Dec 17 2009

Concepts of Social Media Optimization(SMO)

Category: Social Media Optimization — admin @ 1:08 pm

You must have heard your friend putting up photos of a tourist spot that he recently visited. Or, you must have surely read about the latest blog article of your colleague at a blogging site. Today, Internet no longer remains a passive pastime for the users. Gone are the days when users would only glean through the content, page after page. Now, surfers can be a part of content creation – thanks to the Web 2.0 technology. Here lies the basic concept of Social Media Optimization (SMO).

Social Media Sites

Some websites host content, images, or technical stuff offered by users. It is a medium where users or members can log in and place their favorite sites or content – such as bookmarking sites. Some social media websites allow you to share information, participate in discussion forums, or place your own blogs.

Some important examples of social media websites are Facebook, Orkut, YouTube, Word press, Vox, V bulletin, etc. Almost all Internet-savvy users try out their luck in the Internet world by participating in social media sites.

Social Media Optimization

SMO is a concept where you can optimize your website to participate in social networking sites. After enrolling into the site, ensure that you place content, photos, opinions, etc on social networks. The most read blog or most watched video brings prestige and accolades to your website. In the long run, you earn prestige, long-lasting traffic inflow, and quality links. Here is the basic concept and working of social media networks.

Steps in SMO

There is some concrete work required to create awareness among the social networking sites. If done well, it is one of the most lucrative and effective form of online marketing strategy among the small, medium, and big businesses.

First, you should take care of creating quality content that is keyword-centric. However, you should not stuff your content with similar keywords but use synonyms, similar phrases, etc to bring the aesthetic appeal to the content. Remember, fresh content has a lot of benefits in optimizing the website for social media networks.

Second, don’t forget to submit the website to different social media networking sites. With no limit to the web presence, and no boundaries to the novelty used in content, SMO has immense power to showcase the brilliance of the website among its community.

Benefit in the Concept of SMO

If you are start-up without much cash to give for Internet Marketing, promoting your website in social media network is worth the effort. You can give due exposure to your business, methodologies used in the process, and also show-case the USP of your work.

In areas where other marketing methods do not draw the interest of the traffic, SMO can reap good profits in business. And, in areas where a business has grown a lot and stagnating, SMO can rejuvenate it.

Boost in Search Engines Ranking

A good way to boost your search engine ranking is to work on SMO methods in an effective manner. It is only through coordination between the two concepts – SMO along with SEO – that a website can effectively promote itself in the online world. And, the best way to ensure SMO is on right track is to promote the website and generate publicity is through blogs, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), third-party images, videos, and so on.

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Dec 02 2009

Top 10 Social Media Bookmarking Website

Category: Social Media Optimization — admin @ 12:32 pm

Today, websites are not only for passive reading. With the Web 2.0 technology, users too can comment, post favorite sites categorize and organize their photos and blogs in the way they like. In short, this is social media networking concept where the user can add, collect or share objects and information. Others can bookmark them and add this to their list. What are the top 10 social media booking sites? Here’s a set of them in the subsequent paragraphs.

del.icio.us

After being bought by Yahoo!, del.icio.us, a top social bookmarking site, has immensely gained popularity. Many users prefer this site to post interesting websites and also subscribe to interesting tags. The sites are posted in the RSS feed for the user to read through.

Digg.com

Digg is both a social bookmarking as well as a social networking site where users can comment on the sites. In short, you can just pick on a particular “Digg” and comment on it. Most comments are for the technocrats and software geeks.

Reddit

Reddit allows users to share and submit personal bookmarks. Just like is a normal social bookmarking website, such as del.icio.us, this social media hub allows users to vote for the best link so that it can attain the top dog spot.

Furl

Furl is a social media hub that allows users to save copies of other web pages. You can also create archives of these pages and share them with other members. Furl is generally used for Internet enthusiasts who want to make their shopping lists, job lists, real estate directories, etc.

Clipmarks

Clipmarks has all features of a good social media networking site. However, added to this feature, it allows the user to store sections of a page, image, or text without having to store the entire page.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a vast site with comprehensive bookmarking features. Be sure to find all types of brilliant sites of different spheres. Although the stuff is immense, the quality is quite good.

Newsvine

Newsvine is a social media networking site for readers who love read stories, news, and feature articles. You can read articles from media hubs, such as Associated Press or from individual contributors.

Mixx

Mixx, is yet another social media hub that allows bookmarking of different files and pages, such as news clipping, videos, images, etc.

Diigo

A new social media hub that highlights about web tools is known as Diigo. It is also a relatively new bookmark where you can post comments, highlight issues and new websites of your interest.

Propeller

Similar to social media sites, such as Digg or del.icio.us, Propeller is yet another social media hub that allows users to post stories, comments, images, video albums, etc.

More social media networking websites are coming up with new technologies and ideas. Stay in tuned with the latest development to check out your best site.

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Oct 13 2009

Why SEO Needs for Your Business

Category: Social Media Optimization — admin @ 3:17 pm

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the buzzword for any online entrepreneur. The first aspect to a good and successful business is to secure one of the top spots in well known search engines. In other words, this means going for SEO techniques to get that rank.

