Tips To Get More Comments On Your Blog

Comments are always like an award to your blog posts. Every Blogger wants to get  huge number of comments on their blog but sometimes they failed to get it. Bloggers should use few techniques in order to get huge number of valuable comments because comments brand your blog posts.

Here are Few techniques which helps in getting huge number of valuable comments:

1. Write Useful Posts: First of all I suggest to write a post which is useful to others, then only they want to read it and comment on it. If you write a post which is no of use for others then why do they waste their time in reading your blog post. So its primary to write the thing that is useful for your readers and for this you should analyse that who are your readers. Try to find out about your readers, about their needs, about their choice. Once you got to know about your readers and start writing for them then you will notice a sudden increase in the number of comments.

2. Ask Questions: Try to ask specific questions in your blog posts which relates to that post.
For example, while writing about Google + and facebook you can ask put a question at the end as �so what do you think who will be the winner?�
It just an example you can write questions that is related to that blog post.

3. Answer The Comments: Try to read every comments on your blog posts and if any comment need an answer then write answer for them, also if you want then you can thank your all commenters for commenting on your post. Atleast thank for for them who comments on your blog for the first time. This will increase the interest of the commenter to come again to your blog.

4. Use CommentLuv Plugin: Try to use comment luv plugin on your bog. I have already discussed about this plugin so I am not describing here again.

5. Top Commenter Widget: Have top commentator widget on your blog. This will increase commentator�s interest to comment on your blog because they will get traffic for their blog from here.

6. Be calm and Polite: many a time you can get comments which tells about your post�s weaknesses then Just Don�t get angry, be calm and admit if you have find the weakness and reply to the comment politely.
sometimes you can get criticism also because you are writing for the people then just don�t be angry and handle the situation politely.

7. Select Easy Comment System: Many a time I saw sites which wants login to comment. Personally I avoid those type of sites. Sometimes the post is just amazing but I don�t comment their just because of login issue. Also I suggest to use wordpress default comment system because its very simple and easy to use. Keep your comment section very simple to use.

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8 Tips To Get Traffic From Online Forums

Forums have been around since the earliest days of the Internet, and people have been using them ever since to drive traffic to their websites. While they�re not hip and sexy Web 2.0 darlings like Twitter or Facebook, forums are still a great way to drive targeted traffic to your blog. Below are 8 things you need to keep in mind when using forums as a traffic driving strategy.

1. Pick the right forum

Choosing the right forum(s) to participate in makes a big difference. Hopefully you�re already an active member of a forum or two. If not, hopefully you�re at least aware of some of the popular forums that cater to your niche. If that�s still not the case, Google �YOURNICHE forum� or check out Big-Boards.com.

If there are multiple forums in your niche, you should focus on being active in just one forum at first. You don�t want to spread yourself too thin, and you want to be sure you become a prominent member of the community. That�s hard to do when you�re trying to post in half a dozen different forums. Once you�ve become established in one, then you can determine whether joining another would be best for you.

If you�re not already active in a forum and you have multiple forums to choose from, there are a couple points to consider. How large and active is the forum? You won�t get much traffic from a forum that has 30 members and the last post was six months ago. Do you like the look of the forum? I�ve chosen to participate in certain forums because I just like the way they�re designed. Does the forum allow signatures? Some forums don�t allow signatures, which will make it harder for you to get traffic (see the �Put a link in your signature� section below). And finally (and perhaps most importantly), do you like the community that has built up around the forum? You�re going to be spending a lot of time there, so make sure you like the kind of discussion that�s going on.

2. Choose your username carefully

Your username is your brand out there on the forum for everyone to see, so it needs to be chosen carefully. Ask yourself what message you want your username to send. Using your name as a username gives your interactions with others a more personal feel than if you just used the name of your blog or business. It�s important that you username fits in with your niche and the forum. For example, if you�re posting to a realty forum and the forum community you�re posting to has a very professional feel to it, you�ll obviously want to steer clear of usernames like �xfallenangel1987x.�

3. Put a link in your signature

Your signature is the couple lines of text that appear below each one of your forum posts. Putting a link to your blog or to a particularly good post is the backbone of any solid forum-based traffic strategy. This is how you�ll get the majority of traffic out of the forum.

A standard signature will include the name of your blog and maybe your blog�s tagline or what your blog is about. Linking to an especially informative or interesting post can also be a good strategy if you want to drive traffic to certain parts of your blog. Remember that you can also link to a newsletter signup page to help grow your list.

4. Craft your profile carefully

Your profile is what people see when they click on your username, and it usually consists at least of your avatar, a short bio, and a link to your website. Most often, your avatar should be a picture of you. We like to know that we�re interacting with a real person, and a photo gives a face to the name and helps create a more personal interactive experience. If you prefer anonymity, then use anything you want as long as it fits in with 1) the feel of the forum, and 2) the image of your blog or business. Using the realty forum example again, you wouldn�t want your profile pic to be a funny animated .gif of a guy getting hit in his private parts with a baseball. Likewise, you wouldn�t want to use a serious, black and white photo of yourself if you�ve got a fun and colorful blog about funny YouTube videos.

Your bio should include relevant information about you. Again, make it professional, but don�t be boring and one-dimensional. Sure, talk about how much experiences you�ve got in your particular field, but also talk about any other interesting information about yourself. If you�re on a rock climbing forum, you could state that you�ve been rock climbing for 12 years, that you are an avid backcountry skier in the offseason., and that you love watching Lost. Give people more reasons for them to interact with you.

