Twitter is a popular social network and micro blogging platform with great importance on online marketing practices. It enables its users to send and read short messages of up to 140 characters. Twitter users can and receive tweets via web, SMS, and custom applications.
Twitter can help your business in several ways. It can be used for building brand awareness, providing news and update information, even online support. It can also be used for surveying people opinion, getting real time news and reactions, keeping track on latest trends.
Twitter as a promotion tool
Building brand recognition will add an important value to your business relationships. You can use Twitter to provide information, news and updates to your clients. You can give some inner information, ask your employs to have twitter accounts and share some thoughts, and add some spicy content. Giving some preliminary information to your Twitter followers can start a buzz.
Twitter as a research tool
You can use twitter to participate in conversations in your niche. You can ask people for opinion on products, feedback for services and even advices. This can help you to build better relations with your clients. Searching for terms or just following the daily trends can keep you up to date with latest news and reactions.
Twitter as tool for getting traffic
Providing a link at the end of your news tweets can lead many visitors to your website. You can offer an option for your visitors to share or re-tweet the articles they like. One good article or information can be re-tweeted more than thousand times and reach enormous number of people.
Micro blogging can be a great tool for growing an online business. Using services like Twitter can help your business to get known and valued.
Dec 23, 2009
Dec 15, 2009
What do you need to know about links?
Q: What I need to know about hyperlinks?
A: A link is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow. A hyperlink is marked with an anchor element, here is its most usual syntax:
In the above example we have an element anchor - "a" with "href" or hypertext reference to our document – in our case – this blog. The text in the link tells the viewer or the search engine what document the anchor links. It is an optional text and can contain anything.
An anchor element can have several attributes:
A link with all this stuff will look like this:
nofollow
Nofollow is an attribute used to instruct the search engines that the hyperlink must not pass any value to the linked document. This hyperlink must not affect target's ranking. It is used mostly for blog comments or bookmark websites, where the site owner has no way to track all linked resources. Example of nofollow usage:
To check if a website links properly to you, you must see the source. Your hyperlink must have a href attribute with your site in it and without a nofollow attribute.
A: A link is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow. A hyperlink is marked with an anchor element, here is its most usual syntax:
<a href="http://bestseostrategy.blogspot.com/">SEO blog</a>
In the above example we have an element anchor - "a" with "href" or hypertext reference to our document – in our case – this blog. The text in the link tells the viewer or the search engine what document the anchor links. It is an optional text and can contain anything.
An anchor element can have several attributes:
- href– points to link destination.
- title – link title.
- id – the element id.
- target – this attribute is used mostly for creation of new browser window so the visitor won’t leave the current page. This is achieved through target=”_blank” or target=”_new”. It can be used also for opening documents into another frame.
- class - this is not interesting from a SEO point of view. The class attributes says what CSS class to be applied on the corresponding link element.
A link with all this stuff will look like this:
<a href="http://bestseostrategy.blogspot.com/" title="SEO strategy blog" target="_blank" class="CSSClass">SEO blog</a>You can use images in the link or combine different html elements – for example:
<a href="http://bestseostrategy.blogspot.com/"><img alt="SEO Strategy blog" src="our_banner.jpg"></a>A link can have an empty href, or use "#" in the place of href location (href="#"). Most of the time, these links are used through JavaScript and can’t be crawled by the search engines.
nofollow
Nofollow is an attribute used to instruct the search engines that the hyperlink must not pass any value to the linked document. This hyperlink must not affect target's ranking. It is used mostly for blog comments or bookmark websites, where the site owner has no way to track all linked resources. Example of nofollow usage:
<a href="http://bestseostrategy.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">SEO blog</a>Q: How to check if a link is correct?
To check if a website links properly to you, you must see the source. Your hyperlink must have a href attribute with your site in it and without a nofollow attribute.
Dec 9, 2009
Link building is not that easy anymore
You Should Have Seen it. The link building process becomes increasingly difficult. Most of the good, old strategies don’t work any more. You see your traffic going down and wonder what’s happening? Maybe all your SEO efforts are in vain?
Social bookmarking, is it still working?
Social bookmarking sites and web directories are main tools in link building campaigns. But lately, most of them add almost no value to my SEO campaigns. Yes, if you manage to land your article on the first page of the big guys like Digg, you will get a lot of visitors.
For a day or two. But that’s all folks.
