The Benefits of Social Marketing

The Benefits of Social Marketing

Joining a series of social networking websites may seem like a tedious task, especially if you aren’t a very social person, but results you gain are going to prove themselves to be well worth the effort. I was never a huge fan of social marketing, but I quickly found that social networking sites gave me the opportunity to have a little bit of fun while working on my marketing campaigns. Social Marketing may just be the break you need from your regular daily routine !

If you’re still questioning whether or not social marketing is worth your time, take a few minutes to check out some of the main benefits.

Social networking sites allow you to target niche groups. Most social networking sites have groups or filters that allow you to separate your contacts or make new ones based on their interests. This is great because you are guaranteeing that your messages will be seen by an audience that is already somewhat interested in what you have to say. I found one of the hardest parts of marketing was finding people who were really interested in my niche. Social marketing saves me the trouble of filtering those who aren’t really interested.

Social Marketing costs less than traditional advertising methods. Social Marketing may take a little more time and effort, but it costs much less than a pay per click ( PPC ) advertising campaign and can often be more effective. If you pay for a pay per click advertising
campaign, you have to worry about paying for clicks regardless of whether or not they result in a sale. The links you post on social networking sites won’t cost you anything more than time.

Social Marketing doesn’t require a ton of skill. While it helps to have a little bit of marketing background, you do not have to be a lifetime student of marketing or SEO in order to launch an effective social marketing campaign. As long as you can communicate in clear, grammatically correct English, you’ll find yourself more than half way home. You can focus more on the knowledge you need to have regarding your niche and less on difficult technical skills.

Social Marketing helps with SEO. Even though you don’t have to know a lot about SEO to launch a social marketing campaign, a little bit of knowledge will be helpful. Every single time you place a link to your website on another website you are creating an inbound link. Inbound links are critical to SEO, as they prove to the search engines that your website is useful and popular, thus increasing your page rank.

When I first started my online career, i was hesitant to use social networking sites as part of my marketing strategy. I thought they were simply websites where people gathered to collect friends and swap photographs. Once I learned how to effectively use these sites, I was pleasantly surprised to see the impact social marketing had on my ability to generate web traffic. I truly believe you’ll be just as amazed as I was.

To Your Success

Wingcent Ning
Success-Biz Marketing
wingcent@gmail.com
http://mysignaturebusiness.blogspot.com
Singapore

How To Boost Traffic To Your Blog

How To Boost Traffic To Your Blog

Let search engine index your blog and let people come to your fresh blog. Though you're in World Wide Web, nobody knows you're there. You need to pull kindly those who are potentially waiting for you but don't know where your are. This objective is related to generally known as search engine optimization ( SEO ). It's too broad to address all. But the most important things will I talk about. Though they're not all but more than enough will be covered. They are about ...

** How to use keywords as a SEO technique

** What to consider when you choose blog templates

** How to construct your blog search engine friendly

** Ping your blog

How to Use Keywords as a SEO Technique ?

As long as SEO is concerned, the keyword comes at front line. You have to find the target keyword/keywords or niche keywords. What to do with the keyword/keywords ? Please read on ...

** Enter keywords in your blog name :
If you named your blog for example, "John's blog", it's not a good idea in the view of SEO. Instead name your blog something like "keyword blog". You need to substitute "keyword" with your "target keyword", for example "mountain bike blog", if your blog is about mountain bike.

** Enter keywords of your post in title tag :
Actually most of bloggers don't need to concern about "title tag" because most of blog hosting applications such as blogger, typepad, wordpress, movable type, drupal, etc ... care this for you. But you have to use the keyword in your title and then they will include it in the title tag for you.

** Enter keywords in meta description tag, if possible :
This may be difficult for most of bloggers because most of blog hosting system don't support this. If this is your case, don't bother with this. To make it possible is almost impossible for the people like me who are not techie at all. But don't worry there is other solution : care your first sentence of the first paragraph.

** Enter keywords in the first sentence :
Nowadays many SEO experts say that most of search engines don't look meta description tag. Instead they look for the few words in the first sentence. So care your first sentence to include the keywords, make it fit to describe your whole post and attractive.

** Repeat your keywords in your post :
With this an English grammar teacher may not be happy. But as long as SEO is concerned, it's necessary : frankly to say, you have to. General rule says the keyword density should be about 2-3% of whole words in your post.

You may complain "heck, how do I know keyword density." Well, you don't need to count it manually. There is a free tool to check the keyword density. And actually I don't even check it all the time. I just keep in mind 2-3% and check only for some posts that I think worth checking.

