1. Use Keywords

This seems obvious, but use keywords in not only your content, but in your titles, and your updates. If you're writing an article, you have to consider what people are going to include in their updates if they share it on a social network, whether this be Facebook, Twitter, or anything else.

More often than not, they are going to include the title. If the right keywords are in the title, then those keywords are also more likely to appear in any ensuing tweets, Facebook updates, etc. If someone searches for those keywords, they will be more likely to find your content in a real-time search.

The same goes for your own Tweets/status updates. Even if you are not sharing an article, if you want your update to be found, use relevant keywords. Again, obvious, but true.

2. Talk About Timely Events

Simply mentioning events that are current will put you directly into the results for any searches having to do with that topic, provided the right keywords are in play. This is a method that could and (surely is) being exploited by spammers, but that doesn't mean you can't provide legitimate conversation and simply put yourself on more people's radars, without throwing links at them every time.

3. Have a Lot of Followers

If you have a lot of followers or friends on social networks, or even just readers of your blog, you are going to get more people sharing your content. The more people sharing your content, the more impressions of your content will be making their way into real time searches.

There is no easy way to instantly get a bunch of legitimate readers/followers. It will take some promotion. Provide useful content that people will link to and it will spread virally. Provide clear ways for them to follow you (like links to Facebook pages and Twitter accounts on your blog).

4. Promote Conversation

Whether on your blog or on a social network, spark conversations. Talk about topics that people are interested in. This is tied to number 2. The more conversations you are involved with, the more retweets (and equivalents on other networks) you are likely to get. And again, this means more impressions in real times searches.

5. Include Calls to Engagement

These are buttons you can put on articles that show the amount of retweets/diggs that article has. They kind of act as a meter for engagement.

These buttons are certainly not all-encompassing. They only represent the conversation on 2 channels, and not the web in general. I'm sure there are other buttons that can be used in addition.

More importantly though, they provide a "call to action" to share the content. People can digg or retweet a story with a simple click, and you're one step closer to being found in somebody's real-time search.

Wrapping Up

Real-time search is much more basic (at least so far) than say, Google Search. You're not ranking for relevancy. Really, you could hardly call it ranking it all. It's about visibility. That means, you have to get people talking about your content/updates.

Social media by nature is viral. Real-time search is nothing more than putting things in chronological order. You have to keep people talking to stay relevant to "right now."

Information from: http://www.webpronews.com

Microsoft has made deals with both Facebook and Twitter, which will see Bing feature updates from both networks in real-time search efforts. This means that social media just became an even bigger part of search engine marketing, particularly with Google also on board with Twitter and rumored to be talking to Facebook.

Twitter Search only shows you results displayed chronologically, which has really always seemed to be the essence of real-time search to me anyway. But Bing has a "Best Match" option, which attempts to give certain tweets more weight than others.

Bing weighs tweets by follower counts. "If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher," says Bing. "If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower."

This is of course the earliest stage for any kind of algorithm Bing may have in place for its Twitter search feature. The feature is still in beta after all. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft makes more details available for how it ranks tweets moving forward. This could be a whole new nut to crack for SEOs. Consider that Bing results will be taking over for Yahoo if the Microsoft-Yahoo deal goes through, plus there is still Google's Twitter results to worry about.

Yet another reason to join in the social networking game.

Here are 5 tips to help you get found in real-time searches.

A Content Management System is simply a system that is used to manage the content of a website.

Ok, that definitely really doesn't tell us much, so let's break it down.

When someone says, "I want to be able to edit my own content on my own site and change it anytime I want", they are referring to a Content Management System (CMS).  You can edit font size, font color, add images, move stuff around, delete images, add links, and much much more.  CMS's come in all shapes and sizes with various price ranges.  So how do you know which one is right for you?

I always advise people to tread lightly when looking for a CMS.  Why?

You will be using this system pretty often (maybe multiple times a day) and these systems aren't exactly cheap.  Spend some time doing research, and I ALWAYS advise "test-driving" the system. You really won't know the full limitations and advantages for using 1 system versus another until you actually play around with them.

Also, a lot of people seem to have this thought in there head that it's exactly like editing things in microsoft word, well, it is to an extent. You have to realize that you aren't just changing words, you are changing website code (html code).  I won't get into the details of what happens behind the scenes, but sometimes what you want to see and change, and what is actually displayed, are two totally different things.  Sometimes the code just isn't translated correctly.  The bottom line is make sure the CMS fits your needs.  If you are expecting to be able to create new pages, add images, or change the menu structure, just make sure the CMS allows you to do this and that it's very easy to use.

