-life example. One of our recent SEO Training Class students owns a company that designs and manufactures some cool pet beds and pet travel crates. The day before our class I did a Twitter search for "pet travel" or "pet crates" or something along those lines. There was a lot of junk, but one person had mentioned that they needed to buy a dog travel crate. I didn’t know this person, they didn’t follow me, nor I them. Their Tweet just appeared in the Twitter search. So I @replied to them and simply said, "Have you looked into the cool pet crates from ___?" And provided a shortened tracking link to our class attendee’s website.

Tracking Twitter Clicks

Because you have only 140 characters to work with in Twitter, numerous URL shortening services have cropped up. What they do is provide you with a shortened, redirected URL that has fewer characters than the original. On top of that, many of them provide you with clickthrough statistics. My service of choice is Cli.gs.

The next day during the class I told the story to the students and we checked to see how many clicks the site had gotten. It was around 15. (As of today, a few weeks later, there were 20.) So, while I was only talking to one specific person whom I had never engaged with before, others – presumably my own followers or others searching for info on pet crates – saw my Tweet and clicked through.

Did the clicks make any sales? That I don’t know, but if I were measuring it for our own site or for a client’s site, I would have set up a campaign with Google Analytics that tracked and measured those clicks at a very granular level. That way I would know exactly what time those clicks came in and if they converted.

Now, remember, I only made one Twitter search at one particular moment in time. While 20 clicks is no big deal to many companies, imagine if I had searched for 20 or more relevant phrases and replied to other people who were discussing pet travel options. If just one person each had a Tweet that fit my 20 queries, and I replied to all 20 of them, we might have seen 400 clickthroughs!

Monitoring Your Space

The other cool thing about search.twitter.com is that you can create RSS feeds for as many Twitter searches as you want. You just add them to your favorite RSS reader and monitor them on a regular basis (at least daily if not hourly). I use iGoogle for the twitter feeds I monitor. Be sure to also create a search feed for your company name to see if and when people are talking about you so that you can be part of that conversation and monitor your reputation as necessary. There’s even a service called "TweetBeep" that enables you to receive email alerts for specific Twitter searches.

The Fine Line Between Work and Play

You will need to invest some time into this for it to work well. You (or someone) will need to "hang out" at Twitter at least a couple of times a day, perhaps a half-hour each time. During that time you can follow additional people who have followed you, look for other people to follow who would be interested in your offerings, and visit other sites of interest that your followers have pointed out to you. Be sure to make comments about others’ Tweets that you like. Most of all, be authentic. Show your human side and don’t be afraid to just talk about nothing. If you only talk about your products and services, people will get bored with you and lose interest. Say what’s on your mind, use humor, and reply to others who are also just chatting for fun. This way, you’ll have the best of both social media worlds!

Jill

Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings and co-founder of SEMNE, has been performing SEO services since 1995. Jill is the host of the High Rankings Advisor newsletter and the High Rankings SEO forum.

We’ve already moved everyone over from FeedBurner, but if you’d like to receive mailings too, all you have to do is register.

If you too are interested in having Subscribe2 setup on your WordPress powered blog or site, just let us know and we’ll be more than happy to help set you up.