Top Ten Ways To Be Social For Your Website
( The Best Web Hosting Service )- Social networking has quickly become one of the most talked about SEO factors. As Google continues to add more clout to social media in their algorithm, SEO experts and Webmasters alike are using it more than ever to bring organic traffic to their websites. More than likely, you’ve probably tried your hands at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or any of the other major social networks for personal reasons. However, if you haven’t also used them to promote your website, then you are likely missing out on a lot of quality traffic.
Getting started with using social media for SEO and traffic building purposes doesn’t have to be difficult, and in most cases, it isn’t. However, if you’re feeling a bit lost with the whole process, you’re not alone as there are many others that are feeling the same way. With that in mind, we’ve prepared ten easy steps to help you increase your website’s social media presence. By following these steps, you’ll feel more comfortable with using social media to promote your website.
Decide if you’re using your personal account, or one that is entirely separate
If you already have established accounts across the various social media, then you have a decision to make. You could either establish new accounts for your website, or use your personal account for business purposes as well. There are pros and cons to each that are important to evaluate before making your final choice. If you utilize your already established account, you’ll already have a wide network of friends, making it easier to gain supporters that will like and re-tweet your posts. On the other hand, the majority of your friends won’t necessarily be ideal targets for your niche, thus negating any kind of benefit that a massive number of friends could have.
In general, most Webmasters will opt to have separate accounts for personal and business needs. Although you will need to rebuild a new friends and followers list, you can focus their posts on content related to their website. Furthermore, having a separate account for the website will look far more professional. Whether you are planning to use Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Squidoo, or more, a professional account will almost certainly work to your advantage. After all, you may not want your potential clients to see your twitter feed or personal videos. Chances are that those of your friends that are actually interested in your website will likely follow your new professional account as well.
Join the top social networks if you haven’t already
If you haven’t already joined all of the top social networks, then it’s time to get started. You’ll find the best success with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Squidoo, and Hubpages. Each of these social media platforms and websites will work to bring organic traffic to your website through links, and through improvement in the search engine rankings. Because Google has now factored social media into their algorithm, the more tweets, re-tweets, likes and +1s you receive with your link, the better your site will do in the rankings.
Become familiarized with the social networks that you don’t know
For the average social media user, being active on, and familiar with every social media platform is not only exceedingly difficult, but also nearly impossible. However, because each platform offers the potential for organic traffic to your website, you may want to consider a few crash courses to get familiar with what each has to offer. By becoming moderately accustomed to the various platforms, you’ll be able to see which ones will best suit your target audience for your website.
Connect your accounts via 3rd party software
Posting to every single social media network individually, be it LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, or Twitter, would be a monumental task that would take crucial time away from other important tasks. In order to maximize the benefits of each social media website while giving yourself time to take care of other important matters, you’ll need to connect each of your accounts. Fortunately, there are many third party software options that can do this for most social media networks. These software options are often available on the various mobile platforms, meaning you can post on the go.
Encourage your current clients to friend or follow you
One of the biggest mistakes that Webmasters make is failing to encourage their current clients or daily visitors to follow or befriend their accounts. Although these people will likely visit your website whether you promote it via YouTube, Facebook, Squidoo, Twitter, or Google+, they can serve as a gateway to gaining a wider audience. These individuals will be the ones to like your posts, +1 your website, and re-tweet anything you need.
Observe the competition
Let’s face it; the importance of social media is no secret among Webmasters. Your competition may have established accounts well before you, or is at least at the same point as you in the process. By keeping an eye on what they are doing, you’ll be able to see what is working, and what isn’t, making it possible for you to use social media to build true organic traffic to your website.
Consider publishing RSS feeds
One of the easiest ways to be social for your website is to set up your social media accounts to automatically publish your RSS feeds. Not only will you add links pointing to your website, but you’ll also automatically update your follower base without ever needing to make a post on each separate social media network.
Run contests
One of the best promotional methods to be done through social networking is that of contests. The biggest corporations have effectively utilized contests to gain organic traffic, and to improve upon their customer base. You, too, can do the same thing. The contests don’t need to be overly large, nor do you need to give away anything expensive. People like having the chance to win something, even if it is something small. By running a contest, you’ll be able to attract more followers, which will lead to more organic traffic to your website.
