September 2011

Ten Things to Avoid When Running an SEO Campaign

in Internet Marketing  by iqmadmin 0 comments

Even if you’re using the skills and expertise of an SEO firm, it is still important that you at least know the basics of SEO so that you can work with the company to make the results even better.

There are loads of things that you need to be doing within an SEO campaign, but there are also some things that you REALLY must avoid, and we take a look at some of these below with our top ten things to avoid when running an SEO campaign.

1. Waiting Too Long – One of the biggest mistakes most people make is waiting too long to even begin an SEO campaign. If you have a website you should be running some kind of SEO, no matter how young the site is, because a good campaign can help to get a higher ranking in the early days.

2. Targeting Competitive Keywords – If you sell houses then the chances of you getting to the top of Google for the keyword “houses” are going to be slim, to say the least. If you are working in an extremely competitive market, then you need to look outside of the box and start looking at easier keywords that you can rank for, because realistically, it is going to take a lot of time, effort, and a little bit of luck to top the charts for the most competitive search terms.

3. Ignoring Long tail Keywords – Many people think that they should always go for the most popular keywords, but these often tend to be the most competitive, so you need to look at the long tail keywords. If you targeted 5 long tail keywords that all attracted 200 searches a month but were less competitive than one that attracted 1000 searches a month, you stand more chance of getting the traffic you want in a much shorter time.

4. Writing Rubbish Content – Content is king for Google and the search engine is so advanced and sophisticated these days that it can easily spot duplicate content and also poor quality content. The main aim is to write high quality content that is useful, informative, and offers the user a good experience; or else you will just be wasting your time and hindering your progress.

5. Publishing Poor Articles – Content on your own site is very powerful, but you should also look at writing articles and releasing them on some of the more powerful article directories like EzineArticles. If you are going to do this, then make sure you only publish good quality articles, otherwise they will be rejected and, once again, you will have wasted your time.

6. Spammy Blog Comments – Although blog commenting can be a good way to get relevant links back to your site, if you go around adding poor and unrelated comments, then this is only going to backfire on you in the long run. If you are going to comment on blogs, then make sure that you post quality comments on quality
sites and check out the link follow status and the page rank / authority before you even begin.

7. Reciprocal Linking – Swapping links used to be one of the methods used for acquiring links until, like most link practices, it was abused and Google started to shy away from the weight it carried in rankings. Although it can be a good idea to swap links with local businesses or related businesses, do not waste your time swapping links and also limit the number of outbound links you have on your site.

8. Bad Link Neighbourhoods – Always avoid linking to or getting links from “bad neighborhoods” – sites like gambling, adult and other sites that might be considered a little bit risque. If you are found to have loads of links on these types of sites, then you are going to be in trouble, so always make sure you are careful about where links are added to your site.

9. Ignoring Your Own Website – SEO begins at home because if your website is rubbish, any extra traffic you generate will be a waste of time. Add to this the fact that if your meta titles and content are really poor, you are also going to lose out on ranking because two of the biggest factors when it comes to onsite SEO are meta titles and quality content.

10. Running Out Of Patience – SEO takes time – fact! You cannot expect to start an SEO campaign and get overnight results; it will take weeks, if not months, before you really start to get the results that you deserve if you run a good campaign. SEO should be an ongoing thing, running for as long as you decide to keep your website alive, because SEO is one of those things that goes on forever and is a constant effort.

Ian D. Spencer

Tweet Lots of Links To Get Followers

in Social Media  by iqmadmin 0 comments

To get followers on Twitter isn’t about herding unicorns — that is, there’s nothing mythical about it.

Looking at the relationship between the number of followers a user has and the percentage of their Tweets that are “@” replies: Highly followed users are less conversational than those with few followers.

Looking at the relationship between follower count and the percentage of a user’s tweets that contain links and are not replies: Using a sample of random, recently active Twitter accounts, there is a strong correlation. As the amount of links a user tweets increases, the number of followers they have also increases. And users with more than 1,000 followers tend to tweet many more links than users with fewer than 1,000 followers.

The data is starting to mount to suggest that “engaging in the conversation” is a waste of time from a marketing and reach-building perspective, especially when compared to sharing content.

 

College Students Use Technology At A Frenzied Pace

in Social Media  by iqmadmin 0 comments

technologyAdmit it, you’re on the computer and Internet every day.  Studies have found that 53% of people believe they would be upset if they couldn’t get online while 40% believe they would feel lonely.

The use of technology continues to be a growing trend as new gadgets pop up every few months and college students lead the way in gadget use.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project report “College Students and Technology”, 98% of undergraduate students use the Internet. 93% use broadband and 92% connect wirelessly using a laptop or cell phone.

