The Social Media Mantra

Driving traffic to your website via social media has become a mantra for the 21st Century. I have called this phenomenon simply the social media mantra. Kind of catchy. I am often reminded that it has become the yellow pages of today. Sites like Twitter, Tumblr, and Plurk have changed the way that Users of the Internet find out about information, goods and services. It is like having our own online encyclopedia driven by other users of the Internet. Having a strategy for social media marketing cannot be ignored any more, unless you are just bent on self destruction.

In the not so distant past, back links to websites were one of the strongest indicators of how well a website was doing. Search engine ranking also looked heavily into the number of back links that were attached to any specific website. Links meant quality information is here, in a sense.

The problem with this "quantity style" way of ranking websites became apparent when people started buying and selling good links. There were also many other so-called black hat tactics used to just simple push traffic to websites. With these tactics, many websites achieved high search engine rankings by just throwing money at the links, and using sneaky tactics. As a result, the quality of information to be found on various high ranking websites suffered. These sites are easy to find, it looks like chidren in Primary school wrote the articles.

That is why you have websites like Bing now talking about so-called intelligent search engines. Their media ads have also poked fun at the same issue. I just love the gibberish ads from Bing coming out the States. Those Yanks can be funny.

Social media, on the other hand, is built on a "likeability factor" Users of the social media sites can vote with a "like or dislike," or thumbs up or down on whether content is good, or crap. In many respects, word of mouth via these types of social media engines is often driving what Users will see as fact or fiction.

So, on a site like Twitter, one can see who recommends a website, on Digg one can actually do research on who originally submitted a web page. If an Internet User finds quality social communities, like Hub Pages for example, they can, over time, have a certain expectation of the quality of the information found there. In a web link, you might find a consumer report from CNET, let's say. The link might just as easily have come from a Pay per Click ad, or an affiliate sales page. One never know for sure, till after the link is clicked.

In the final analysis, people don't want to waste time clicking on garbage websites. So, in true human fashion, people have banded together on social media websites to help each other find quality information, goods, and services. It's that simple.

If you happen to be one of the business people who can provide quality information, quality goods, or quality services, then the website in question will need to be driven by a social media campaign. Driving traffic with social media can mean the difference between Internet survival and prosperity.

Johnny Smoes is an IT Programmer and Principle with SEO Experts Australia, a company specializing in search engine optimization and website development. He frequently writes on issues about social media and search engine optimization. You can reach him at @seoaus2010 on Twitter.

SEO consulting: A must for all businesses online

SEO consulting is a need of the hour for every business online – big or small. It is a comprehensive subject with a growing body of knowledge and methodologies. A business, whose core area of interest is not Search Engine Optimization and internet marketing, would always find it tough to stay up to date with the latest information of the essential steps that only an SEO specialist can guide about.

If you run a business online and wish to attract potential customers, there’s no other way than either engaging an in-house team of SEO specialists or subscribing to one of the many search engine marketing services online.

Either ways, if you know what to expect from an SEO expert, you would stay benefitted.

And yes, there are free consultation options available. Just ensure that the suggestions are inline to your business uniqueness and complexities involved with it. A free consultation before an SEO service help you ideate on the works to be done and arrange/allocate budget accordingly.

Free or paid, an SEO consulting solution helps you gain a better insight on how your present marketing strategies are faring and what are the future steps likely to be in the future course of time.

A 5 Step Approach to Building Links

Getting people to link to a particular website is not always an easy proposition. But it is possible to stack the odds in one's favor just a bit. So, let's discuss a five point process for getting quality back links to a website.

Point One: Link to the Best
The first process of better link building is to find people who are interested in a particular website's overall theme. Right off the bat, this increased the odds of getting people to link back. Take time and look at the Google PR rating of the site, the Alexa score, etc. Determine which websites are the best in the industry. These are the type of influential websites that can help. The goal is to link to these.

Point Two: Link to a Rising Star
The second process involves further use of the research done in point one. Also take time and link to a website that is on the rise in a particular subject. These types of websites are often easier to get, and will pay dividends down the road.

Point Three: Write Content that is Interest to These Sites
The third point is fairly self explanatory. Get content on a website that is of interest to the best in any particular industry. It makes take some time to determine what is of interest to any particular site. But once the answer is found, it will pay dividends to include content like that on the website being developed.

Point Four: Contact the Website and Offer an Exchange on Promoting Links
The fourth point involves contacting the owners of the other websites, and offering an exchange of links. One simple idea is to offer two links to your one. This may help to make the deal more attractive. Offer links to only quality material. Ask about what is important to them to be promoted about their website.