And while we�re on the subject of getting people to interact with you, be sure to include a line in your bio (preferably at the end) that you welcome people to contact you with any questions or comments. This can help people feel comfortable about coming to you for any additional help or information beyond what you provide in your forum posts.

Many forum profiles have a space for your website�s URL or the URL of your favorite website. Be sure to put your blog in there!

Finally, take advantage of any other profile features your forum might have. Some forums let you enter your Twitter handle, for example. Others let you enter your other interests. Use these elements to further differentiate yourself from others, to establish yourself as an expert in your field, and to set yourself up as a person people want to interact with.

5. Don�t be spammy

When you�re networking with people in person, you don�t shake their hands and immediately stuff a business card down their throats. You want to get to know the person a little bit before interacting with them on a professional level. To put it another way, you wouldn�t go all the way on a first date, right?

Sure, you�re using the forum to promote your site, but that shouldn�t look like the main reason you�re there. Stick around the forum for a while before you start promoting your blog openly. No one likes it when the forum user�s first and only post is, �Hey guys! Check out my sick awesome new blog!�

6. Provide quality content

We�ve all heard that �Content is king� for getting traffic to your blog and getting people to subscribe to your blog. The same applies to forum posts. For example, don�t just respond to a question by saying �Yes� or �No,� but justify your response with a clear, well-thought-out, informative, helpful reply. Provide the best content you possibly can. Link to other resources both inside the forum and elsewhere online to provide even more helpful content.

Another tactic you can use is writing content especially for the forum. Think of it like guest posting for the forum: you provide your own content for free to the forum, and in exchange you get more exposure for your blog. At the end of the forum post, you can include a line of text that says something like, �This was written specifically for the Whatever Forum. If you found this information useful, check out my blog at WhateverIsAwesome.com.� You�re adding value to the forum while at the same time giving people a reason to check out your blog. Win-win!

Having said all of that, not all of your posts need to be long and epic. Quality content can be as simple as posting a funny YouTube video that a lot of people in the forum community can enjoy.

7. Start new threads

If someone opens up a thread to read it, that person is obviously going to read the first post in the thread, right? The first post in a thread gets read more than any other, so being in that position is a great way to leverage your forum posting.

It�s important, however, that you start the right kinds of threads. If you�ve got genuine questions about something, then by all means ask about it. If you don�t have any questions, a great way to go is to ask people�s opinions on a topic that they all can have input on. If you�re posting to a mountain biking forum, for example, ask people what they�d do if they had $5000 to spend. Would they spend it on a new bike? Upgrades to their current bike? Travel to that place they�ve always wanted to ride? More examples can be asking people on a Corvette forum to post sweet pics of their ride, or encouraging members on a photography forum to post links to their portfolios.

8. Post often

Forum posting isn�t the best passive traffic strategy. You can�t just spend a week posting multiple times a day and then sit back and expect the traffic to roll in forever. The threads that you spend all that time and effort posting in will eventually be pushed further and further down the page until they disappear from page 1. It�s sad, but that�s just the way it is. Participating in � and getting traffic from � forums is very much an active process. To get the best results, you really need to commit to it and make it a regular part of your blogging process.

Above all, just try to enjoy the experience. Hopefully you�re talking about things you like, and you might as well be building blog traffic while you�re at it, right? In addition, forums are great way to get post ideas for your blog, so keep your eyes peeled.

Pick a forum, do your best to become part of the community there, apply the above 8 points, and you�re sure to see the traffic start to come. Good luck!

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How Do I Monetize A Classifieds Website?

I�d like to setup a classifieds website for a fairly large community. The community actually had one, but the person running it moved away and shut down the site. People keep asking for a new one so I think it�ll be a good opportunity.

My question is how can I fully monetize the opportunity. I was thinking of charging local businesses to place small ads on the site similar to your sponsors section. Any other thoughts?

There are several ways to monetize a classifieds website, and the best model will depend on the nature and size of your website. Here are some examples:

1. The Traditional Model: Classifieds emerged in newspapers and other print publications. The model was to charge people who wanted to place an ad in the classifieds (usually according to the length of the ad, with options to highlight it). This model can work on the Internet as well, but you would need to have a very specific focus and a large audience to showcase the ads, else advertisers would not get a good return on their investment.

2. The Craigslist Model: Craigslist revolutionized the classifieds industry because it created a really popular classifieds website where posting ads is essentially free. You can browse through different categories and cities, and the volume of ads you�ll find is always amazing. How do they make money? By charging money for ads in very specific categories (e.g., job postings and brokered rentals). The model is quite effective because they only charge people who have a lot to gain from using their services, and hence are willing to pay for it.

3. The Inverse Model: Depending on the nature of the ads being placed on your website you could actually make the viewers of the ads pay. For example, there are freelancing job boards that charge for people who want to see the contact information of the job seekers. The advantage of this model is that posting an ad becomes free, and it increases the overall activity on the website.

4. The Sponsorship Model: As mentioned in the question itself, another possible model is to let everything be free, while getting sponsors who want to showcase their products and services to your audience. This model works well if your website has a local focus. For instance, if the classifieds website is for your local soccer community it wound�t be hard to get a sports store to sponsor it.

Keep in mind that you can also experiment with two models at the same time, and that you can also start with one and migrate to another one over time. For instance, I would definitely start with the last model, making everything free. This is to make sure that people would join and participate on the website. Then once you reach a critical mass of users you could consider start charging for specific parts of the website.

