Thursday, December 17, 2009

Proven Social Media Optimization Tips

As you probably know, practicing social media optimization tips greatly assist in positive exposure. Actually, social media optimization is an effective online marketing strategy that can do amazing things along with driving targeted traffic and grabbing the attention of your targeted audience.

It would be correct to say that SMO connects your search market and social media. Popularity and publicity are basic need of every business, and you can get it through relating your market to social media.

Social media optimization is of course related to search engine optimization, but at the same time, it differs with it, in many ways. Main elements of SMO are social networking and bookmarking sites, community sites, video and photo sharing sites. So, performing social media optimization is like optimizing a site for social media sites.

Here are some secrets to start with Social Media Optimization and getting most out of it:

Increases link ability of a site
Increasing link ability is considered very important for your social media optimization efforts. Actually, it is the ability if a site to get links from other sites. This is more for static websites. Adding a blog is great idea for increasing link-ability.

Encourage inbound links
Better interlinking results in better search results. It also provides good visibility to your readers.

Flexible content
Make your content travel around the internet, spread your content and gain popularity.

Don’t fake – be real
Transparency and clearness can be considered as foundation of any business. Fake things are simply not liked by anybody. So, be real in your approach.

Stay fresh
Never hesitate to try new and creative ideas. New challenges welcome many paths to success. So, it’s good to follow them.

Easy bookmarking and tagging
Offer buttons for bookmarking and tagging. This will boost call to action from users for easy bookmarking. Make sure to add a list of relevant tags.

Participate in relevant community
Find a relevant community, say a forum and be an active participant. Help out people; this will let them know your knowledge and experience.

Reward valuable and supportive readers/prospects
Readers or prospects are always invaluable inspiration. Just imagine, how would a business grow if there is no client? So, if your readers have any questions or advice, then reward them by giving them proper feedback.

Ref: http://www.seobloggingsolutions.com/8-proven-social-media-optimization-tips/

Thursday, June 11, 2009

How To Create Forum Signatures (Sig)

If you are an avid user of forums or message boards, then you are no stranger to what a forum signature is. Chances are, you are reading this because you want to know how to make one for your account as well. For those who may not know this already, the forum signature is that little area of text and/or pictures that appears under a person's message board post.

When you sign up for a message board, you do not have a signature that goes with your name. In fact, you will not have one unless you take it upon yourself to make your own signature. Many people love the look of a forum signature. However, the problem lies with knowing how to put them in. If you are going for a very specific look, you will need to use special codes to make that look happen.

The good news is that everything you need to know about creating forum signatures is listed in this article.

Learn BBCode (Bulletin Board Code or BBCode is a lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message boards.)
BBCode is what will make your signature appear exactly how you want it. BBCode is a special code that is similar to HTML. While not all message boards use BBCode, the vast majority of forums do.

The main difference between HTML and BBCode is the tags that control the code. BBCode uses [ and ] brackets where HTML uses <> brackets.

If you are completely uncomfortable using BBCode, a good trick would be to open a new message and write your signature in the message box. This will allow you to use the clickable interface for special features (such as bold, italics, font color, etc.) and quotes.

Once you have your signature the way you want it you can easily copy it and paste it in the appropriate box where your signature will be listed.

Create your Signature
Once you are familiar with BBCode, it will be time to make your signature. You can do many things with BBCode, so you should try to have a good idea of what you want your signature to look like.

You can make text bigger and smaller and color it as well. If you want, you can make the text bold, underlined, or italicized. You can also add links and pictures to your signature. This is all done through BBCode coding.

As long as you use the following codes, your signature should look exactly like you want it to look.

Note: When you create the codes, there should be no spaces between the bracket and the first word and between the last word and the closing bracket.

[b]To make your text bold[/b]

[u]To make the text underlined[/u]

[i]Text you want Italicized[/i]

[size=5]Text you want Sized[/size]
(sizes go from 1 (too small to read) and 29 extremely large.)

[color=red]Text you want Red[/color]
or using a hex color [color=#666666]Text you want Gray[/color]

[quote="Name of person you are quoting"]Text you are quoting[/quote]

[url="http://url you wish to add"]Text you want to be clickable[/url]

[email]Your Email[/email]

[img]URL of image[/img]

Add your Signature to Your Profile
Once your signature has been coded, all you need to do is add it to your profile. To do this, all you need to do is go to the forum and sign-in. Once you are signed in, click on the profile button or another area where you can change your personal information.