Earning likes, re-tweets, and +1
Whether you have one follower, or fifty thousand, it is absolutely critical that you emphasize to them the importance of likes, re-tweets, and +1s. Don’t be afraid to ask for each at first, as soon enough, your friends and followers will be doing it on their own. Each of the three have become essential pieces to Google’s algorithm, and may also lead to the link to your website being picked up by social media aggregators.
Be positive
Lastly, the best thing that you can do to be social for your website is to be positive on each and every social media network to which you belong. Nobody’s going to re-tweet a message if you are being depressing and negative. On the other hand, people want to feel positive. If you’re positive, and give off a positive message, you’ll see your likes, re-tweets and +1s multiply.
How Google +1 Will Affect SEO
( The Best Web Hosting Service )- With Google +1 having been officially introduced to the public on a global scale, both SEO experts and Webmasters alike are asking the question of how it will affect SEO now, and in the future. As case studies and experiments as to its impact are being conducted on a daily basis, the picture of how it is immediately affected SEO is starting to get a little clearer. Google +1 is certainly influencing search engine results, and its full impact may have yet to be seen.
Google has already come out and explicitly stated that the more +1s a website receives, the better its results will be in a Google search. Thus, with a greater amount of +1s, your website will bring in more organic traffic, as Google will see it as an approved authority. It will gain authority status because it is believed that recommended content is generally more relevant than its counterpart. In a sense, Google is stating that +1s are similar to backlinks in that each serves as a means of recommending content, and the more that you have of each, the higher your website will rank.
Both case studies, and Google itself have, in fact, confirmed that SEO is, and will continue to be affected by Google +1. However, the question still remains as to how Google +1 will affect SEO. In order to provide an answer to that question, we’ve outlined a few areas that could provide the reasoning that you need. These areas include personalization, social authority influence, competition, longevity, and aggregation services.
Personalization
The gaining importance of both Twitter and Facebook on search engine rankings is clear evidence that Google is taking personalization very seriously with respect to its algorithm. It should come as no surprise then that Google +1 will further increase the significance and influence of personalization in SEO. Pages that have been tweeted, re-tweeted, and liked are seeing the greatest increases in search engine prominence. Google +1, even in its infancy, is adding to the mix. One only need to look at SEOMoz’s case study, as it showed that personalization is a force to be reckoned. The results of the case study saw pages reaching the top result for their respective keywords with just tweets, re-tweets, and +1s alone.
Social Authority Influence
With +1s, re-tweets, and likes being used to determine content relevancy, it should be obvious that social networking is gaining strength as a major component of Google’s algorithm. While the average user can have an influence by liking, or +1ing a website, one has to wonder just how much social authority will be affecting the process. Those with tens of thousands of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ friends have even further influence as to what websites will reach the top of the rankings. Basically, these social authority figures may have the power to control what you see when you search via Google. The more friends and followers you have, the stronger your influence as to how a website will rank for its keyword. While an individual’s +1 may not be more powerful than another’s, their overall expansive audience reach may contribute to an abundance of +1s.
Competition
Google +1s may present a unique twist on analyzing your competition for targeted keywords. In the past, many Webmasters have been able to get a glimpse into the SEO methods of their competition in order to devise a plan to surpass them. With +1s making an impact on search engine results, you’ll be able to see why you are ranked below your competition. However, you won’t be able to see how they are getting their +1s, making competition analysis a bit tougher.
Longevity
Longevity will be a major factor as to how Google +1 affects SEO for a multitude of reasons. Aged domains have always influenced search engine rankings. With Google +1, the aged domain factor may still play a slight role, but it is likely that it may be neutralized. Newer domains and websites may actually overtake aged domains depending on who adapts +1 first. Furthermore, a newer website may provide fresher content that attracts more +1s from its visitors.
Longevity also plays a role with respect to just how long Google +1 will last. Google has tried various social networking ideas in the past, though none have ever garnered fanfare. Google +1 seems to be an exception at this point, but there are still many questions as to whether it will stand the test of time. The truth impact that Google +1 might have on SEO largely depends on how long the concept lasts. If it fizzles, the effect will be minimal. On the other hand, if its popularity soars, it could have a tremendous influence on the way we approach SEO.