Point Five: Develop an Ongoing Relationship
The final step in quality link building just involves continuing to build a relationship with that website owner over time. Stay in touch. Periodically check out the website and make notes about new and important events, ideas, pages, etc. Keep coming back and promoting.

This five point concept is simple in nature, but highly effective. It is built on age old principles of doing business through relationship building. Over time, the technique can help to build lots of quality links that will bring new readers to any website.

Johnny Smoes is an IT Programmer and Principle at SEO Experts Australia. He frequently writes about issues surrounding search engine optimization. You can contact him at @seoaus2010 on Twitter.

How Private is Personal Information?

How private is personal information? Privacy in the internet age is almost impossible to maintain. One may think that they have set up one’s computer to provide anonymity, but if anyone is on the internet their personal information is up for grabs. While there has been serious work done to keep names, as well as personal banking information safe, other important information about individuals is for sale everyday.

What exactly constitutes personal and private information is the real issue. Laws protect the selling of individual names. That is the definition, per se, of personal identification. However, with the advent of the internet, companies gather information about every aspect of personal and corporate life except names. Does that still mean that one’s identity is still anonymous?

I would contend that no, it does not. By the use of cookies and beacons, companies gather information about what users look at on the net. It then stores that information and continues to add to that file on some distant server. This information is also for sale.

That does not sound like anonymity to me. For instance, say that I look at fly fishing sites or home beer brewing sites. That is enough information to let company “A” sell those little bits of information to other companies in those businesses. So I have never been on those sites, but I am suddenly getting ads tailored to those companies. Many times, this is based on storage of an IP address for login.

The search engines of course, are privy to that information and my queries will be directed more towards my personal preferences. At that point, I no longer have wide open access to all the information available on the net. My world has been narrowed down considerably. Do I need access to everything available on the internet? Probably not, but I would like to be the judge of that, rather than some server somewhere looking at my past searches and keeping me in the same information pool. That is, essentially, my argument.

Laws will probably have to be enacted to protect not only personal names and identifying account numbers as personal information, but also personal preferences. While it is not too concerning that companies know about favorite hobbies, there are implications regarding other areas of personal life.

Here are some other theoretical possibilities for and against the collection of statistical data. It is based on the issue of medicine. If a person has medical symptoms that they investigate on the internet that would take them to sites about diabetes or cancer, can their insurance company then decide not to cover them for a pre-existing condition? On the other hand, looking up the symptoms of the flu does help world medical organizations keep track of infection rate. It gives a fairly accurate picture of where flu cases are more numerous, perhaps a bit better than even local health offices. There are always going to be a fair number of people who will be able to ride out the flu at home with over the counter medications. So tracking may not always be a bad thing.

It is always a good thing to remember that personal information is being tracked. Login IP addresses, locations, times of day, etc., are being stored. Maintain the best software that you can to keep the cookies, flash cookies and beacons to a minimum. At this time it is hard to find software that can keep all tracking devices off your computer. Vigilance is the current best plan of action.

Johnny Smoes is an IT Programer in Victoria Australia. He frequently writes on issues of internet security. You can read more of his work at http://ping.fm/ywuiO or http://ping.fm/GUc9w

The Chicken or Egg Dilema for SEO Experts

The chicken or egg dilema for SEO experts goes something like this: which Comes First, Web Design or SEO?

When you are likely to consider your next web design change, you may want to consider the SEO version of the old chicken and egg question. Which comes first, web design or SEO? Both will ultimately be important. One the one hand, web design can appeal to the human eye, and get people excited about sharing links with your site. On the other hand, good search engine optimization makes it possible to find the site in the first place.

What I am going to argue is that SEO considerations need to be built in from the beginning. Web design that is "out of the box," pre-designed, or even pre conceived can make it harder to get good search engine optimization. Yes, you have to consider the architecture of the site. You have to consider how you are communicating your message, and how you will get people to respond with contact information, sales, etc. The security of your underlying code and the overall functionality of that code are all important. But all of this must be designed with SEO in mind from the very beginning.

Poorly built sites may make it hard for search engine spiders to "crawl" the site. An SEO Expert that hasn't considered "how we are going to get links" may make it harder to get people to back link. We may have designed our site; so that the best potential links spots are buried too deeply, making it hard to get people to stay that long. We may have a wrong strategy about "do follow" or "no follow" linking.

We need to take the process from a different approach. Start with developing a strategy for getting critical information to people quickly. Think from the other person's erspective. Design the site so the best "link bait" opportunities are easy to find. Follow simple, basic principles about designing content for search engine spiders. The results could be dramatically better.