Type the URL of your post, keyword and click " analyze" button. It'll return you the keyword density of your post. If the keyword density is too low, consider repeat the keyword more but don't repeat too much ( more than 3% )

** Use your keyword in your blog domain :
This improves the ranking of your blog and hence more traffic come to you. If your blog is about "anniversary gift", for example, include it in your domain name so that your blog domain looks like "anniversary-gift.yourhost.com"

** Use your keyword in the link title :
Many blogger don't know about this ! Which one do you think better, "anniversary gift" or "anniversary-gift.your host.com" as your link title ? The former is better. The reason ? Because search engines value more. So keep in mind that whenever you get link try to enter your keywords in the link title.

** Enter keywords in your file name :
When you save your blog, use your keyword. Which one is better, "mypost98.html" or "anniversary-gift-how-to-choose.html" ? This time the latter is better because it includes keywords and hence get better chance to be listed in high rank in search engine.

** Enter keyword in alt tag :
If you use images in your post, don't forget to put your keyword in alt tag. A 2 cent-tip related to this is that if your Google Adsense doesn't seem to show matching ads with your content, check your alt tag. Maybe it's because you put unrelated words in alt tag.

What to Consider when you Choose Blog Templates ?

Certainly there is a search engine friendly blog templates. To know whether your blog template is search engine friendly designed, go to Crawler simulation ( It's free.) Enter your blog URL and then it'll show you how it looks like when a search engine spider visits your blog site. If you see a lot of html code or java scripts before you see main content, it means your blog is not well designed in the point of search engine optimization.

There is a way to hide unnecessary code from spiders, using CSS or div class "hide". Try to make your title tag immediately after head tag and to show up your body content as near to head tag as possible.

How to Construct your Blog Search Engine Friendly ?

Make your blog site structure as simple as possible. This may not be a big issue for bloggers because unless a blogger can design her/his blog system, they have to use a default system. What I mean by this is that most of blog system make permalink be for example : www.myblog.com/user/archive/year/month/date/apost.html.

See how far the final "apost.html " is from root. It's 5 step further. This is not so good in terms of search engine optimization. You can reduce those steps but you only can do so one or two step because database recognition is concerned behind this story.

So the bottom line is that try to make your blog simple but if it's not possible, focus on writing good content. I observed many top bloggers have a bit complicated permalink system yet have lots of traffic.

But if you can make your blog structure simpler without problem, please do so because it is much better for the reader and search engine as well.

Ping your blog

Do you ping ? Many pongs will come,then. :-) This may not be an issue if you're using Movable Type, WordPress, Typepad, or Drupal 4.6.0. But consider pinging to Ping-o-Matic !, if your system is not configured to do so. Because it pings to most of important blog search engines and directories in one spot.

If your blog application doesn't support to ping automatically to "Ping-o-Matic !", you can do so manually by visiting Ping-o-Matic ! Once you type your blog name, blog URL, check where to ping and click "submit ping" button, and don't forget to bookmark. It gives you a convenience because you don't need to type blog name, URL and check where to ping again.

By pinging you make search engine spider crawl you more frequently and make your reader notified faster. So far you have the most important SEO techniques for your blog. Say, how to use your keywords and where to enter, search engine friendly blog template design, structure and finally ping to " Ping-o-Matic !" But one thing is missing !

Get inbound links !

Probably it is as important as your blog itself !

To Your Blogging Success

Wingcent Ning
Success-Biz Marketing
wingcent@gmail.com
http://mysignaturebusiness.blogspot.com
Singapore

P.S. : To learn more about Blogging and create your own successful and profitable Blog, just visit here for your "Must Learn" guide.

Search Engine Optimization For Blogs

Search Engine Optimization For Blogs

Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System ( CMS ) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage. Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page. But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages. Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. ) Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain ( recommended ) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in http://mysignaturebusiness.blogspot.com/rssnews/

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.

2. ) Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers ( the H1 or H2 tags ) as well as the title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file " search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.

3. ) Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately. Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. ) Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text. Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.

5. ) Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages. Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

6. ) Get backlinks from other blogs or websites

Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings. I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal. http://www.blogrolling.com
But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.

As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code. Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.

* Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories :

Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog. Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

* Link Exchanges :

Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.

* Trackbacks :

You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.

Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog. http://www.haloscan.com

But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.

* Comments :

You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.

7. ) Update Frequently

There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content. Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.

8. ) Stay put

Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish. You could end up losing a lot of your traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move.

To Your Blogging Success

Wingcent Ning
Success-Biz Marketing
wingcent@gmail.com
http://mysignaturebusiness.blogspot.com
Singapore

P.S. : To learn more about Blogging and create your own successful and profitable Blog, just visit here for your "Must Learn" guide.