Twitter is expected to be one of the only social networking sites to have long term viability.  Twitter usage and name recognition has been growing in leaps and bounds.  Many are using Twitter not just to stay connected, but to market as well.  So how do you maximize your Twitter?

Get an active Twitter account.

Yes it sounds basic, and you may already have one, but don’t just breeze past this section.  We have some interesting tips to help you maximize your usage.

For those of you just getting started, open your account at http://twiter.com/signup. Once you have the registration form complete, connect with as many people as you can. They make it easy by allowing you to search your email lists (see below for more information).  Customize your profile to show your main website and your, or your company’s, bio information. Don’t forget to set your location, update preferences and how you want to be notified of friends who have joined the Twitter revolution.

Draw attention with a customized background.

Get creative here. Simply click on “Settings” and then “Design” to choose a premade background or upload your own image.  If you have a flair for design and a little Photoshop experience you can create a background that speaks volumes about you and your company.  Check out some great custom layouts like:

http://twitter.com/JetBlue

http://twitter.com/BBCClick

http://twitter.com/MarthaStewart

Gather friends and follow interesting people and organizations

Finding friends on Twitter is easy. Three options are available.

1.      Search Twitter.  Use the “Find People” function to search for anyone from your next door neighbor to celebrities to companies.

2.      Search other networks.  Connect to anyone in your email contact list. Twitter can search through your hotmail.com, Gmail, Yahoo mail or AOL mail contact lists and if your friends use Twitter they can be added to your list.

3.      Manual invites.  Have friends, co-workers or clients who are not on Twitter? Manually input their email addresses and invite them to be your friend.

Connect your blog to Twitter

One of the best tools to connect Twitter and your blog was created by Alex King.  This plug-in will automatically create micro blogs from your WordPress blog posts. Just follow this link for all the information

http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

to download this plug-in click here

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/share-this.2.3.zip

If you blog regularly, be sure to review the instructions and support information.

Monitor your Twitter Rank

Twitter offers the Twitter Grader (http://twitter.grader.com) to show you where you rank against other Twitter members.  Once you enter your user name, you will see where you rank among a possible 100 points. 

Twitter Grading is based on overall rank, number of followers, your following and updates.  The more active you are the higher you will rank.

Link your Twitter account to social bookmarking sites.

If you are in the Twitter game, be in it to win it.  Build up your social networking account by bookmarking your Twitter account to sites such as Digg.com, Propeller.com, Dropjack.com and others.

Take advantage of advanced search features on Twitter

To really maximize your connection with people in your target market, go to http://search.twitter.com/advanced to use the Advanced Search features Twitter offers.  In Advanced Search you can search by keywords or phrases, location, names and more.

Resist the urge to connect with everyone you see.  Be choosy and select only the best people who actually have good information to share and are likely to accept your friend request.

As you take these steps to maximize your Twitter impact, you will see your social status rise.  As with any adventure, the more you keep at it the better the result

Search engine optimization (SEO) budgets are increasing as marketing executives gain knowledge of how SEO can benefit advertising and marketing campaigns.  eMarketer is reporting that SEO budget allocations are expected to rise in the coming years as compared to other search marketing strategies.

With the decline in the economy, customer acquisition is becoming more and more vital.  As the focus on customer acquisition increases, SEO becomes a more vital part of the overall marketing strategy.  Because SEO provides a long term strategy for increased consumer presence, it has added value as compared to paid search marketing.

“Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics” reports that SEO growth will grow from 17.7% to 20.3% while paid search will decline from 15.9% in 2009 to 11.3% in 2013.  When searching for information, consumers find more value in organic search results than pay per click (PPC) advertising.  The value placed by consumers on organic search results garners more clicks on these results thus making SEO a valued part of the marketing plan.

SEO Market Growth

Combining SEO and PPC marketing efforts may result in higher search engine result rankings.  Paid search engine advertising offers more immediate results, but in order to see results in the search engine arena advertising must be consistent.  SEO marketing results occur over a longer time frame, but result in organic search results more valued by consumers.