As we consider the overall web design of our coming change, let's make sure we have asked and answered these types of questions:

• What does my site offer to other website designers that would make them want to link to my website?
• What does my site offer to any visitor that would make them want to share that content on their favorite social websites?
• Out of all the information that exists, that I could put on my website, what relevant information is in demand (or soon will be). Out of that type of information, what part is not being communicated well on other sites?
• How do I need to effectively keyword target that demand?
• What functionality/organization will make my site more attractive to search engines?
• How do I build ongoing SEO refinement and growth into my overall business plan?
  
  

The chicken or egg dilema for SEO Experts gets a lot easier with a little planning. A web design that is built around these guiding principles has a better chance of succeeding. It will be more easily found by search engines, and will ultimately rise in rank quicker. Further, you will get more people to want to connect to your website. This will make the job of your SEO expert much easier.

Johnny Smoes is an IT Programmer and Principle with SEO Experts Australia. The company is located in Australia, but does business world wide. He frequently writes on topics of search engine optimization, web design, and search engine marketing. You can get more information at SEO Experts Australia.com.au or Zanity.com.au.

Finding Good SEO Help

Finding an SEO expert is not always as easy as you think. There are lots of people out there who just want to con the public. There are also lots of people who know a little about SEO, and market as such. At SEO Experts Australia, we work very hard at keeping traffic moving for our customers. So, we wanted to share a little on what you should look for in a good company.

Rule One: check their customers. You need to be able to see the type of work they are doing for their customers. Ask for referrences. They should be able to provide actual testimonials, data, etc. that shows what they have done for their customers.

Rule Two: be aware of the tactics being used for getting traffic. On a very high level, anyone can tell you that SEO and PPC are good ways to draw traffic to your site. But how, exactly, will that happen? Quite frankly, that is just the beginning anyway.

You should have a working plan for email, direct traffic, organic searches, social media sites, and a host of other things. Your SEO person needs to be able to give you a clear strategy on how this will work.

Rule Three: what will be the budget? How much are you willing to spend on marketing your website? There are lots of good companies to use, to help you with getting Traffic to your website. If you low ball your budget, though, you should know the stretegy for getting the most bang for your buck.

You can only expect so much work for $25 a month. But if you choose to go that way, you should know what will be done for the, let's say, hour of work you will get. (You'll be lucky to get an hour!)

Rule Three: good SEO takes a long time. The best are spending the time to get it done right. Make sure you have a good idea of how much of the budget is going to PPC (pay per click), SEO, article writing, etc. Make sure you also know what part of your website needs SEO. You may want to focus all the work on just a couple of high hitting pages.

Rule Four: measure everything. You need to have analytics on the website that will tell you how many people are visiting the site. Good search engine optimization help from any SEO experts will require a knowledge of how many people are visiting the site. A Google account can start this for free. Content management systems like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and others can also let you install a plugin that will do the analytics you need. It is where the rubber hits the road.

Finding good SEO help can be a challenge, but these basic ideas will help you get it done. Good luck in finding an SEO expert to help you with your website. We are always glad to help. For more information, check out http://ping.fm/7cL8o for the SEO expert near you.

Will India Shut Down the Blackberry?

Will India shut down the Blackberry? Research in Motion is again negotiating with a foreign country to keep its Blackberry up and running. The issue is the encryptions that the Canadian based country has on all e-mails and IM’s. In this day and age of increased vigilance against terrorist activities, the encrypted messages make it impossible to monitor e-mails and instant messaging. That is of great concern to intelligence agencies around the globe.

RIM made a deal with the United States to have servers that handle Blackberry traffic there in such a way that is internal security friendly. Elsewhere Blackberry communications are handled and encrypted by RIM servers in Canada and other countries. But once the deal was cut with the US, other countries have jumped on the bandwagon.

RIM just recently came to terms with the Saudi Arabia to insure that service will continue in that country. European countries are also concerned about the encryption and are reportedly in various stages of discussion with RIM. India has set a date of August 31, 2010 to resolve their security concerns. If there are no terms reached, Blackberry service will not be available after this time.

India and RIM will most likely come to an agreement before service is discontinued. The affect on the business community would be far reaching and disastrous for both parties. There are a little over 1 million Blackberry users in India and it is one of the fastest growing segments for RIM. Neither party wants service to end.

RIM is walking a precarious tight rope. Part of its appeal is its top of the line, tight security. Individual governmental demands are slowly chipping away at that security which companies absolutely demand. Proprietary information needs to be protected as well as national security. RIM so far has managed to do an excellent job of keeping everyone happy.

If you are using your Blackberry to work on your website, post SEO related articles, or even log into your website to do search engine optimization, you need to keep an eye on this topic. It could effect your ability to work from almost anywhere with the Blackberry.