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6 Tips to Speed Up and Optimize Your WordPress Plugin

The WordPress engine is pretty efficient out of the box, but once you start loading plugins the performance and responsiveness of your site might go downhill. On top of that the consumption of resources might become too big, possibly leading to a suspension of your hosting account (especially if you use shared hosting).

Over the years I played with and tweaked my WordPress plugins trying to achieve a good performance level, and below you�ll find the tips I learned along the way:

1. Use a Cache Plugin

Serving cached versions of your pages is one of the most efficient ways to speed up your site and to reduce the CPU and memory consumption on your server. Also, if you are not using the W3TC plugin yet I highly recommend you switch to it, as it works much more efficiently than the other plugins available.

2. Remove All Unnecessary Plugins

Unless your site absolutely relies on a plugin to work I would recommend removing it. Sure, you might need to lose a functionality or two, but in the long run this will keep your site running fast and securely. Keep in mind that it�s possible to hard code what some plugins do, as well. For example, instead of using a plugin to generate a list of �Popular Posts� on your sidebar you could create the list yourself with raw HTML. Instead of using a contact form plugin you could simply write a paragraph on your �Contact� page including your email address there. So on and so forth.

3. Pay Special Attention to Post-Level Plugins

On most WordPress sites and blogs, the bulk of the traffic goes to the posts. The homepage, the category and archive pages receive around 20% of the overall traffic, if that, while the posts receive 80%.

This means that plugins that act at post-level will consume most of your resources. Examples include plugins to change SEO aspects of your posts (e.g., All in One SEO Pack), plugins to display related posts and so on. As a result you should put an extra effort to either remove or optimize those plugins (more on that below).

4. Consider Substituting All In One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack plugin is certainly one of the best SEO plugins around, but it�s also pretty intensive on the resources of your server. For small sites this won�t be a problem, but once your traffic starts growing you might start to feel it.

A good alternative is called Greg�s High Performance SEO. According to the author All in One SEO Pack outputs 2000 lines of code per page load/view, while Greg�s plugin output only 700 lines.

In my opinion the main benefit of those SEO plugins is the ability to customize the title tag. If that is the most important factor for you as well you can be even more extreme and use no plugin at all. Instead use the piece of code below to create optimized title tags for your posts:

<title><?php if (is_home () ) { bloginfo(�name�); }
elseif ( is_category() ) { single_cat_title(); echo ' - ' ; bloginfo(�name�); }
elseif (is_single() ) { single_post_title();}
elseif (is_page() ) { single_post_title();}
else { wp_title(��,true); } ?></title>

5. Consider Substituting YARPP

Along with All In One SEO Pack there�s another plugin that is very popular and yet very resource intensive: YARPP (Yet Another Relate Posts Plugin).

One alternative you can consider is the Efficient Related Posts plugin. The main difference is that the database of related posts is updated only when a post is created/updated, while other plugins tend to build the list on the fly, whenever a post is loaded.

6. Optimize Your Database Tables

As with any dynamic content management system, great part of the work your WordPress site does is related to getting, storing, removing and updating information on its database. That�s why optimizing your database tables can affect your site�s performance.

A nice plugin you can use for this purpose is WP-Optimize. It will remove your post revisions, clean your comments (e.g., spam and deleted ones), run optimization queries and so on.

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5 Ways to Ensure an SEO Campaign Fails

Obviously no one sets out to create an SEO campaign, or any other kind of business initiative, that fails. However, along the way certain mistakes can be made that will inevitably result in campaign failure. Sometimes the mistake can seem innocent enough, but really SEO is about gaining momentum as time goes on. A mistake that is made early in the process can hinder every effort that follows. Therefore, when implementing an SEO campaign be sure to avoid the following common mistakes:

1. Optimizing for a Bad Website

SEO is a long term process that takes time and resources. The goal of an SEO campaign is to increase website traffic to improve conversion rates. SEO efforts will help to get more visitors to the site, but then the rest of the work is up to the website itself. If it looks bad, has a confusing navigation, or doesn�t have clear call to actions it�s a problem. Before starting an SEO campaign you need to determine whether your website is worth the effort. If it�s not, concentrate on improving that first.

2. Not Conducting Keyword Research

Many website owners make the mistake of assuming that they know how their target audience is searching. In most cases, they are wrong. Keyword research needs to be conducted for every page of the website, since each page serves a different purpose and can be an entry point to a website. Using the wrong keywords can result in getting the wrong kind of visitors that won�t convert. Traffic is good, but sales and leads from qualified visitors are much better.

3. Greedy Link Building

Links are a huge part of SEO. The search engine spiders crawl links to determine website relevancy and trust. It�s tempting to get greedy when it comes to link building. After all there are plenty of advertisements for thousands of links at a low price. But are those links really valuable? Not at all. It�s the quality of a link that really matters, not the quantity.

4. Creating Poor Content

Without content, there is nothing to optimize and publish online, whether it is on site or on other web properties. Content is what ranks in the search engines and helps build links. However, in order to do so the content needs to be good! Publishing lots of low quality content that is only vaguely related to the industry just to get some links will backfire. Focus on the needs of the target audience and create content with that in mind.

5. Not Using Social Media

Social media and SEO continue to converge online. One strategy should not be implemented without the other in mind now that the search engines incorporate social signals into the ranking algorithms.

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6 Ways To Make Your Blog A Success ~ Must Read

6 Ways To Make Your Blog A Success

The whole point of having a blog is to get traffic to it, and as difficult as this may seem, your best option is to work at it. The World Wide Web can be likened to a bottomless pit of information, with an endless flurry of users trawling it, day in and day out.  To get these users to consider your corner of the web, by which I mean to drive more traffic to your blog, there are a number of things that need to be done, things that cannot be avoided and have to be done with a generous dose of passion.