Most of these sites use some sort of third party advertising to generate revenue. And most of these advertiser networks have strict rules against links to dangerous websites. The social bookmarking sites can’t afford to check every link because they receive thousands per day. Solution for them was to add nofollow to some or even all outgoing links. Some of them get even further with cloaking links. Now webmasters submit their links, visit the SB websites, link to them but in return, they get nothing. You can submit your article link to hundreds social bookmarking sites and get no visitors and no links at all.
Blog commenting?
With mass usage of nofollow, you’ll only lose your time.
Forum posting?
The same thing. Some forums don’t add nofollow, only until they get enough visitors.
Creating blogs or random pages on the net won’t help you, because they are pages with no value. You must work on any of them to become popular – does it worth its time?
What will be the next, successful SEO strategy?
I don't know. Do you?
Social bookmarking, is it still working?
Social bookmarking sites and web directories are main tools in link building campaigns. But lately, most of them add almost no value to my SEO campaigns. Yes, if you manage to land your article on the first page of the big guys like Digg, you will get a lot of visitors.
For a day or two. But that’s all folks.
Most of these sites use some sort of third party advertising to generate revenue. And most of these advertiser networks have strict rules against links to dangerous websites. The social bookmarking sites can’t afford to check every link because they receive thousands per day. Solution for them was to add nofollow to some or even all outgoing links. Some of them get even further with cloaking links. Now webmasters submit their links, visit the SB websites, link to them but in return, they get nothing. You can submit your article link to hundreds social bookmarking sites and get no visitors and no links at all.
Blog commenting?
With mass usage of nofollow, you’ll only lose your time.
Forum posting?
The same thing. Some forums don’t add nofollow, only until they get enough visitors.
Creating blogs or random pages on the net won’t help you, because they are pages with no value. You must work on any of them to become popular – does it worth its time?
What will be the next, successful SEO strategy?
I don't know. Do you?
Dec 6, 2009
Best free ways to promote a blog?
There are many different ways to promote a blog and drive traffic. Here is a list of things I do for promotion. I hope it will help you.
Social media optimization works best for my blogs. Use sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg to promote your content. Create a community, join similar communities in your niche, participate in events and you will get people attention. Groups and communities in your niche work best. Also social media sites in you niche may bring you more visitors than big, global SM sites. For example, for one of my coding blogs I get tons of traffic from DZone – social bookmarking site for developers.
Offer social bookmarking buttons to encourage your readers to share what they like. Tweet and retweet buttons also can bring you many new fans.
Link building.
Link building is an essential part of a SEO campaign. Don’t skip it. Join the majority of blog directories and especially the ones in your niche. Share some personal information and write something interesting as a description of you blogs.
Press Release Sites – write a press release and send it to some of the biggest press release sites. If you have a specific niche like gaming – send your press release to the biggest news sites in your niche.
Register to search engines. It may sounds trivial but this may help you a little.
Run contest or offer something for free. You can offer an e-book, website template, or blog theme. Freebies tend to bring a lot of new visitors.
Forum posting and blog commenting.
Prefer forums and blogs in your niche. It would be better if they don’t add nofollow to your link.
Social media optimization works best for my blogs. Use sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg to promote your content. Create a community, join similar communities in your niche, participate in events and you will get people attention. Groups and communities in your niche work best. Also social media sites in you niche may bring you more visitors than big, global SM sites. For example, for one of my coding blogs I get tons of traffic from DZone – social bookmarking site for developers.
Offer social bookmarking buttons to encourage your readers to share what they like. Tweet and retweet buttons also can bring you many new fans.
Link building.
Link building is an essential part of a SEO campaign. Don’t skip it. Join the majority of blog directories and especially the ones in your niche. Share some personal information and write something interesting as a description of you blogs.
Press Release Sites – write a press release and send it to some of the biggest press release sites. If you have a specific niche like gaming – send your press release to the biggest news sites in your niche.
Register to search engines. It may sounds trivial but this may help you a little.
Run contest or offer something for free. You can offer an e-book, website template, or blog theme. Freebies tend to bring a lot of new visitors.
Forum posting and blog commenting.
Prefer forums and blogs in your niche. It would be better if they don’t add nofollow to your link.
List of useful social bookmarking sites - updated
Social Bookmarking websites are easy way to get many visitors and quality links. Here is a useful list with social bookmarking websites.
This list will be continuously updated.
