A collection of some important SEO articles: http://www.ecombuffet.com/Summary.pdfdeath at a funeral dvd

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Search Engine Land shared info this morning on a quiet update to the Google Blog Serach algorithm.  For more details, check out http://searchengineland.com/quietly-google-updates-its-blog-search-algorithm-19329

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Check out my guest Blog post at SearchEngineJournal.com: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seven-deadly-sins-of-social-media/10380/

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There is so much information floating around out there about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how to get some rankings.  So much of it is contradictory and confusing.   I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about the secrets of top rankings.

So, let’s jump right in with the secrets to SEO success…

Search Engine Secret # 1: There are no secrets! The search engines make it all very public and clear what you need to do to get top rankings.  The success lies in the details and proper implementation.  But there is no top secret, proprietary technique for getting top rankings.

OK, so now we all know there are no secrets, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t information you need to know, such as:

If you don’t optimize your site, you won’t get top rankings. It really is that plain and simple.  If the engines can’t spider your site and you don’t have links and strong content, you don’t stand a chance against the sites that do have all that in place.  So many people don’t want to spend money on SEO, or are afraid to take the plunge but then they can’t understand why they don’t have rankings.  So maybe there is a secret – maybe the secret is take action and get your site optimized!

Your site structure matters! I can’t tell you how often people have said to me “I know my site is a mess, but I don’t want to spend the money fixing it, so can’t you just throw up some keywords and Meta tags and get me some rankings?”   Ummmm, no, I can’t.  Your site structure is your foundation.  You would never build a house without a solid foundation, why would you build an SEO campaign without a solid foundation?  (For more information on the importance of a solid site foundation and how to evaluate your site foundation, visit: http://www.ecombuffet.com/SEO-consultation.htm)

Don’t just focus on small keyword list that is made up of the most popular and competitive keywords.  You will be missing out on opportunities for great keyword phrases that convert really well.  Expand your list.  Include long tail phrases.  They may have less traffic but they will convert at a higher rate and if you get enough of these phrases they will likely add up to be better than your original list.

SEO is changing and evolving so staying current on what the engines are looking for is important.  Either hire a firm to get you top rankings or find a way to make sure you stay current with information you can trust.  (For more information on how to stay current and informed on the SEO Industry, visit: http://ecombuffet.com/sos/)

Social media and SEO go hand in hand, so get out there and be social. You can optimize your site without doing social media, and you can do social media without an optimized site.  But why would you?  The two enhance and compliment each other.  The truth is there is a lot of competition out there for website traffic so why not use all the tools at your disposal?

Focusing on SEO without focusing on conversions is a mistake. You are going to work so hard, or pay someone your hard earned money to get you top rankings.  You can’t afford to ignore marketing issues.  Make sure your site is going to convert all that great new traffic you are going to send to your site.  (For More Information on marketing and conversions, visit: http://www.ecombuffet.com/WSS.htm)

Google Webmaster Tools and your web stats are a goldmine of information.  Make sure you take time to see what words people are actually using to find your site and see what people do once they get to your site.  See how many people link to you and which of those sources are driving traffic.  Find out if there are errors on your site.  There is so much information to be analyzed; you just need to make the time to check it out.

Successful SEO requires time, patience, skill, knowledge, persistence, attention to detail, knowledge of HTML, current information and an understanding of marketing helps too – then you can write the best possible text while using the keywords well, and it will also help you write compelling Title and Description tags…OR – the willingness to invest in a professional firm to get those top rankings for you.

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This post might not make me too popular, but I’m OK with that.  I love that we all get to put our opinions out there and have conversations.

Social media is constantly evolving as new people come on board, new tools are developed and people find their voice and participate more.   So here are just some of my ramblings on Twitter, hopefully those just getting started will appreciate the tips and those more involved will comment and share their opinions.

So this is the Twitterverse according to me. 

Auto-follow people: For me, it’s a no go. I still like to look at every person and decide for myself if I want to follow them.  I follow way more people than I used to and I’m loving it.  However I don’t do it out of obligation, I check people out and decide based on certain criteria (which I’ll get to shortly).

