By Mike Jones, Search Engine Watch, Feb 28, 2008
People online are seeking new ways to connect and be social. To meet that growing need, a new wave of social media sites have germinated explicitly to provide tools and platforms that facilitate sharing in all its facets and forms. The recent popularity of online social networks gives testimony to our most primitive desire to belong, as we congregate around the things we are most passionate about.

Savvy marketers are beginning to see this evolution of Internet users, from passive consumers into brand influences and ambassadors who are not to be underestimated.

Many brands are wary of exposing themselves on social media sites, but as anyone who’s been involved in social media for more than five minutes knows, they’re too late. Their brands are already exposed, and the community is talking about them, whether they choose to get involved or not. Rather than trying to avoid the conversation, brand marketers need to create a strategy to engage online influencers and social media users who have the power to make or break their brand.

Here are seven social marketing tactics to help your brand “get social” and join the conversation:

1. Boost the Fun Factor
2. See the Forest and the Trees
3. Widgets are Welcome
4. Conversation is King
5. Engage
6. Research and Listen
7. Don’t Go It Alone

More detail Information Here>>>

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

In this month’s Target Marketing Magazine, a TopRank authored article on how small businesses can gain a competitive marketing advantage by leveraging content promotion, blogs, social media and universal search was featured. Recently there has been some dialog and commentary on certain SEM channels about upcoming harder economic times calling for SEO to be taken back to the basics: “Textbook SEO” as Mike Grehan would put it. I disagree with the premise that companies should stop experimenting with new tactics and stick with the fundamentals. Effective SEO in any economic environment means getting more creative, not mundane.

More Via

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

100% Organic - A Column From Search Engine Land Here’s a quick test for you. Don’t worry, it’s only one question. True or false: Today’s SEO techniques could be tomorrow’s search engine spam with one turn of the algo crank.

What do you think? Is what you do to optimize your site going to be considered search engine spam one day because of a change in the search engines’ magic formula?

Search engine spam takes many forms

If you answered “true,” you may need to seriously examine your SEO practices. Good, professional SEO that puts users first while keeping search engines in mind would never be considered spam by any stretch of a search engineer’s imagination. Search engine spam takes a concerted effort and is done in an attempt to misrepresent any given page of your website. It can take the form of showing one thing to the engines and something else to the typical website user, i.e., cloaking or hidden text. But that’s not the only thing that might be considered spam.

Search engine spam can be perfectly visible to the typical user as well. Keyword stuffing in all its forms—be it the copy, the title tags, within image alt attributes, or in anchor text—is search engine spam, as it’s only there to try to increase rankings. Which is why those “techniques” rarely work for very long.

You can’t OVER optimize anything

You may have heard some people talk about an “over-optimization” penalty. They say this can happen to a page that has too much optimization. Huh? How can a page be over-optimized? That’s like being “a little bit pregnant”! By its very nature the word “optimize” means “to make as effective, perfect, or useful as possible” (according to Dictionary.com).

Over-optimization isn’t optimization at all; it’s search engine spam, clear and simple. Just because your spam increased your rankings for awhile doesn’t mean that it wasn’t spam. And that’s what confuses people.

Search engine spam does work

It certainly is frustrating to review many top-ranking websites only to find them using all sorts of deceptive techniques that go unnoticed but are seemingly rewarded by the search engines. This in turn makes people assume that’s what you’re supposed to do on your website in order to get high rankings. They believe what they saw others doing must be a legitimate SEO technique. As far as I know, “everyone else is doing it” is not a legitimate defense in the courtroom, nor is it to the search engines when they decide to change their algorithm.

Jill Whalen, CEO and founder of High Rankings

(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Building a website that will be considered a ‘traffic worthy site’ is essential for your site’s success. A traffic worthy site is developed for more than just the human, however. It also needs to be developed for the search engines along with their spiders and crawlers. That is why a sound web design is crucial for driving traffic to your site. So, what is involved in building a traffic worthy site you ask?
First of all, you must perform a thorough research into what constitutes your company’s keywords.

A smart web developer will see what their site looks like to search engines. A Lynx viewer (text mode web browser) is great for this. This viewer also make one’s site friendly for the vision impaired who regularly search the net. Yes, there are millions doing this.Designing your website for your human visitors should be first priority. A balancing act between human and search engine visitors is a tricky one, but needs to be accomplished.

Practice good SEO, but not at the expense of your visitors’ viewing experience.

It’s also important to note that web browser standards are not yet fully integrated. For instance, a site that looks good in Window’s Internet Explorer may not look good in the Mozilla based Firefox or Netscape. Developers must be knowledgeable about cross browser design for their website’s success. Plus, with the multitude of hand held devices provide another issue. These hand held devices display information differently and developers must be conversant in W3C formatting. Google-backed Firefox is quickly eating up Window’s Internet Explorer browsing turf. Developers must keep abreast of these changes.

Never use a word processor to design your website. Word processing software is notorious for containing a variety of hidden messy codes which are not search engine friendly.

Search engine ‘bots’ are your most important visitors. You must accommodate and entice them. By properly designing your website, you will gain respect with them. This respect, in turn, increases both your targeted visitors and sales.

The subject of bringing traffic to your website is immense. This article touches upon only a few of the ways you can succeed in this area. You can only benefit by knowing how to build a traffic-driven website.

SEO. Everywhere we turn anymore it seems we hear about search engine optimization (SEO for short). SEO consists of keyword optimization. SEO also is utilized by both search engines automatically and humans manually. Each time a visitor types in their word of choice into the search engine (known as search utilization), sites pop up containing that word. See the importance of knowing your keywords?

It is estimated that more than 86% of all human visitors arrive at websites via search engines. Recent statistics have shown that Google is the top pick search engine. Can you see how search engine optimization is of utmost important for your site’s success?

A top ranking in the search engines can bring you highly targeted traffic. These particular visitors are essential for your success. You offer a certain product. Visitors are searching for that particular product and come across your site. You offer something they are seeking. Therefore, search engines are sending you pre-qualified customers.

Google indexed 8 billion pages. Google uses bots (also known as spiders and crawlers.) It’s important for marketers to know how spiders crawl around your web page and site.

Search engine crawlers are your best visitor. Giving the crawler unlimited ability to move around your website and page is essential for your search engine ranking.

Your website must be spider (search engine) friendly if you want any traffic from the search engines. The search engine spider does not read your website the way humans do. The spider reads HTML (web page source code). If your site does not contain it, or uses it poorly, the spider will give up.

Furthermore, spiders love text content. They do not care about JavaScript at all. Sites containing a multitude of images and no ALT tags may not be indexed properly for the spiders. The site may be appealing to the eye, but the bot spiders do not care. They will lose interest in your site. So, when designing your site, you must convince your web developer of incorporating some structural design that promotes search engine friendliness.

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Technorati Profile

(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Web Base Marketing and search engine optimization consultants provide you with customized solutions for your Internet marketing needs. Our web Base marketing programs consistently result in increased leads, sales and online brand visibility for our clients.

Web Based Marketing is primarily an online marketing consulting firm.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...