Tips for Start Mobile Marketing

Do you use mobile marketing for business?
Are you wondering how to get started?

Mobile Marketing

Why marketers should pay more attention to mobile customers
Jamie states that 15-50% of the people who visit your website come in from a mobile device and this number will continue to grow.
When consumers visit your website from a mobile device, you need to be there to meet them, understand mobile marketing and know how to connect with customers on mobile.
You’ll have to learn how to use mobile, as it’s a way to build a bridge between you and your customer.

Make sure you're mobile-ready

You’ll discover how more people check prices on their mobile devices while shopping and what you need to provide them to make sure they buy from you.
And you’ll hear that when people buy a product on mobile devices, particularly tablet computers, their total ticket price is typically higher than it is via a desktop computer.
It’s important to be mobile-ready—not only for B2C but for B2B too.
Listen to the show to find out how many people bought a virtual ticket on a smartphone while attending Social Media Marketing World.
Is there a social media connection when it comes to mobile marketing?
Jamie sees email as a social media tool. Sixty-seven percent of all “C-level” executives check their emails from their mobile devices. The better-known tools being LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
We all need mobile websites. Remember when consumers visit your site, one of the prominent things you want to do is give them the ability to connect with you on social media platforms from their mobile device.
You’ll hear Jamie give a great example of how you can use LinkedIn on a mobile device in a business environment.

Use LinkedIn mobile to find out about future prospects.

Photography is easy on a smartphone. Look at how well Twitter and Facebook have integrated photos into their mobile apps. It’s a great opportunity to grab customers. You’ll find out how Ramon De Leon, a regional Domino’s pizza guy in Chicago, evangelizes his business with the use of Twitter.
Jamie explains what mobile websites mean and the difference between a mobile website and a mobile app.
You’ll discover what you need to do to make your website mobile and why the WPtouch plugin for WordPress is an awesome tool to have.
Listen to the show to find out why social is mobile.


The most common types of marketing when dealing with mobile users
Jamie lists 7 things businesses have to think about when it comes to mobile marketing.

1. Mobile websites
2. SMS
3. Mobile display ads/banner ads
4. Mobile paid search
5. Location-based marketing
6. Apps
7. QR codes

These are the primary tools out there. Jamie’s advice is to make sure you always start with a mobile website and then move into paid search or QR codes.
You’ll hear Jamie give an example of how a restaurant can use SMS to drive more foot traffic to their business. It’s one of the tools that’s been around the longest and is well-established. People are comfortable with it.
When you use SMS, you have to go through an SMS service provider. There are many different companies out there. One that has been around a long time is Sumotext. You’ll learn the benefit of carrying out proper research on SMS service providers.

Jamie shares how there are some really cool opportunities when it comes to mobile banner ads and explains how you can do mobile display ads that are targeted on a house-by-house level, based on their purchases.
The advantage is that a mobile device can be identified at a residential location through geotargeting.
Listen to the show to learn how geotargeting works when it comes to statistical data.


How to get started with mobile marketing
Once you have a mobile website, the next step is to get into QR codes. You can search on Google to find out how to do a QR code.

QR codes are easy to do

Next, you can move into mobile paid search, which is low-cost and easy to get into. You can then start to spend a little more money when you get into SMS and mobile display.
Listen to the show to find out why mobile app development can be complex.

Typical mistakes marketers make with mobile
Jamie states that when marketers at typical small- to medium-sized businesses read about social media as a marketing tool, they embraced LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter very easily.
However, when it comes to mobile, they think it sounds too technical and difficult. They believe that they have to hire someone to do this for them.
So the #1 challenge is that people are afraid of mobile marketing. Jamie says that it’s not that mysterious—it’s just another channel to use to connect with customers.
Listen to the show to hear why you shouldn’t be afraid of mobile marketing.

Survival Tip: Getting Out

I’m a Fitbit fan. It’s a pedometer, calorie counter and distance counter all in one. I try to walk 10,000 steps a day and as the weather has started to improve, I’ve managed to get more serious about it.

Fitbit is great for accountability.

If you want to get more exercise, the Fitbit is great for accountability. It will allow you to see your progress over a period of time and connect with friends to see what kind of progress they are making.
So let’s get outside and start walking more.
Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you.

This Week’s Social Media Question

Stan Dubin from Hiring Tips asked, “If you were going to start over from scratch, which social venue would you concentrate on first, and why?”