Sure, it’s nice to return the favor and automatically follow back, but my problem with that is we all get inundated with people we are following, we don’t read most of the tweets and we aren’t really interested in any given person (or at least we don’t know if we are interested, because we didn’t check them out).  I don’t want to dilute the benefits of Twitter and lose people in the crowd.

Auto-tweet when you get a new follower: Again for me, it’s a no go.  I have not received one auto-tweet (no offence people) that I’ve really felt made a big difference to me.  I check out the person’s Twitter profile page and website anyway, so I feel I get a glimpse of what they are all about and then I can choose to DM them if I want to.

I guess I just feel like I get inundated with auto-tweet messages that are either too salesy, too impersonal or uninteresting.  Maybe I’ll get creative and think of a killer auto-tweet but for now, I don’t use them.  Maybe I am missing out because of it, and maybe one day I’ll change my mind but for now I’ve chosen not to go there.

And now is the perfect time for my disclaimer. The more I tweet the more I learn. I often change my thinking and “twitter practices” so my disclaimer is this: These are my views based on my experience and knowledge today.  Hey, it’s a girl’s prerogative to change her mind, right? download in the valley of elah movie

Numbers game: To me, Twitter is not a numbers game.  Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate and value every single follower and will work on growing my followers – however, I will not put into practice some of the techniques people are putting out there to just amass followers as quickly as possible.

I am OK with growing my base over time, when people are really interested in what I have to say.  I just feel quality over quantity wins out every time.

I know the argument, with bigger numbers you have the power to reach more and you never know who you will connect with out of the crowd.  That is true, I am not disputing that.  I just think in many cases large numbers are misleading and not everyone is truly paying attention, they are following but not reading, responding, participating.

OK, now onto my personal criteria for following people….

1.    Don’t protect your tweets.  If you have cool/important/interesting stuff to share, let the world see it.  To me protecting tweets from the general public defeats the purpose of Twitter.
2.    Put up a pic.  Sometimes logos or cartoons are fun but I almost always prefer seeing the person.
3.    Tweet often at the beginning – feel your way through the learning curve.  I know everyone is new and has to start somewhere but with no history of tweets for me to look at, it’s hard to say if I want to follow.  In that case I use the description and photo to decide.  Please don’t misunderstand – I know when I first started I didn’t have much of a history, I had to build it.  I’m just sayin, get tweeting people!  Build it quickly and they are more likely to come, and follow.
4.    I also look at how many people you are following versus who is following you.  If no is following you, and you are following tons of people, I wonder why!
5.    If you have instant-cred cuz people I trust are already following you, I will follow.
6.    I use guy instinct and decide if I like the profile page, the tweets, the description etc.
7.    I am not likely to follow if your most recent tweets are all salesy and too self promotional.
8.    Another reason I may not follow is as simple as I may just miss seeing a new follower and haven’t checked you out – so feel free to tweet me and introduce yourself!

One last thing – at first I didn’t really follow many people, I was learning and was mostly talking at people and not to people. It took me a while to really learn how to interact so learn from me!  I don’t advocate being too focused on your own personal agenda.  Be open, be honest, be fun and be open to the boundless opportunities and relationships out there.

OK, I know it’s long, thanks for hanging in and reading every last word.  LOL

Comments please?!

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If you aren’t creating a monthly newsletter you are missing out on an opportunity to market to your list.

Newsletters help establish your credibility, keep you top of mind for your prospects and allow you to make special offers to your list.

Please note a paid newsletter needs to be informative and doesn’t always offer the same sales opportunities.  However a freebie newsletter can have ads, special offers and promotions and more.

If you are running a monthly newsletter, it is important to make sure you are getting the most out of it.

Here are some things you should keep in mind month after month as you work on your newsletter.

1. Determine what your readers want– If you aren’t covering topics they are interested in, no one is going to want to read it.  And although your newsletter should promote your business, it’s also meant to establish your credibility and build your relationship with your prospects and customers. Be sure to discuss topics of interest and value for your customers and prospects.