In this area, you should find a signature box. Paste your signature code into this area and save the changes that you have made. If you want your signature to show up with every post you make, you need to make sure that this is noted in your profile preferences.

Most forums have a box you can check underneath your signature to make every post show your signature. If it is not clicked, or you do not want the signature to show up after every single post, then you will need to add your signature to specific posts manually by clicking a check box near the bottom of the message screen when you are replying to a post or creating a new post.

Note: This box should say "Attach Signature." It will be located beneath the box where you type the body for your forum topics and replies.

Check out your New Signature
Once you click "Save" in the profile area, you are done. It is really as simple as that. You can go to the forum and make a post to see what your new signature looks like. If everything is how you want it to be, then you are done.
If you want to make some changes, you can go back to the profile area and make them until you have the signature just the way you want it.

Quick Tips:
Every time you change your signature (after the first time), it will automatically update to the new version on every post that you have made on the forum since you first added a signature.

You can combine BBCode to make your text as specific as you want it. For instance, you can change the text size, color, and make it bold on one specific text line or word.

Ref:http://www.howtodothings.com/computers/a2254-how-to-create-forum-signatures-sig.html

Monday, June 8, 2009

21 Off-Page SEO Strategies to Build Your Online Reputation


These things have to be done after the completion of on-page SEO. Before doing these things you must be aware of your competitors who can able build a negative reputation against your company/website.

Community Creation in Social Networking Sites
Also known as online reputation management, this is the first and foremost step with which you have to initiate your process. Try to become a member of the most popular social networking sites like Orkut, Myspace, Facebook, Linked In, Ecademy, etc., and create a profile of your own. By doing this you can extend your network online, get connect with your friends, share things with each other, and promote your company/website to build an online reputation. This is most likely the same as Web 2.0 (Participatory Web), which means you have to show your active participation on a regular basis.

Blogging
This is one of the most powerful ways to promote your company/website online. Write a blog of your own for your company/website and include lots of unique content. Be precise in what you're trying to convey for the users in your blog entry and promote your blog in blog directories and blog search engines. You can also promote your blog/website by posting comments in other service-related blogs which allow links in the comments section that are crawlable by the search engines (these blogs are commonly identified as Do-Follow Blogs). If you're not very good at writing content for blog posts, hire a guest blogger for your blog and ask him/her to write precise and unique content so that your blog can gain more credit from a search engine point of view.

Forum Postings
Create a forum/online discussion board of your own and start a discussion or share topics with your friends. You can also post/reply to a thread in other service-related pre-existing forums that allow links in your signature which can be crawled by the search engines (aka "Do-Follow Forums").

Search Engine Submission
Submit your website to the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, Alexa, Alltheweb, Lycos, Excite, etc., to get listed for free.

Directory Submission
Many people may say that directory submission is dead. As far as I'm concerned it is still alive. It is purely based on how effectively we are selecting those directories and how efficiently we are choosing the category for submission. Of course, I agree that it gives quite delayed results, but it is worth doing it. Submit your websites to the topmost quality directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, ZoomInfo, One Mission, Pegasus, etc. Nowadays many web directories may offer paid listings but don't go for it.

Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking is yet another powerful way of promoting your website, but nowadays most people are spamming social bookmarking sites without knowing how to use them. Since content in these websites update frequently, search engines like these types of sites and often visit them (this is commonly termed as Tagsonomy & Folksonomy in Web 2.0). Do some social bookmarking in popular bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Propeller, etc. You should be very careful while doing this and you must properly handle the tags which are very essential to broadcast your news on a wide area network. This may increase your website traffic based on how effectively you have participated.

Link Exchange
Exchange links with service-related websites (this is commonly termed as Thematic Link Exchange) that can help increase your link popularity, which is a major factor of Google's PageRank algorithm. Beware of Black-Hats while doing exchanges.

Link Baiting
Suppose you have copied/published another website's news or content in your blog/website. Don't forget to place their website link as a reference. Do it for others and, if your content is trustworthy, let others do it for you. This is another way to increase your link popularity.

