How do you get the attention of websites prestigious enough to improve your ranking? As any SEO company can tell you, there are several ways to go about it.

Provide an Intuitive Format with Helpful and Insightful Content

It doesn’t matter how many other tricks you try. The bottom line is that your website must have interesting, accurate copy. You get extra points if your website is easy to navigate, and if it is accessible to people using mobile devices like smartphones.

Keep Your Content Fresh

Most websites periodically check their links to make sure none are broken. If they find a website that has not been updated in several months, they may to decide to delete the link to that site in order to make room for links to newer content.

Submit to an Article Site

As the name suggests, article sites allow you to submit articles in your area of expertise. Google’s updates have made this a slightly trickier process – you should read an earlier article about the effectiveness of article marketing for more info. While you can’t blatantly self-promote, if your article is accepted, you will be able to post a link back to your site. By the way, most article sites have clear guidelines and will check the writing for quality. If you don’t like to write, or if you don’t write well, it may be in your best interests to hire a freelance writer to pen the articles.

Write a Guest Blog Post

Find a blog that both interests you and relates to your blog. Then contact the webmaster and offer to write a guest blog post in exchange for a link back to your site. Be sure to research the blogs you approach and put together a thoughtful, on-target proposal. If you send out a bunch of generic proposals, you could get the reputation for being a spammer — and that certainly won’t earn you any links. Again, you may want to hire a writer to produce the actual guest blog post.

Avoid Link Farms

Link farms are sites that will post a link back to your website in exchange for money. They were popular for several years, but Google’s newest algorithm, Penguin, penalizes sites that pay to be featured on link farms. In other words, trying this route may actually harm your Google ranking rather than help it.

Use Social Media

Whenever you update your website, especially if you’re offering a new product or service, make sure to share the news on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. This social media marketing will drive traffic to your site and, with luck, earn you some links as well.

Comment on Other People’s Blogs

Read blogs that are related to your business and leave an appropriate, thoughtful comment on one of the posts with a link back to your website. Don’t just say “Great post!” or your comment will probably be deleted or, worse yet, marked as spam. Leave a comment that indicates that you have really read and given some thought to the material.

Link to Your Favorite Websites

Find a few sites that you genuinely admire and provide links to them on your website. Then send a polite email to each web master, explaining why you have linked to their site and inviting them to visit your site in return.

Getting links from quality sites involves building trust with other web masters. It can be a slow process, but with a little persistence and creativity, you will get the links you need to improve your page rank.

The post How to Increase Your Page Rank by Getting Links to Your Website first appeared on StayOnSearch.

And it doesn’t just stop there, not even close.  Take a look at the job posting below on Fiverr; you can pay someone $5 and they’ll lodge complaints at all your competitors.  Or worse, your competitor could pay this person to lodge complaints against you.  If they do this a few hundred times you could have a crises on your hands that could break your business.

If you have an online reputation problem already, you know what a headache they are.  They are incredibly difficult to fight and consume lots of time, money, and energy.  If you don’t have any reputation management issues right now, perfect, don’t just wait for one to happen – be proactive!  Here are 3 easy tips you can act on today to help build up your positive online reputation.

1.  Ask for Good Reviews

Every business has big fans.  There are always those clients who are just extra appreciative of the work they received.  We used to ask these people for a testimonial for our website, but now we ask them for a review. Testimonials on the website are great, but you only need a limited number of those because of course you are going to have positive reviews on your own website.

However, you can never have enough positive reviews on Google Places, Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc.  Those little star ratings that show up in the search results are very quick indicators of quality, so the more five stars you can stockpile, the better.

Review sites like Yelp frown on asking for reviews, but who cares?  That is like them saying, “A business owner should never ask a satisfied customer to tell their friends about the business.”  Sure, don’t incentivize or give discounts for reviews, but by all means, ask for them!  Put a link to Yelp and Google Places in your email signature, mention reviews to satisfied customers, and even have a few of your friends who are also customers submit a nice review for you.

