Top three ways to use Social Media for SEO

The search engines have made it known that social media is increasingly being used to influence their rankings – a fact that we’ve been expecting for some time. So with this knowledge in hand, what are the best ways to use social media to influence your SEO strategies?

1. Social Media Profile and Account Linking: This is the obvious first step in terms of using social media for SEO. There are plenty of link opportunities in setting up your various social media accounts and profiles. Whether it’s your Facebook page, a twitter account or your company page on Linkedin, these are all easy link building opportunities.

That said, they’re also probably the least valuable of the SEO opportunities from social media. There’s often not much “link value” provided from social profile links, but nonetheless – take advantage of every opportunity.

2. Leveraging Content: Content is the basis of all the best linking strategies. Quality content attracts links of the highest quality naturally and social media allows you to attract those links more easily than ever. It’s social media’s distribution possibilities that make it such an important asset to your SEO strategies.

There are numerous ways to leverage social media for distributing your content. Here’s just some of the primary ways:

• Post it on your Facebook wall
• Promote it on twitter
• Announce it via your Linkedin account
• Link to it from your various social media streams (posterous, tumblr, etc)
• Blog about it on your blog
• Share it with other bloggers and get them to discuss it on their blogs

3. Engaging in Conversations: Social Media as the name suggests is about being social. And therein is the 3rd way to leverage social media for your SEO strategies.

By engaging in relevant online conversations “naturally” you’ll gather valuable ranking indicators through your efforts. The key is to do this “naturally”, which means in a none contrived or spammy way. Here’s just some of the ways to start or engage in conversations:

• Get involved in an industry discussion on Linkedin
• Answer some questions on Yahoo! Answers
• Share some news via an industry Facebook page
• Comment on your favourite blog posts every week
• Retweet news you read on twitter and add in your opinion
• Write an opinion piece on your blog about something that happened in your industry

It’s important to realise that engaging in the conversations is not just about trying to sneak in a link everywhere possible. The participation in the discussions will deliver more SEO value than you realise by just being knowledgeable and authentic.

Three site architecture tips to get you Ranking Higher

Before spending money on SEO, your site can get a great head start in achieving top rankings by ensuring you’ve implemented SEO friendly site architecture. URL structure, file names and website speed are three important elements to consider when designing your site.

Your URL structure refers to the structure of your website and the way each page is connected to another. Keeping your architecture relatively flat and separating content into different categories is the best way to achieve this.

Instead of placing all of your products into one folder, separate them out into categories and subcategories. Using the example below, you can see how each subcategory of jackets, shirts and shoes are separated into their own product folders. This helps search engines assign keyword relevance to different areas of your website and will have a positive impact on your rankings.

File and Folder Names: File naming conventions are another important area of website architecture. Including keywords in your file and folder names will help search engines determine the theme of each page and boost your ranking for these terms. Following on with our clothing store example, you can see the final URL below is much more descriptive than the first two and lets search engines know that content of the page is related to red dress shoes.

Website Speed: Website speed is a relatively new ranking factor that Google introduced in the middle of 2010. According to Google, “Faster sites create happy users”, so they’ve set out to reward sites with faster loading times and punish those that aren’t up to scratch.

Some areas to check on your website include:

• Images – Ensure your images are a reasonable file size and don’t take a long time to load.
• Flash animations – Again, keep the file size for any flash animations to a minimum.
• Website hosting – Make sure your hosting plan is up to scratch and isn’t limiting your websites speed.
• Javascript – Check that any scripts on your website don’t limit the performance of your page.
  

Three alternative steps to improve your Google quality score

If you’re a Google AdWords advertiser, chances are you’ll be very familiar with their quality score ranking. It’s an important metric as Google uses your quality score to determine the position of your ads and the cost-per-click of your placement.

Generally a higher quality score can lower your cost-per-click and trigger your Ads to appear in a higher position so it’s important to learn what impacts your score and how to improve it.

The formula behind Google’s quality score has a number of core components which are used to determine your ranking. For ads on Google’s search network these components include:

• The historical CTR (click-through rate) of your keyword/ad combination
• The historical CTR of all keywords/ads in your account
• The historical CTR of your display URL
• The quality of your landing page (original content that’s easy to navigate and transparent)
• The load time of your landing page
• The relevance of your keyword/ad to the search query

Historically the click-through rate of your ad/keyword combination has been seen as the most important factor. While this still holds true, landing page quality is very important as it helps to shape your initial quality score which can impact your position and future click-through rate.

How to Improve Your Quality Score: Now that we’ve explored the factors behind your quality score we can look at the best ways to improve them. There’s plenty of advice out there for some of the more obvious steps, so I’m going to focus on some lesser known ways to impact your quality score.