Cross-Linking
Link to internal pages within your site wherever necessary (this is commonly termed Internal Linking). This increases your internal link popularity ,which is another major factor of Google Page Rank algorithm. The best known example of successful internal linking is Wikipedia. Also try to get a content link from websites/blogs that are related to your site theme. Try getting a link from within their site content using a targeted keyword as anchor text (much like Wikipedia does). We know that this strategy can often be hard to implement, but these types of links have more weight from a search engine point of view.

Photo Sharing
Publish/share your website product pictures and make them public. Let your friends see them and comment on them too, which will help drive traffic towards your website. Do this in major photo sharing websites like Flickr, Picasa, Photo Bucket, Picli, etc.

Video Promotions
Like with photo sharing, you can publish/share your product videos, expert opinions, and reviews of your product and make them public in YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, etc.

Business Reviews
Write reviews about others businesses or ask your friends/clients to write a review of your business in major business review sites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Kaboodle, Stylefeeder, etc.

Local Listings & Yellow Pages
Instead of going global and facing huge competition, make your website local so that search engines can easily view your website and fetch the content. This will help you to reach a targeted audience. Submit your website to Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, Superpages, Hotfrog, etc.

Article Submission
Write articles of your own and submit them to popular article sites like Ezine, Go Articles, Now Public, Buzzle, etc. This will help you to attain some deep links for your website (though it's usually a slower process).

Press Release Promotion
If you are a business/service provider then go for PR submission in popular PR websites like 1888pressrelease, Open PR, PR Leap, etc. This will help you to publish your site in Google News.

Classifieds Submission
Do some classifieds submissions to advertise your products for free. Try Craigslist and other major classifieds sites like Kugli, Myspace, iMadespace, Vivastreet, etc.

Social Shopping Network
If you own an e-commerce website, this is a good strategy for advertising and easily branding your products for free. Submit your products to Google Product Search, Yahoo Online Shopping, MSN Online Shopping, and other major social shopping network sites like Kaboodle, Style Feeder, Wists, Five Limes, Buzz Shout, Ohmybuzz, etc.

Answers
Participate in Answers by asking and answering relevant questions and placing a link to your website in the source section if necessary. If you don't spam, this is another great way to increase your link popularity (Yahoo Answers, Cha-Cha, Answer Bag, etc.)

Document Sharing
Share your website documents like business documents, information brochures, and slides in Google Docs, Slide Share, etc. This will help you brand your website.

CSS, W3C & RSS Directories Submission
If you have a web design site or offer services related to web design, submit your website to CSS and W3C website directories which may drive traffic towards your website. Also submit your website to RSS feed directories which, again, will help you attain more traffic.

Widget / Gadget Development
Develop some interactive and innovative widget/gadget applications (such as an online poll or game widgets) for your website and publish them on your blog/website or in other popular social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. Let your friends and others vote/play/use the widget/application, which will help you increase your branding and website visits.

PPC Ad Campaign
When none of the above strategies work for you, go for a PPC ad campaign with your targeted keywords. Remember that you have to pay to drive more traffic towards your website through PPC.

Ref: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/21offpage-seo-strategies-to-build-your-online-reputation

Monday, January 12, 2009

How was SEO born?


In 1995 (the early days of Yahoo – have a moment to reminisce if you were online back then – grey backgrounds, single column websites, crazy spinning GIF’s), optimization was born out of the roots of AAA, A#1 and Acme style yellow pages / white pages alphabetical optimizations.

This meant that if you wanted to be top of the list, you would name your site or business !@#AAA 123 Business – it seems insane now, but it worked. This was the first example of SEO – or the manipulation of rankings for your own gain.

In late 1996, search engines finally realized the work of databases to match text and how that would be applied to the greater database of the web.

In 1997, the first algorithm crackers appeared and this was quite basic by simply making up of pages in the results of many of the major search engines. The first major “page jacking” and “bait and switch” incidents begin to happen. This was when people copied the content from top ranking search engines for their own use, got high rankings and then switched the content to their own.

In late 1997, it was very easy for search engines especially Infoseek to crawl and index. In fact, back in the day it was possible to submit a site in the morning and have it appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) in the afternoon.

