Twitter Helpful Quick Tips from @SEOMom2

The most recent SEO/SEM conference was PubCon in Las Vegas. Because I had clients that actually pay me to visit them and it will be next week, I was unable to have the time to head over to PubCon this year (next year I WILL be there!). But, no matter, I was able to feel like I was right there. I had Twitter.

Twitter is an online social service used to instantly message people all over the globe. What makes Twitter unique is that you “follow” people, friends or those with common interests and info you want and they “follow” others who then “follow” more people (Tweeps or Tweeple). By your mini conversations, or Tweets (nor more than 140 letters/characters), you gather “followers” who have other “followers’ who then have their own “followers”. This allows your messages to travel all over the place in an instant.

Once you are following and have followers you can sit back and simply feel like a fly on the wall for awesome quick and brief bits of news, information and general gossip – and you can contribute to it all at any point.

I was able to attend PubCon with the use of Twitter. I had friends and co-workers Twittering me bits of information, links to web pages with good or new information, blog posts, useful SEO tools and even live video streams to conference sessions. – Rumor had it that the live streaming wasn’t really allowed as the sessions were for “paying” visitors only. But, with Twitter, we were able to confirm that the session speakers were totally cool with the events. Yey for me – and special thanks to Chris Drake (@FirePowered – http://twitter.com/firepowered). I latched on to Chris when I found out what he was doing. I had no idea who he was, never met him before in my life, he just managed to Tweet at the right time when I was paying attention and noticed his message that he had live video streaming from his computer. Every day since Tuesday, I was able to attend some sessions.

Ok, so, now you have a bit of info on this Twitter stuff you should want to check it out. Well, go to Twitter.com and sign up, creating a username or use your own name (do yourself a favor and create an account with your own name no matter what) and start playing. My Twitter name is @SEOMom2. I was dubbed “SEO Mom” at Bruce Clay Inc because I always seem to take people under my wing, sort of a mother hen character. SEOMom was already taken so I added the “2” because of my two kids. – I also am @LydiaMazorol (my name, in case there was a question). This was done for personal branding and to keep my name so no one else could take it!

With a few quick tips on things that will make your Twittering more fun and useful you may get just as hooked on it as I have - I guess it’s safe to admit now to being a social media convert!

Some Twitter Quick Tips:

1)@username - the symbol used when you want another Twitterer to get the message, example, type:
@seomom2 Hi!
This will send me a “hi” from your Twitter account.

2)D username – “D” stands for Direct. Use a D then a space then the username instead of the @username to send a message that only the recipient can see, example, type:
D seomom2 Don’t tell anyone I sent this!
And no one but me will see!

3)# - The pound sign attached to the front of a word is a way to search tweets for a specific reference. You can search for any word but the # symbol in front helps identify that this particular word is worth searching for or referencing when looking for others info when using that word. Example:
I was able to attend #pubcon using Twitter.
I can search on “#pubcon” or even “pubcon” using Twitter search to see who else is talking about things going on at PubCon.

4)RT username – “RT” stands for Re-Twitter. One uses this generally to suggest that another username Tweeted the comment and you are Re-tweeting for your followers to see too. You can RT your own stuff too. Example:
RT @seomom2 Twitter Helpful Quick Tips: http://www.searchvisiblewebsites.com/blog/seoblog.html
Suggests that there was already a Tweet about this helpful web page. If the URL you point to is too long for the 140 spaces then there are tools to create shortened URLs, like TweetBurner and others.

5)Tweets, tweeple, twits, twitterverse – Miscellaneous Twitter vocabulary. You guess what they mean!

6)Twitter on your Phone – You can setup your phone to send and receive Twitter messages. You will send a message to 40404 in the US, 21212 in Canada, and +44 7624 801423 for all other international locations.
OR
Set up your phone with Twitterberry or go to m.twitter.com if you have internet on your phone. Blackberrys and I-Phones like Twitter – any phone with internet access can display Twitter streams.

7)Public verses Protected – You can set up your account for public or private viewing. If it’s private other Twitterers can still request your Tweets but you have to ok for them first.

8)Backgrounds – If you can create a graphic, you can create your own Twitter background. You can set it up to show a special picture, your business name, logo, phone numbers, email, whatever. Do it to help others get to know you better. And don’t forget to add a picture in your profile. It is recommended that you actually use your own photo – but, whatever!

9)Twitter messages show up in Google alerts. They can be set to show automatically in your Facebook. There are applications everywhere for special fun things to do and see in Twitter, like scheduling your Tweets or seeing who ranks highest in Twitter. You name it, it is out there. Search for them or just Twitter that question to your followers. You’ll be amazed at who answers and the answers you can get in a flash.