Hiring Tips

Stan also said,”My area of focus is helping people to make better hiring decisions. We provide employee testing and a hiring tips newsletter. We’ve got a lot going with social media and we’re making progress, but a number of our clients are pretty new and I wanted to give them a good starting point.”
You’ll learn why I advise Stan to start on LinkedIn.
Here are some steps to take when deciding which platform to choose for your first social media marketing efforts:

• Ask your customers where they hang out
• Master that domain
• Measure and track what kind of progress you make
• Come up with some metrics
• Measure on a weekly basis
• Start to expand to second- or third-level social networks

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10 Tips to Improve Your Online Business

I’m not a mind reader, but I’ll bet you’d like to know a quick way to get more leads and sales using the Internet. I regularly consult entrepreneurs who want to improve their online content marketing strategies. The following 10 tips will instantly improve your online business. They’re listed from the easiest quick fixes to activities that will take a bit more time.
 

Quick Fixes

1. Link to your site from your social media pages
 Make it easy for people to learn more about your business by sending them to your website. Even if they want to learn more, people won’t search way down your Facebook page for a link to your site. So put it front and center. Fill out the biography or “about” section on each of your social media profiles. Always include a link back to your website in the topmost section. Make sure the link isn’t cut off from view once you hit publish.

2. You’re so clever, but don’t be
 People who are looking for your “About” page won’t click on your “Familiarize” navigation link. Clever is usually not clear, and clarity is the first rule of writing for your business. Less confusion = more conversion. Go change any navigation links on your website that aren’t clearly specific to the page topic.

3. Always end with a call to action
 Ask your readers to take the action you want, and you’ll see more results. This is the logic behind the CTA, or call to action. Example CTAs are “Join our list,” and “Email me to inquire.” But don’t stop at the CTA. It’s important to also include a reason why your reader should act, also known as a value proposition. An example value proposition combined with a CTA is “Join our list to enjoy exclusive members only savings.” (Refer to No. 6 for more on this.)

4. Make it easy to contact you
 Have a “contact” link in your top navigation. List your phone number and business hours. If you use a contact form, test it once in a while to be sure it’s still working properly. You might also include your mailing address and a map to your office if you do in-house consultations.

5. Get more traffic to your website by building backlinks
 There are many ways to build backlinks, but one of the simplest techniques is to submit your articles to blog directories. When your website is approved by the directory, you’ll be listed under the category you blog about. Your profile will include links and titles to your most recent blog posts.  A few blog directories to submit to include Technorati, Blog Catalog and Alltop, to name a few.

Invest Some Time

6. Get business clarity
 Know who you serve, what value you offer and how. This is the first step to successfully selling your offerings. If you’re not clear, your potential customer won’t be either. A confused lead is a lost lead. When you know what you’re marketing, you’ll offer leads the information they need to make an informed decision.
7. Know your value proposition
 Simply put, a value proposition answers the reason “why” for your leads. Why would they want to hire you? Why should they join your email list? Why should they take you up on your complimentary consultation? An example value proposition is as follows: I (do X) for (target market) so that they (accomplish Y). Always include a value proposition when writing about your services or when asking readers to take a specific action.

8. Prioritize building your list
 Ideally, the goal of most of your web pages will be to entice leads to join your newsletter list. Most people will join your list because they’re interested in your services and want to learn more about your business. In some cases, your new lead to conversion time could be as little as 7 business days, or it could take months. Either way, email marketing does work. Fifty-nine percent of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in generating revenue. Learn more about newsletter marketing in my blog post, “Newsletter Content to Cash.”

9. Publish YouTube videos to drive traffic to your website
 Introduce yourself and what you do. Address a problem your prospects likely have. Present a solution to the problem. Then, direct viewers back to your website to get more information. Ideally, you’ll send them to a landing page where they’ll opt in to your leads list. Here’s an example of a landing page.

10. Make your content scannableReaders can decide to leave your web page in 3 seconds flat. Entice them to stay by organizing your content into scannable segments. Use headers, subheaders and bold text. Also, use columns if your website theme allows. If you’re not sure how to make your website more appealing, hire a graphic designer to consult you and/or to design graphic elements that will streamline the look of your site.

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Penguin 2.0 rolled out today

We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.
This is the fourth Penguin-related launch Google has done, but because this is an updated algorithm (not just a data refresh), we’ve been referring to this change as Penguin 2.0 internally.

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Top 5 Mobile Email Marketing Tips

With the conception of new smartphones, everything has become so easy be it mails, social networking or sharing pictures or videos. With this new invention, interaction through email has become as easy as it has accelerated from desktops to mobile screens.  As per the reports of Return Path, there has been 82.4% increase in the ration of emails opened in mobile phones be it smartphones or tablet. This technology has affected the businesses as well. Business owners, who previously thought for marketing their business through Email marketing, have not resorted to mobile email marketing. Here are five mobile email marketing tips for you:

Learn about your mobile email spectators

The finest way to begin with mobile Email marketing is to know about the audience and their engagement with your emails. Once you get to know the medium through which all your viewers are going through your emails, it can be of great help to you. Through this, you can easily target them and can achieve maximum audience without wasting much time.