 I hope this helps!

~Chris

I was just reading an article that was talking about how Google does not use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking. There are a lot of people out there that still put a lot of stock into this, but they are basically wasting their time.

Just because Google ignores the "keywords" meta tag, that doesn't mean it ignores all meta tags. In fact, there are several that the search engines definitely use. For one, Google sometimes uses the "description" meta tag as the text for search results snippets. But even then, the "description" meta tag isn't used to influence ranking.

This doesn't mean that Keywords on your site are useless, this just means the actual meta tag keyword is useless.  If you are not familiar with html code, meta tags sit behind the scenes and aren't even viewable to customers unless they view the page source.  Keywords in your content where customers can read them are still very important.  As I like to say, content is king.  It has to be in your content before it can be on Google.  So think about what people will type into Google and make sure those phrases are in your content.

So do yourself a favor and stop wasting time with adding in "Keywords" to the meta tags.

~Corey

1. Let's Get Competitive

If you run a site that thrives on user generated content (or you're thinking of adding this feature to your site but aren't sure where to start), then this is one technique to increase interaction from users. In forums, competitive behavior occurs naturally as users try to achieve various levels of status within the community. Other sites can mimic this behavior (and the consequential engagement it brings) but they may need a structure to help it along. Here are a few ideas:

- if you have a product or place that you want reviews for, feature a 'Review of the week' (don't forget to email them to let them know they're featured!). It's up to you how far you want to take this- why not take your top 5 reviewers out for dinner once a month?

- take a leaf out of Trusted Places' book and create badges for Local Experts

- follow SEOmoz's example and create a leader board that is powered off thumbs

Any of these incentives could be turbo-charged by adding a followed link back to the user's site.

2. Feature your users

Allowing guest posts, or even 'guest content', on your site is a great way to let your users know how much you value them. If a site I spent time on came to me and asked me to write a feature for them because they valued my input up to now, I'd be bowled over (yeah, I know, it doesn't take much).

If you'd rather not put the time into contacting individual users, try just putting a button on your site that invites guest posts or pitches. Savvy bloggers will be in touch before too long and you'll give off great vibes implying how much you value your users.

3. Donate to charity

Promising you’ll donate to a charity if someone links to your site feels a bit mafia-esque to me. Seeing as donations are a slightly gray area anywhere, I’d advise going after other kinds of beneficial user behaviour. For example, a client of ours donates about $5 to charity every time someone reviews his product. You could also use this method to acquire usability feedback, UGC and email newsletter sign ups.

How to do it

1. Have a look at your site and decide where it is this tactic could be useful. Ideally, users will be very close to interacting in these ways already- the charity angle just serves to push them into action.

2. Depending on what you're after, present the donation option when the user is in the right place to action it. For example, it would be much more effective to ask for a review of a product once someone has actually bought one! Similarly, why not ask for usability feedback when the user leaves the site, sweetening the deal with a promise to donate if they acquiesce.

3. You should definitely have a dedicated page that describes what you're doing, why you're doing it and how much you've raised. Include a link to this in any relevant call-to-action.

4. If possible, have a small list of charities that you donate to and let users choose which one they’d like the money to go to.

5. Once you've had the donations up and running successfully for a few weeks, let the charity know what you’re doing and suggest they might like to link to you to verify the process for your users. Win win.

6. Make the process as shareable as possible: ask if the user would like their friends to know about how they can make a free donation to charity.

A word of warning: even though this isn't an opportunistic scam and allows everyone- you, the charity and your users- to benefit, some people will have a problem with it. Make sure to be careful and respectful at all times.

4. Product Giveaway

If you have an ecommerce site, do you have any small, cheapish products that you could send to bloggers to get them to review? If you do, then this is a great way to build relationships with bloggers in your niche and encourage them to talk (hopefully positively) about your company. I wrote a whole thing on how to go about doing this, but then Rob pointed out he'd blogged about it a couple of weeks ago- so have a read of his post about Link Building for Small eCommerce Sites

5. Competitions and Prize Draws

Competitions are a really adaptable way of incentivizing certain types of user behavior. Here are just a few examples that we've seen recently:

- To get email sign ups - Fat Face- Win A Camper Van (very viral- has a 'refer a friend' draw as well)
- To sign up to a newsletter- Silksleep.com - win a silk blanket
- To get reviews - Pitchup.com- review a campsite and win a tent
- To generate buzz- the Hoxton Hotel competition- first set-number of entries win a room for a £1 and, of course moonfruit- enter anyone that mentions you into a prize draw (This doesn't necessarily have to happen on Twitter, but the real-time nature of it really helps to add momentum)
- To receive blog engagement- New Scientist - win a piece of moon rock

If you have any other examples of using 'positive motivational influences' to encourage certain kinds of user behavior, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

Entry from: Lucy Langdon on October 5th on http://www.seomoz.org

Press releases are a form of online marketing that we don't discuss very often. They don't have the new and exciting appeal of social media or even search engine marketing, but they've been around a lot longer and are still working. In fact, they can play right into those other forms.

"Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic -- and potential prospects -- to a small business' Web site," a PRWeb spokesperson tells WebProNews. "However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive."

PRWeb shared a case study with us, involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn't believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the "shelf life" of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.

"If you want a release to rank highly in search engines you have to use key words and link those to your Web site," says Peter Figueredo, CEO of NETexponent, the subject of the case study.  "In addition, you need to put them in the release a few of times, for example in the headline, the sub-headline and again in the body. This is different from a traditional news release with a catchy headline where you may not have your key words included." 

"When we included a link to our press releases on Twitter and other social media networks, we saw these both expanded the scope of distribution and the extended the longevity of the announcement," adds Figueredo.  "With other news releases we saw an initial spike in Web site traffic on the first two days and then it dropped off.  With these features we've seen increases in traffic up to five days after the news release was issued."

Some have suggested that Twitter could actually replace the press release. I wouldn't go that far, but it provides a complimentary service for announcing news quickly. The press release just has much broader potential. That hasn't stopped at least one company from offering a service that provides one line "Twitter-style" press releases.

When we think of press releases, we often think of distribution, which is a huge part of it definitely. But when using a newswire service like PRWeb, BusinessWire, PRNewswire, etc., don't forget about your own website as well. Earlier this year I discussed how some companies' own press centers are holding back some marketing opportunities for them.

Your site should have a section for press releases, and that should be up to date with the latest release when it goes out. You'd be surprised at how often these go without being updated even when a press release has been spotted elsewhere. It is also a good idea to link to any company blogs, Twitter accounts, or any other place where company announcements are made.

Another thing I notice is that many company press pages also do not have RSS feeds set up. Some offer different kinds of press alerts, but otherwise, they are relying on people to frequently check back to see what is happening. Google does this well. They announce a lot of their news via their wide range of blogs, and while their press release section doesn't get nearly as many updates, they offer a feed so that users know when it has been updated. They also provide links to other press-related resources where their latest info can be obtained.

The bottom line is that press releases inform interested parties of what is going on with your business. Despite their name, they're not just about the press anymore. The web has made them available to anyone. Social media is an extension of this, and opens up the opportunity for sharing. Search engine rankings of course bring releases right to searchers. Make your releases good.

 Entry from: http://www.webpronews.com

We get asked a lot if advertising on our clients websites are a good idea.  So we decided to put a list together of the "Do's and Dont's" of website advertising.

As long as you keep your visitors to your site in mind while putting advertising on your site, you should be in good shape.  You DO NOT want to annoy your visitors.

Do Not create a "site intro" for advertising.  This will cause visitors to immediately leave your site.  In the website world, they say you have around 7-8 seconds to capture your visitors attention.  Well, if 5 of those seconds are for an intro to advertising, you can kiss those visitors good bye.

Do Not create popup advertisements.  These have been dying down recently and aren't as bad as they once were, but none the less, still a very bad idea.  This is the #1 way to make a visitor unhappy with your site and gaurentee they won't be back for another visit.

Do Not create audio ads on your website.  If users can't find the pause button within a second or two, they are going to leave the site just for one reason: to get rid of the sound.  You do not need any additional reasons to cause visitors to leave your site.

Do Not create in-line text ads.  There is nothing more annoying to me than when I am reading an article and using my cursor as a guide (which many people do) and happen to rollover a text hyperlink that causes a popup.  Popups have always been and will always be viewed in a negative sense.  Keep your site clean and easy to navigate and you will keep your visitors.

Now on to the "Do's" of website advertising.