2. Personalize your newsletter- there are hundreds of newsletters circulating on the Internet and in the mail. You need to make your newsletter stand out from the crowd. Making your newsletter uniquely you will make a difference. So be real. Feel free to include personality and emotion in your newsletter.  Create a template with a look and feel that your prospects will associate with you and get to know.

3. Make it look good– people will first judge your newsletter by appearance and if it doesn’t look professional and compelling they won’t bother reading it. Also, remember to keep it brief. Use bullets and appealing headlines. And include graphics.

4. Ask for feedback and opinions from readers– include your readers in the process.  Invite them to provide feedback and then actually implement some of their suggestions.

5. Include your contact information- the ultimate purpose of the newsletter is to get more customers (through name recognition, relationship building, and promoting your products). However, if you don’t make it easy for them to reach you or get to your site, you won’t get the benefits.  Be sure to include a bio with full contact details at the end of every newsletter.

6.  Create a teaser for your next newsletter - let people know what they can look forward to in the next issue.  This builds anticipation and makes them more likely to actually open and read the next issue.

7.  Consider deliverability issues - think about the best way  to deliver your newsletter.  You can deliver it as an HTML email, or a plain text email, or send a short email with a link to a webpage that holds your newsletter, or a short email with a link to a PDF.  If you load the newsletter content onto your site as an HTML page or a PDF it will also serve double duty and act as content addition for your site.  You are also more likely to get through SPAM filters if there is less content and HTML in the body of the actual email.

8.  Make sure you track your email stats - whatever program you use to deliver your newsletter should provide you stats, so you can see how many people open your emails and click on links in your newsletter.  Knowing how many people you are reaching is important so you can monitor your results and can tweak and try different things until you get the results you desire.

It doesn’t have to take a ton of time to consider all these details and create a great newsletter.  However it may take a little more time than you are spending now.

Try to factor the time into your schedule, it is really important to properly and effectively use your newsletter as a marketing tool.  You worked hard to drive traffic to your site and build your mailing list so you may as well get as much as possible out of it!

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With so much talk about social media these days, so many are jumping on board and trying it out.  We are seeing some common mistakes out there and I thought it was important to address these mistakes to help eradicate them in the future.

Don’t get me wrong, there will be a learning curve – we all went through it (and I met some great people that helped me, and that I helped along the way) but the key is to learn up front to minimize errors!

So, here we go…

Mistake One: Completely Ignoring Social Media
Believe it or not there are still some people out there that are ignoring social media.  They may be unsure of how to participate or maybe they just don’t have time to get involved.  No matter what the reason, this is a big mistake.  Social media continues to grow in popularity and in importance to internet users - the exact users you are trying to reach.

Mistake Two: Bare Profiles
If you don’t bother completing your profile people won’t be able to get to know you.  It is also a sign to other users that you aren’t serious about participating on that site.  Many spammers don’t bother to complete their profile and a blank profile has become a red flag.

Your profile should include a custom background when possible, a photo, contact information, and a list of interests to help people get to know you better.

Don’t be afraid to show some personality and let people really get to know you and your company and what you stand for.

Mistake Three: Faking It
We’ve all seen companies being ripped apart for trying to fake it in the social media world.   They either hire someone to pretend to be them (it’s OK if staff, colleagues or team members participate, but to hire an unknown to play you, not cool!), or they make up personas or even fake customers posting positive feedback.

The truth is if you can’t invest the time to create an authentic social media profile, you shouldn’t bother creating one at all.

Mistake Four: Trying to Sell Users Instead of Listening
Social media isn’t about you selling, selling, selling.  You are here to network, build trust, listen to what customers and prospects have to say. You want to hear customer concerns, to learn about them, to find out what gets them excited, what they like about your product, what they still want, etc.

Remember to be a good social media participant, which means listen before you speak.  If you don’t, you risk being written off as yet another company that doesn’t know how to use social media and who is only interested in promoting themselves. Remember, you always have to  add value to the communities you’re participating in - just remember its value for your customers, not yourself.

Mistake Five: Recycling download blood car dvd
Don’t recycle old content and marketing materials on social media sites.  Start new conversations, create new information to share.  Granted, you’ll have some content that falls in the “oldie but goodie” category and that’s OK to share.  Just try to keep things fresh.