Design of your email

There is a custom design concept of mobile email marketing campaigns. There is a standard width of every handset such as for iPhone the width is 320 Pixels. So, make sure that the mobile email site you are creating is in standard form so that there does not arise any nuisance in future. Before you create your design, bear in mind that the iPhone screen is in landscape format which is 480-pixels in width.

Importance of proper font size

Do consider to keep proper font size on your email. Make sure that the text on your site is easily readable. This is the reason that professionals suggest you to keep the font size 30pt for headlines and minimum 14pt for the body. Once the content is put together, it should look as a complete whole. In addition, do not add giant boxes in middle of the text as it will put away reader’s attention.

Consider mobile touch

It is easy to access mails on desktop through the click of mouse, but it is not that easy to go through emails on a small screen that too with the touch of finger. The finger touch is that accurate as that of mouse click. This is the reason that Apple proposes to consider spacing of minimum 10 pixels around the clickable items. The main motive behind this condition is to make your browsing experience more hassle-free so that you do not confront any problem.

Plan to create a good surfing experience

By using these tips, you will definitely end up in creating good email marketing campaign. Once you succeed in creating so, do not stop here. Endeavour to invigorate more engagement of your customers in your website, your communities or your blog as well.

These tips will eventually lead you to a good mobile email marketing promotion among your clientele. Follow these tips and experience a transformed world of mobile email marketing.

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Top 5 Impressive Methods to Improve your “On-Page SEO Optimization”

In aspect one with this guides in order to SEO mastery we will be describing 5 various quick approaches to improve your “On-Page SEO Optimization”.
Firstly let’s define On-Page SEO shall most of us. On Site SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is what can be performed on the pages of your blog to maximize the potential performance it offers in Google and yahoo for your selected search phrases. This contains all the written text, pictures and also code defines your situation.
To ensure search engine robots accurately what your website is about and just what key terms you are usually targeting it’s important they can be found in the particular “website architectural mastery”. The underneath examples explain how you need to edit ones sites framework according in order to SEO very best practice.

1. Title construction:

First factors first, the particular title of which appears in the browser club should contain the keywords you are generally targeting.

2. URL anatomical structure:

It is another good idea to operate the keywords in the actual URL address. In addition to looking a good deal nicer what’s more, it adds “Search engine optimization juice” for your page since the keywords is being used. Amazing, proper? This in addition encourages people who link to your pages to utilize the Web site name as anchor written text.

3. Internal anchor text content:

Instead of using “find out more” or “click here” use keywords and phrases to link to your web pages, it facilitates Google better understand the content of the particular linking blog or page.

4. Unique Page metadata:

In your <head> of one’s page you should definitely have metadata and be sure for each page it can be different!

The written text written the following isn’t actually utilized by search engines to make your website rank, but it is significant for a person’s reader. Let’s keep in mind you needs to be building your blog for individuals, not only for search serp robots! Having a compelling verbal description here which includes your targeted keywords will probably really benefit click-via rates.

5. Usage of heading tags:

When building your internet site make positive you use the html going tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc. By employing these you are insanely putting it simpler for search engine robots to be aware of and evaluate which your web site is regarding, what would be the main topic and what exactly sub-topics are.

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5 Quick SEO Tips

Search engine optimization is the practice of optimizing your site to boost your search engine rankings, which helps you to be found easier. There are TONS of factors that go into the algorithm that search engines use to rank websites, and you don’t necessarily have control over all of them – like how long you’ve owned your domain. But there are a bunch of things you CAN do if you’re looking to boost your rankings and be found easier.
Here are a few quick and easy tips that you can do on your own:

Create a Google+ Local Listing

People are searching for companies online more than ever before, and this is a quick and easy way to get your company listed on local Google search results and Google Maps. It’s nicer for users when you have this set up because they can view more information about you quickly in a local search. Google also considers this quality content about your company. Make sure to fill out as much information as possible to get everything you can from it.

Add social media sharing buttons to your blog

People are more apt to share your content if they can do it quickly and easily. If you include easy to use like, tweet and pin buttons, they are more likely to be used! There are tons of great WordPress plugins that make this process really easy too.

Interact more on social media

More interaction allows more people to get to know you and inevitably brings more people back to your website. Aim to spend a few minutes every day making posts to your social media profiles and replying to any messages you’ve received.