Do ask local businesses if they would be interested in advertising on your site.  Now, you may be asked by these companies for traffic statistics.  This is normal.  Companies do not want to advertise on a site that only has 15 people visiting it a day.  So be sure to ask your web developer if he keeps the statistics and have them handy for the local businesses. 

Do have your (or their) graphic or web designer design the advertisement and be sure they look professional.  Businesses don't want to see a "text" advertisement for their company.  They want to see something professional that they will be proud of.  Also, at the same time, you want something that visitors will not mind seeing.  For example, take a look at most major league baseball team's sites.  Let's take www.reds.com for example.  As of today (8/27/09), they have 2 advertisements that you can't even notice at first glance.  One for StubHub and one for Shop.MLB.com.  They look like they just "flow" with the site.  You get the best of both worlds, you keep the visitors, and you make the businesses happy because it looks very professional.

Do keep the amount of advertisements on the site limited.  Too many advertisements really takes away from the site and pushes visitors away.  At some point, the visitor doesn't know what's an advertisement and what's the real content they want to find.  They will leave immediately for a more "cleaner" site.

-Chris

There is an endless number of social media sites out there.  So how do you decide which to use for your business?

I believe there are 4 fundamental reasons you are using social media sites in the first place.  1.) To draw more traffic to your website, and in return increase sales.  2.) To expand your network of professionals.  3.) To make people aware of your business and what you do.  4.) Keep up with the latest industry trends from other business professionals you meet and network with.

Here are 3 social sites that I believe every business and consultant should utilize to increase their sales and network with professionals in their industry.

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. LinkedIn

It’s true that there may be a few better social sites such as YouTube that fit your specific business better.  But those 3 I feel any business can utilize to bring value to their firm.

We get asked the question, "How can social networking help my company?" a lot throughout our line of work along with "How can I tie social networking into my website".  I'll try to answer these questions.

What is social networking?

In case you might be wondering, what is social networking exactly and what are social network websites?  Social networking websites are communities of people who come together through the internet with similiar interests.  For instance, a popular social networking site, LinkedIn, focuses on entrepreneurs and building relationships with people to grow everyone's business.  Pretty similiar to networking groups in person.

How can social networking help my company?

Coleman-Parkes Research discovered 60% of American citizens used Social Media. Of those 93% indicated business should have a Social Media presence and 85% indicated businesses should interact via Social Networks with their customers. With powerful results such as these, why not impliment a social networking campaign?

The more friends you make in the communities, the more people notice you and your company, the more people visit your website, the more people realize what you do, the more referrals, etc, etc, etc.   Social media in my opinion isn't about pushing your product/services onto people.  It's about pulling people into your product/services.  If you have something you feel is of value to people, give it to them.  Most of the time, it's just knowledge, but that's all people ask.  The more knowledge you give, the more people trust and value your opinion, and in the long run, the more people that trust your company and products/services.  Whether it's through Facebook, Twitter, a blog, or LinkedIn it all comes down to the same main concepts that I just listed.

Should I incorporate social networking into my website?

Yes, without a doubt.  Search Engine Optimization is a must also, but with the combination of social networking marketing and SEO, your company should see some significant results if done correctly.  Both can be very powerful and both are very different in their approach to drive in more business.

How should I incorporate social networking into my website?

If you are new to social networking, I recommend signing up for a few of the free websites such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.  There are endless amounts of free social networking websites out there.  Get used to how they operate and how you can benefit from them.  From there, I recommend starting a blog.  Reasoning being is this is where you can centralize everything.  On your blog you can have links to your Facebook account, your LinkedIn profile, and even have your twitter posts shown on your blog.  This also gives you the ability to post something of value that you feel your clients/prospects can benefit from.  Once you have that, if someone asks you a question on Facebook or LinkedIn, you can simply answer their question briefly and say, "If you want more information, feel free to check out my blog here" with a link to your blog.  Now people are not only reading your blog, but visiting your website.

Hopefully this answered some of the basic questions regarding social networking.  I'll have more to come.  If you have ANY questions, don't hesitate to contact us.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine such as Google. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user.

Why would you need SEO?

90% of all online traffic is achieved through the various search engines.  Not many people use the yellow pages anymore.  Pulling up Google and typing in "Plumbers 45205" is much faster and easier than flipping through hundreds of pages.  People value time much more in today's world than they did in the 1900's.  Therefore knowing how to generate traffic through Search Engine Optimization is almost the only way to get found on the internet.

If you have any questions about SEO, don't hesitate to ask.

-Chris