Undergraduate students make up the largest percentage of students who use social networks, followed closely by graduate and community college students. However, the largest percentage of social network users were adults ages 18-24 who were not in school. Someone has to keep up with Farmville right?

The use of different technological devices has grown throughout the years. Years ago, it was rare to find someone who had a cell phone and an mp3 player. Now everyone has cell phones that function as mp3 players along with e-readers, laptops, and gaming consoles. Undergraduate students lead the way in owning e-readers and tablets. Undergrads are also more likely to own a laptop than a desktop computer.

Another unsurprising statistic is that 63% of undergrads admit to using their cell phones for the internet or email.

Technology use continues to rise and many higher education institutions are integrating its use into learning whether it is using an iPad for taking notes and using a laptop for distance learning.

 

World.Edu  (Natasha Bright)

Alton Brown Twitter Meltdown

in Social Media  by iqmadmin 0 comments

Ah, the possibilities of social media are endless. So are the possibilities of abuse:

It’s easy to see why Twitter is so popular, if, for nothing else, the ability to follow and grief your favorite celebrity. Just ask Food Network personality, Alton Brown. Like most people with any kind of celebrity following, Brown had an active Twitter account, and because of some Internet impersonation, Brown’s previously-active Twitter account is now gone.

According to the Fancy Pants Foody blog, Brown abandoned his Twitter account because someone impersonated his wife, DeAnna.

Apparently, Brown’s Twitter account had only been active for two months.

Fancy Pants Foody has the details:

…AB got the mother of all stalker tweets from someone apparently pretending to be his wife, DeAnna. Details are sketchy (and the tweet and account were deleted before I knew about it), but it reportedly included a photo of his wife and child, Zoey.

Later in the day, his account was gone. This time, apparently, for good. And I can’t say I blame him.

Christie, the blog’s lead writer, goes on to say that it appeared as if Brown’s Twitter had been set to private, but now, when @altonbrown address is entered, the return response is “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” However, before Brown took his Twitter account down, he gave the impersonator a piece of mind–140 characters at a time. And while the account has been removed, Brown’s reaction was caught in screencaps:


If the Internet griefer who started the fake account had kept his posts to simple mockery, Brown may have simply ignored it, but once images of Brown’s family were introduced into the situation, Brown understandably reacted with some venom.

And now, Brown’s Twitter account is no more. Brown did, however, address the issue at his blog:

I didn’t leave Twitter because my wife started tweeting. I left Twitter because a parasitic troll fraudulently posing as my wife started tweeting. It even used a photo of my family as its avatar.

The way I see it, Twitter is like a big cocktail party. If I was at a cocktail party and someone puked on my wife’s shoes, odds are excellent that we’d leave. Does that mean I won’t attend any more cocktail parties? Maybe not. Maybe I’ll just have to figure out a way to host my own cocktail parties where people have to actually be accountable for their behavior.

Did Brown overreact? Granted, when images of your family start showing up on other people’s profiles, that may be reason to take pause. That being said, a simple Google Image Search for “Alton Brown Family” reveals at least two images that fit the description. Granted, because the griefer account has been taken down as well, there’s no telling if the person was using Google Image Search to find pictures of the Brown family, or if the offending image was something not readily accessible from Google.

Whatever the case, because of the nature of the Internet anonymity–that is, to give people a hard time under an anonymous guise–Alton Brown’s Twitter account is no more.

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Using Humor in Social Media

in Social Media  by iqmadmin 0 comments

Can you remember something funny? Better than something dry and technical, we bet. Humor in social media can go a long way. Are you considering using humor with your social media activities? If not, here is some assistance to get you on the path to humorous interaction.

It’s no surprise that using humor in advertising is an effective way to connect with your audience and humanize your company or brand. What about using humor in social media?

  • Adding humor to your social media strategy can be an excellent way to get people’s attention.
  • If you appeal to your audience emotionally, you’ll increase your chances that they will further engage with your brand or product.
  • Using humor to your advantage will help your clients remember you. This will naturally lead to the sharing of your content and let others have a better understanding of what you represent.
  • An emotional appeal separates you from the thousands of other companies out there saturating their social channels with self-promotion. If you’re not “humorizing” your brand, product or business, your exit from the  social media arena may not seem so funny.

Don’t Forget To Keep Your Audience In Mind When Using Humor in Social Media.

Not all humor lands right. Edgy humor may be the hardest to gauge, because one person’s “edge” is another person’s “too far.” Slapstick humor tends to work best with young or old audiences, politically-charged humor should be used sparingly if at all, and religion-based humor should probably not be used at all. Cleverness and wit work in any arena, as long as it’s not sarcastic — sarcasm doesn’t translate well to text.