Mistake Six: Launching, then Ignoring
Social media is similar to search engine optimization in that you can’t just set it and forget it.  You need to participate and remain active, otherwise you have wasted your time initially setting things up.

If you want your customers to stay engaged, you have to keep producing great content yourself. Keep writing Blog posts, creating widgets and being active in the community. Social media is real work but when done properly it’s worth the effort.

So review your social media practices and make sure you aren’t making any of these mistakes.  If you are, change course quickly and get yourself back on track.

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As a website owner, I’m sure you are always looking for new sources of traffic.  Have you considered Google News?  If you regularly publish news in your industry and want to be seen as a source for news you can request Google include your  site.

This can be a great source of traffic and an excellent way to boost credibility for your company.

There are some important details you need to be aware of in order to increase your chances of Google including your site.

First and foremost, you have to request that Google include your site by visiting: http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/request.py.

Here is some of the criteria Google is looking for.

Make sure that your pages that display the full text of news articles have unique URLs so that the Google is able to index each story individually. URLs with more than one article will not be included on Google News.

The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits, and should not resemble a date.  I’ve often heard you should aim for more than six digits to be safe.

Here is what Google says about this: We can’t crawl an article with this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article23.html. We can, however, crawl an article with this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article234.html Keep in mind that if the only number in the article consists of an isolated four-digit number that resembles a year, such as http://www.google.com/news/article2006.html, we won’t be able to crawl it.

Make sure content on your news site is original.  You can’t republish a CNN story and expect Google to include your site in the News search results pages.

Your site should have more than one author. You should also have a page listing  all of the authors with their bios. For Google this is a deal breaker, so don’t bother proceeding with your request to be included if you don’t have multiple authors.

Articles should also include the writer’s name and timestamp.

Other important details to consider:

Make sure you have information about your company/organization.  This is often done in the form of ‘contact us’ and ‘about us’ pages.

Server response time is important; Google crawlers will look for pages that they can index quickly, and that will load quickly for users.  So make sure your server is up to par and can handle the load.

If you aren’t already doing these items, get it all in place and run with it for a little bit before your request to be included.  I look forward to reading your news in Google next time I search!

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Below are some of the crucial items you should have on your Blog.  Take a look at this list and your Blog and see how you measure up.  I can tell you that I did it myself and I had to create an action plan to fix my own Blog.

You see, just because I know what needs to be done doesn’t mean I always have time to implement it myself.

It is like the shoe cobbler’s children going to school with their shoes falling apart.  I am so busy helping clients,  I don’t have time to work on my own things.

The same may be true for you.  You are so busy but you know you want to, actually you need to, Blog.  So you start it and don’t necessarily have everything in place.

That’s OK.  The key is to find out where you are lacking and create an action plan so you can take steps towards getting everything in place,

So, here is your checklist.  Do you have:

A strategy in place?  Do you know why are you Blogging? What are you hoping to accomplish? Do you know how often you have to Blog, what types of posts you need in order to accomplish your objective?

A posting schedule?  Ideally you should have at least 2 new posts a week, and up to 5. Less than 2 is too little, and over 5 is often too much (unless you are a great writer and have lots of news and information to share, so you aren’t just writing fluff).

A comment policy? Do you moderate? If so, how long does it take to approve comments.

An ‘About Us’ section?  Since Blogging is about connecting, sharing information and creating dialog to form relationships, you need to be sure to tell people who you are and what you are all about.  Including contact information is a good idea

A Blogroll?  Be sure to include NON company links. Point your readers to sites/blogs that you think THEY would be interested in reading. Yes, you can add your website, but please mix in some non-company sites as well to show people you are truly interested in being a resource for them.

RSS subscriber buttons? Give your readers a way to subscribe to your Blog, via a feed reader.  Feedburner is a quick and easy way to get this done.

Photos, graphs or charts to create visual interest.

Videos to engage users.

Personality and opinions so people feel they are really hearing your voice and not just some regurgitated industry news.