2.  Monitor Social Media

What starts out as a throwaway social media status update can snowball.  A tweet complaint today (like the one below) could turn into a blog post rant tomorrow.  A few days later, that post could rank on Page 1 of Google for your brand name, and if you weren’t monitoring, you’d have no idea where it came from.

If you aren’t actively monitoring, you can easily get started today. If you are on a budget (like zero budget), you can use these free tools and a few hours of configuration to get things rolling:

1. Google Alerts
2. Trackur Free
3. Hootsuite
4. Social Mention
5. Backtype

3.  Link Build to Positive Content

This is an SEO blog, right?  So we all know the value of links here.  But typically when we talk about link building, we are talking about link building to our own properties that we want to rank well.  In Online Reputation Management, it is a bit different.  Rather than just building links to our properties, we also build a lot of links to other properties.  How about an example…

The local newspaper has just done a great writeup on your small business and it is published in their online edition.  You’re smart about proactive reputation management, so you immediately start building links to that article so that it ranks well for your brand name.  That way, when people search the brand name, they find your company and positive content about your company.  By doing this early and often it is a lot harder for negative content to come along and start ranking for your brand queries.

To find more content like this, look at what is ranking on pages 2, 3, and 4 for your brand name queries.  Google likes this content already, so you might be able to bump it up to page 1 with just a few links.

Pro tip:  You can be a little more liberal with the quality of links you point to other people’s sites.  If you are trying to bump up a strong domain like a newspaper or social media profile, you can point some really low quality links at it without risk, and they often are enough to get it to move up.

Anytime you find a positive piece of content about your brand, product, or services, be sure to sprinkle a few links to it.  Think of it as an investment in protecting your brand’s reputation.

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

Online Reputation Management as an industry is growing at an amazing clip.  What was once a very niche need is now very mainstream, and you’ll often hear commercials on the radio and TV offering these services.  The reason for this rise in popularity is clear; put bluntly:  a positive reputation will help you sell more, while a negative reputation will hurt your sales (or worse).

As they say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, and I can think of no area that this is more true for than reputation management.  Spend a little bit of time doing the things covered in this article:  asking for reviews, monitoring mentions of your brand, and promoting positive content from 3rd party sites, and you’ll make it much more unlikely that you’ll have a reputation management crisis of your own to cure!

The post Three Pro-Active Tips for Online Reputation Management first appeared on StayOnSearch.

Blogging tells your potential clients a few things about your site like detailed information and important news – it puts the client within the confines of your business and gets them to see what it is like from the inside. It gets the client involved with you. With a blog you essentially have free reign to write about anything and everything and in the end, the goal is all the same: to win over clients.

This is an important aspect of viral marketing but where blogging works well for people is that it is so personable.  Think of this: without a blog, there is no other information about the company (or the employers or owners) other than what’s on the site. This is exactly why social media is widely popular.  You can know all you want with the frequency of posts that are being made on social media (but the understanding is that you can turn off clients by posting too much).

A blog, or web log, is more or less a diary on your business.  When you strike a tone that is personable, you develop followers, which means you have to consider a few things when blogging:

1)    Relevant Yet Fun – Blog writing does not have to be stiff writing. In fact you should never approach blog writing that way. Have fun with it.  Grammatical construction is important but it’s okay to not emphasize it.  Tone can be more relaxed.  Information can be freely dispersed.  You have the writing world at your finger tips.  In today’s business you want to be relational with your customers.

2)    Relevant Yet Credible – Establishing your credibility will take more than one blog.  What’s important is that blogging must be backed up by your ability to deliver.  The more blogging that takes place and the more you deliver, the more you will gain more notoriety for your business.

3)    Relevant and SEO-Friendly – Blogging plays an important role because it leaves room for companies to apply SEO concepts to their blogs.  The more blogs that take place the more SEO friendly your site becomes.

4)    Relevant and Good Communication – Communication is the key to any successful business venture.  It is often said that bad communication will shut down a business in less than a year. While it is a saying it shouldn’t surprise you if that is the case. Communicate to your customers and you will see major results.