Add alt tags to all your images

This is really easy to do in WordPress – every time you add an image, add a description of it in the Alt Text box. Try to use keywords or things that would be helpful for your site. This description is put in the code for the image and search engines see it when they crawl your site, so they can use it when ranking you. It’s not a huge factor, but every little bit helps!

Write better content

Search engines want to see that you have quality content, things that your audience will be interested in. People are also more interested in quality content, so they are more apt to visit, subscribe, and share things that interest them.
5 quick tips, there you are! Let us know if you found these helpful or if you have any great SEO tips to add in the comments area below!

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10 Tips To Finally Make Money With Google Adsense

When thinking about website, Google Adsense is probably the first thing that came to the mind of many people. Created in 2004, Adsense is the easiest way to make money online. Making real money with Google Adsense is not as easy as it seems, but if Adsense wasn’t an efficient way to make money online, people would stop using it.
In this article, I’m going to show you 10 efficient tips to really make money with Adsense.

1- Understand on which sites Adsense works

 

 Is it possible to really make money with Adsense? The answer is definitely yes. But not on all kind of sites. For example, I own a blog in French about visiting New York City (it is called Visiter New York) and Adsense works very well on it. On the other hand, my most popular site, Cats Who Code always had terrible results with Adsense, because tech-savy people will not (or less) click on Adsense ads.
One of the best Adsense tip I can give you is to know which niche are good and which ones are to avoid.

2- Avoid “Smart-Pricing” like the plague

Smart pricing (which is everything but smart…) is when Google automatically gives the advertiser a discount based on the perceived value of your web site. Certain types of sites supposedly generate more sales so get a higher cost per click while others are typically more lookers and get paid less per click.
If Google placed your blog in the second category, no luck for you. In fact, for the same click on the same ad, a website can earn $1 while another will get on 10 cents!
In order to avoid getting “Smart-priced” by Google, you have to try to keep your CTR high. Low CTR sites (under 1 or 2%) generally ends up by being smart-priced.

3- Place Adsense ads on old posts only

In order to avoid smart-pricing, a great idea is to display Adsense ads on old posts only. Why? Because the vast majority of your regular visitors don’t click on ads. By showing Adsense on old posts only, you’ll definitely keep your CTR high.
The following function have to be pasted in the functions.php file of your WordPress theme.

function is_old_post($post_id=null){
   $days = 15;
   global $wp_query;
   if(is_single() || is_page()) {
      if(!$post_id) {
         $post_id = $wp_query->post->ID;
      }
      $current_date = time();
      $offset = $days *60*60*24;
      $post_id = get_post($post_id);
      $post_date = mysql2date('U',$post_id->post_date);
      $cunning_math = $post_date + $offset;
      $test = $current_date - $cunning_math;
      if($test > 0){
         $return = true;
      }else{
         $return = false;
      }
   }else{
      $return = false;
   }
   return $return;
}

Once you successfully inserted the code into your function.php file, you are now ready to call the functions in your single.php template as shown below:

<?php if(is_old_post()){ ?>
INSERT AD CODE HERE
<?php } ?>

4- Identify high paying keywords

To appear on Adsense ads, advertisers have to bid on a specific keyword. Some keywords, such as “mortgage” have a way higher CPC than others.
A great way to maximize your Adsense income is to identify those high paying keywords and use them in your blog. Several lists of high paying keywords are available on the Internet, some are free and some aren’t.
A good list to start with is this one, which is completely free.

5- Work with keywords

Although you can’t directly control which Adsense ads appears on your site, you can work with keywords in the hope that Google will display related contextual ads.
For example, if you’re writing a post about Javascript, the keyword “javascript” has strong chances of being used in Adsense ads. If you want Adsense to display ads based on high paying keywords, you have to put these keywords on your document. Don’t abuse though; you may be penalized by Google.
To check your keyword density, here is a great tool : http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

6- Use section targeting

As I said before, in order to maximize your revenue you have to work on keywords. But what if Adsense is displaying ads based on a keyword you don’t want to be used? Using section targeting, you can emphasis some text as well as asking Adsense to ignore some other.
The following example shows how to use section targeting in your posts:

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
    Content you want to emphasize.
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
    Content you want to be ignored by Adsense
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

7- Display Adsense to search engine visitors only

Another way to avoid being smart-priced is definitely to display Adsense ads only to visitors who came from search engines.
The following WordPress hack will do that job perfectly. To apply it to your blog, insert the code below in your theme functions.php file.
Note that the $SE array is where you specify search engines. You can easily ad new search engines by adding new elements to the array.

function scratch99_fromasearchengine(){
  $ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
  $SE = array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
  foreach ($SE as $source) {
    if (strpos($ref,$source)!==false) return true;
  }
  return false;
}

Once done, open the file where you want to display the ads and paste the following code:

if (function_exists('scratch99_fromasearchengine')) {
  if (scratch99_fromasearchengine()) {
    INSERT YOUR CODE HERE
  }
}

Save the file, and you’re done.