An e-commerce website owner would surely go for SEO aspects. But, how about a business which thrives in brick-n-mortar office only? Why would a cast iron company or a marble firm have a good website with all SEO techniques well managed?

But Why Need the Top Rank?

Exposure is very important for a business to succeed. And, if the business succeeds, the company becomes profitable, reputed, and much better than its competitors. This is true for any kind of business – ecommerce, media, and product-based company.

Here’s one example to highlight the point: any user would try out a search engine to find out about important sites on a particular subject. It is obvious that the first ten links in the search engine would be more eye-catching to the user. He would click these links first than go to page 20 and click the last link.

In a luckless situation, you would be left out in the cold with customers going to your competitors without even clicking to your site at least once. Why should they even take the trouble to scan through scores of pages in a search engine to go to your site? They would surely settle for the first few sites only.

To make sure that you are in the limelight and in the centre-stage, it is important to get your site optimized. Once you get your customers, it is now up to your valuable products or services to keep the existing ones.

Getting into the Top Slot

In this tough competitive world, it is not easy to secure the top slot in any reputed search engine. Every day numerous sites are getting created and summarily uploaded by the search engines. Some sites are genuine business hubs while others are sprouted to siphon the limelight from those who have not optimized their website.

One day you find your site in the top position, and the next day the ranking may fall. The situation is quite dynamic. More so, if you are in a lucrative trade – say e-commerce, online retail shop, etc.

It is a gross mistake to sit back and remain passive on your site’s Internet presence. Even though you might be a reputed entrepreneur, your site says it all in the world of the Internet. If its position is way below, people would not be attracted to you. Traditional marketing tactics do not work here, and your market value would drastically fall.

Value the Timing Too

It is important to value the time factor as it plays a major role in placing a website in one particular page of a search engine. For instance, many firms were basically precursor to the search engines. As such, the websites get their place automatically due to this factor – grandfathered by the firms.

Instead of remaining passive, every webmaster should be pro-active to get the website optimized as soon as possible from an SEO expert. Else, conquering the bell curve to topple one website is not an easy task.

Also, don’t think others are sitting still. Your competitors are equally smart and active enough to get to their target zone before you’ve made up your mind. It is important to respect your competitors and SEO aspects to be a master in your field.

Trying to Do it All by Yourself

Can you do it yourself? Why not, as SEO is not very difficult to accomplish. But, it is indeed hypothetical to assume that one can optimize a site as well as look after the business nitty-gritty aspects.

It so happens that one day you work at it and the next day you are doing some other activities. But remember, you competitors are working day and night – with people dedicated to do the job.

It is important to get hold of specialists for this job – an expert who knows exactly what to do to get the SEO done for your website.

Tapping All Customers

It is equally important to tap all business browsers. For instance, website owners optimize their sites for Google only. Although a very powerful and popular search engine, it is not the only searching site. Surveys suggest that almost 87.5 percent of the valuable users looking for business deals do not surf Google.

There are some sites which are quite active in other search engines and not Google. Here too, the policy is not right. In a nutshell, SEO experts would optimize your site so that in all search engines it has a good ranking.

Competent Site is Worth the Penny

Any user would be attracted to that site, which is presented well and has good navigational capabilities. The content should be crisp, attractive, and have an impact on the user. The site should also be easy and fast to navigate as well.

When a website is SEO-friendly and user-friendly, it becomes popular as users come back to it again and again to take a look. A site that is reputed, attractive, and easy to handle would be at least browsed once by any business enthusiasts. Here, most of them get hooked and never leave the site. A lasting impression stays on too.

The word goes around and more visitors would throng your site. A typical example of this kind is some popular media sites. For live telecast, many of these sites gained popularity – primarily because many others found it efficient, user-friendly, and worth taking the effort of browsing the site.

In the bottomline, if you intend to increase your sales, boost your prospects, and get more leads, SEO is a must for your site. In other words, your business would definitely need SEO services as it is a good way to get to the top in an affordable manner.

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Oct 12 2009

Determining the Profitability of a Social Media Website

Category: Social Media Optimization — admin @ 1:16 pm

A social media website is a new way of interacting with Internet-savvy people. Earlier, static website with pages or images posted by the web master made wonders in the online world. Today however, it is the user who converses, interacts, or posts images and content in a website.

Social Media Site – A Profitable Business

A good, optimized, popular social media site would command huge traffic – and customers who are knowledgeable and interested to pursue a trade. In a nutshell, a well-managed social media site would be profitable or earn huge Return of Investment (ROI).

However, how can one measure or determine the profitability or ROI of a social media website? As the concept is very dynamic rather than static and more like a Public Relations (PR) work rather than marketing, deducing the actual ROI can be tough. — More so, because there are no softwares or theories to substantiate the same.

Nevertheless, all is not lost. The Internet Marketing experts have found a novel way to find out the answer. Read on to know more.

Determining the Quality of the Interactions

Social media sites deal with interactions between customers through active conversations, customer relations, and similar PR works. The ROI statistics based on the quality of such interactions can be found out by answering simple questions related to the conversations.