10)Ok, I am getting tired of writing about all the things you can do and how to use Twitter. I haven’t even suggested the social media aspects or the SEO value. That’ll have to be another post. Anyway, find additional applications, plugins and suggestions here: http://wtips.blogspot.com/2007/04/twitter-tools.html, a fellow Twitterer's, Warren Whitlock's book on the Twitter Revolution and Twitter’s own help here: http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=26

11)Last tip...now send me a Tweet that you are there: http://twitter.com/seomom2

Assessing a Web Site and your Client

To stay current, I just wrote a blog article on:
5 Steps (minutes) to Assessing your Client through their Web Site

It’s useful information for other SEOs and their sales team. But, I think it could also be interesting for a client to use for checking out their own website. Understanding issues related to how the online world can see you (and how they see your site) and evaluate you can be most useful in a variety of ways.

Also, use the information provided in the article to create your 5 step process to not only check and evaluate your site but the websites of your competitors. Use these 5 steps along with our more formal SEO Checklist to do a more thorough site assessment.

Here’s the list of the 5 steps – that should take 5 minutes to perform:

1) PageRank
2) site: command
3) SEODigger.com
4) Archive.org
5) View page source – meta tags, H1, quick coding check

Check out the article and let me know here and/or there if it was helpful. I hope it is!

Best Link Building Techniques

No time today - and for a while now - sorry! I've been traveling, training, SEOing for several important clients in the US and in Europe. Could things just quiet down for a brief second??!!

But, good news - and good information was collected over at SEOmoz on the "...Best Link Building Techniques". I saw it a bit late but added a few extra link building items myself that you might find interesting.

Read the whole blog - note the higher votes - take notes and off you go to work on this. This was a nice gathering of intelligent and useful link building tips for anyone with a website to look into.

The Silent SEO

Interestingly, I’ve been reading articles lately on Search Engine Optimization consultants, how to find them and what makes a good one. Today, there was an article by Rhea Drysdale, Death of SEO Transparency, that discusses that the best SEOs seem to keep their mouths shut and "secrets" safe.

Working for several years now as a top SEO (yeah, tooting my own horn here!), the one thing I noticed that makes a great SEO consultant is not the tips or tricks but how and when they use them! It’s a form of logic that is nearly impossible to describe or teach to someone else. It comes from “feeling” the search engines and “playing” with them day in and day out. It’s having each website and each individual industry act and react differently in the search engines because there are so many factors involved. So, telling all your “SEO secrets” will not give any one a real advantage over another if they don’t know how to use it anyway. – Does that make sense?!

I don’t believe in keeping quiet or holding back (ask anyone at Bruce Clay – hi guys!). Sharing information and a willingness to teach all that you know tells me you are secure with your knowledge, secure in what you can do with it and, I think, gains you a lot of respect in this or any other industry you are involved in.

The problem I have is that I spend more time working for my clients and getting their sites optimized for whatever keyword phrases we need than I have time for talking about SEO or blogging about it. I wish I had more time to work on my own website!! Look at it! Look at the Page Rank – yup! - not so optimized is it – not so search visible!!?!! Search Visible Websites site started about 4 months ago when I went solo with my SEO services. My first thoughts were “%@*&!!, Now I have to do my own keyword research, write all this content, I need to start blogging, write press releases, find any and every way to build links to my site, etc, etc.” Needless to say, I was not thrilled, mainly because there was no one to pay me for all that work! And you SEOs out there know it takes work! Lucky for me, enough people knew where I was and how to find me and things started from the get-go. That’s why I just don’t have time for all of this here!! (round and round we go!)

I hope and wish for continued openness and sharing of SEO tactics and ideas. The more we give the more the consumer can get a hold of and judge things so as to make informed, intelligent choices. Read my previous blog posting on How to Find a Decent SEO – Interviewing an SEO Consultant. This will help give those in the “not-know” a better idea on how to distinguish one SEO over another.

Hope this all helps!!

Five SEO things to do for your Business in 2008:

I’ve seen lots of predictions for 2008 with regards to search engine optimization and marketing. Most of these come from SEO firms and consultants. They all focus on what they think Google will do or how Universal Search (blended search), Social Marketing and such will change or affect how we will view search engines and their results on our websites. But I’ve not seen any predictions related to what businesses should do about all of these predictions and changes.

Five things businesses should plan on doing for themselves and their websites in 2008:

1) Create a blog.

I’ve said this before in an earlier blog post. Update your blog when you can but pick a topic to focus on and use that topic to link to a page within your site.

2) Check your anchor text use within your site.