Blogging can be fun and exciting and it is easily implemented into your site.  As far as Internet marketing is concerned, you can do a lot with blogging and its very nature is already SEO appropriate and friendly, depending on the blogging software you use.  Add pictures, videos, be short, be long, tease, etc.  A blog, especially if it is customized, can do your business wonders…it’s just a matter of how you want to implement it.

Most companies do blog as a habit, but they don’t necessarily have the right approach to it.  Never underestimate blogging as an Internet marketing tool.  If you use all the other sources of Internet marketing at your disposal then you’ll be in really good shape moving forward.  A blog in many cases are free or relatively cheap so the return on investment is quickly regained.

The post Let the Power of Blogging Work for Your Business first appeared on StayOnSearch.

1. EBay accurately measures brand desire and trends in real time.

2. EBay rates customers.

Both of these things when applied analytically to any niche market are extremely valuable. It’s likely that Neiman Marcus have been using EBay for market research and brand exposure for their Last Call stores for quiet some time. Priced much higher than most of the used merchandise on EBay, these items rarely sell. However, similar items do sell and EBay helps Neiman determine what will and won’t sell in their Last Call stores and to a degree in their regular stores.

Brand Desire and the Aspirational Shopper

The truly rich section of society probably doesn’t shop on EBay, why would they? However, many luxury sales are driven not by the really wealthy but by aspirational shoppers. These are people that can’t afford a 6 million dollar ski house or charter a plane. However, they can afford an Armani suit or maybe a pair of Prada boots. Aspirational shoppers are what drive brand sales for everything from cars to cell phones. EBay is the homeland of the bargain hunting aspirational shopper and this is why it is excellent for brand research. By watching the auctions of popular brand name items it is possible to see the magical power of branding at work and quickly determine what is “hot.” For example, what makes a used Moncler jacket command a $250.00 ending price with 11 bids while a comparable Cinza Rocca Due jacket goes unclaimed at $59.98? This is powerful information for anyone in online marketing or retail.

Watching brand desire on EBay also makes it possible to spot trends. For example, some of the most sought after items in women’s clothing are Fossil purses and North Face puffer jackets. These items can sell used on EBay for close to their new retail prices. What is interesting about these two brands is that they are not top of the line traditional aspirational brand names like Versace, Prada or Pucci. New, these items are not wildly expensive. However, they are cute, well made, and functional and shoppers want them. This is reflective of a new trend in aspirational shopping that reflects a more money conscious buyer. The fascinating part is that a used Fossil purse (new at about $200.00) can demand a higher price on EBay than an authentic Pucci purse from a top rated seller (new at about $1,000.00). The level of desire for the product dictates the value.

Watching desire on EBay works in almost any category. For example, it is possible to buy HDMI cables to hook up sound and video systems. Certain types of cables sell much better than others. Moreover, using EBay’s geographical tools it is possible to determine the demand for different types of cables in different markets. This in turn reveals the penetration of different types of audiovisual systems depending on the region. The audiovisual cable shopper on EBay isn’t an aspirational shopper so much as a shopper in search of convenience and a deal. If you happen to be an online seller of HDMI cables it would make sense to design your website high lighting cables that are in high demand on EBay.

EBay: Judging the Buyer

Bum buyers have been a problem on EBay so buyers as well as sellers have ratings. Sellers can also block bad buyers from bidding on their items. Rating buyers in the past has been the sacred land of credit agencies and credit card companies. However, this is an excellent metric that has the potential to transform all online commerce. Simply put, sellers would love to know the star rating of their buyers. Good buyers = happy sellers and lower prices. Bad buyers are not worth the energy. They are slow to pay, they return things for no reason and they provide substantial losses for any business. Distinguishing bad buyers isn’t generally easy even on EBay. Sellers cannot leave anything but positive feedback for buyers so the scores are not as valuable as they could be. However, certain categories tend to attract bad buyers much more readily than others and this is easy to see by comparing bidding categories and buyer ratings. Online sellers and marketers can analyze the ratings of buyers in different categories to cherry pick customers through their choice of inventory. In addition, in categories where there is a high level of bad customers a seller can institute strict return policies to protect profits.