8- Go Large!

Adsense ads can be displayed in various formats, but they don’t provide the same results. Although it depends of many factors such as your blog niche and layout, the large rectangle (336×280) has proven to be the best paying Adsense format. It is also one of the few Adsense block which can display video ads.

9- Use a personalized Google search engine on your blog

Many people don’t like the way WordPress search works, and I must admit that this is not the best feature of my favorite blogging engine. In order to have better search results for my readers, I decided to give a try to a Google custom search engine. You can try it, search form is located on my blog sidebar.
The tools works very well, and you can start monetizing it using Adsense. I found out that on Cats Who Blog, the search engine is very profitable. For those who’d like to learn how to add Google search to their blog, a very old post from Cats Who Code explains how to do it.

10- Don’t break Adsense terms of service

At last but not least, one of the best bits of advice I can give to anyone who’d like to make money online using Google Adsense is to be careful with the terms of service. For example, if you click on your own ads, or display incentive messages on your site, Google will quickly finds out and they will consenquently ban your site from Adsense.
You have to play by their rules, so don’t thing you are smarter than them. Respect the terms of services, optimize your ads using the tips I just gave you, and write great content so people will visit your site and click on your ads.

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25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers And Search Engines

25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines

 

 

Everyone and their dog (yes, there are a few dogs out there with their own blogs) have started up a blog these days, but many people just aren’t taking the steps needed to optimize their blogs for both readers and search engines. While blogs can be business related (another blog about mesothelioma anyone?) they can also be personal where you talk about the great ham sandwich you had for lunch today or the crappy service you had at that trendy restaurant last night. 

But whether your blog is business or personal, you should ensure that you are optimizing your blog for both your readers (after all, you want to keep those readers coming back) and the search engines. Unfortunately, optimization is an important step that far too many blogs seem to be skipping over, even those that have a broad appeal to surfers and have the potential to be monetizable.

However, optimizing a blog is a bit different than your standard website search engine optimization (SEO), particularly because most blogs run off standard blog platforms, or worse, run as a hosted blog on someone else’s domain name. And there are design issues that can be unique to blogs which can impact your rankings. 

Let’s face it, when you commission a styling’ new blog template, most blog designers focus on making your blog look the way you want it to. But unfortunately for bloggers, not very many of those great blog designers are also SEOs by trade, meaning that the blog design you use could actually be hurting your search engine rankings. While you may have a great design that looks wonderful to readers, new readers might not find you if your blog isn’t ranking well organically in the search engines.

Also, when you optimize your blog for the user experience, you make it easy for users to return and engage in your blog without dealing with any of the hassles that can cause them to abandon other sites or blog entries. Repeat visitors are the cream of your blog, so by following these tips you have given them the tools they need to return as well as the user experience that makes them want to come back.

Fortunately, if you are on the case to make your blog rank well while not hindering your visitor’s experience on your site, there are definitely things you can check – and fix – to prevent any indexing issues from occurring, and ensuring your blog a happy and healthy existence in the search engines.

So here is advice on how you can optimize that blog of yours for both users and search engines without alienating one or the other.


1) Dump The Default Template – Looks Count!
I cringe when I see a blog using the “out of the box” WordPress or MovableType template. Hire a designer to create a unique look for your blog, or at the very least, take advantage of some of the free templates available and customize it a bit with a unique logo or a slight color upgrade. 


2) Just Say No To Bad Color Schemes
While a hot pink with lime green color scheme might be your favorite, consider what your readers will be expecting. That color scheme might work perfectly on a teenage gossip site, but would look extremely out of place as the corporate blog for a men’s suit company. Likewise, gamers would think nothing of a black background on an Xbox 360 blog, but it would look horrendous on a parenting or pregnancy site. So while you should experiment with colors to find a good mix for your blog, keep in mind user experience and their expectations.


3) RSS Me!
Make sure you have RSS available. Many hosted blogging solutions don’t have RSS automatically available, so you will need to add it. And when you do add it, ensure you have those RSS links in an obvious spot. Don’t tuck them away at the very bottom of your index page after your most recent 20 entries, or hide them on a separate “About Us” page. Place all those handy subscribe links in your sidebar, which is exactly where people will look for them. If you use Feedburner currently, have a look at their new MyBrand option which allows you to host your own feeds for a seamless user experience.


