How to Optimize Your YouTube Channel

Posted: Thursday, May 17th, 2012 by | Filed under: , , ,
YouTube

YouTube

We already know the importance of video and the power it has over the internet. Shooting and producing a web video can not only help your traffic, but can be used as a conversation tool for your prospective customers. A video can help users relate more and having a visual aid is much more effective than reading website copy.

YouTube is one of the most popular search engines and contains millions and millions of video. According to YouTube, 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, over 4 billion videos are viewed a day and over 800 million unique visitors visit YouTube each month. That said, it’s easy for your YouTube channel to get lost.

Here are a few ways to optimize your YouTube channel: Read more …

Does Social Bookmarking Help SEO?

Posted: Monday, April 2nd, 2012 by | Filed under: , , , ,
Social Bookmarking Sites

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to organize and manage their bookmarks of online resources. Social bookmarking for SEO companies is not only for organization, but a help with creating backlinks and increasing the visibility of the website across a number of platforms.

For SEO, social bookmarking sites are helpful in that every time you add a bookmark to a social bookmarking site, you create a backlink. Backlinks are one of the most important pieces to the SEO puzzle. Over time, by adding and building the number of backlinks to your website, you can help increase its PageRank and ranking in many search engines, especially Google.

Websites like Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg provide users with the option to “vote.” If your content is of good quality, voters can vote your link up, which can result in a good amount of traffic. Quality traffic to your website is very valuable and for many, can turn into potential leads. Read more …

Can Pinterest Help SEO?

Posted: Thursday, March 22nd, 2012 by | Filed under: , , , , ,
Image bookmarking

Image bookmarking

If you haven’t heard by now, Pinterest is one of the latest social networking websites drawing attention in the social media world. Because of the visual attraction, users are flocking to the latest social site. Pinterest offers a social bookmarking feel, in the sense that you pin your favorite things, like you would bookmark your favorite urls on sites like Delicious and Digg.

Now, SEO specialists are also figuring out the newly popular website and using it to their advantage. Here are some of ways Pinterst can help SEO: Read more …

Internet Marketing Big Picture

Posted: Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 by | Filed under: , ,

 

Internet marketing

Internet marketing

Internet marketing incorporates more than just SEO into the mix. A successful online marketing campaign should include content marketing, SEO and social media. These three pieces of the puzzle will help build a strong internet presence. Yes, you can slowly focus on one area, but these three work best when they’re used together.

Unfortunately (for SEO agencies), Google and other search engines have been getting smarter as the days go on. They know which websites are using SEO and which aren’t. With that said, Google’s algorithm for ranking evaluates more than just whether or not a website is using SEO. Ranking well in search engines may be a great start, but it’s not the only thing that’s going to help your business grow. Ranking well may translate to the user that your website is trusted by the search engines, but many times that’s not enough to convince them you’re what they are looking for. Read more …

Social Media Marketing Results

Posted: Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 by | Filed under: , ,
Social media strategies

Social media strategies

Search engines are constantly changing and updating. Just research Google Panda and you’ll find out all about Google’s updates to its algorithm. Unfortunately, there’s no controlling Google, but there are ways to help your website prepare for these types of changes. For SEO, content is king. Search engines like content, especially keyword-rich content. Your webpages throughout your website should incorporate relevant keywords into the copy; this will help your ranking in search engines.

Now, with social media’s popularity, search engines have started using social signals, such as Facebook Likes, Tweets and +1s in their search results. Social media has changed the game since they produce such a large amount of information. Content is pouring out of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, among others.

Search engines look at social media sites for guidance and use them as part of their algorithms for search results. If your content is shared by a significant number of people, chances are that there must be something interesting about it. That said, Google will consider it when ranking its results for relevant searches.

Google and Bing now consider shared content when responding to searches. Tweets, Facebook Likes and other social media shared content appears in organic search when relevant. This all circles back to SEO experts and their concern over quality, keyword rich content. Read more …

Interpreting Google’s Updated Privacy Policy

Posted: Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 by | Filed under: , , ,

As of March 1, 2012, Google will be replacing its 60+ privacy policies with one. In an effort to try and simplify terms for users to better understand, all the Google services’ policies will be combined into one. Google’s new, shorter privacy policy will allow them to share users data across their applications (YouTube, Gmail, etc).

Google users are still able to control their personal information, can edit ad preferences and can also control whom their information is shared with. Google has been collecting user data for some time now, that aspect isn’t new. When you sign up for a Google account, Google asks for personal information, such as your name, email address and phone number. From there, they give you an option for whether or not to create a public profile and upload a photo of yourself.

Some other information Google will collect is: Read more …

Social Media and Branding

Posted: Monday, January 30th, 2012 by | Filed under: , ,
Online branding

Online branding

Since social media now has such a strong presence on the internet, search engines have been including and incorporating them into search results. Google, as well as other search engines, now pull data feeds from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. For SEO experts, traffic is important and since social sharing yield website visits, social media sites can’t be ignored.

Social media can fall into any type of marketing campaign, including SEO. It’s an important strategy to build into an SEO campaign, but social media is much more than helping your business appear in search results. Social media is all about engagement and interaction. Aside from appearing in search results, social media can help your brand become more recognized. By engaging with customers, employees and others you can build your audience and in turn, your brand.

What’s important to remember about social media and SEO though is it’s more than just automatic status updates. Keywords are important and so is interaction. If you have experience with SEO and social media, it’s very beneficial for your business to work these together. Read more …

Internet Marketing Tips That Have Stood the Test of Time

Posted: Friday, January 6th, 2012 by | Filed under: , ,

Some SEO techniques work for a few months or years before they become antiquated by revised search engine algorithms (link farms, anyone?). However, there are a handful of tips that worked in the past and will most likely continue working in the future. Read on for internet marketing tips that have stood the test of time.

Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

Fresh Content

With today’s technologically savvy generation, many companies feel the need to use social media to keep up and maintain the interest of their current and prospective clients. And given that platforms like Twitter, Facebook fan pages, and blogging sites are generally free, most businesses (old and new) tend to view social media as a low-risk investment. However, once you decide you want to have a blog or Twitter, you absolutely MUST update them frequently. Even though Twitter and WordPress may be free, you still have to spend time writing new content on a regular basis, or at least you’ll have to pay an employee to do the updates for you. Just having a Twitter, Facebook fan page, and blog isn’t enough to increase your ranking in the search engine results page. Here is a good example that better explains the often over-simplified benefits of social media on web marketing: A company blog ranks relatively high in a SERP. However, one day, the owner finds that his traffic has suddenly dropped significantly. The culprit? His popular blog had not been updated for more than five months. However, once he makes a new blog post, that is enough to bring his traffic back to its standard volume.

Fresh content is good because search engine crawlers will recognize it. But more importantly, fresh content is good because it will naturally attract the attention of users and help you build organic links. Read more …

Benefits of PPC Advertising

Posted: Saturday, November 5th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

Pay per click (PPC) is an aspect of internet advertising that is used to direct traffic to your website. Your advertisement, in text format, is displayed on the top of or to the side of organic search results in Google, Yahoo or Bing.

PPC advertising

PPC advertising

Advertisers will typically bid on keywords or keyword phrases that are relevant to their target niche and will only have to pay that amount if people click on your advertisement. Your advertising campaign will help manage your accounts as well as your budget. So, what are the advantages of using PPC as part of your internet advertising strategy?

PPC online advertising can be created around your budget. Keyword costs can range based on the competition, but you can set a maximum bid on the keywords of your choice to be sure you don’t extend outside your budget. You can effectively disperse your marketing budget based on the levels of participation in PPC. Read more …