In my blogging experiences, I have learned quite a few things that I decided to share.

1.) You have to provide value to your visitors.  This is in my opinion, the most important concept to keep in mind when writing on your blog.  If there is no value, no one will come back or visit in the first place.  This means, don't just go on rants about your products or services.  If you are writing on your golf store blog, post tips for golfers, post videos for golfers, post recent golf news.  Whatever it is that will grab a person's attention and make them want to come back.  But the bottom line is, provide value.

2.) Don't forget the importance of blog titles and tags.  I didn't realize how big of a deal these really were.  But you want to cater your blog titles towards what you think a person would type into Google if they were trying to find this kind of information.  Why? Because that's one huge source of traffic, it's as simple as that.  As far as tags go, whatever tag you use the most Google will likely recognize as what your blog is mainly about.  However, I would not list tags on your posts that aren't really related to the content of your post.  You will just frustrate your visitors and they may leave or not come back.

3.) Learn what ping services are.  Ping services are basically how you notify the blog directories that you have posted a new post on your blog. Most of the major blogs have a section dedicated to ping services in the blog admin section.  Make sure the major ones are included, Google, Yahoo, etc. Why? Another source of traffic to your site. I have posted a list below of some of the ping services we use.  Feel free to use any of them.

4.) Lastly, I just wanted to point that Google if not already, probably will incorporate ranking criteria based on how frequently you update your site.  I mean this obviously won't be the only factor in their huge equation, but it will be important.  So if you are posting a blog entry once every few days, your site could rank higher...

Hope those helped!

Chris

This is the subject that frustrates me the most out of all web design topics.  Some companies just refuse to either upgrade their 1990's website or get one all together.

I don't think business owners really realize how big of an impact a website has on their sales.  I'll list a few reasons below.

1.) When's the last time you picked up the yellow pages? I can actually remember the last time I picked up the yellow pages and that was 7 years ago! Stop advertising in the yellow pages if you are and get on Google!  Google is the new yellow pages.

2.) I can't tell you how many times I have heard something along the lines of "Well, let's not stay at x hotel because the website looks really crappy.  Oh, y hotel looks good, let's stay there!".  Congratulations x company, your losing business everyday because of your website.  Don't be that company.  That goes for all types of businesses too, not just hotels.  I actually see this happen a lot for restaurants as well.

All I'm saying is that you are hurting yourself more by NOT getting a website than you are by getting a website.  The internet is here to stay, are you?

Let's just start out by saying even I underestimated the power of links.

Do yourself a favor, what keyword do you want to be #1 on? Go out to Google or Yahoo and type in your keyword to find out where you are in comparison to everyone else.  Let's say you come back as #10 for "New York Hot Dogs" and you want to be #1.  Now, look at the #1 person on Google and copy that sites web address.  Now go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7zeeyStMVEoBHfnbl8kF?p=&y=Explore+URL&fr=sfp and type in "link:" + their site address.  So for instance it would look like "link:http://www.yourdomainhere.com" and hit enter. (make sure http is included)  Look at the number of results in the left hand column.  Now, hit back, and type in the URL of your web address.  More times than not, the person that is #1 will have more links coming into their site.  The only exception I have found is when the actual domain name is the keyword.  For instance if there was a website named www.newyorkhotdogs.com it will probably rank pretty high regardless of the amount of links.

Now, another thing to note is that if you have 5,000 incoming links to your site and the person that's ranked 1st on Google only has 4,000, there may be a few reasons for this.  First, perhaps your content is not optimized for the keyword you are trying to rank on.  Second, maybe the person that is 1st is linked by higher quality sites.  For instance if the New York Hot Dog #1 website has a link coming from The Wall Street Journal and you have a link coming from Joe Blow newspaper, Google will rank the Wall Street Journal linked site higher because it's a higher quality site.  You can tell what Google thinks of a site by looking at the "PageRank" google assigns to each page.  If you download the Google toolbar you can easily see this.  Google ranks a site from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, 1 the lowest.  So for instance a site like the Wall Street Journal is probably ranked above a 5 and the Joe Blow newspaper would be ranked a 1 or 2.  No one knows the exact math behind it, but what I am saying is that having 4,000 links that are ranked a 6 is a lot better than having 5,000 links ranked a 2.  Get my drift?

More to come soon.  Next I'll cover linking strategies.

High rankings in Google search results are coveted by nearly all webmasters, but Google is constantly making changes to keep them on their toes. Actually, Google is said to make roughly one change per day.

One recent change in particular, however, has gotten some webmasters riled up. It's being referred to as "Mayday," and some claim it is costing them money.

Ex-Googler Vanessa Fox, who spoke on a panel with current Googler Matt Cutts at Google I/O last week, quotes Cutts as saying, "this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back."

She also says Google told her that it was a rankings change, as opposed to a crawling/indexing change. This, she says, "seems to imply that sites getting less traffic still have their pages indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly as before."

"This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with 'item' pages that don't have many individual links into them, might be several clicks from the home page, and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them," says Fox. "For instance, ecommerce sites often have this structure. The individual product pages are unlikely to attract external links and the majority of the content may be imported from a manufacturer database. Of course, as with any change that results in a traffic hit for some sites, other sites experience the opposite."