- digg.com
- buddymarks.com
- spurl.net
- linkagogo.com
- a1-webmarks.com
- diggyourpost.info
- savethislink.net
- newsmarked.info
- ebaumsworld.com
- seedz.org
- tungaw.com
- bookmarkglobe.com
- iorkut.net
- starton.us
- bookmarkplace.com
- gyach.com
- cmymark.com
- tedigo.net
- websapiens.net
- justpoint.org
- totalpad.com
- mysitevote.com
- maple.nu
- dzone.com
- blurpalicious.com
- socialogs.com
- spotback.com
- svejo.net
- hitmarks.com
This list will be continuously updated.
Dec 5, 2009
How to get indexed faster - for blogspot blogs
Google indexing is often crucial for any website or blog out there. Sometimes your content gets indexed fast and sometimes it takes a week or even more to appear in the result pages.
There are some things you can do to make Google index your articles faster.
There are some things you can do to make Google index your articles faster.
- Publish your full RSS – these days Google prefers to index blogger blogs RSS feeds rather than the full pages. The crawler may visit your blog once in a while but if you publish your RSS, Google will index your new content in a matter of minutes. You can try and publish only short snippets but then your full post will be indexed rarely.
- Get links from big and hourly updated websites in your niche. Your links must be regular, not marked as nofollow. High quality links will make the search engine pay more attention to your content.
- Update often. Google likes the fresh content and will index your pages faster if you update them often enough. Even now you can see traffic bursts after posting new articles. Make schedule and post daily.
- Quality content. I may repeat myself but quality content will bring you success. Satisfied visitors will link back at you and will share your link with friends. Your backlinks count and popularity will increase.
Dec 4, 2009
List of top webmaster, seo and blogging forums - updated
- forums.digitalpoint.com – Digital Point, very popular forum with good and helpful community.
- sitepoint.com – SitePoint – another very popular forum.
- webmasterworld.com – WebmasterWorld News and Discussion for Web Professional
- warriorforum.com – Warrior Forum, internet marketing forum.
- forums.searchenginewatch.com – SEO oriented forum.
- forums.devshed.com – Web development forum.
- www.dnforum.com – Domain forum.
- forums.blogflux.com – Blogging forum.
- webdeveloper.com – Web development forum
- ozzu.com – Webmaster forum.
- kirupa.com – Web development forum.
- v7n.com – Webmaster forum.
- webmaster-talk.com – Another webmaster forum.
- www.webworkshop.net – SEO forum.
- www.bloggerforum.com – Blogging.
- geekvillage.com – SEO forum.
- googlecommunity.com – And another SEO forum.
- webtalkforums.com – Webmaster forums.
- forum.authorityblogger.com – Blogging forum.
- seo-guy.com – SEO forum
This list will be continuously updated.
Dec 3, 2009
Dec 2, 2009
How to make your blog a money-maker?
Your first task is getting enough traffic. But traffic is almost never enough. So getting traffic. You can achieve this with various SEO techniques like link building, forum posting, on-site optimization. Traffic can be obtained through social media networks like digg, twitter, facebook.
Let’s assume you’ve finished the first part and now you have a decent blog with many visitors. Now you need to monetize your traffic.
First and one of the most widely used – PPC and CPM advertising networks. The profit of PPC advertising depends on many things but mainly your income will be according to your traffic, CTR and CPC. CTR stands for click-trough rate and it depends on the ads position and visibility. CPC means cost per click and depend on your niche. There are niches with high CPC like finance, mortgages, SEO. CPM advertising networks are relatively similar to PPC ones, but your income will depend on page impressions. Gaming and lifestyle niches tend to perform well.
You can make money through affiliate marketing. Many companies offer affiliate programs for people to sell their products. You can even join an affiliate network like ClickBank or Commission Junction.
Other way to make money from your blog is selling ebooks or other digital products. There is a big market for WordPress and Blogger templates.
Let’s assume you’ve finished the first part and now you have a decent blog with many visitors. Now you need to monetize your traffic.
First and one of the most widely used – PPC and CPM advertising networks. The profit of PPC advertising depends on many things but mainly your income will be according to your traffic, CTR and CPC. CTR stands for click-trough rate and it depends on the ads position and visibility. CPC means cost per click and depend on your niche. There are niches with high CPC like finance, mortgages, SEO. CPM advertising networks are relatively similar to PPC ones, but your income will depend on page impressions. Gaming and lifestyle niches tend to perform well.
You can make money through affiliate marketing. Many companies offer affiliate programs for people to sell their products. You can even join an affiliate network like ClickBank or Commission Junction.
Other way to make money from your blog is selling ebooks or other digital products. There is a big market for WordPress and Blogger templates.
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