Continual Optimisation is key
As with all things SEO or optimisation of any form is constantly changing and evolving – this said the SEO task is never complete – there is always a new school of thought, another search tool to research.
Link History
Consider the history of links or linking. When links were first considered the buzz word every site looked to have as many links as they could; it did not matter if the linked site content was of any relevance to their own site; just ‘give us the links’. Things have evolved somewhat since then; in fact any search engines will throw out anything that resembles a ‘link arm’ as this is considered as bad as spamming. Any links within your site need to be “qualified” that is they need to have relevance within the subject matter contained with the link area of your site.
Website upkeep
Regular optimisation needs to be considered within your weekly monthly tasks for your website upkeep.
Many choose to employ specialist companies for just such a task so that they have the time free to spend on growing their business and not on housekeeping tasks. Executive Virtual Consultancy offers just such a service with a range to suit all budgets.
Structured style
Each page or article needs to have a structured style that helps with the optimisation; this also makes the article far more user friendly to the reader. Title headings need to be clearly defined to help the reader to skim the relevant key points as discussed in Are you content with your content. This also makes any page far more ‘bot friendly’ so that those that crawl your site can easily tag the keywords for reference.
Use of heading groupings is a daily task within the publishing industry and easily transpose to an online media. This gives a far more professional finish to a piece as well as aiding in the readability stakes.
Social media networking
Networking helps immensely to optimise a site. SEO and Social Media explores this topic to a greater degree. By building a strong network within an industry allows for constant feedback on any changes to your key industry. In this current climate this could also help to keep you in work. This helps with optimisation and popularity.
Making Yourself Heard in the Virtual World
If you feel passionate about something shout it from the roof tops, power of free speech. On the surface this sounds like a brilliant idea but when we look more carefully at this statement we need to consider political correctness, we do not want to offend another in what we write. It is one thing to write in a thought provoking way it is quite another to take a stance and suggest that it is the definitive thought of the many.
Blogging gives you the chance to voice your opinion for others to see ‘virtually hear’ you can quite literally ‘make yourself heard within a virtual world’ learning to promote your blog helps your virtual voice to become louder, you can assume you have ‘made it’ when your voice becomes a crescendo. Blogging can filtrate the web the same way a conventional website does, through links, organic optimisation, word of mouth advertising, the list is long but not inexhaustible.
Forums give you a chance to voice an opinion these could be considered the prequel to the blog, the blog being the natural progression. Would you agree?
As with all forms of the written word you need to know your target audience, interaction proves you have provoked a response your virtual voice has been heard and responded to. Sometimes you need to choose a niche market that will create a dedicated following. This could be derived from loyal readers or from the community that your blog is aimed at. Aiming your writing at a particular niche allows for specialist authorship. Continuing a strand from a dedicated theme helps to promote brand and gives the author greater credibility as their knowledge is communicated to their readership through a contained string. As a blog evolves the introduction of contextual advertising such as AdSense will give a better result as the controlled topics allow for more defined topic advertising. In the same way a niche topic blog is seen as more attractive to advertisers that wish to use direct advertising to boost their sales. This is turn helps with organic search engine optimisation as the search engines like to see topics that relate closely within their pages. The more you get to specialise within your niche market the more likely you are to post as your knowledge base grows and your research will deepen within the topic.
A well defined, expertly written blog allows for future expansion into neighbouring topic areas when you have created a dedicated following that have similar interests. The more focused your topic area the more likely your conversion rate should you be aiming at a sales generated market - a true test that your voice has met that crescendo, and can be seen to shout across the virtual world.
Blog Optimisation – Saturation of the fittest
Successful blogging is as much down to organic optimisation as it is to the writing of the articles. Writing prolific articles is one thing getting them noticed across the web is something else entirely. There are a wealth of books, websites and articles written advising about getting your blog noticed. The thrill of watching your web awareness rise is addictive. Blog aggregators help with submitting your blog to directories to give you further presence. Examples of blog aggregators can be found at www.technorati.com or www.blogexplosion.com . Other ways to optimise your blog is to aim for blogger referrals; readers that subscribe to a regular blog will normally take the recommendations of that blogger to heart. Message here aim for recommendations from your peers. Trackback is a mechanism of communication between blogs that allows permanent links between articles published on different blogs much like the idea of reciprocal inking within websites. Once a trackback has been set up you are notified through your blog administration with a brief description of the article your work has been linked to. This is a good tool to use to further your conversations and encourage comment and feedback. Often your viewpoint can become stale; the injection from another interested party can continue a healthy debate.
Blogging can easily become a full time occupation, what may start as the dream to write can grow into a need to populate an array of topics which propagates into an aim for ‘web domination’ or simply organic saturation of your market. You need to be fit in mind, body and soul to help bring your venture to fruition. You become an author of your own destiny, using the power of persuasive prose to populate your given subject area.
Social Media Revolution
Do you Digg or Tweet or do you prefer to StumbleUpon your web content?
Key topics to include
· Attention grabbing headlines good for creating narrative greed within your audience also loved by the search engines for optimisation.
· Keep paragraphs short and punchy this helps your reader to skim through to find their preferred topics
· Use of bullet points images and subheadings also help with the skimming process
· Include interesting quotes and key points
· Keep your topics popular, something your readers will want to discuss and revisit on a regular basis. This is key to help build up a steady comment flow within your articles.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon provides a downloadable toolbar that allows you to rate each website that you browse with the chance to leave a review if you so wish. With just a few votes from your friends you can generate a steady flow of traffic to your site through exposure to StumbleUpon.