In order to gain the most information and knowledge of your results, Web analytics is necessary.  Having solid feedback regarding your SEO and PPC marketing efforts will allow you to gage how successful your campaign is.  More traffic is only positive if the cost of the search ad relative to the conversion doesn’t reduce your bottom line.

SEO is a bit like a good public relations strategy; it helps to bring top of mind awareness to your site.  SEO gets them in the door, so you can complete the deal.

We’ve all done things in our lives we regret. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, those things are often found on the internet, available to potential employers, schools and any other person who enters our life.  So can you protect your online reputation by having those pages removed from Google’s index?

Unfortunately, it is not as easy as you would hope for.  Google clearly states on their website that they do not own the internet. This means that in order to get the pages off of Google’s search results, the website that houses the undesirable information must be changed.  Your only hope of getting a change is to approach the webmaster of the offending site to request removal of the page or at least request they block the page from Google’s indexing.  Google’s response if you approach them first is a polite, but firm, “We are sorry, but we can’t do anything without action by the webmaster.”

Your only hope is if the information falls into one of the categories that Google is prepared to deal with.  They include:

·         Social security or credit information in results

·         Adult content in results, when SafeSearch has been turned on

·         Inappropriate images in video results

Beyond these points, you are pretty much on your own.  Once you understand that Google has no control over what is posted to the internet, it does seem to make a bit more sense.  Google’s job is to tell you what is out there, not to police what is already posted to the Web.

So what is the best way to protect yourself?  Be on your best behavior to keep your reputation intact, and well, if that doen’t work for you… than you’re in good company.  If you do have to approach someone to get a page removed, make nice and hope for the best.   If that does not work, just make sure you have lots of good stuff to make up for being less than perfect.  After all, nobodys perfect J  .

No one wants to see or hear a negative comment about their business. When you first read a negative blog post, you are likely to get a sinking feeling in your stomach. However, a negative blog post doesn’t have to mean impending doom. Instead of dreading seeing your company’s name, take this as an opportunity to spin a negative into a positive.
When a blogger mentions your business consider it an open invitation to respond. If a blogger criticizes a promotion you are running or pans your business based on their experience, it is your opportunity to craft a well thought out response.
You have every right to explain yourself. Address the specific issue raised in the blog; explain what your business is all about or the structure of your promotion in question. Be sure to take the high road and always be professional. Personal attacks are never appropriate; even if you were attacked first.
Opening a dialog with a blogger gives you the opportunity to provide an explanation, to correct misinformation and address misunderstandings. With a well thought out and timely response, showing your thought process and professionalism is likely to enhance your image.
Don’t forget that the blogger’s posting and your response is going to be viewed by all of the blog’s readers. Accuracy is a must. On a side note, a quick “Thank you for the kind words” post to a positive blog comment is always appreciated.

Integrating Telephone Leads and Live Chat for Increased Results

Get more from your marketing budget and increase ROI by combining the power of Google Analytics with telephone tracking and live chat interactions. Each of these powerful marketing tools, when combined with Google Analytics, can provide you with better results and more information about your customers.

Telephone Leads and Google Analytics

Combining telephone calls and Google Analytics allows you to track each phone call made by your customers to your company resulting in new valuable information about you customers. All of this is easily accomplished when you work with a company like Mongoose Metrics. Purchasing bulk toll free numbers from Mongoose Metrics, allows you to use unique phone numbers for individual marketing campaigns or product lines at a very reasonable price. By assigning each number to a hidden web page on your site including the Google Analytics tracking code, each phone call will trigger a visit to the hidden web page. This will then trigger Google Analytics to register the phone call as an event in its tracking system. By combining the numbers being tracked with your account in Google Analytics, you can see results including the phone number called, duration and date of the call. All of this information can help you to refine your marketing and increase ROI.