It is heartbreaking to see the number of blogs out there that have excellent content but can�t seem to succeed. They have rotten rankings and fail miserably. Don�t let same fate plague your blog, kick back and crack the Technorati 1000 by getting your house in order.

1. Make Your Blog Successful Or Die Trying: First thing to remember is to never give up, to keep on trucking, or rather writing, and remember that if the content is crap, no marketing effort will make it a success. No one starts a blog just for the hell of it, ensue that you have something to say. More publicity, promotion and, consequently, traffic will come your way, but only if the content is truly great. If you cannot write, get a writer to do it for you. There are loads for freelance sites online, where a blogger will write for you at a small cost.

2. Be An Expert: You know the old saying jack of all trades, master of none, become the master of your subject matter.Read and learn; write with intelligence and knowledge about your subject; with experience, your reputation will grow and people will seek you out. This will attract more comments in your blog, which can help you get cross promoted; always respond to your comments too, it is vitally important.

3. Be A Better Publisher: Publish full feeds particularly on controversial matters, this gets the attention of content scrapers which re-post your content and creates traffic. Use Feedburner too as this will allow you to find out how many people are subscribing to a particular feed.

4. First Impressions Always Count: Do you remember your mother telling you this? Well she was right and design matters. Set yourself apart from every other blogger with your design and be serious about it. If you cannot afford a professionally developed blog, then learn about photoeditors and CSS. You can also tweak your Wordpress theme, your blog, when done, has to scream out loud to people, READ ME AND LEAVE COMMENTS. A professional theme will get more readers to your blog.

5. Get Up-To-Date With SEO: Find out what makes it tick and what will make your blog tick too. Your blog needs to be tricked out with unique title tags, and keyword rich headlines to enjoy complete SEO wellness.

6. Be A Good Host: Host contests, polls and other interactive features to encourage even more participation in your blog. Make them fun or funny, controversial or challenging, but keep your readers interested. Your little corner of the blogging happy-hunting-ground needs to buzz with a life of its own. Make your blog successful, it will pay dividends.

Get your blog in order using these six tips, then set about promoting it using the prevalent internet marketing methods like social bookmarking and other means of social media,  and you�ll find your blog flooded with traffic in no time.

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9 Tips & Tricks for Better Google+ Brand Pages

In social media, Google+ brand pages are the way of the future. Using Google+ brand pages, you can create an informative, interactive profile for your fans on Google+ to connect with you. Few companies today are taking full advantage of what Google+ brand pages have to offer.

The easiest way to access your brand page is to go to your own Google+ page. Just click the drop down menu under your username to switch to your brand page�s view. Here you can edit the page, add people to circles and post status messages.

Here are top 9 tips & tricks for using Google+ brand pages to their full potential.

#1 � Creating an Easy to Reach URL

By default, Google+ gives you a custom URL that�s fairly difficult to read or remember. For example, your URL might be something like �plus.google.com/872350370197390157.�

To make this easier for people, create a redirect on your own website to your Google+ brand page. For example, people should be able to reach this page by going to www.yourwebsite.com/googleplus/

You can also use Google+�s URL shortener to create a better URL on Google�s domain.

#2 � Add Buttons to Your Site

Want to make it easy for people to find your Google+ page on your site? Want to put live feeds of your status updates on your sites? Want to make it so people can re-post whatever you said with one click of a button?

It�s easy. Just add the respective Google+ buttons or widgets to your site. Access these under the �Get Started� menu in your brand page.

#3 � Don�t Share Your Visitor Count for the First Few Months

If you see that a page only has a handful of visitors, chances are you�re not going to want to visit that page. In other types of social media, like Facebook or Twitter for example, there�s not a whole lot that you can do about this.

However, with Google+, you can choose to hide your follower count. While this isn�t a good long term strategy, it can be very useful in the short term.

#4 � Give Great Resources

Google+ gives you the ability to add as many links as you want to your profile. The links can point back to content on your own website or to other people�s sites.

Make liberal use of this feature to point your users to the best possible resources for their problems.

#5 � Upload Stellar Photos

Some people like to interact with brands through status updates, but a lot of people prefer to use photos. They get much more of a visceral experience from seeing photos of an event or of a product than just reading a description.

Upload professional photos to your Google+ page to create a more lasting impression

#6 � Scan Your Circles Regularly

When someone adds you to their circles, you�ll have the ability to then add them to your circles in return.

If you don�t add someone to your circles, they won�t see anything you post. If you have people who�ve added you but you haven�t added them back, you�re �wasting� social goodwill.

Make it a habit to check your friends list regularly and add people who aren�t already in a circle.

#7 � Segment Your Readers

Perhaps Google+�s most powerful feature is their ability to segment where each post goes. You can post different things to your list in New York versus San Francisco. You can say one thing only to newcomers and different things to long time followers.

Use circles to craft the most powerful message possible for each group of your audience.

#8 � Hide Tabs That You Aren�t Using

By default, Google+ chooses what tabs it displays along the top of your profile. If it�s using tabs that you don�t want to be there, you can choose to disable it.

Just click on the specific tab and uncheck the box that says �Show this tab on your profile.�

#9 � Post Regularly

Much like any other kind of social media, Google+ has a running feed. If you post often, you�ll ensure that your content will frequently land in front of your visitor�s feed. If you don�t post often, your page won�t be on your visitor�s radar at all.