4) Offer RSS & Feed Subscription Buttons
Yes, when people want to subscribe to a blog, they will often look for that orange RSS logo as well as the logos of the standard aggregators such as Bloglines. So it is worth the time to add the most popular ones to your blog so visitors can easily do their one-click subscriptions to your feed without it require much effort on their part. If you make it hard to subscribe, most just won’t bother. FeedButton offers a service that allows you to offer multiple RSS aggregator and feed reader buttons with a single expanding rollover button.


5) Offer Posts Via Email
Some people just don’t get RSS. So cater to them by offering them an option to get your blog posts by email instead. The most popular service to do this automatically is FeedBlitz, although there are also many other tools available to do this.


6) Decide On Full Or Partial Feeds
Do you offer full feeds or partial feeds? This is a personal preference, and is often dependent on what market space you are blogging in. One option is to offer two feeds, one being an ad-supported full feed, with an RSS ad included, and the other being an ad-free snippet copy of the feed, where readers won’t see ads but will have to actually view your blog in order to read your full entry. But this will often come down to personal preference, and the preferences of your readers.


7) Write Compelling Snippets/Descriptions
If you do use snippets for your RSS feed, be sure to make them compelling or leave readers with a cliffhanger to encourage them to click and read the full entry. This will get you many more readers to your entries than just using the default option of including the first X number of words in the blog post as the snippet. Use your excerpts to generate interest and clicks.


8) Pay Attention to How You Write
One of my favorite bloggers has the unfortunate habit of writing detailed long entries… without a single paragraph break and with the double whammy of also writing with a font size smaller than usual. If I look up for a moment, it is hard to find my place again in her 1000 word entries. As a result, I don’t read it as often as I would like to, simply because reading it is such a painful experience.


9) Spelling Counts
Spelling is also worth mentioning. Add one of the many spell checkers to your internet browser and run a quick spell check before you publish your entry. Every word doesn’t have to be perfect, and I am certainly guilty myself of letting on occasional typo slip through unnoticed. But I also get annoyed when I am reading typo after typo after typo in an entry. And yes, if it happens enough, I will unsubscribe out of sheer frustration.


10) Fontography Counts
Make the font easy to read. Some bloggers think it is cool to have their handwriting turned into a customized font, or use a trendy font that would be better suited to a scrapbook layout. But not everyone has those wild and weird fonts installed, which means that those people will see a standard font such as Times New Roman, and it can really kill the look of your blog. So instead design the text of your blog entries to use a standard font in a standard size.


11) Don’t Forget Navigation
Is this blog part of a larger site, such as a corporate blog on a site for a major company? Don’t just link to the main page of the blog. Syndicate your recent headlines in the sidebar to encourage visitors on the main site to check out the blog too.


12) How Fast is Your Host?
Another one of my favorite blogs has such a slow response time when I click from the snippet in my RSS to the full blog entry that I only actually end up waiting around for it to load about 10% of the time. Don’t lose readers because your hosting company thinks 30 seconds is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to load up a page.


13) Avoid Widget Overload!
Yes, there are definitely some cool widgets you can add to your blog, such as MyBlogLog or a Flickr photo box tied to your photo gallery. But be aware that having a large number of javascripts can slow down your site. So don’t sacrifice timely loading time for nice-but-not-all-that-necessary widgets.


14) Have Descriptive Titles
Some blog software actually makes your entry titles seem pretty repetitious in the search engine result pages, and can result in a lower click through than you might have had otherwise with highly optimized titles. If your title’s say something like “Jason’s Tech Industry Rants & Ramblings Blog >> New Xbox 360 title announced for April release” you should change it to “New Xbox 360 title announced for April release”. Unless you are well known as an authority blog in that market, the blog name is simply wasting crucial space at the beginning of the title tag and causing the rest of the entry title to end up getting truncated in the search results. And make sure your titles actually enhance the entry and don’t leave the reader wondering what on earth the blog entry could be about. Ensuring you have great titles when you have a small readership and are depending on search engines to send you readers is one of the first steps you should take to optimize your blog.


15) Look at your Cascading Style Sheets.
Most blogs use a tremendous amount of CSS to create that custom look. And while most of the “out of the box” designs that come standard with the installed template include all CSS in an external file, there definitely are some blog designers who will put their CSS on the individual template pages rather than placing it all in an external CSS file. And when you don’t place CSS in an external file, it can clutter up your pages and result in the most important part of the page – the entry text – being much further down in the HTML code when it has to go after the masses of CSS coding lines.