Aggregation Services
Aggregation services have played a significant role in the way Twitter, and other social media has influenced search engine rankings. With the help of social aggregating services, a simple tweet could lead to a webpage reaching the top of Google for its targeted keyword. One has to wonder if, and how, social aggregation services will respond to Google +1. It would not come as a surprise for aggregation services to surface that highlight the websites with the most +1s. If that does happen, it could be even more of an SEO game changer.
Whether Webmasters and SEO experts like it or not, Google +1 is affecting the way that we approach SEO. Depending on how each of these factors discussed comes into play, Google +1 may be the next dominant component of the Google algorithm. It is definitely affecting SEO now, but just how much it will affect it in the future has yet to be seen.
Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service )- XML sitemaps are very useful tools to speed up indexing in search engines such as Google. In a nutshell, a sitemap is an xml file containing all the details of your site from all the pages and posts, along with how each site is relevant to each other. This is what Google finds and reads within websites for easier indexing so it will not have to read your whole website anymore.
The best thing about sitemaps is that it is automatically updates whenever a new content is created and added, after which it also prompts search engines about the changes. Again, it can be done manually via a text editor, but that’s if you know how to. There are also lots of sitemap plugins that you can use. But so far the best you can use is, of course, Google XML Sitemaps. I use it on this site and all my sites!
Obviously, the main reason why Google sitemap generator is the best to use is because it is upon Google itself. This plugin automatically generates sitemaps for your site that can be read by Google, along with other search engines like Yahoo, Ask and Bing. Each search engine uses the same protocol for reading sitemaps which is usually located in robots.txt file.
Through the plugin configuration page, you can choose which part of your site should be included on the XML file generated. Also, you can actually set priorities for each post and page so that engines will know a page relevance, whether this will be depending on the number of comments a particular post has, or the number of visits to that specific page.
You can also set how frequent bots should visit your sitemap for changes, in order to keep your data on the engines updated on time, whether daily, weekly or depending on how often you make changes or updates to your content.
This plugin is also connected with Google Webmaster Tools, which also gives you the ability to monitor the sitemap’s activity, how the bots utilize it, and how it gives your site the boost it needs to get indexed within the search engines.
Having this automatic XML sitemap generator is very useful and is really recommended for everyone. It saves a lot of time and effort doing the sitemap configuration yourself, making you focus your time and effort, as well as resources, on improving the site and adding contents that will be helpful both for your site’s indexing and the benefit of all your loyal visitors.
To check out the Google XML Sitemaps plugin please check it out here.
Twitter Marketing For Your Website
( The Best Web Hosting Service )- When it comes to promoting your website, social media marketing is as important as ever. Although Facebook is widely considered to be current king of social media, and offers great opportunities to attract new clientele, it would be utterly foolish to rule Twitter out of the mix. While there may be limits on the number of characters that you can write with each tweet on Twitter, there is certainly no limit on the variety of ways that you can use the social media engine to drive both traffic and sales to your website. Many individuals and companies alike have discovered the potential power that lies within the use of Twitter, and have run widely successful campaigns that have brought in incredible profits, and more importantly, a new consumer base.
Whether you are currently on Twitter, or have yet to get started, you’re probably wondering exactly how you, too, can use the social media engine to attract visitors to your website, and ultimately build your business. While creativity and a business savvy mind are, most certainly, two important factors in running a successful Twitter campaign, there are other elements that must also be considered in order to achieve your desired results. If you are planning on launching a Twitter campaign, you may want to consider the following options to give you a head start.
Identify your target audience
In order to be successful in any business, it is critical that you know exactly who your target audience is. Identifying your target audience can be made easy by simply defining your particular market, and considering the product or service that you are selling. Think of marketing on Twitter as any other marketing campaign for your product or service. Rather than trying to sell to the hundreds of millions of users on the social media giant, hone in on those that would actually use your product or service. If you’ve established a target audience, it will be easy to find these individuals, thus giving your campaign a running start.
Analyze your competitors
Competition doesn’t always have to be the enemy. In fact, more times than not, the most successful businesses use their competition as a resource, or a friend of sorts. In general, the best marketing campaigns borrowed ideas from a competitor, and then made them better. Running a Twitter campaign is no different. By getting to know those in your industry, and learning what has and hasn’t worked for them, you’ll know both what must included, and what must be avoided in using Twitter to gain a wider consumer base.