EBay: Niche Communities

Every section of EBay is full of niche communities and niche sellers within these communities. Many of these sellers have established themselves as their own brands and they have strong followings. Niche sellers’ items sell better and get higher bids than non-niche sellers on EBay. Following any category identifies the niche sellers. These are social communities too and members occasionally chat with one another while they are asking questions about an item. Anyone interested in online selling can learn a lot from EBay’s successful niche sellers. They know how to use online marketing, keywords, photo listing services, descriptions and images effectively.

One example of a niche EBay seller is lassiefaire. This seller targets budget-minded working women with high quality used clothing made out of natural materials. As a convenience to her buyers she coordinated outfits together so that it is easy for them to buy an entire outfit at one time. Return buyers come back because they can trust that the quality and condition of the clothing has been hand picked by lassiefaire. It’s cheaper and easier for time-strapped working women to rely on her as their personal shopper than to try to tackle any other kind of store. Their choice to buy used items is also eco-friendly. This particular seller is expanding her business into an EBay storefront called “Transit of Venus” to further capitalize on her customer following. This type of niche targeted selling is the antithesis of Costco and it is likely to dominate online sales in the future because it is so much easier for the consumer. Niche selling brings buyers exactly the types of items they are interested in buying quickly and efficiently.

EBay tools allow a searcher to break down almost any metric and collect data about almost anything and then save the searches to test them again at a later time. For anyone interested in online market research this is one way to gain a valuable perspective.

The post Creative Online Brand Research: Using eBay as a Niche Marketing Tool first appeared on StayOnSearch.

Make sure you give him some props on his amazing job!

Image Credit

The post Google Panda Algorithm Update [Infographic] first appeared on StayOnSearch.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, we occasionally have to write for topics or industries that are, to put it bluntly, boring. You (like me) may find it difficult to turn keywords like “industrial office supplies” or “toaster ovens” into engaging 600-word-or-so blog posts. The task is often made more complicated by time constraints that allow little time for thorough research.

Here are four tips that have helped me turn “boring” into “brilliant” (or, at least, “not sleep-inducing”):

1. Find a Way to Interest Yourself

Figure out some way to relate your boring subject to something you are interested in. On the topic of toaster ovens, for example, why not write a blog post about unusual ways to use an oven? What can you do with it besides, well, toasting things? Even if you don’t have that much creative freedom, you could write about “green” ovens—what can someone do to use their oven at maximum efficiency with minimal effect on the environment?

Granted, this technique might take a little forethought and is sometimes easier said than done, but if you can make a connection with the thing you are writing about, you’re almost guaranteed to write a more passionate, and thus a more interesting, article.

2. Ask (And Answer) a Question

Sometimes you are asked to write about a subject that you know little about. In this case, I find that I can usually write a good article by answering questions that I, myself, may have about the subject. What does it do? How is it used? What is the market? Other times as I answer these basic questions, new, more complex ones spring up. Chances are if you have a question about something, others will too, and you’ll be able to write an interesting post with a strong call to action. 

3. Write a Killer Headline

Sometimes all you need to send you in the right direction for an article is a great title. Look at examples of strong marketing headlines. Pay attention to what titles entice you to click. Look at whether you can modify any of these headlines to fit your topic. What about “5 Essential Industrial Office Supplies” or “Industrial Office Supplies that Can Save Your Life” (whether that’s a literal or figurative “saving” is up to you).

With these headlines typed boldly at the top of your page, you now have a framework from which you can write an attention-grabbing article.

4.  Tell a Story

Turn your article into a story. Maybe not literally (though if you can find a related narrative about how someone actually did use a toaster oven to build a robot, that’s great, too), but if you can find a way to connect the dots for people and tell them a story about an otherwise boring subject, you’ll turn an everyday article into something that people can’t help but read.