These are a few ways you can make sure you have a top notch Google+ brand page. Spend some time perfecting your Google+ page. After all, Google+ is the fastest growing social media network in history.

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The 80/20 Rule of Spending Time on Social Media

How much time should you put into social media? Some people believe just a few minutes a week is enough, while others believe it should comprise of the majority of your time. The reality is somewhere in between.

Social media today is an integral part of any successful business. Almost everyone is on these networks, from your partners to your readers to your vendors to your clients. That said, there�s still only so much you can do every day on social media.

Approach social media with an 80/20 mindset. Of course it�s possible to spend 8 hours a day on social media. But chances are, in about an hour you�ll have connected with the most important contacts and said everything you have to say.

After the first hour, you�re more or less just spending time doing things that may or may not have much of an impact on your bottom line. Instead of doing this, it�s best to just commit to spending one hour a day on social media.

This consistent attention will allow you to make connections with all the most important people, while spending the rest of your time on the rest of your business.

Developing a Social Media Marketing Strategy is About Cultivating Relationships

Don�t think of social media like TV advertising. With TV advertising, your goal is to �touch� as many people as you can. Each person might not know much about you or your brand, but you�re okay with that. You just want to make a small impression on them.

Social media Marketing is different. Think of social media like a business mingler. There are a lot of people there and you might shake hands with a large number of people.

At the end of the day however, you have to pick and choose just a few people to get to know better. These people could turn out to be customers, they could turn out to be joint venture partners, they could turn out to be mentors.

On social media, it�s simply unrealistic to get to know everyone who�s following you. However, you can and should pick a few high impact people to develop connections with. Exchanging a message or two a day is quick and easy, but can result in powerful business connections down the line.

Schedule it in � It�s Not Optional

A lot of people treat social media for business as an optional activity. After all, browsing Facebook and Twitter can seem like a trivial activity on the surface.

It�s not. It�s a crucial business networking tactic that simply cannot be ignored. And unlike other marketing tactics, you can�tmakeup for it by stuffing in more time later.

Spending 7 hours one day on social media is not the same thing as spending 1 hour a day on social media. You can�t have conversations in a day, you can�t develop relationships in bulk and you can�t stay in touch all at once.

Instead, it�s something that has to be done every day. So schedule it into your daily schedule, just as you would any other important business task. Social media marketing isn�t something that can be neglected. If something comes up, move it to another time, but never skip it.

If You Don�t Have a Strong Plan�

If you don�t have a strong social media plan yet, allocate an extra 30 minutes a day to learning about social media and planning your strategy.

Just browsing Facebook isn�t social media marketing. The goal of social media marketing is to create engagement with people on the social web. There are a lot of different factors that go into this eventual end goal.

If you don�t know how to maximize your time spent on social media yet, spend a bit of time studying up on the subject.

Learn to Enjoy it!

Social media marketing shouldn�t feel like a chore. You�re on Facebook! You�re on Twitter! It should be fun and interesting. You�re meeting new people, making new contacts and making progress in your business.

Learn to enjoy social media marketing, so that you�ll look forward to it rather than avoid it. Learn to enjoy it, so that when you get an email once you�re off work, you�ll still naturally want to respond to it.

Social media for businesses is a critically important tool that can�t be ignored. However, you should also be careful and make sure it doesn�t suck up all your time. About one hour a day is the perfect amount of time to spend on social media marketing.

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How to Leverage Social Media for SEO

By now, you�ve probably heard that social media is important for SEO. Yet most advice around social and SEO seems rather vague. How, exactly, does social media impact SEO? What can you do about it? How can you use social media to improve your own SERPs?

This question can actually be broken down into two parts: Part one is getting your social media profiles, like your Twitter feed and your Facebook page, to rank. The second part is how to use the power of social media to get your primary site ranked higher.

Let�s explore both of these avenues.

How to Boost Your Social Media Profile SERPs

Imagine owning the top three spots for your primary search term: Your main site ranks, as well as your Twitter feed and your Facebook page. You�ll effectively destroy any other site(s) trying to rank for that position.

Of course, this is a dream scenario that rarely happens. However, getting your social media profiles to rank is certainly a worthwhile goal to shoot for. So how is it done?

The first and most important thing to do is to link to your social media profiles from your home page. This lets the search engines know that your social media profile is linked to you. This is actually perhaps the most important thing you could do to boost your social media profile rankings.

Next, build backlinks to your social media profiles. After all, they�re also webpages and need to be ranked just like any other page.

Get as many likes or follows as possible. The more likes or follows you have, the higher the perceived authority.

Use your product�s names and your brand�s names in your tweet. This will increase the relevance of the page to the keywords you want to rank for.

Finally, make sure you have your brand name and/or your keywords in your profile�s shortcode or URL. Having the keyword there will help with the rankings, help Google identify the �official� page and help users find your page.

If you follow all these steps, your social media page has a very strong chance of ranking.

Leverage the Power of Social Media to Rank Your Main Site

Social media can do a lot for your main site. Here�s how.

First, your primary focus should be to get likes and to get people to share your content. Google can read not only the number of likes you get, but the authority of the people liking you and even the sentiment of the people posting on your page.

While it�s possible to manipulate these factors, the best way to achieve strong rankings with social SEO in the long run is to really optimize your page properly. Get as many likes from real people as possible. Post high quality content and work to increase your reach and your virality stats.