Links back to relevant pages on your website.

A custom header graphic that doesn’t take up too much space but shows that your Blog is uniquely yours and not just some out of the box Blog platform that has no customization.  Some people choose to have their header match the look and feel of their main site.

So go check out your Blog right now and see how you measure up.

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Twitter Fun Tools:

TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ status on Twitter and lets you make posts from your browser status bar. It also allows you to switch between multiple Twitter accounts in one click.

Retweet This is an application designed for use with the Greasemonkey Firefox plug-in. It allows you to append a retweet button to the end of each Twitter entry to encourage your followers to retweet your posts.

TweetEffect: Find out which of your Twitter updates might be responsible for people following or leaving you. Simply enter your Twitter ID in the following form.

TwitterFeed Send your updated blog posts to Twitter automatically. Links to the post and takes title and first few words and posts to twitter for you

TwitThis TwitThis is an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about your blog post or website. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their friends on Twitter.

Classify Twitter Users is a script that allows you to classify Twitter users and decide whether they are worth following based on their friends, followers and post ratios. Another Greasemonkey app, it’s a great tool to help you weed out the Twitter spammers and fan boys from the socially healthy. You can set the script to use your Twitter user scales (e.g. spammer, social climber, social rock star) or just gather more information about people you are following.

TwittAd allows Twitter users to monetize their account by accepting advertising on the background image of their Twitter user profile. You decide the duration and price advertisers pay for exposure and get paíd for every hour you serve the ad.

TwitterCounter lets you add a daily updating TwitterCounter to your blog so everybody can see how popular you are by the number of persons following you.

Twitter Grade measures the reach and authority of a Twitter user, calculated by the pace of their updates, the completeness of their profile, their number of followers and the network power of those followers. Displays as a score out of 100 and is consistently updating and adapting as your Twitter account grows. Based on those grades, Twitter Grader lists the Twitter Elite globally and in each country, just like Technorati does for bloggers.

Tweetmasters Just how much time DO you spend on Twitter. Tjis is a fun calculator on time you spend tweeting

TwitPic, as the name suggests, is a photo sharing tool for Twitter. When logged in, it allows you to upload photos and post them with comments as a Tweet. It works with a range of Twitter clients such as Twitterific, Twhirl and MobileTwitter and stores all your photos in a single location with updated viewing stats. As far as Twitter image sharing goes, this is king for reliability.

TwitterCounter Gives you up to date stats on how many followers gained by date as well as top twitters and twitter topics

Twuffer Twuffer allows the Twitter user to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release.. Twuffer is ideal for announcements or send reminders to people about upcoming events.

iTweet is another interface for Twitter. It has built-in auto-refresh, search and hash tags and features full follow, block and notifications features. Users can view and post user bio, location and URLs inline with their tweets. Another cool feature of iTweet is the ability to Retweet a user post with a single click.

Twitturly is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter. Similar to Digg, on Twitturly, people “vote” for a URL. The more votes it gets the better it ranks. If it does well enough, it gets promoted to the home page and as the votes rise it gets displayed higher up the home page. Twitturly differs from Digg in that instead of voting on their site, you vote by participating on Twitter. Each time that you send a link to your followers on Twitter, Twitturly takes a note of it and applies your vote to that URL. It’s a great way to follow the loudest global conversations.

Mr Tweet Similar to LinkedIn , it looks through your extended network and makes suggestions to help you build effective relationships on Twitter. For example, which of your followers should you be following in return? Who are the most influential people you should be following? Who are your followers following?

Twitter Search is Twitter’s own built-in and oft-overlooked search tool. You can use it to search for other Twitter users, keywords, hash tag topics and a range of cool shortcut items.

TweetTree: Tweetree puts your Twitter stream in a tree so you can see the posts people are replying to in context. It also pulls in lots of external content like twitpic photos, youtube videos and more, so that you can see them right in your stream without having to click through every link your friends post

TwitterDeck: TweetDeck is an Adobe Air free desktop application that is currently in public beta. It aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces.

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SEO Director Ecombuffet
Bonnie Burns
http://twitter.com/burnsie_seo

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