The next time you find yourself needing an article about a less-than-riveting industry try some of these ideas to make your task a little easier.

The post How to Write About Anything first appeared on StayOnSearch.

Even when you try really hard to keep your readers happy, you might make multiple mistakes, which will obstruct your blog’s growth. Let us have a look at the five potential mistakes that can prevent your blog from growing.

#1. The About Us Page Is Crippled

The ‘about us’ page of a blog gets a high amount of traffic. Before stepping into a new relationship with you, readers want to ensure whether you are a great match for them. It is the ‘about us’ page that tells readers whether the blog has a human side to it. This page gives you a potential opportunity to connect with your audience.

An incomplete or a crippled ‘about us’ page will certainly fail to compel readers for stepping into a long-term relationship. Therefore, use this page to inform your readers of your whereabouts and establish a wonderful personal connection.

#2. Headlines Don’t Attract Clicks

Creating attention-grabbing headlines is key to attract the most number of clicks. Learn the art of writing killer headlines. Use numbers, give world-class examples and employ power words to add weight to blog post headlines. People will click a headline only when it piques their curiosity.

What’s even more important is that you deliver what your headline promises. Make sure the headline that you have chosen is exactly in tune with what you have shared in the blog post.

#3. Web Pages Are Not Visually Appealing

Visual appeal can only be created when you know what type of audience you are going to target. Where is your audience located? Your audience may belong to different fields of work or occupations.

Once you are aware who your target audience is, you should pull up your socks to create a blog design that’s in tune with their aspirations. According to the requirements, customize the page layout, font style, background color etc. The focus should always be on making your blog visually appealing to the target market.

#4. The Opt-in Form Looks Ugly

The appearance of your blog’s opt-in form makes a heck of difference when it comes to inviting readers for sign-up. People will be tempted to sign up if the email capture form really catches their attention. There are multiple professional email services (like Aweber and MailChimp) you can use.

The opt-in form issue might appear to be a petty one, but it’s actually not. An ugly looking opt-in form can make your blog lose a lot of potential readers. Pay attention before it’s too late, if you really want to grow your blog.

#5. SEO Has Become an Obsession

As soon as you become obsessed about SEO, you start affecting the quality of your blog posts. Definitely, your blog needs to be found in search engines. But that doesn’t mean you should start targeting search engines rather than people. Don’t ever let SEO take its toll on the quality of articles.

What steps have you taken to increase the growth of your blog? Please feel free to share your views and experiences in the comment section below.

The post 5 Mistakes That Will Crush Your Blog’s Growth first appeared on StayOnSearch.

So here are the carefully chosen 6 ways to make your website’s performance better:

1. Find the culprit by Firebug: Firebug is a great tool to inspect HTML, debug JavaScript and to analyze network usage & performance for a website. Profile your webpage with the help of Firebug to know about the components which needs to be optimized. Firebug is a free to use tool and you can integrate it with Firefox browser.

2. Save a few bytes by minifying JavaScript and CSS: Remove unwanted characters like tabs, spaces and source code comments to reduce file size of CSS and JavaScript. For Example:
A small part of CSS:
.more-class {
color: #ffffff;
line-height: 40px;
font-size: 10px;
}

Above code can be written as:
.more-class {color: #ffffff;line-height: 40px;font-size: 10px;}
And it will work as the previous one. You don’t need to be panic for manually minify JavaScript and CSS, because there are plenty of tools to do this.  Some popular tools for minify CSS and JavaScript are: CSS Optimizer, CSS Compressor, JSMIN, YUI Compressor and JavaScript Code Improver.

3. Avoid inline CSS and JavaScript: External JavaScript and CSS files are cached by visitor’s browser by default.  When user navigates your website’s inner pages his/her systems have already cached JavaScript and CSS files which help inner pages to load fast.  On the other hand if you use those CSS and JavaScript in your HTML document, you would not be able to take advantage of users caching. So always use CSS and JavaScript as separate files not inline.