1) Improving Your Keyword Relevancy - Google’s keyword tool can help you determine if Google considers your landing page relevant to your chosen keywords. This tool can be found via your AdWords dashboard. If your landing page is giving weak results, make some changes and run the tool again until you’re seeing a positive change.

2) Test and Optimize Multiple Ads - A major part of improving your click-through rate is optimizing your ad copy. Create a number of different variations with alternative headlines and calls to action to determine which one works best. Making your ad relevant and unique is the key.

3) Landing Page Load Times - One of the quality score factors I mentioned above is the load time of your landing pages. Google wants to provide users with a good experience so they give preference to ads which have fast landing pages.

Ten Essential Ajax Scripts for Web Developers

Ajax Script is one of the most widely used languages across the globe for web development. It is simple, yet very powerful, and the number of ways that it can be used is almost limitless.

Ajax scripts to help web developers with direct download link. The following list includes Progress Bar, Ajax grid, Ajax Menus, Ajax Event Calendar, Ajax Tag Clouds, Ajax Image Transition etc

1. Simple JavaScript Progress Bar with CSS: WebAppers have created a simple JavaScript based Percentage Bar / Progress Bar which is inspired by Bare Naked App. Bare Naked App taught us how to display Percentage Bar with 2 images only by using CSS.

2. Sigma grid-Ajax grid for php java & .net: Written in pure JavaScript, Sigma Grid is an Ajax data grid for displaying and inline editing data in a scrollable and sortable table. IE 6.0+ \ FireFox 2.0+ \ Safari 3.0+ \ Opera9.0+ supported. Pure JavaScript codes, Seamless Integration with any server side solution, such as j2ee, .net, PHP, perl. Inline editing, keyboard data navigation, nested multi line headers, sortable and frozen columns.

3. Instant.js: If you're looking to add some interesting backgrounds, rotations and other effects to images, Instant.js might be just what you're looking for. The JavaScript degrades gracefully, so browsers who don't have JavaScript enabled won't notice a difference.

4. Phatfusion image menu: Phatfusion image menu is horizontal menu, reveals more of the image as you rollover it.

5. dhtmlxScheduler - Ajax Event Calendar: dhtmlxScheduler is a web-based event calendar which provides simple in-browser scheduling solution. With smooth Ajax-enabled interface dhtmlxScheduler allows users to add, modify or delete events without refreshing the web page.

6. DrasticCloud: DrasticCloud is a configurable tag cloud. The example on the left presents the mountains in the grid ordered and scaled by height. Mountain names in green have been climbed. Change the settings in the cloud menu to change the cloud.

7. AJAX Rating Stars: Based on the prototype.js JavaScript framework, these rating stars are really easy to implement on your website. They feature form field binding, JavaScript callback function support, and XML Http Request value sending (AJAX).

8. Ajax Image Transition Manager: The image transition manager is a JavaScript library based on scriptaculous and prototype. It supports several image transitions, such as fading, appearing, sliding, growing and shrinking. Because it uses the unobtrusive JavaScript technique, no inline JavaScript is needed and hyperlinks still function when JavaScript is disabled.

9. Sigma Visual Ajax builder: Sigma visual builder is web based tool for AJAX RIA application GUI rapid design and involved scripts programming. Do everything by drag & drop.

10. Smooth Counter: It's been a while, but a new piece of JavaScript is here to add some dynamics to your web-page. SmoothCounter is a script that enables you to count between 2 numbers (with a given precision) in a given period of time.

Top Seven Tips to Get Your Local Listing above Your Competitors

Did you know that in 2008, 82% of local searches online resulted in a phone call, site view, in store visit or immediate purchase? This has no doubt increased along with the popularity of local listings and highlights the need for your local listing to be in that prime position – above your main competitors.

Assuming you already have a Google Local listing, I have outlined seven things you can do to help get yours ranking above your competitors:

1. Complete your local listing profiles fully by adding business information, website, photos, You Tube videos, etc. Google is all about the user experience and the more complete you’re listing, the more helpful it looks to them.

2. Use your keywords several times in your local listings and be descriptive. The description section is the area where you can provide the most content about your business in your listing, so make it count! Be descriptive and give people a reason to choose you over your competitors.

3. Use a physical address instead of PO boxes if possible. This is especially important now that Google is currently blocking listings with PO Box addresses.

4. Don’t submit your listing more than once. Duplicate entries can get you in trouble.

5. Choose the categories for your listing wisely. The Google Local Business Center has so many category options to choose that it isn’t shouldn’t be too hard to find the one that best suit your products and services.

