Subscribe in a ReaderArchive for April, 2008
A growing trend in search engine marketing and search engine optimization is known as Social Media Optimization. This involves uses the myriad social networks available to drive traffic to your website by marketing through them. Interestingly, this also works to increase your link popularity, which will in turn boost your PageRank. However, there are some things to remember in order to make your social media marketing strategy most effective.
Not all social networks or social media sites will be beneficial to you. For starters, you have to have a good idea of who your target audience is, and what social media services they might use. These are the places in which you should focus your efforts.
Another thing to remember is that on many social networks, users are hyper aware of spam. Therefore, you’re going to have to get creative about where and now you submit links, because you don’t want to come off as a blatant marketer. When using social bookmark sites, such as Digg or Del.ici.ous, don’t make overt attempts to have your content voted to the top, either by encouraging others or creating false accounts and voting for your own content. This is considered black hat SEO in many circles, and your content can be removed if this is discovered.
One thing that’s important to remember is to provide specific tags for your links. Specific keywords and tags can help you stand out in a crowd. Rather than competing for a popular keyword such as “used cars”, try being more specific, using something like “used car parts” and try to tackle a niche. This will result in more attention in that niche and much better results.
When you link, link to content within your site that will be useful to users. Providing them with something specific is much better than linking them directly to your homepage. Remember, providing specific, useful content to a niche interest group will ultimately be much more effective than trying to reach everyone through general, boring content. A great idea is to link to an article within your blog, and then use the blog to relate back to your main site. Make yourself look like a specific expert, and your SEO and social media marketing will be most successful.
Related Posts:
Improving the popularity and visibility of your website is important to any webmaster, and most often it can be done by securing a good foundation on which to build in the future. Whether you’re running your own informational news website or an e-commerce website, these tips can help you get noticed.
One of the best places to start is in your website design, and if you’re going to spend money on anything, this is where to spend it. Having a professional looking, easy to navigate site design is going to keep users coming back and contribute greatly to the reputation and credibility people lend to your site.
Try to provide something that users can really use. Avoid just letting your site be an informational brochure about your company or business. Add blogs and provide information on current events related to your industry or service, or provide video or photos. Provide something for your users that you think will encourage them to want to show their friends.
Stay up to date and stay topical. If your business or website is involved in the health food field, and you miss the chance to report on a bacteria scare in vegetables or a new type of health product being released, your going to miss out on the opportunity to generate tons of valuable traffic. Keep your site up to date.
Ask for and respond to criticism. Getting to know what your users want is key to providing it for them. Ask for suggestions and heed the best advice you get to improve your site and give your audience what they need.
Learn about search engine marketing, forums and blogs, and the rest of Web 2.0 and use them. Everyone else is doing this, so in order for your site to keep up, you should too.
Do things that will attract attention. We’re not saying be outright controversial or offensive, but do or cover things that will get you noticed and talked about through the Web 2.0 methods we just mentioned.
Optimize for Google. Google control 80% of the search market, so if you can place highly in their rankings, you’re opening yourself up to a huge volume of traffic. Learn what it takes to rank highly and design your site to comply.
Related Posts:
Social media sites can be very good at drawing traffic to your website, as well as at increasing your link popularity and thereby your PageRank. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg or Del.ici.ous are proven to draw vast amounts of traffic within a very short amount of time.
StumbleUpon is a different type of social bookmarking site, but can produce just as effective results. StumbleUpon allows users to add a toolbar to their browser that includes a like/dislike vote feature. If a user likes a site, it will be submitted to StumbleUpon. What’s interesting is that unlike the other sites mentioned, StumbleUpon draws a lower amount of traffic over a longer time, but that consistency can be very beneficial to your search engine optimization. Here are some tips to improve your own StumbleUpon ranking.
- Get on StumbleUpon and rate sites that you like. Getting involved in the community in this way will make your website get more visibility to users with similar interests.
- Add new friends frequently. The more people who see your site and site’s that you give thumbs up, the more your own rating will improve, and thus your visibility.
- Create and submit new websites often. If you have a new site, new content or a new blog post, submit a link to StumbleUpon. The more sites you have in their database, the more likely that users will find you. Cross linking between these sites can have a great effect on your SEO as well.
- Choose titles and tags carefully. Try to appeal to those with relevant interests, so you can improve the quality, and not just the quantity, of your traffic.
- Use several tags rather than just one. This will spread out your appeal and attract more viewers.
StumbleUpon can be an excellent part of your search engine marketing strategy, and a great way to generate useful, specific traffic for your site.
Related Posts:
One of the most frequently asked questions by webmasters and search engine optimization speciualists is how one can structure their site to make it more accessible and readable to the search engine crawlers? We all know that the crawlers are out there scanning our sites and assigning them a ranking based on what they find, but how can we structure our site to make sure the crawler will give us a high rank? The biggest factor in search engine optimization and search engine marketing depends on making your site accessible and easily scannable for the crawler. The easier time they have scanning your site, determining its value and finding keywords, the higher they will rank you. So here are some tips to help make your site easily digested by the search engine crawlers like the infamous Googlebot.
Continue Reading: Making your Website Digestible for the Search Engine CrawlersRelated Posts:
SEO is a huge part of any website’s strategy for marketing these days, but there are right and wrong ways to go about it. In general, we see that some mistakes are more common than others. Below we’ve listed the 5 most common misconceptions and mistakes regarding search engine marketing so you can avoid them.
Continue Reading: 5 Common Misconceptions about Search Engine OptimizationRelated Posts:
Everyone can always use new techniques for getting high quality inbound links to their web site, the best way to improve Page Rank, and a key part of search engine marketing. The best link building strategiess will incorporate a number of techniques and methods, so here are a few you can add to your existing strategies.
Continue Reading: More Helpful Linking StrategiesRelated Posts:
As you probably know, inbound linking is one of the most important components of a search engine marketing strategy. But often times people simply understand how using the options for link building that exist out there on the internet are key to the overall construction of your website as a whole. You have to get links from the right sources, and ultimately, those sources are going to have to want to link to your site, so your content needs to be useful, informative and make your site sound like the best out there.
Continue Reading: Building a Winning Site Using Linking and ContentRelated Posts:
While Digg.com can be a great place to submit articles and information that can help build your search engine optimization link building strategy, there is a new feature in place on the site that can make it harder for SEO marketing strategists to get their articles noticed. The feature, called the “Bury” button, is featured right below the headline and intro clip of the article, next to the comments section. Its purpose is to allow users who feel the article is irrelevant or blatantly for marketing purposes to vote to “bury” it so that other users won’t spend their time reading it.
Continue Reading: Dealing With Digg: Viral Tactics to TryRelated Posts:
When you’re building your search engine marketing strategy, a wide variety of link building techniques can only benefit you. The more inbound links you have to your sites the better, and having a wide variety of sources for these links can be beneficial to your ranking. Here are some more unconventional link building techniques you may not have previously considered.
Continue Reading: Some Unconventional Tips for Link Building