16) Post Often
The more frequently you post, the more likely Googlebot and other bots will stop by on a more regular basis. If you only post once in a blue moon, expect that it might take a while for Google to stop by and see that you actually have updated again. Google loves updated fresh sites, so it make sense to feed the bot what it wants.


17) Spread the Link Love
If you are blogging about a story, link up the original story as well as other’s commentary on the same topic. When you do so, you will often make those bloggers aware of your blog’s existence (if they weren’t already) when people click from your blog to theirs. And it also increases the odds that they will either link to you on that story or on something you blog about in the future. 


18) Be Aware of Your Anchor Text
When you link to someone’s blog entry, or even a previous blog entry on your own site, make sure you link well. This means instead of linking to someone’s blog entry with the anchor text “click here”, you link to them using anchor text related to the blog entry, such as “Jason’s scoop on the new Widget Xbox 360 game”.


19) Create Unique Stories
Bloggers love to link to other bloggers. When you write original blog entries, rather than just rehashing something someone else has already said, you increase the odds that someone will find yours interesting enough to link to and talk about. And a reader of that blogger’s blog might read the entry and decide to write something about what you said as well, meaning yet another link as well. And if you are fortunate, it will go viral, meaning suddenly it seems like every blogger in your market space is talking about what you wrote. Rinse and repeat as often as possible for maximum exposure and link juice.


20) Use a Related Posts Plugin
Not only does this make sense to keep readers around for other articles on your site that are related to your current post, but it also allows you to deeplink from a current page on your blog to older entries. Often, older entries get buried several pages deep on an archive page, and this allows you to showcase entries written months or years previously and give those “oldies but goodies” an extra little kick in the search engines. There are several related post plugins available depending on which blog platform you use.


21) Ping Other Sites
When you add a new blog entry, you might want to ping site such as Technorati and FeedBurner to let them know you have a brand new blog entry on your site. You can also now ping Google’s Blog Search as well for faster indexing in their blog search engine at blogsearch.google.com. Automatic pinging is an option in the control panel of most blog platforms including WordPress and MovableType. And Ping-o-Matic offers a service that allows you to quickly pick and chose what to ping.


22) Buy Your Own Domain Name
Don’t always think your free blog hosting company will be around forever. What will you do if you build up a loyal readership then one day you discover yourblogname.examplebloghost.com no longer works because examplebloghost.com has gone out of business? You want to make sure the search engines have a URL they will always find your blog at, rather than have to worry about them re-indexing your previously well-ranked blog on am entirely new domain… that is if you are lucky enough to get your blog posts from your free hosting company. Both Google’s Blogger & WordPress allow you to use their hosted blog service while displaying it on your own domain instead of their own branded one.

23) Manage Your Trackback & Comment Spam
You don’t want Google or Yahoo to find masses of spammy links on your site to all manner of less-than-quality sites submitted to your blog by a blog spammer. Use one of the many tools on the market for your blog platform to manage both comment and trackback spam.

24) Use a Good URL Structure
Don’t use “permalinks” such as www.yourblogsite.com/?p=123 . Instead, use www.yourblogsite.com/2007/01/01/blog_entry_title_here. Most blogging platforms allow you to change from the standard numbered permalinks to this style of search engine friendly ones. And just in case the blog platform you use has funky dynamic URLs for each entry, you will want to ensure that the bots can crawl them easily or use a mod rewrite to create a good structure such as in the example.
25) Use Great Categories
When you write a post, place it in 1 to 3 different categories related to the post. For example, and article on the television show Grey’s Anatomy could go under “Grey’s Anatomy” and “ABC”. Avoid the temptation to add it to ten different categories though, such as including “drama,” “hospital,” “interns” and “Seattle” because that is just overkill. But if you wrote something great on Grey’s Anatomy, you have made it easy for your reader to find all your posts on Grey’s Anatomy because they simply have to click on the category link at the top or bottom of the entry. 

While some bloggers insist that search engine rankings will come naturally to those who wait, who really wants to wait for Google? A blogger can run into several unique challenges when it comes to optimizing for search engines, and it makes sense to get the jump on it now than simply hoping that if you write it, the bots will come. It is far easier to ensure you have a well optimized blog now than trying to figure out what the issue is 6 months down the road when only your blog’s index page is found in Google!
Does anyone else have tips they would have put in their own top 25 list of blog optimization tips? I had some that didn’t make the cut for the top list, but am interested to hear what others feel are the most important tips.