6. Get your valued customers writing reviews? In some cases, the number of reviews your listing has will determine if your listing is on the first or second page of the results.

7. Get social. Properly constructed social media profiles, like Twitter and Facebook, can be picked up as citations for your listing if they include your business name, address, and phone number.

Five Google Webmaster Tweaks to Optimize Your Rankings

With the ever expanding feature set of Google’s Webmaster Tools, it’s easy to miss some of the more essential settings and tools that can help you achieve top rankings.

In this post, I’ll cover 5 tips which will give your site the best chance of ranking well.

1. Upload Your XML Sitemap

Helps: Ensure your website is indexed

Where to find: Site configuration > Sitemaps

Uploading an XML Sitemap provides Google with a map of your website which helps them crawl your content and maximize the number of URLs which are included in their index. This is especially important for larger sites that have a large number of brand and product pages.

2. Set Your Geographic Target

Helps: Improve your position in local search results

Where to find: Site configuration > Settings

Setting your geographic target helps Google to associate your website with the particular region you are targeting. We have seen some strong positive ranking improvements for our clients after enabling this setting, so ensure it is correct for your website.

3. Look at Google’s HTML Suggestions

Helps: Improve your position in search results

Where to find: Diagnostics > HTML Suggestions

Google’s HTML suggestions include any issues that Google found when they were crawling your website. These can includes issues with duplicate or missing META information as well as any un-indexable content on your website. If Google finds any issues with your website, click on each to learn more and correct any problems.

4. Optimize Your Sitelinks

Helps: Improve click-through to core pages

Where to find: Site configuration > Sitelinks

Sitelinks are links to a site’s interior pages that can be shown in search results. Google automatically generates these links for some websites; however these can be modified using webmaster tools.

If your website is showing Sitelinks, remove any non important pages from the list.

5. Monitor Your Page Loading Times

Helps: Improve rankings and customer satisfaction

Where to find: Labs > Site performance

With Google using page speed as a ranking factor, it’s also a good idea to make sure your pages are loading as fast as possible. Use this tool to monitor the load time of pages on your website and optimize this when possible.

The Essential List of Free Content Related SEO Tools

Content is King in SEO – we all know its true, but many people still fall into the trap of focusing on everything else – except their content!

It’s easy to get distracted with your offsite SEO strategies and forget the fundamental rule of SEO – create valuable relevant unique content. So to help you research, create and analyze your content, I’ve created this list of essential free content SEO tools.

Keyword Research

Keyword should be the starting point of any solid SEO strategy. These tools and services will help you find new keywords and check to see if your existing keyword strategy is viable.

Often overlooked, but a good place to start is basic dictionary and thesaurus websites. It helps you think of other ways searcher could be looking for your products/services. http://www.thefreedictionary.com http://thesaurus.com/

This free keyword tool offered by Google is the first spot for research keywords by most SEO professionals. It also provides valuable insights into traffic levels.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Wordtracker (and the many other keyword research tools available) utilize data that includes sources outside of Google. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Website Keyword Suggestion Tool

This keyword suggestion tools searches the existing content on your website to determine the keywords and search terms to target. http://www.webconfs.com/website-keyword-suggestions.php

Duplicate content checker

Duplicate content is a big no-no in the SEO world. Getting caught with duplicate content can result in penalization by the search engines – which often include delisting from their results. These tools will help you check whether the content on your product pages or articles is too closely matched to other content on the web.

http://www.seomastering.com/site-comparison.php

http://www.copyscape.com/

Page Comparison Tools

Sometimes, the best way to opti9mize your content for better rankings is to see what your competitors are doing better. These two tools will check to web pages (yours and your competitors) and provides some vital stats about each.

http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php

http://www.seomastering.com/similar-text-checker.php

Keyword Density

When determining relevance, search engines like Google look to keyword density are one of the key measures. These tools will help you check whether the copy on your pages provides adequate density to your primary keywords.

http://www.ineedhits.com/free-tools/keyword-density.aspx

http://www.seomastering.com/keyword-density-analyzer.php

Text to Code Ratio Tools

In the world of the web, being lean in terms of code is now more important than ever. Ideally you want web pages to be more content than code to keep the search engines happy. It makes their indexing of your content faster and more thorough. Use these tools to check the ratio of your web site code to content (indexable text)

http://www.lee-johnson.com/text-to-code-ratio-seo-tool/

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/code-to-text-ratio/

Search Engine Spider Simulator

While the good looking pages (with images and fancy media) can be good from a user perspective, you have to remember that search engines primarily index text – and that’s how they assess your content’s relevance. These tools will help you see your webpages in the same way that search engine spiders do.

http://www.seomastering.com/search-engine-spider-imitator.php

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/spider-simulator/

http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php

With all these free tools in your content optimization tool chest, it’s a good chance to go and review your existing content and see if it needs a spruce up, or create some new content on your website with the new content opportunities you’ve found.