Live Chat and Google Analytics

Having the capability to chat with your customers while they are on your website is invaluable. Aside from the personal touch this provide, it allows you to get a better handle on what is working or not working on your site, with your marketing and how your customers are responding to your company. Using the services of a company like LivePerson, allows you this real time interaction. Combining LivePerson’s services with Google Analytics gets you a wealth of knowledge not before available. Some of the information available to you includes:

* volume and quality of live chats by geographic area
* the source and keywords that lead to the chat
* navigation paths that drive chats

The more you know about your clients the more successful you will be. By garnering this type of detailed information from telephone and live chat interactions, you will be able to modify your future messages and increase ROI.

To get the best results from local SEO searches, a few simple steps can make a world of difference.  Follow these quick tips and you should see improved results in your local SEO searches.

First, spend some time researching the local link groups of the sites you are in competition with.  Finding out which local link groups the competition is using will give you an idea of what you are up against.  If you can get your web site attached to these same local link groups, you will make huge strides in catching up to the competition.  While you are working on this part of the project, you could make Hubpages or Squidoo pages to enhance your results.  The objective here is to simply group together sites that are normally together and add your website into the mix.

Another way to improve your local SEO search results is to focus on address citations.  For this step you want work on getting your business name, business address, business phone and business website with as many references as possible.  If you have access to HTML code, it is helpful to bracket your business address like this:

    * [address]
    * [/address]

Remember that each time your website gets a citation on another reputable website, search engines look at this in a positive light.  The more citations you get in your geo-location, the better your SEO ranking.

Finally, combining the authority and anchor text will help to give you a final boost in rankings.  Both anchor text and site authority are valuable factors in raising your ranking.  By combining the individual strengths of anchor text and site authority, you will be more likely to win the ranking in a close race.

Link building can greatly help your business increase ranking within the search engines and cover any bad press about your business online. Here are some ideas that you can use to build links in the search engines:

1. Use social media. Social media sites such as FaceBook and MySpace are not just for the kids. You can create as many pages as you want that are SEO friendly and watch links build.

2. Use forums. Posting search engine optimized content in forums can end up drawing people to your website, especially if you learn how to use HTML.

3. Use RSS feeds on social media pages. This will allow your sites to be updated continuously.

4. If you have multiple sites, link your sites to each other.

5. Use social bookmarking pages.

6. Learn to use Meta Tags on your posts.

7. Take advantage of free press release distribution with SEO content.

8. Write reviews about your website on forums, blogs and especially on your site!

9. Encourage others to visit your site and spread links around.

10. Use a link exchange site.

11. Write articles for Ezine and have them posted containing SEO rich material.

12. Submit links to all search engines.

13. Distribute free articles on sites that will allow SEO content.

14. Use hyper links to your articles in your various websites.

15. Get a sub domain site in addition to your website and build on that.

16. Link all articles as an RSS feed on your website.

17. Write a blog at a free blogging site that contains SEO material.

18. Use a good Meta description for your articles that contains your keywords.

19. Blog on your social media sites.

20. Learn how to use SEO resources.

21. Use Video for your site.

22. Post videos used on your site to other video sharing sites.

23. Learn how to understand and use web analytics to improve your content.

24. Use question sites as a way to post about your site and for link building.

25. Use question sites to answer questions posting a link to your site.

26. Encourage comments about articles as these will also help build links. Even if you have to comment on your own article, this will help with link building.

27. Add content to all sites periodically to keep building links.

28. Join groups where you can post in forums.

So I know it’s been quite some time since my last post, no worries, as I think this blog is going to come to a grinding halt.

There are soo many great seo blogs out there already, and in order to be a well-read blog, one needs to be on top of events as they happen.

I just can’t maintain that pace with everything else that is going on. So, this will probably be one of the last posts, but it’s still a goodie – it’s a Google Cheat Sheet PDF – it’s free so go get it now!

-To your online success!

www.SEOforGoogle.com