Digg
Digg allows you to submit an article you may find of interest, yes you can promote your own work comments and votes are welcomed from other visitors to the site. This is another way to populate your blog articles with comments, feedback and followers. “If you build it they will come” but only if ‘they’ know it is there! The key with Dig is to have a large friendship base that can vote your articles into high ranking positions to ensure they receive a large amount of interest. With little or no circle of friends within the Digg community there is little chance of great exposure on this site.
Through short, sharp phrases you can send a steady stream of traffic to your work simply by regular posting on Twitter. There are arrays of applications that help to promote followers to your profile that will give a greater distribution to your article when posting your new work with the complimentary hyperlink to send readers to the specific piece
The article SEO and Social Media gives an initial breakdown of the various uses of social media when optimising your work. This topic is evolving continuously and will be revisited on a regular basis.
Twitter Optimisation, use of Social Media, further hints and tips
By using Twitter as a form of organic optimisation coupled with other forms of Social Media you can help grow your business at a rapid rate with little to no initial outlay. This article follows on from Twitter Optimisation and the Social Media building on the various ways available that will help advertise your business or produce further company awareness. Social networking interest is growing in leaps and bounds as a brilliant form of organic optimisation. Especially in this current climate using as many forms of Brand awareness as you can is paramount, couple this with a constant need to find new or fresh input into an industry or subject area. Networking provides the inspiration and ‘fresh blood’ needed to give any business new impetuous. Networking within your profession allows you to keep abreast of key advancements within the industry; also it can never hurt to know how your competitors are doing. LinkedIn provides just such a networking opportunity. Key skills within optimisation need to be practiced daily or weekly to ensure that you stay at the peak of your strategies. This can be a painstaking job and is often outsourced to companies that specialise in SEO (Search engine optimisation) and SEM (search engine marketing) Executive Virtual Consultancy offer just such a service. Alternatively there are a multitude of applications that help within the social media arena this article aims to consider those designed specifically for Twitter.
Twitter Optimisation applications
Tweetlater now known as SocialOomph
Tweetlater is a brilliant bit of kit. It provides the perfect opportunity to ‘plan it, set it, forget it’. By organising specific messages that are scheduled to post at the allotted times that you decide your Twitter account can grow whilst you sleep. This gives you the chance to distribute your message in ‘real time’ on a global capacity. Tweetlater gives you the chance to manage more than one account schedule retweets and keep an eye on the keywords important for your business growth and so pinpoint other tweeters that it would be beneficial to network with. The banner link takes you through to Tweetlater/Socialoomph where you can find out further information on this useful tool.
Further articles in this series will consider:
- Ping.fm
- MySpace
- Blogger
- WordPress
Each of these networks helps to grow awareness through a range of social media techniques and campaigns. These allow you to link globally, to grow through business acumen and friendship with likeminded individuals within your profession.
Optimisation through the use of social media
Optimisation and social media are all buzz words within the online marketing media. Social networking has been in the news markedly of late. Some have even been lead to remark do people socialise in reality any more or is it all done online? You Tube, Facebook, Del-icio.us, Twitter, My Space the list goes on. All of these give you a ‘presence’ in the virtual world. More and more people are using the social media route to optimize and advertise their presence through the internet.
Social Media Considerations
Most bloggers and webmasters use social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com, StumbleUpon and Del-icio.us. These sites work by providing feedback on submitted articles via a judging and voting system. A well received article can bring a multitude of visitors to your site.
When considering your Search Engine Optimisation strategies it is best to choose one maybe two of the social media sites. All will help create further web presence and can bring traffic to your site, each work in a slightly different way. StumbleUpon can give a good influx of traffic from just a few votes; Digg however needs far more votes to help lift your article to the front page, once there your stats will show a huge traffic peak or spike. Social media sites can help boost your exposure throughout the web which will help considerably with optimisation objectives. The more traffic the search bots encounter visiting a site the higher up the rankings it will go. When aiming to build the popularity of your work not only do you want those tell tale spikes in your stats leagues you also want a loyal audience that read your work because they enjoy it.
Here is where social networking sites come into their own. By building up a large network of likeminded people you have a good start to a ‘reader list’ you know these people enjoy similar ideologies as yourself why else would they be within your network or circle. By simply building an enormous list for list sake’ you run the risk of putting the worrying thought of spam into people’s minds. Large communities or networkers can still easily be built but you need to constantly keep your reasons for building uppermost in your mind.
Key Points for Consideration
When writing content or articles and considering search engine optimisation alongside social media exposure the key points to keep in mind are:
· What is your aim with the piece?
· Who is your target audience?
· Which keywords you are aiming to optimise?
· Have you included well placed links throughout your article to include internal and external links?
· Do your paragraphs elicit narrative greed, grabbing the audience with short, punchy remarks?
· Is your content styled to aid ease of reading? This could include:
· Bulleted points
· Clearly defined subheadings (search engines appreciate this to help with indexing as well as any reader being able to grasp the articles intention from an initial skim reading)
· Key points and interesting quotes
· Do you emulate the feeling of community through your prose?
· Is your article informative or educational?
· Does your title give the relevant impression for those following through RSS feeds?
Handy little pocket book on Twitter - Dominate your market with Twitter fits easily into your pocket or handbag makes for easy reading on the commute - put what you learn into practice and grow your business