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Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Better SEOSearch Engine Optimization uses a combination of techniques, tools, and technical know-how to get results. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listing. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves the careful optimization of corporate web sites to effectively increase their visibility in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Alta-Vista,and many others. 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. 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. Optimize the below three for better SEO: Meta Tags Navigational links Rich ContentMeta Tags:Meta Tags are very important for your website's visibility. Many search engines read them from your site when you submit it to them .Major meta tags that you can use:Meta Title,The only resource type that is currently in use is "document" This is the only tag that you need to put in for indexing purposes.Meta Description,Depending on the search engine, this will be displayed along with the title of your page in an index. "content" could be a word, sentence or even paragraph to describe your page. Keep this reasonably short, concise and to the point.Meta Keyword,Choose whatever keywords you think are appropriate, seperated by commas.Navigational links: At the right or at the bottom, but not on the left, of the page. When the search engines "read" your site, they read from the top left to the bottom right. Search engines place an emphasis on the first 100 words or text on the site. You do not want these words to be navigational links or Javascript. Ideally, you want to have your heading tags with your keywords in the beginning of your page. This being said, placing your links/JavaScript on the right or bottom of your page ensures the search engine spiders get to the text first, giving more weight to what's important on your page.Rich Content: The more content you have on your site the more likely someone is to find what they're looking for when they get there. Keep your site very content rich. Have a lot of pages.Update the site even twice a day if you have the time. Updating your site does not mean that you copy paste content from other sites.That will only push your rankings further down. Don't have any duplicate content. At the same time ,dont spam multiple content across the same website. When a search engine views or reviews a website, which they do at least every few months, it looks for specific characteristics found in the content of website landing pages.

Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Better SEO


Search Engine Optimization uses a combination of techniques, tools, and technical know-how to get results.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listing. Search Engine Optimization  (SEO) involves the careful optimization of corporate web sites to effectively increase their visibility in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Alta-Vista,and many others. 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. 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.

 Optimize the below three for better SEO:

    Meta Tags
    Navigational  links
    Rich Content


Meta Tags:

Meta Tags are very important for your website's visibility. Many search engines read them from your site when you submit it to them .Major meta tags that you can use:

Meta Title,
The only resource type that is currently in use is "document" This is the only tag that you need to put in for indexing purposes.

Meta Description,
Depending on the search engine, this will be displayed along with the title of your page in an index. "content" could be a word, sentence or even paragraph to describe your page. Keep this reasonably short, concise and to the point.

Meta Keyword,
Choose whatever keywords you think are appropriate, seperated by commas.

Navigational  links:

             At the right or at the bottom, but not on the left, of the page.  When the search engines "read" your site, they read from the top left to the bottom right.  Search engines place an emphasis on the first 100 words or text on the site.  You do not want these words to be navigational links or Javascript.  Ideally, you want to have your heading tags with your keywords in the beginning of your page.  This being said, placing your links/JavaScript on the right or bottom of your page ensures the search engine spiders get to the text first, giving more weight to what's important on your page.


Rich Content:

             The more content you have on your site the more likely someone is to find what they're looking for when they get there. Keep your site very content rich. Have a lot of pages.Update the site even twice a day if you have the time. Updating your site does not mean that you copy paste content from other sites.That will only push your rankings further down. Don't have any duplicate content. At the same time ,dont spam multiple content across the same website. When a search engine views or reviews a website, which they do at least every few months, it looks for specific characteristics found in the content of website landing pages.

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Website Design Trends for 2013

Website Design Trends for 2013

It’s not just your clothes and your style that need to stay up-to-date — so does your website. Nothing screams ‘my mentality is stuck in the past’ like a site that has not been redesigned since the late 90s. It is all about first impressions, so your site better keep up with the times.

But let’s be clear – I’m not just talking about how your site looks. It’s not that simple. I’m talking about how your site is built. Forget about tables and flash…think bigger…think along the lines of sliding images and responsive design.

Sliders on Pages

Look for sites taking advantage of having multiple sliders that continually rotate at the top of each page. It is most common on home pages. The sliders usually contain a graphic or image and a catchy marketing message.

Responsive Design

Now here are two words that are highly important if you want your site to keep you in business — responsive design. Your site needs to be able to easily adapt to the different mediums your customers are using: smart phones, laptops, desktops and tablets.

Mobile Display Option

Since just about everyone has a smart phone, it is impossible to know if your customers are using desktops or their phones to visit your site. Make it easy on yourself and your customers and build your site to be mobile friendly. This allows your customers to choose if they want to look at the mobile site or the full version when on their smart phones.

Retina Display

With every new gadget that comes out, means more changes to your site. Now that computers and tables have retina display capabilities, your site needs to catch up with technology.

Need a cutting-edge site with the latest bells and whistles? Just contact us today and we can design and build a site for you that will blow your competitors away.

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