Due to the easy indexing within 24 hours on Infoseek “Spam” became a very serious problem for the SE’s as deceitful spam sites began to understand the algorithms and how to manipulate them.

In 1998, the off-page optimization criteria of link popularity and directory listings had grown in importance of SEO as search engines tried to lessen the effects of just looking at the onpage optimization. At the same time, it had also revealed that multiple algorithm usage in search engines resulted in different top 10 positions in search results.

In late 1998 and early 1999, AltaVista (then the #1 search engine and had the biggest
index) made a fight against “too many URLs” and banned huge segments of sites and sites with auto doorway page generators. Google had introduced its page rank technology while the other search engines self destructed under management chaos and mountains of pages with no idea how to determine which was more relevant compared to other pages.

In late 1999, search engines had introduced PPC to make their service profitable. This enabled businesses to take a short-cut to the top rankings by agreeing to pay a small amount every time a surfer clicked on their link.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Dynamic Site SEO Tips and Hints

What are dynamic website:

Dynamic website are websites in which webpage are created through on the fly or database generated. All the contents, links, images, footer etc appears from database. Examples of dynamic websites are shopping cart, ecommerce sites, news site, forums, real estate site, manufacturer & buyers sites etc.

Dynamic Sites are Spidered Slower than Static Sites:

Google in particular has made it clear dynamic sites are spidered slower than static sites. The reason for Google to do this are webmaster friendly, dynamically generated sites can potentially have unlimited pages and so Google assumes a dynamic looking site (a site with URLs like dynamic-page.php?page=1) is big and slows the crawl speed. It does this to limit server load because if a dynamic site (any site) has millions of pages, Googlebot and the other spiders could cause the server to crash if they spidered too many pages at one time.

Problems with dynamic website:

As all the pages is generated through database, a dynamic page does not exist as a file on a hosting server, as a static html page does until the request comes for a page, when a crawler comes to the website, does not get that pages to crawl every time, so crawler avoid those pages next time to crawl.

Database generated pages URL called dynamic URLs, dynamic URL is not easy to read by human as well as search engine spiders.

How to overcome with this problem:

a) Place links of the dynamic pages on static pages. Further, it can be submitted in search engines manually. Most of the dynamic pages will indexed by the search engine by this way. Use appropriate alt and title tags on your static page, and be sure to follow all of the search engine guidelines before submitting your static pages along with the dynamic pages.

b) Coldfusion and other softwares are available which can replace special characters like ?, %, & with alternative text.

c) Using help of CGI/Perl, we can convert query string in the URL with suitable text. Path Info and Script Name are environment variables, which contains complete URL including strings in dynamic pages.

d) URL rewriting is another method; convert the dynamic URL to static URL. If you are using the apache server then mod_rewrite is used to rewrite the dynamic URL and in case of windows, ASAPI is used to rewrite. In addition, there is much software to convert your dynamic URL to static.Dynamic URL - http://www.seoinfotech.com?a=seo&b=services&c=IndiaAfter rewrite it looks likeStatic URL - http://www.seoinfotech.com/seo/services/india.htmlThis is easy to read and crawled by spiders.

Tips to Optimize Dynamic Websites:

Now you know what hurts search engine bots/crawlers to index your website. What you need to know is that how you can keep your valuable website indexed by search engines; the more your web pages are indexed the better your website will impress search engines

1. Create an HTML sitemap with 100 text links or less. If you have more than 100 links, break the sitemap into more than one web pages

2. Google Sitemap will also be an advantage, specially if your website is big and dynamic

3. Get inbound links deep into your website from other relevant websites such as directories, classified directories, vertical industrial portals

4. Convert dynamic web pages into static web pages with the help of URL re-writing techniques

5. You can use some plug-in applications that will change your existing dynamic URLs into static ones, specially for shopping carts there are plenty of applications available

6. Avoid using session IDs in the URL, specially when user has not logged in

7. If you do need to include parameters, limit it to two and limit the number of characters per parameter to ten or less

8. If you do have small dynamic website and enough time, you can apply this technique. Just right click on page by page of you website, copy the source code and create new static page with .htm or .html extensions