Add a social media widget to your site. You can get WordPress plugins that make it very easy to add a whole social media toolbar to every post on your site. If you run a standard HTML site or use another CMS, you can simply string a few widgets together to create your own social media toolbar.

Make it easy for people who�re on your site to like your pages, tweet about your content or to like specific pieces of content. Remember that every time someone �likes� your page, it gets posted to their wall. Every time someone shares something you posted, you get exposed to a few hundred more people.

Publish tools that are designed to be shared. If you run a weight loss calculator for example, have a simple and easy to click link on the bottom that encourages people to share the calculator with other weight-conscious friends.

Tools are some of the most viral kinds of pages out there; yet many tool publishers simply forget to make their tools easy to share.

Social media is already an important factor in search. While it�s still a minority factor, many experts agree that it�s most likely going to gain in importance in the years to come. By starting on your social media SEO today, you�ll give yourself and your company a leg up over your competition in the coming years.

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4 Tips That Will Help Make Your Blog SEO Friendly

It all starts with Keywords: Research and Optimize your keywords:

Everything starts with relevant keywords, since keywords themselves are the backbone/premise of the entire search engine system. It is through keywords that search engines pull up your website/blog for display when a visitor types in his keywords. So, to make your blog SEO friendly, make sure that your keywords are used effectively. It is great idea to use your target keywords in the name of your blog. Although you cannot do much if your blog is already registered, you can still use keywords in the text to make it easier for search engine spiders to find them. Further, when you post new blog posts, make sure that each of them has the right ratio of keyword usage. Ideally, 2% to 3% keyword usage is accepted as the best practice. It is also important that the keyword should not be used in excess since this will backfire, and begin to actually penalize your blog (natural writing should be fine, it�s just overstuffing the words that causes problems).

Friendly Templates with built in support:

Another way of optimizing your blog with regard to search engine optimization is to select a blog template that is simple and makes easy navigation for search engine spiders. Clarity of blog design makes for good SEO practices. There are thousands of themes and readymade templates in platforms such as WordPress and Blogger that you can choose from. Also, be sure to select custom urls, to make your post titles using the name of post, rather than nonsensical numbers. This is not only good for SEO, but also end users, as they can clearly understand what the post is all about before clicking.

Regular updates, and maintenance go a long way:

The most important aspect of search engine optimization is maintenance and updating of the blog � spiders simply love fresh unique content. The content provided has to be regularly added for optimal results. More importantly, every blog post that you update should be of high quality, since visitor time spent on page and bounce rate are becoming part of ranking factors. The contents have to be error free and if there are links to other blogs or pages, they need to be well connected (unrelated links still work, but for the best contextual links and authority, relevancy is king). Broken links are not appreciated by search engines; make sure to have a proper 404 page, as well as redirect strategy for changed pages (htaccess or plugins can simplify this). You can enrich your site by including audio and embedding video links. When partaking in link building, make sure that the links are all related and that there is no spam links directly to your blog. Quality of links is of prime importance. You need to pay proper attention to the blog to make sure that it is well kept. Also, posting links to your blog in various places such as article directories, comments in other blogs, forums and social book marking sites will help build brand awareness and notify the spiders that your site is important, talked about, and worth indexing often.

No need to reinvent the wheel: Plugins to expedite the optimization process:

Plugins are a boon to blog owners since they offer a lot of opportunities to manage your blogs in an efficient manner. One of the best plugins that you can use is All-in-one SEO. This plugin helps in optimizing keywords, checking whether there are copied contents in the blog and even in choosing the best content. Other very effective plugins that can help are Automatic SEO links that helps in choosing phrases or words for linking, No Follow Case by Case that helps in keeping away from no follow sites, SEO No Duplicate WordPress Plugin and Sitemap Generator. There are numerous other plugins that can be used to great effect. Trial and error will always play a role in creating a more optimized blog, but if you research keywords, create good content, and effectively use tools such as plugins and ready-made templates, then you make becoming a success that much easier.

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Is Facebook Marketing Wasted SEO Effort?

Facebook is a huge social networking site by anyone�s measure: more than 500 million users strong and a high percentage of those people log onto the site regularly.  Talk about a captive audience! Many people and small businesses think that advertising on Facebook will skyrocket their SEO rankings. However, it is not as straightforward as building links, but more an indirect effect on your SEO due to your increased popularity in some instances. This assumes that you do things the right (spelled social networking style) way.  Here are a couple of ideas that will make Facebook worth the time you spend on it.

Indexed Facebook Pages

Now that Google is indexing Facebook Pages, organizations, businesses, bands, and public figures can make regular updates to their Pages and have them be part of Google�s search results.  (Google also indexes FriendFeed, Identi.ca, Jaiku, and MySpace.) Twitter was the first social networking site indexed, way ahead of the others, and still seems to pop up on top in today�s search engine results.

Be sure your page is indexable by choosing the correct settings. Some default settings could prevent indexing by Google, which in turn can cost you a lot of traffic and users for your page and website. If these settings remain incorrect, your Facebook Page is pretty well invisible and is visible only to the small number of fans that your page has. Open it up to a much wider audience by clicking the �edit page� link at the top of your page and setting the �Country Restrictions� and �Age Restrictions� settings that appear to take full advantage of the massive traffic on the Facebook site. Be sure to publish the page as �Publically Visible� and save the changes you have made.  Your page is now indexable, including photos and new posts, so you will want to update regularly.