Use consistent terms for individual pages to keep them distinct from one another. Don’t use “click here” or “learn more”. You can say “learn more about xyz”, like “learn more about SEO Services” as we would do. Note the only part highlighted is the link.

3) Create a sitemaps.xml page.

Make sure you have this XML feed of all the pages on your site. See www.sitemaps.org for information on these types of files accepted by Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

4) Get the word out!

Write Press Releases of new and fascination information or offerings you have on your site. Participate in others blogs or forums and add a reference (link) to a specific page of your site that you are responding to. Map your location. Create link magnets, or link bait, and let others know it’s on your site. Maybe add a video to YouTube and your site. And, if it’s not online then make sure you always, always reference your website in any publications, stationary, local news articles, whatever.

5) Hire an internal SEO for your organization.

Full-time is best but part-time is ok too. This will give you better first-hand knowledge and more control over SEO happenings with regards to your website. It also gives a sense of more responsibility to the newly hired SEO for results! – I have first hand knowledge of that one!! Hi, Richard! Hi, David!! (wink)


Note: We do have access to SEO specialists around the globe that will work locally, remotely or on a consultant basis so contact Search Visible Websites if we can help.

Blogging for SEO

You may be seeing that Blogs are an important addition to your website. I’m seeing news reports on this topic more and more… “Blogging for Business”, “Marketing with Blogs”, “Blogging for SEO” (oh, is that my blog post?!!!), etc… but is it just a trend?? I don’t think this one is.

I see blog posts as a great way to keep bits of information fresh and new for your site. Writing and maintaining an interesting blog can be great for readership and developing inbound links to your blog page. Inbound links developed here or through other link building techniques can only help your website with better search visibility. But, the information written about can also be used as supporting documentation to help strengthen the inter-linking of your website.

Now, don’t forget that you can set up your blog so that you have complete control. You don’t have to allow any and all comments if you don’t want to. I do suggest that when first starting a blog that you just write. Write a few posts before you consider opening any flood gates to comments. Advertise or market the fact that you have this blog for whatever reason. Let fellow bloggers know about your postings. See if there are others that you can comment on and refer to yours for a response. Even if you can’t get an active hyperlink for this you can still spell out your page reference and, hopefully, interest will follow and active hyperlinks will come about.

Pick precise topics or very specific subjects to write about. Don’t think about SEO while writing but do consider re-reading and editing your blog post for possible spelling or grammar issues. Then make sure that you have stayed on topic, add a few extra keywords that might help elaborate on the topic and help SEO then add a link to the page or area of the site that could best use the blog post for support. Know that your blog can spread your voice to others so write in a way that you feel comfortable. It will bring added benefit to your SEO efforts and your website will have better search visibility!

The blog post before this one suggests creating a plan for increasing link popularity, well… here you go!! Setting up you site with a blog directory is a great 1st step towards fulfilling this plan.

A lot of SEO to work with!

So much SEO to do and so little time to do it in!

I just haven't had the time I've needed or wanted to get this blog really started and focused on SEO and SEM issues that I'd like. So, I'll start tempting you with these topics...

How about Linking Strategies?!?

Or, ways to increase your site's Page Rank?

How about increasing your site's conversions - making more money! (no question mark here!!)
That's really it, isn't it!!! (or here!!)

Today's SEO blog will just start outlining the basics of Linking Strategies. I'll take things step-by-step and elaborate slowly because for those who know, and I mean really know, they don't have to read this! This is for those that have heard some of these things but it's over their heads and they are just trying to understand it all!

To start strategizing on building links to your site, you'll want an understanding of Link Popularity.

Link Popularity relates to the number of links and authority of web sites linking to your web site.

Search engines recognize when a site is popular. They base this determination on other sites that point to your site or any page in your site. Link popularity is factored into search engine algorithms. Increasing quality external links to your site can improve search engine rankings. You gain popularity points with the search engines for quality links. Quality links are defined by their content relevancy to your site as well as their own popularity. Understanding the basics to establishing good links will help increase your site’s popularity.

To gain additional link popularity, it is good to have information on how your site is currently doing. Determining if you have others linking to your site is invaluable information. Knowing if the search engines know about that is what gives you the popularity rankings. Then you can decide if you need to establish more quality links that point to your site. Or maybe, you need to get rid of badly placed links that point to your site, such as those related to link farms. Pay attention to the content and quality of a site linking to yours and the other sites that they link to as well.

Consider formulating a plan of action and goals for your web site, including procedures for a Link Building Campaign related to your site. If you are not sure on how to formulate a plan for increasing link popularity for your web site then consider reeading the next blog entry COMING SOON!

You can always email me with any questions. I don't mind at all!