Build an Audience
Most people confuse the idea of building an audience with gaining a mass number of followers. In reality, a huge follower base that could care less about your product or service is no better than having four or five followers that are serious, potential clients. By building a loyal audience, you’ll be able to identify, and then cater to interests, thus developing ideas that potentially provide for an optimal sales campaign.
Go Beyond Twitter
Rather than looking for your loyal audience, you should let them find you. One of the best ways to do that is by utilizing your resources beyond Twitter. For example, if you have a local following offline, you’d benefit greatly by inviting these individuals to follow you on Twitter. The same can be said for those that run blogs, or have a good amount of friends on Facebook. Although these individuals may already be clients, they will increase your Twitter follower base, and could potentially be the best promotional vehicle you have. In many ways, Twitter can be likened to word of mouth promotion. All it takes is one loyal follower to Re-Tweet about your product or service for you to gain three, four, or more new customers.
Follow in the footsteps of success campaigns outside of your industry
One of the best ways to bring something innovative to your industry is to look elsewhere so as to see what other unrelated companies have done successfully. As an example, IBM has had great success on Twitter by using the social media engine to organize event conversation. During their big Lotusphere 2011 event, IBM created a social media hub that incorporated Flickr, live streaming of video, and blog updates to reach out to their audience. Furthermore, they encouraged the use of the hashtag for any conversation about the event. The hashtag enabled those at the event, and those who couldn’t make it, to interact, and capture the attention of millions.
IBM wasn’t the only company to find success using Twitter and the almighty hashtag. American Airlines utilized the hashtag during one of their more recent highly successful campaigns. During their Deal 30 promotion, Twitter users tweeted the #Deal30 hashtag for a chance at winning 30,000 miles. Tens of thousands of people followed the AAdvantage twitter account, and proceeded to tweet with the #Deal30 hashtag. American Airlines was thus able to gain both promotion, and also clientele by simply running a successful marketing campaign on Twitter.
Reward your audience
As can be seen in the success of the American Airlines campaign, everybody likes being rewarded. By incorporating a contest into your Twitter marketing campaign, you will create a buzz that will only serve to benefit you by driving traffic and increasing sales. While giving a reward through a contest may an additional cost, it will certainly produce the results you desire. Furthermore, a successful Twitter campaign, even one that has minimal costs for rewards, can save you thousands on offline local promotional material that may bring one or two new customers, if any.
All in One SEO Pack – WordPress Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service )- WordPress has been the main tool for website creation, and is by far the easiest way to incorporate SEO management. While WordPress already allows you to manage SEO easier, adding a plugin like All in One SEO pack can even make this task easier and yield better results.
Along with other themes like Thesis and Headway that are SEO-ready firsthand, the All in One SEO Pack plugin shows you key areas of your site for you to be able to add the right keywords that could attract visitors to your site. SEO is a long and bloody task, that’s why one can utilize any help it could get to make the process easier.
After installing and activating this plugin, you can configure the plugin within the Options page. The configuration page will let you put the right keywords right where they needed to be. The areas that you will need to fill with keywords would be:
Page Title: Apparently, the page title is the most important area for optimization. Your page title will reflect the whole site’s keyword – meaning it is where the bots and people would know what your site is all about. So it’s definitely not a place to miss optimizing!
Meta descriptions – This is also another important place to optimize. Pages rank according to their keywords within page titles most of the time, but this description that appears after the page titles is actually what convinces people to go to your site instead of another having the same keyword.
Meta keywords – These are basically codes and keywords hidden or not published within your site’s pages but are descriptions of what your site is all about. This helps the search bots determine the site relevance to the keywords searched.
The good thing about this plugin is that once it is configured, it automatically does the site optimization for you, faster than doing everything manually. Also, it also generates meta tags automatically based on the posts and topics, especially useful if you are a beginner. SEO will work just like that for you. If you are an advanced user, this plugin pack can also let you individually tweak keywords for each page and posts.
Given all of these help, this is a must-have plugin for an effective SEO. But still remember, no matter how good you optimize your site for SEO, having a good and useful content on your site is still the best way to succeed. At the end of the day, sites will still be deemed useful by people, not by bots.
Click here to go the All in One SEO Pack plugin page.
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