Link bait to Drive Traffic

Linkbait is something that is incredibly witty, controversial, compelling, or downright informative�an article that many other sites and bloggers will link to and it is what you should aspire to post on your site.  Once you have a large Facebook network on your Page, you will want to put your best linkbait on Facebook to garner the most interest in your website or blog (which you should always consider your home base.) Write something that gives people something of value that they can use, and they WILL share it with their friends on Facebook. Do not be shy, either, and ask friends and family to post some links for you so that their Facebook friends will see them in their news feed. Remember: exceptional content is paramount.

You will need to generate kick-butt content for your site that will attract links from other Facebook pages, as well as links from the general cyber sphere. After all, once you begin to capture some of that massive traffic on Facebook, you need to have great content to keep them on your site for a while, and compel them to return.

Facebook SEO Effort

In terms of the return on your investment in time spent on SEO and other marketing, how much effort should you put in to advertising on Facebook? To answer that question, you need to take into account that Facebook searches equate to about 3% of all searches today, even less than those for the Yahoo and Bing search engines do. Most marketers spend the vast majority of their time optimizing for Google, and it is still the major engine available with over 60% of total searches.

However, putting some effort into Facebook will pay dividends when it comes to trust. For every 10 hours you spend on SEO, devoting an hour to Facebook is about right. Most people are leery of trusting someone blindly, and a referral from someone they know helps immensely. There is a great value in referral linking on Facebook, and people will patronize businesses that their friends recommend, whether online or offline.

Facebook is NOT a waste of your SEO time, but marketing on Facebook should not be labor intensive. Spend the majority of your time working with Google, but do create some exceptional content for your blog or website readers to share with all their friends, and it just might go viral! If they love what you write, they will go to your site, spend some time there�and even link to some of your other work.

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20 SEO Terms You Should Know

If you have a website or blog, or if you work with anything related to the Internet, you�ll certainly need to know a bit about search engine optimization (SEO). A good way to get started is to familiarize yourself with the most common terms of the trade, and below you�ll find 20 of them. (For those who already know SEO, consider this post as a refresher!).

1. SEM: Stands for Search Engine Marketing, and as the name implies it involves marketing services or products via search engines. SEM is divided into two main pillars: SEO and PPC. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the practice of optimizing websites to make their pages appear in the organic search results. PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, and it is the practice of purchasing clicks from search engines. The clicks come from sponsored listings in the search results.

2. Backlink: Also called inlink or simply link, it is an hyperlink on another website pointing back to your own website. Backlinks are important for SEO because they affect directly the PageRank of any web page, influencing its search rankings.

3. PageRank: PageRank is an algorithm that Google uses to estimate the relative important of pages around the web. The basic idea behind the algorithm is the fact that a link from page A to page B can be seen as a vote of trust from page A to page B. The higher the number of links (weighted to their value) to a page, therefore, the higher the probability that such page is important.

4. Linkbait: A linkbait is a piece of web content published on a website or blog with the goal of attracting as many backlinks as possible (in order to improve one�s search rankings). Usually it�s a written piece, but it can also be a video, a picture, a quiz or anything else. A classic example of linkbait are the �Top 10? lists that tend to become popular on social bookmarking sites.

5. Link farm. A link farm is a group of websites where every website links to every other website, with the purpose of artificially increasing the PageRank of all the sites in the farm. This practice was effective in the early days of search engines, but today they are seeing as a spamming technique (and thus can get you penalized).

6. Anchor text: The anchor text of a backlink is the text that is clickable on the web page. Having keyword rich anchor texts help with SEO because Google will associate these keywords with the content of your website. If you have a weight loss blog, for instance, it would help your search rankings if some of your backlinks had �weight loss� as their anchor texts.

7. NoFollow: The nofollow is a link attribute used by website owners to signal to Google that they don�t endorse the website they are linking to. This can happen either when the link is created by the users themselves (e.g., blog comments), or when the link was paid for (e.g., sponsors and advertisers). When Google sees the nofollow attribute it will basically not count that link for the PageRank and search algorithms.

8. Link Sculpting: By using the nofollow attribute strategically webmasters were able to channel the flow of PageRank within their websites, thus increasing the search rankings of desired pages. This practice is no longer effective as Google recently change how it handles the nofollow attribute.

9. Title Tag: The title tag is literally the title of a web page, and it�s one of the most important factors inside Google�s search algorithm. Ideally your title tag should be unique and contain the main keywords of your page. You can see the title tag of any web page on top of the browser while navigating it.

10. Meta Tags: Like the title tag, meta tags are used to give search engines more information regarding the content of your pages. The meta tags are placed inside the HEAD section of your HTML code, and thus are not visible to human visitors.

11. Search Algorithm: Google�s search algorithm is used to find the most relevant web pages for any search query. The algorithm considers over 200 factors (according to Google itself), including the PageRank value, the title tag, the meta tags, the content of the website, the age of the domain and so on.

12. SERP: Stands for Search Engine Results Page. It�s basically the page you�ll get when you search for a specific keyword on Google or on other search engines. The amount of search traffic your website will receive depends on the rankings it will have inside the SERPs.

13. Sandbox: Google basically has a separate index, the sandbox, where it places all newly discovered websites. When websites are on the sandbox, they won�t appear in the search results for normal search queries. Once Google verifies that the website is legitimate, it will move it out of the sandbox and into the main index.

14. Keyword Density: To find the keyword density of any particular page you just need to divide the number of times that keyword is used by the total number of words in the page. Keyword density used to be an important SEO factor, as the early algorithms placed a heavy emphasis on it. This is not the case anymore.