For instance, how far is an online company part of a forum in a social media site? How often do customers prefer speaking to this company rather than shying away from it?

It is equally important to understand whether a positive relationship has been developed with key audiences. When customers interact in a forum more often, they are likely to be interested in that site. On the other hand, sites which go on through huge monologs don’t really appeal to the readers or customers. Lastly, it is essential to get involved more and more in new conversations in similar social media sites.

Human analysis such as these requires a lot of effort and money. However, if done accurately, one can realize the tone, profitability, and brand positioning in the social media site.

Determining the Quantity of the Interactions

Up till now, the positive nature, attitude, and feature of the social media website have been dealt at length. This measure is however, more subjective rather than objective in its outlook. Now, the quantity or the objective part of measuring the ROI would be assessed.

The quantitative measure would look into the number of users or traffic list of the website. It would also cater to the sales and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ranking of the particular website.

Feedburner or Google Analytics are some tools which immediately provide data on the number of traffic that has accessed the site at a given time. It would also highlight blog traffic, subscriber count, and user trends in the site.

AideRSS is yet another tool which helps to analyse how many times a particular URL has been shared by social media networking users. It would also give reference to the posts and comments that are posted on the site. Few other tools help to analyse data related to SEO and social bookmarking.

In a nutshell, any kind of interactivity, such as users who want to join the social media network, click-through-rate, or forum activity, can be determined easily. Tools have been developed to ensure that the data is accurate and quick.

Wrapping Up

ROI can be measured through a variety of ways and using different parameters for the measurement. However, even before the inception of the site, it is essential for the website owner to calculate the success metrics. This benchmark would help to assess how far a website has progressed or regressed in due time.

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Oct 06 2009

SEO Tools to monitor your website

Category: Social Media Optimization — admin @ 11:24 am

You can’t just put your website on the net with right keywords and all the right touches and expect your traffic and ranking will remain constant. As the web is an ever changing landscape, you have to keep track of your own web results like what is happening with the competition and also the best and highest ranked sites. There are many useful tools to help you find out what exactly is happening. 

Keyword Tools

Website Analysis/Optimization Tool

Alexa Tools

Link Popularity Tools

Google Ranking Tools

Yahoo Ranking Tools

Pay Per Click Tools

SEO Information and Resources

Other SEO Tools

1. A tool which you can use to test your own website links or other websites for broken links:

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

2. With this tool you can check search engines for the number of back links to your URL i.e. other web pages linking to your site:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/backlinks/

3. It sometimes becomes important to know where the servers of your hosting company are physically located. Because, some search engines like Google have the ability to filter search results based on their physical location called geotargeting. This could be used to determine why your site is showing in only a certain country. This link can also be used to research the country location of a particular competitor’s website:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/

4. In order to track the location of the visitor or a customer to your website:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/geovisitors/

5. In order to check the Yahoo! web ranking of your’s or your competitor’s website use :

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/webrank/

6. Here is a link to check the web ranking of a website using a Mac or Apple computer:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/pagerank-mac/

7. You need a Google AdSense account for using this. This link provides you with charts and reports which will help you analyze traffic, clicks, and results from your AdSense advertising

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-charts/

8. If you have an AdSense account, you can analyze your website address or another website address to see what Google ads will be displayed when the customer selects certain website names or keywords:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-sandbox/

9. This link will take you to a cooperative advertising network where you can join to display and

share your ads with other website owners:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/

10. You can add the Search Functionality on your website which uses Google. This works only if your site is listed in the Google Index.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/search/

11. Here are some links to free website counters which you can use on your website to track your traffic and hits:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/counter/

http://www.amazingcounters.com/?ref=gad033

http://www.cyber-counter.com/signup.php

http://www.statcounter.com/free_hit_counter.html

http://www.free-counters.net/

 

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Oct 01 2009

A Good Ways To Improve Sales Through Your Website

Category: Social Media Optimization — admin @ 1:00 pm

Anyone who has been marketing online knows that the lifeblood of a business is the traffic of a site. More visitors equal more sales. However, here are some ways that you can tweak your sites with to improve sales without the need to get more visitors.

The first method is to weave in your personal touch in your sales message. Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many people will buy what their close friends recommend to them. If you can convince your audience that you are a personal friend who has their best interest at heart, they will be convinced to buy your products. Remember to speak to an individual in your salesletter, not to your whole audience.

The second method is to publish testimonials and comments from your customers. A good idea would be to publish both good and bad comments; that way prospects will be really convinced that these testimonials are real. When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have the confidence to buy from you because human beings follow the herd mentality; when others have bought and proven it authentic, they will jump on the bandwagon and buy too.

Use visual representations for the problems and solutions that your product offers. Not everyone will read your text copy from the head to the tail, but most people will pay attention to images on your website.

Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. When you offer bonuses that complement your product, your prospects will feel it’s a very good deal and it would be stupid to miss it. Be sure to state the monetary value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to grab your good bargain.

Lastly, ask for the sale! Many people entice their prospects with the benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forget to ask for the sale. Give a clear instruction on how to buy your product (e.g. “click the button to buy now!”).

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