This is not the first we've heard about "Mayday". There's been discussion about it around the SEO community all month, but this is the first we've seen it really addressed by Google.

Most savvy webmasters have learned by now that they can't rely on Google rankings alone to drive traffic. This is why social media opportunities presented by networks like Facebook and Twitter have become so attractive. The way people search and obtain information is becoming more and more diversified, not only spread out around different applications (largely due to increased mobile usage), but also within search engines themselves.

For example, Google recently rolled out its big SERP redesign, which gives users a great deal more options for filtering their results (or at least puts these options in the spotlight). The importance of ranking in a completely natural, organic search has become greatly diluted over time. Don't get me wrong, it's still nice, but it's getting harder to rely on as well as less critical for discovery.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/

Why Twitter is Becoming Increasingly Important to Marketers

1. Twitter Lists
Twitter Lists are changing the game. They will appear on sites and blogs, which are more than likely going to be related to the niche you are in anyway if you have the right audience on Twitter.

2. The Openness of Twitter
The openness of Twitter, social media and the web in general, pretty much means that your messages on Twitter won't be limited to your Twitter audience. Facebook and other social networks will bring tweets in. People will share them, screenshot them, link to them on blogs, etc. Twitter is a means of getting your message out to more people, but it's not necessarily only the people on Twitter that will see those messages.

3. Building Valuable Relationships
Laura Fitton, the author of Twitter for Dummies, chalks up success on Twitter to four basic concepts: listen, learn, care, and serve. Basically, if you listen to the community, you will learn, and if you show that you care, you are more likely to get more out of your efforts. Serving means providing something of use to the community. If you what you're not doing that, you may be setting yourself up to fail.

4. Traffic That Cares
Twitter can bring you not only random traffic, but traffic from people who are actually passionate about the niche that you are a part of. Retweets are huge in this regard. Guy Kawasaki calls retweeting the sincerest form of flattery. He has a point. He notes that people are willing to risk their reputations by retweeting your content.

5. Staying Current
Being found in Twitter searches (not to mention real time search in general, which is starting to become a main area of focus for all of the big search engines, not to mention all of the standalone real-time search sites) provides a lot of opportunity for exposure. Check out tips for getting found in real-time searches.

6. Connecting with Local Customers
There are a variety of ways you can connect with local consumers and customers using Twitter and Twitter-related tools. There are tools which let you find Twitterers in your area, for example. Another thing to keep an eye on is Google's new Social Search. It's currently just a lab experiment, but could become more. It certainly has potential.

A recent Search Engine Land article made some good points about the potential of local marketing with this tool, which delivers Google search results based on the communities you are a part of. It draws from Google profiles, which include the networks that people are connected to (based on what any person includes in that profile).

7. Going International and Multi-lingual
Twitter is expanding into more languages. If you thought Twitter was important to marketing already, consider that for most of its existence, it has only been available in a couple of languages. Now it's in Spanish, and many more languages will follow. That's not only going to be huge for international and multi-lingual marketing efforts, it's going to be huge for Twitter's growth, and the more Twitter grows, the more potential customers are out there.

8. It's Still Young
Consider that Twitter is just getting started in the grand scheme of things. It's still young. There are no doubt going to be a lot more features added in the future. And don't forget about the thousands of Twitter apps that are already out there that can make Twitter useful in different ways to different people and businesses. Take some time and explore them. Fitton's site OneForty.com, which is like Yelp for Twitter apps, is pretty good for that. It has reviews, and people tell why certain helps have helped their businesses.

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

There have been a significant number of studies released recently indicating that email marketing is doing quite well. Epsilon shared some findings about how email marketing is driving offline purchases. The same firm also found that email open rates increased for the fourth quarter in a row (up 18% YoY according to the most recent study). Forrester Consulting and ExactTarget found that email marketing is the most popular channel for consumers. Earlier this year, Forrester Research reported that email marketing in the U.S. alone was expected to reach $2 billion by 2014.

Is the email landscape changing? Yes, without a doubt. Social media has become a very large part of the online lives for many Internet users. Earlier this year, social sites were even said to have surpassed email in usage. That said, Facebook has come significantly close to matching Google in terms of unique visitors, but that doesn't make Google any less important does it? The two can co-exist, and so can email and social media. They are co-existing.

We personally have been trying to push more for online newsletters.  Everyday less and less people are paging through newspaper ads and more and more are signing up for email ads.  It's easier, less clutter, and if you want to purchase something, it's 1 click away instead of a drive to the store.  A few of our clients see it's a good idea, but their first objection is, "How do we capture the emails?" We tell them that this is actually one of the most painless and easiests tasks.  Think about it, unless you are capturing emails in a sneaky fashion, people will want to sign up.  They want to hear about your special deals and promotions.  So a simple button "Sign up for our monthly newsletter" would do.  Or, you can add it to a sign-up feature with the option to opt into receiving the newsletter.  The second objection is some business owners relate email marketing to spam.  There is a complete difference between the two.  Spam is un-wanted emails.  In my mind, email marketing is the same as putting an ad in the paper.  People will be looking for them.

Some information from: http://www.webpronews.com

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

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

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

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.