4. Reduce HTTP requests by using CSS Sprites: You can combine smaller images into one big image and at the time of display adjust the CSS attribute (background-position) to display the correct image. In this way you can reduce the number of HTTP request for images.  This technique is known as CSS Sprite. You can do it manually or with the help of a web based tool called CSS Sprite Generator.
CSS Sprite technique is very effective in improving website’s performance especially in situation where many smaller images like menu icons are used. You would be surprised to know that Yahoo uses this technique for its home page.

5. Reduce image file size by saving in right format: Images can be real culprit for bad performance of a website if not used in right format. You can reduce image file size by just saving them in right format. Lighter images help a webpage to load fast. There are three common file format used in web designing: PNG, GIF and JPEG. You should use JPEG format for most images with smooth gradients and color tones. You should use GIF and PNG format for solid color images like charts and logos. In increasing order heavier formats are: JPEG, PNG and GIF. Now you are clear that GIF should be avoid wherever possible.

6. Reduce HTTP requests by combining JavaScript and CSS: When a webpage is requested by a web browser, an HTTP request is created for every component that is required to render that page. Let us assume that a webpage needed 5 CSS files to render the whole page and then 5 separate HTTP requests are needed.  By combining those 5 CSS files we can reduce HTTP requests to generate the webpage. These reduced requests will make your webpage performance better.

Although there are many other ways to reduce page load time, but above mentioned six are really good and practically proven methods to do the same. Hope these will help you to make your website perform better on web.

The post 6 Ways to Get Better Website Performance first appeared on StayOnSearch.

DomainsBot

One of the fellow guest stay on search contributors Kristi Hines in her recent SEJ recommended a new platform DomainsBot but I haven’t used before. After spending sometime looking at it’s features and advanced search options DomainsBot is a fairly decent platform. The reasons are that DomainsBot is unique as it’s one of the few that offers a fairly wide global reach for finding a great domain name amoung a number of popular domain extensions and some great advanced search options.

Advanced Domain Search Options include:

• Add Synonym
• View Only Extensions: Com,Net,Org,Co,Info,Biz,Us,Mobi,Me,Asia
• Status: Available,Expiring,For Sale
• Include: Hyphens,Numbers,Related,Compound,Variation,BadWords
• Language: Auto, English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese

Limitations of the DomainsBot platform is that while it offers .me and .asia domain extensions it does not support these language sets. One other area would be appreciated if they could expand the number of extensions supported to include AU,UK and EU domains.

SEDO

One of the largest domain platforms Sedo also offers some features for those looking to secure a decent domain from their huge database of listings.  The downside is that their domain search platform is heavily focused on direct domain sales and their auction platform but also suggests those that are still available to be registered so not all is lost.

Advanced Domain Search Options include:

• Extensions: upto 420
• Languages: English,Spanish,French,German
• Domain Length: All, upto 12 characters and over 12 characters
• Number of Words: all, upto 5 words, over 5 words
• Price range: EUR,USD,GBP
• Categories:Top level, level 1, level 2
• Date Added
• Traffic
• Listing Type: buy now, negotiable, marketplace, auction
• Special characters: hyphens,digits,IDN domains
• Domains/Websites: domains,websites,both
• Safe Search: off,on

Being one of the largest domain registrars offers them the ability to have the largest range of domain extensions. The limtations are the overly complex search functions, confusing menu structures and an inability to catch dropped/expired domains.

FreshDrop

One of the newer platform that requires a monthly subscription to make full use of their service is FreshDrop, the free version is great but you need to experience it’s full potential.  The interesting aspect of their domain search platform is the hourly scans of the domain registrars.

Supported Domain Registrars you can search include

• GoDaddy
• Fabulous.com
• Afternic
• eBay
• SEDO
• Dynadot
• SnapNames
• NameJet
• Pool.com

The only issue that the domain while appearing to be very powerful is a little technical and may not be suitable for new enterants to the domain market. It’s one of the only platform that has a wonderful tour feature that explains all the functionality and features available to find domains.

