Archive for February 27, 2012

What Do I Blog About?!

February 27, 2012 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / 1,750 comments

Thanks for being a loyal visitor. Check back often for information on SEO!

Blogging is a great way to inform people about your industry and what you do. It also counts on Google as adding unique, relevant, and new content. And if you and others share it on social media platforms, your info will be in a lot of different places for people to find.  But what do you write about and how do you think of new things to say?

1. Do a screencast with Screenr of your product and share it on your blog.
2. Show a step-by-step guide on how to do something in a screencast, how-to video, or show seo the woodlandsthe steps in a series of photos.
3. Create a blog post video or music video for your company and post it on the blog.
4.    Share a cartoon about your business or something that has to do with your business, or create an original one.
5. Write a how-to article. Give instructions with screenshots or photos on the steps someone needs to take to do something that’s relevant to your business.
6. Point out common mistakes in your industry and offer solutions on how to fix or avoid them.
7. Offer a list of benefits for doing something that has to do with your industry or business, or offer helpful techniques.
8.    Share a list of some things to avoid or look for in your industry.
9. Relate your how-to content to a current event or a celebrity. Example: “5 _____ Lessons from Lady Gaga” or “What the Election Teaches Us About ____”.

10.  Write ANYTHING!  Posting on your blog is a great way to increase traffic, improve your search engine optimization, and inform people about your business.

Here’s to happy and productive blog post writing and if you like this post, share it below!

Category: Blogging, Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands, SEO The Woodlands / Tags:

Why Your Web Designer Should Know About Internet Marketing

February 18, 2012 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / 43 comments

Many fantastic web site designers know virtually nothing of internet marketing, and this is a major issue. Promoting a site in search engines demands that the site be designed in a search site compatible format. These are some things website designers should really know about web selling.

Meta Tags

Usually Internet design experts will put the same meta tags on each page of a site. This just isn’t effective because the search engines target the meta tags of each page. Having pages express meta tags is an alternate way of showing not just search engines, but your visitors, precisely what your page is about.

Load Times

Pretty sites with a lot of graphics and flash may look grand, but are commonly so slow to download that web visitors will simply go somewhere else before the site even finishes downloading. Some search engines also may penalize sites for being to slow.

File Names

When planning a site, all the file names of the site should be representative of what’s on all pages. File names like page_1.html aren’t useful in conveying what’s on the page.  Make your sites clear about the data being provided. Detailed, yet short names, like web_marketing_design.php tell not only search engine spiders what’s on a page, but humans also. Like file names, URLs should be made in formats that that are significant to humans and search sites. Regularly URLs are a mixture of website names, list names and file names. All these elements should be detailed of what’s on the site, the list and the page respectively. Also, many shop cart use URLs like http://www.somesite.com / store / index.php?pid=2786247642 .  This is unreadable by humans and search engines.  Shopping carts that don’t use question marks in the URL are available and make for cleaner looking URLs that are less difficult to remember, for example http://www.somedomain.com / store / sky_widgets is much better.

Alt Tags

Alt tags are displayed when graphics have been turned off.  A surfer may turn off graphics to improve Net speed or may depend on alt tags due to physical impairment. This is maybe why search sites still appear to weigh alt tags into their search ranking processes.

Utility

There are specific elements that users of the web have learned to expect of the sites they encounter. Examples would be Home and Contact buttons. Ahh, what a breath of fresh air to go to an internet site and find the menu in the same location on each page and have the 1st button be Home and the last button Contact.  This makes finding your pages that much more simple and clean.

Typically, before planning a site, it is a great idea to figure out your keywords first. Determining your keywords is the subject of another article altogether. Planning your keywords into your internet site will give you a big edge over many rivals and is way easier (and less expensive) than planning keywords into a site after it’s been designed.

So, make sure your web designer knows a little about internet marketing before building your site…in the long run, it’s more effective at letting potential clients find you.

Category: Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands, Small Business Websites The Woodlands / Tags:

20 Ways to Increase Your Facebook Likes!

February 6, 2012 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / One comment
  1. Advertise on Facebook to get more “likes”. This is the quickest way to grow your fan base. The Supre fashion brand did this to obtain almost 400,000 fans quickly.
  2. Rotate your ads “DAILY” !
  3. Add Facebook Social Plugin Box to your Blog and Website
  4. Offer a free exclusive video that can only be viewed if you like the page.
  5. Run a competition. Everyone likes a competition! :)
  6. Make it obvious on a custom landing page by providing a big bold “Like our Page”
  7. Initially ask friends and family to like your page. A bit overdone but essential at the beginning
  8. Offer a free ebook or whitepaper to obtain a “like” (just like you should be doing for email subscriber acquisition on your website)
  9. Post content from your blog to Facebook whenever you write a new post. Facebook users love receiving new content on Facebook without having to go looking for your blog. Treat Facebook as an extension of your blog.
  10. Provide enticing high resolution photos. Compelling photos that are appropriate for your target audience will keep them coming back and make them share and so drive more likes from their friends
  11. Ask questions regularly using Facebook’s native question app.
  12. Include a link to your Facebook page in your email signature
  13. Provide a compelling welcome video on your Facebook landing page
  14. Simple but often missed: Add a “follow us” on Facebook button near the top of your website and blog pages
  15. Create an incentivised “Like” page that gives people a reason to like your page.
  16. Include the Facebook like button on your email HTML template so that people can like your facebook page from the regular email newsletter
  17. Add a large custom banner to your blog and website asking people to “Like
  18. Add a link to your Facebook page as one of your three LinkedIn website links that are part of your LinkedIn settings in your profile
  19. Add a newsworthy update that is relevant for your industry or market niche to your Facebook page every day
  20. Offer “Specials” including discounts to Facebook fans. The majority of Facebook users “like” a page to obtain a discount.

Well, you have lots of ideas here so get busy and implement them!

 

 

Source for much of this info at http://www.jeffbullas.com.

Category: FaceBook Fan Pages, FaceBook Marketing, Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / Tags: ,

Tools To Help You Manage All That Overwhelming Social Media!

February 2, 2012 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / 4 comments

Managing all your social media platforms is sometimes overwhelming.  With a little help from web-based tools, this can be manageable and time-saving. See below for some of the tools available for managing your social media platforms.  This is in no way a comprehensive list….it just give you an idea of what’s out there.

Ping.fm: Ping.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap! It allows you to simultaneously update accounts like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Flickr through their web interface, text message, email or instant message.

HootSuite: According to them, they are the leading social media dashboard to manage and measure your social networks.  This is a tool that allows you to manage multiple social media channels through one dashboard. If you have a company with more than one contributor to your social media program, HootSuite is a good solution.

TweetDeck:  TweetDeck is an app that brings more flexibility and insight to power users.  Like HootSuite, TweetDeck provides a way to track many of your social media channels on one dashboard. It can be a time-saver and a productivity- enhancer, assuming you’re not easily distracted.

Cotweet: Cotweethelps companies of all sizes engage customers, manage conversations, and report results across leading social networks like Twitter and Facebook. CoTweet is perfect for companies who have multiple people contributing to their social media campaigns. In addition to organizing and monitoring your Twitter and Facebook pages, it allows you to assign updates and social streams to members of your team based either on their expertise or who working at the time.

Seesmic:  Seesmic connects you wherever you are. Keep up with all of your personal and professional networks, anywhere, anytime.  Manage your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Ping.fm, and Foursquare accounts all from one simple interface. Whether you want to access your social networks from the web, a desktop application, or your mobile phone, Seesmic has a solution.

NutshellMail: Manage your Facebook Pages. Keep track of Likes, Posts, Comments, and Insights. Manage your personal Facebook profile too, with all your Facebook Birthdays, Photos, Friend Requests, Wall Posts, News Feed, Event & Group Invites, and Messages in one interactive email.  This is by Constant Contact.

Sprout Social: Sprout Social will deliver relevant messages from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs & Articles, competitor insights, check-ins and more directly to your dashboard.  Another organizing tool, Sprout Social manages multiple social networks from one dashboard, allowing you to optimize your outreach in each channel, identify people interested in your brand and convert them to loyal consumers.

PostRank: Tap into the intelligence of millions of online users active on the Social Web. PostRank delivers objective, real-time data and analysis on any topic, trend, or interest relevant to you or your business. Learn how you can use PostRank.  PostRank, recently acquired by Google, has a dashboard that aggregates what is happening with all of your content across the web in a constantly updated feed. This way you can see what type of engagement your content is getting across different channels right as it happens.

If you don’t have time to manage your social media, even with these cool tools, JaxWorks SEO & Web can do it for you!  See below and contact us for more info.  These plans enhance and are part of the custom Facebook fan page we build for you, which start at $70.

 

 

  • Maintenance refers to changes you would like to make to the fan page
  • Posting services refers to us doing more than one generic post a week. It is a custom proposal that may include multiple post a week on FB and daily Tweets.  This also could include other social media platforms like LinkedIn or Foursquare
  • Social Media Advisor is available to assist and answer questions about the social media platform we built for you
  • Monthly Tips are general monthly social media tips.

 

 

 

 

Category: FaceBook Fan Pages, FaceBook Marketing, Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands, Social Media The Woodlands / Tags: , , , ,
 
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