15. Keyword Stuffing: Since keyword density was an important factor on the early search algorithms, webmasters started to game the system by artificially inflating the keyword density inside their websites. This is called keyword stuffing. These days this practice won�t help you, and it can also get you penalized.

16. Cloaking. This technique involves making the same web page show different content to search engines and to human visitors. The purpose is to get the page ranked for specific keywords, and then use the incoming traffic to promote unrelated products or services. This practice is considering spamming and can get you penalized (if not banned) on most search engines.

17. Web Crawler: Also called search bot or spider, it�s a computer program that browses the web on behalf of search engines, trying to discover new links and new pages. This is the first step on the indexation process.

18. Duplicate Content: Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. You should avoid having duplicate content on your website because it can get you penalized.

19. Canonical URL: Canonicalization is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a �standard� canonical representation. A canonical URL, therefore, is the standard URL for accessing a specific page within your website. For instance, the canonical version of your domain might be http://www.domain.com instead of http://domain.com.

20. Robots.txt: This is nothing more than a file, placed in the root of the domain, that is used to inform search bots about the structure of the website. For instance, via the robots.txt file it�s possible to block specific search robots and to restrict the access to specific folders of section inside the website.

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30 Essential SEO Resources for Beginners

For many bloggers, SEO seems like some kind of black magic that only super technical people can ever get the hang of.

I�ll admit, starting out with SEO can be very intimidating.

The massive amounts of information (and misinformation) is enough to send any blogger into a state I like to call �information paralysis�, where they are unable to act.

I�d like to alleviate some of that today.

Below I�ve outlined some of the most essential and trusted SEO resources, from blogs, to tools, to guides, to forums and conferences: it�s all here.

Dive in below, and don�t let the fear of learning something new stop you from utilizing this great inbound marketing aspect.

SEO Blogs

It�s always good practice to keep updated on the world of SEO with the top SEO blogs.

Below I�ve outlined a few of my personal favorites, covering search engine news, tips, and algorithm changes.

• Search Engine Land � One of the biggest blogs on search engine news and information.
• SEOmoz � One of my favorite SEO blogs, I�m also a contributor, split between the main blog and the YouMoz blog, filled with good SEO articles.
• SEO Book � Aaron Wall creates some truly great articles, love him or hate him, you should be reading his blog.
• Matt Cutts � Head of Google�s webpam team, you should probably listen to him or something.
• Search Engine Journal � Great blog for link building, PPC, and optimization information.
• Google�s Blog � Google�s main blog, not much on SEO specifically, but it�s good to know what Big G is up to.

SEO Guides

Blogs can be an incredible source of information.

Unfortunately, for the newbie, they are too split up: info is spread throughout hundreds (or thousands) of posts.

These complete guides offer a more thorough offering on learning SEO.

• Google�s SEO Start Guide � Official Google guide to getting started with SEO.
• Beginner�s Guide to SEO � The most essential read for beginners, and it�s pretty too!
• The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors � Excellent visual guide to SEO.
• SEO Copywriting Guide � The SEO Copywriting guide is a must read
• Marketing Terms � Confused about what �SEO�, �SEM�, �PPC�, or �inbound marketing�? Learn all of the necessary phrases here.
• Search Engine Ranking Factors Guide � Another great guide, this time on ranking factors, from SEOmoz
• Simplifying SEO Guide � Great guide on how to keep SEO simple.
• SEO Cheat Sheet � Another must read for website owners from SEOmoz.

SEO Tools

SEO can be an immense time sink if you aren�t careful.

Definitely check out a few of the SEO tools below that can save you countless hours and a ton of frustration.

Just be sure not to spend too much time playing around with the tools instead of actually using them!

• Google Keyword Tool � If there is one �getting started� tool that you must learn about, it�s this one. Know it well, you�ll use it forever (or at least as long as Google is around).
• SEOmoz�s Tools � A comprehensive suite of tools that I�ve started to fall in love with. It�s paid (and a premium price), but very useful.
• Google Webmaster Tools � If you are going to play Big G�s game (whitehat style), you need to use their tools.
• Open Site Explorer � A individual SEOmoz tool that�s perfect for checking competitor�s backlinks, as well as other metrics. More comprehensive if you�re a pro user.
• Serp IQ � One of my recent favorite tools to emerge on the market, tons of great uses from competition analysis to keyword discovery, this tool is insanely fast and has a ton of great features.
• Scribe SEO � A super useful tool (especially if you are focusing on WordPress SEO) because it breaks down keyword density to perfection.
• SpyFu � Great for spying on your competitors, specifically their advertising.
• Wordtracker Keyword Tool � A classic, must use for keyword research.
• Market Samurai � Still one of the best keyword analysis tools on the market, perfect for checking SEO competition, although it runs somewhat slowly (Adobe Air).

SEO Forums

Although guides and blogs can offer a ton of essential information, sometimes you are going to have questions.

Forums are a great spot to get these questions answered.

• Webmaster World � One of the oldest forums for website owners.
• Digital Point Forum � Useful, but can be a time sink: remember, it�s always better to do more work and less reading.
• Search Engine Watch Forum � Very popular forum tied to Search Engine Watch.

Conferences

A bit advanced for most, but a great way to really dive into SEO is to know about (and go to) the many search engine related conferences.

• SES Conference � SES is the leading global event series about search and social marketing, with a focus on tactics and best practices.
• Blueglass � BlueGlass� Internet Marketing Conferences have quickly become known in the web marketing circles as being premier events for learning the latest strategies, interacting with the speakers and networking
• Search Marketing Expo � Another leading search engine conference.

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