Top five SEO Wordpress Plugins for 2011

I have been chatting to a bunch of people recently who are setting up websites in Word Press and want to know which plug-ins I use. So to save me having to list them out every time someone asks, here’s a post that lists my Top 5 Plug-ins for SEO. Of course there’s plenty more out there, but these are the ones that fall into my “Must Have” SEO plug-in list.

All-in-One SEO Pack: This is the top plug-in that any half decent SEO specialist will recommend for WordPress. It literally works straight out of the box (metaphorically) and is easy enough for beginners while giving more experienced SEO practitioners enough options to refine their approach. The plug-in provides a range of handy SEO functions which include auto page titling and meta data, avoid common duplicate content issues, navigational link management and more.

Google XML Sitemaps: Sitemaps are a proven tool in improving a sites indexing performance in Google, Yahoo! and Bing. This handy plugin creates the XML sitemap automatically and alerts search engines when new content is created. It also creates a priority for your posts based on the number of comments it receives saving you the time of adjusting them manually.

SEO Smart Links: Internal linking within a website or blog can have a dramatic impact on rankings. This plug-in does the hard work for you – identifying specific search terms within your website and linking them to relevant pages or content.

SEO Friendly Images: How often do website owners forget to add “alt tags” to their images? Given they’re a proven way to boost the keyword density of content, this plug-in ensures you don’t miss an opportunity with any of your images.

Redirection: Websites are constantly evolving. Changing pages and removing content is an ongoing part of this process. The redirection plug-in helps you manage your website’s page redirects ensuring URLs don’t end up on 404 pages and more importantly so that you can ensure the link juice for discontinued pages is redirected elsewhere.

There is some other great plug-ins for pulling in relevant content, adding tags and leveraging your comments, plus much more – but as a bare essential, every word press website or blog should have five plug-ins I have listed above to boost its SEO performance.

If you have any other essential SEO wordpress plugins you use, share them below.

Source: ineedhits.com

Quality Score Bug Hits Google Ad-Words Accounts

Are you a Google AdWord advertiser suffering from sleepless nights due to a sudden poor quality score from Google? Well you can rest assured you’re not doing anything wrong. There’s a glitch in the AdWords quality program – a ‘score bug’ is affecting your AdWords reports.

Every Google adword advertiser knows the importance of getting a good quality score from Google as their cost per click prices depend solely on this score. With a bad quality score your CPC prices will inflate and will force you to bid a higher price which is not good news during the holiday season.

About three weeks ago Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land reported on a similar problem that hit Google AdWords creating turmoil for many advertisers by giving them poor quality score reports overnight. At the time, a Google representative assured all advertisers that the problem had been solved but it seems the bug is back again.

Here is the latest statement issued by Google on the AdWords Help forum:

It is understood that what is being described here is what appears to be a similar but separate issue that folks started seeing on Friday evening, November 19th. Engineering is taking a look into this, as a priority – and I will report back in this thread when I know more. In the meantime, my apology for the inconvenience and upset this issue has caused you.

So a word of caution to all Google advertisers would be that if you see any such sudden drops in your quality score reports Do Not Panic! As you just might have been become the latest victim of this bug which is only impacting reporting, not actual scores.

We are now waiting for a final word from Google confirming that the bug has been fixed and will update this post once that happens.

Source: ineedhits.com

Did Google’s Indexing Issue Hide a Secret Ranking Update?

Almost a month ago we wrote about a major Google indexing issue that prevented thousands of new pages from being included in Google search results. Mostly impacting blogs, the Google bug prevented new content from being indexed across a whole range of sites including our own blog and major sites like cnn.com.

Shortly after reporting the issue, a Google representative stepped in and confirmed they were experiencing a problem. On October 25, Google reported that the issue had been fixed, stating that content from the 19th-24th October would be reindexed again shortly.

After further investigation of the issue there is a possibility that Google made a tweak to their ranking algorithms around this time. According to a blog post on Alexa, sometime around October 21st, they noticed a change in traffic for a number of websites. A quote and screenshot from the post can be seen below:

There’s also a 14 page discussion on Webmaster World with a number of other users also seeing changes in their rankings and Google traffic. There have been discussions around the impact on long tail keywords, but it’s tough to confirm the exact nature of this update.

Source: ineedhits.com