Blogging

Note: This is a guest post written by Christopher Angus, an award winning Internet Marketer.

While Google and social media are two separate entities, they are closely intertwined. Google ranks its results based on several hundred quality signals. These range from website backlinks to the actual words on a particular page and whether a website has trust and / or authority. Many a SEO Company has tried to manipulate the results to their benefit. This is largely based on the fact that Google is a “backlink-based algorithm” and people would simply buy or find other means of artificially inflating their number of links. Of course, Google combats paid links or other “unnatural” links with its algorithm or in extreme cases penalising a website.

As Google’s algorithm advances it has become far more difficult for business owners or SEO professionals to “game” the system and Google will continue to use other signals outside the normal margins to determine the quality and where a website should rank—these are starting to include the inflow of traffic to a website and possibly citations on other websites too. However, the most advantageous aspect to performing well in social media is that many people who frequent the sites are webmasters and blog owners. Should you have an interesting article, resource or any other item which may be of interest to them; they will link to your site from their own internet property. It’s these “natural” links which have a gargantuan impact on a website’s ranking on Google. This is particularly true when a popular website or blog picks up your story or other item and links to it, these top websites may include Wired.com, BBC or generally any other high end news website.

Many journalists cruise techy social media sites such as Digg and Reddit looking for interesting stories to cover and link too. Getting your story to the front page of these hugely popular sites is not hard if you have the knowledge. These top social media sites also have their own algorithms to prevent people manipulating their story to the front page. To get your story to the front page of a popular social media site you need to submit it to the site in particular and then ensure that your story gets sufficient votes to ensure it reaches the front page. To get several hundred votes you either need to have a large number of friends or get someone with an established network to submit your story for you. These Social Media Experts will usually charge a fee though for helping your story reach the front page of a particular site.

Having your story visible on the front page of a social website for a short amount of time will bring several benefits. These include: Huge amounts of traffic, brand building and of course the all precious “backlinks”. We also believe that Google looks at what’s popular on social networks and gives the popular items a temporary as well as a long-term boost in its own rankings.

To succeed on Google, webmasters and business owners now need to embrace social media and other internet communities or risk losing valuable rankings on Google.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

More:
How to Use Social Media to Leverage the Power of Google

How Much Is a Top Level Domain SEO Worth? by Search Engine Journal

The ubiquitous Ann Smarty explores the relative SEO value of .com top level domains (TLDs) vs. .net, .edu, .org etc. Not her best stuff perhaps, but still interesting.

16 Things to Look for in a Website Health Check by PluginHQ

Glen Allsopp offers his list of SEO health check items for websites, including use of proper use of the non-WWW to WWW redirect, unique page titles, sitemaps, anchor text, header tags and more. My only quarrel would be with the inclusion of insidious no-follow tags, which should be banned not encouraged.

How to Fix the Bloated Code that is Jacking Up Your SEO by Search Engine Guide

First off, you gotta love that title. Web design guru Stoney deGeyter explains four coding issues that can “screw up your on-page optimization processes,” such as a very high code-to-content ratio, and how to fix them.

10 SEO myths debunked by iMedia Connection

Writer Michael Estrin interviews a group of SEO experts to dispel some “common misperceptions about SEO” such as that SEO is about secret tactics, submitting your site to thousands of directories is helpful, SEO is a one-time event, and my favorite, “SEO is free.” Among the experts are Danny Sullivan, Aaron Wall and Shimon Sandler.

The SEO makeover: simple tools for better traffic by iMedia Connection

In another piece from iMedia Connection, Andrew Hazen, founder/CEO of Internet marketing firm PRIME Visibility, offers 10 simple steps to improve SEO results for the site that can be applied anywhere, such as using keyword-rich text-based navigation in place of Javascript menus and optimizing H1 and H2 tags.

Aaron Wall discusses future trends in search, the difficulty in scaling SEO, coping with Google’s mood swings, competition, social media and more.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Continued here:
Best of 2008: SEO Guidance, Part 1

The trends are clear: as the economic malaise deepens, GDP growth heads into negative territory and unemployment rises, marketers are slamming the brakes on any program that is offline / branding and shifting whatever dollars they have left in their shrinking budgets to online / direct response.

Last week, MarketingSherpa published two charts showing the shift from offline to online spending, and from brand advertising to direct. Then yesterday, they released this chart, providing detail on the shift in tactics.

The temptation to move in this direction is obvious—but temptations can be dangerous. Shifting resources to social network interaction is smart, and likely would have occurred to some extent even without a recession. Emailing to house lists is another no brainer, though it has to be done with caution; if overdone, unsubscribes will increase and your house list will shrink.

As for the next two tactics on the list, paid search and telemarketing, the only surprise is that there isn’t a more pronounced shift toward these activities. They are highly measurable and meet the need for instant gratification.

So, if “everybody’s doing it”—shifting resources from branding to direct marketing—why should your company buck the tide? Here are four reasons.

Less clutter means more chance to stand out.

Fewer banner ads on websites, fewer print ads in magazines, and fewer pieces of direct mail in in-boxes mean that your ads and mailers have much less competition for attention.

It makes you look like the big dog.

Buyers figure that if your company is one of the few still willing and able to keep running print and online display ads when everyone else is cutting back, there must be a good reason for it. Success breeds success.

The slowdown gives you leverage.

Think about the people trying to sell online display, print, radio and TV advertising right now—they’re desperate. That not only means you can get more attractive pricing, but also that you can get creative in terms of what else goes into the mix: print advertorials, case studies or bylined articles; online editorial coverage, reduced-cost lead gen activities like webinars and white paper syndication; reduced pricing on newsletter sponsorships, etc. What else do you want? Now even moreso than in good times, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Most importantly, branding supports direct response.

Prospective buyers are more willing to open a piece of mail, take a phone call, or click on a search ad if they are familiar with a vendor. By enhancing name recognition and credibility, brand advertising makes your direct marketing programs more effective.

Don’t neglect branding. While shifting some of your marketing dollars from offline to online programs certainly makes sense, there are compelling reasons to take advantage of the current climate to make some smart branding moves as well.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

See the original post:
Four Reasons to Keep Branding During a Recession