DomainTools

One of the most power platforms is Domain Tools Monitor, I have been using for a number of years to monitor both my own domains, those I have a vested interest in and those belonging to clients. One of the key aspects of staying on top of domains is using automated domain monitoring tools where possible.

Some of the cool features that you might want to checkout include

• Registrant Alert – monitor whois record for any newly registered, renewed or deleted
• Name Server Alert – monitor daily activity on all major TLDs on any name server with fewer than 50,000 domains whenever there is a new domain added or a domain deleted
• Trademark Alert – monitor activity on your alert word or string of words and be notified when they are about to be registered or deleted
• Domain Monitor – advises of expiration dates, status changes or updates to Whois records

One of the other features to use platforms like DomainTools is to check the Whois details on the domain due to drop to understand more about who owned the domain, what was the site profile, other matching general TLDs and some details on what other domains they own.

NetFleet

One of the platforms i’ve been testing is NetFleet Alerts which mostly focuses on AU domains but allows me to automatically monitor both domains listed for sale and domains due to expire/drop. Their free keyword alert service sends me an email alerts when a domain matches the industry, market or niche that i’m monitoring.

The domain alert settings require

1. Keyword or domain names monitored
2. Alert type: standard, expired aftermarket
3. Notification frequency: daily, weekly

The limitations of the platform is that the automatic classification of the domain niche is not always accurate, but the ease at which you can quickly scan the notification is brilliant.

Go out and start building your portfolio

My best piece of advice is it’s a great idea to try and pick a platform that works for you but if you centralise your domain purchases with one registrar to get a bigger discount.  To ensure fail safes are in place always use more than one monitoring platform where possible and ideally pick a solution for it’s strengths. I hope all these suggestions and platforms makes it easier for you to start expanding your domain portfolio.

The post 5 Resources to Find Seasoned, Expiring Domains first appeared on StayOnSearch.

Organizing Your Twitter Searches

Most Twitter searches (ones that involve only keywords) can be created and monitored directly in Twitter management tools like HootSuite. Alternatively, more specific queries (especially ones that are location based) will need to be performed on Twitter’s advanced search page and saved either as browser bookmarks or in RSS feeds.

Top Twitter Searches for Business

Here are some great searches to use for your business.

Reputation Management

For reputation management purposes, you will want to have searches for your company name, brand name, unique product names, and names of key people in your company. These can be managed in HootSuite or other Twitter management applications.

Market Research

Sometimes, your reputation management searches will result in some good ideas from your customers, such as a recent tweet by a random Twitter user mentioning that they wished Olive Garden delivered, and since they don’t, that user was opting for pizza delivery instead. You should also can create search queries for your industry. For example, if you’re a fashion retailer, you could create a search for “new designer sunglasses” and see which shades are being discussed the most – these would be ones that you would want to carry (if you don’t already) and maybe include in your next corporate blog post.

Competitor Research

You can easily use Twitter to spy on your competitors. If your competitor is on Twitter, you can do a search for their @username and then monitor what people are saying. For example, if someone mentions that @yourcompetitor’s price is too high for a specific product that you carry, you could reply to that person and say that your store sells it for less. Or if someone mentions that @yourcompetitor’s service takes too long, you could reply that your service team turns requests around faster. The possible uses of this information is endless.

Location Based Research

What if you are a local business? This is when you will want to turn to Twitter’s advanced search and use the local options. You can perform searches such as dentist near:85255 within:50mi ? which would result in anyone asking a question about a dentist, and limit the results to users who have identified themselves as living within a specific distance of a particular zip code or city. Granted, you will to sort through random Twitter chat, but you may also see some users who ask their followers if they know of a good dentist in the area. This would be a good time to reply, maybe with a first time patient discount offer.

Your Twitter Searches

Do you use Twitter search for business? What other queries do you find useful to monitor that could be applied to any niche or industry?

The post Essential Twitter Searches for Your Business first appeared on StayOnSearch.