Bing's Perspective on Quality Content

in Internet Marketing / Web Development  by iqmadmin 0 comments

contentSince the Google Panda Update first launched back in February (and really for some time before that), there has been a lot of discussion about search quality throughout the industry – the quality of the content that search engines are returning in their results.

This is the whole reason the Panda update exists. It’s all about improving the quality of results. Some will dispute the success of that, but it is the reason for better or for worse.

But what about Bing? It doesn’t command nearly the search market share that Google does but, as it powers Yahoo search, it’s really the only major competitor in town.

Whereas Google had a list of questions one could ask themselves to asses the quality of their site, Bing has published a list of things to avoid, which reads as follows:

  • Duplicate content – don’t use articles or content that appears in other places.  Produce your own unique content.
  • Thin content – don’t produce pages with little relevant content on them – go deep when producing content – think “authority” when building your pages.  Ask yourself if this page of content would be considered an authority on the topic.
  • All text/All images – work to find a balance here, including images to help explain the content, or using text to fill in details about images on the page.  Remember that text held inside an image isn’t readable by the crawlers.
  • Being lonely – enable ways for visitors to share your content through social media.
  • Translation tools – rarely does a machine translation tool leave you with content that reads properly and that actually captures the original sentiment.  Avoid simply using a tool to translate content from one language to the next and posting that content online.
  • Skipping proofreading – when you are finished producing content, take the time to check for spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and for the overall flow when reading.  Does it sound like you’re repeating words too frequently?  Remove them.  Don’t be afraid to rewrite the content, either.
  • Long videos – If you produce video content, keep it easily consumable.  Even a short 3 – 4 minute video can be packed with useful content, so running a video out to 20 minutes is poor form in most instances.  It increases download times and leads to visitor dissatisfaction at having to wait for the video to load.  Plus, if you are adding a transcription of your video, even a short video can produce a lengthy transcription.
  • Excessively long pages – if your content runs long, move it to a second page.  Readers need a break, so be careful here to balance the length of your pages.  Make sure your pagination solution doesn’t cause other issues for your search optimization efforts, though.
  • Content for content’s sake – if you are producing content, be sure its valuable.  Don’t just add text to every page to create a deeper page.  Be sure the text, images or videos are all relevant to the content of the page.

If you’re living up to Google’s definition of quality, you probably won’t be doing too bad in Bing either, and if you’re doing well in Google, you’re probably getting a lot more search referrals from Google than you could ever get from Bing anyway, but it’s still helpful to get a look into Bing’s own thinking on this issue.

 

Thanks to Chris Crum of Web Pro News

Make The Most of YouTube Marketing

in Internet Marketing  by iqmadmin 0 comments

youtube marketingThe most recent statistics on online video and YouTube are mind-blowing: Nielsen reported that Americans streamed 15 billion videos in the most recently recorded month (May 2011). While traditional TV viewing was up only 0.2% over last year, Internet video viewing was up 35% and mobile video viewing went up 20%.

Before you throw all your marketing dollars into YouTube, however, you might want to consider this other statistic: 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube… every minute. In the time it takes you to read this article, about two weeks of fresh content will be posted. Watch the video below and add another three days.

In other words, there’s a lot of competition for those eyeballs. So, how do you maximize your YouTube marketing results?

  •  Create compelling videos.

  • Use YouTube Ads.

  • Make your video findable.
  • Brand your YouTube channel.

  • Post a bulletin and alert your friends and subscribers.

  • Review YouTube Insights for good insights.

  • Leverage other social media platforms.

 

Employers Use Social Networks to Screen Employees

in Social Media  by iqmadmin 0 comments

social mediaIn an increasingly digitized world, roughly 45 percent of employers now reportedly use social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to screen potential employees, according to Mindflash.com.

Not all Facebook-related employment decisions are necessarily negative, as Mindflash.com depicts in the below infographic. Indeed, 18 percent of employers have found information that has actually facilitated their decision to hire a job applicant.

Still, finding something unsettling is more common, as more employers used what they found on social networking sites to bar applicants from employment. Of those surveyed, 35 percent of employers were reported to have found content that cause them not to hire a candidate for an open position.

More than ever, already-hired employees are paying careful attention to what is on their Facebook. That would seem appropriate, seeing as the National Labor Relations Board recently decided to give employers a free hand in firing employees for inappropriate material found on social networks, as reported by the The Huffington Post.

Beyond the more obvious red flags of inappropriate photographs and comments, Mindflash also says a prime reason for potential employees being denied a job is their digitally badmouthing of ex-employers and patrons.

courtesy: Mindflash.com via Huffington Post

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