Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

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Which Social Media Channel is Right for My Business?

Monday, August 30th, 2010

With all the buzz about Facebook lately and its ambitions to be the social hub of the Internet, many small business owners are wondering which social media channel they should direct their attention to.

How do Facebook and Twitter compare? Is it right for my business to invest in social networking?

To answer these questions, HubSpot pulled data from 2600 of its customers.  Companies were sorted by industry and were examined to see how many followers they had on each channel (referred to as the channel’s reach by Rick Burnes over at HubSpot).

From the chart below, we can see Facebook has more “reach” with B2C businesses…B2B businesses enjoy more success with Twitter.

Data from this chart doesn’t exactly mean you should only work with one and not the other. Considering Facebook’s expertise, ambitions and sheer scale of its plans, it would be unwise to not have a Facebook profile at all and focus solely on Twitter and vice versa.

And don’t fall in the trap of thinking your industry doesn’t use social media so it’s not worth considering. As with websites, blogs and SEO, being the first to step into to social networking will certainly payoff in the long run. Don’t be shy…experiment with social networking no matter what industry you’re in.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology | No Comments »

3 Steps to Making your Site worth Coming Back To

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

Not to diminish the advantages of SEO but it’s not the only consideration when marketing your small business online. While many sites depend exclusively on traffic from search engines, many people forget that getting “new” traffic is only one part of the equation.

Once you get someone to your site for the first time, you need to be sure the content is compelling and informative enough for them to return again and again. If visitors don’t return to a site, you’re putting yourself into the position of having to rely on visitors coming directly from the search engines. The problem with this of course is first-time visitors are least likely to subscribe or buy.

Your best customers will be those who have reviewed your site several times and know it better rather than first-time visitors coming from a search engine who just quickly glance at your page and move on.

So keep reading for three steps you can take to get first-time visitors to come back again and again.

Step #1 – Optimizing your site for the search engines

Of course, the first step is getting new people to your site. Optimizing your site to rank on page 1 in the search engines is key to making this happen. Be sure your site architecture is friendly to search engines and your content contains valuable keywords woven into the content. Meta and title tags do help and you also need to obtain inbound links from other sites.

Step #2 – Write great content that keeps visitors reading

Someone coming to your site for the first time is unlikely to return if they don’t entirely read the first page they land on.  If your site/business depends on people taking action on your site, you need to engage them from the very beginning so they’re interested in the entire page and want to come back for more. To succeed at this, you need to diversify your content beyond simple advertising slogans and the like.

Step #3 – Get people to come back again and again

For those of us who have sites primarily consisting of content, it can be quite a challenge to develop engaging content that keeps people coming back. You’re likely one of hundreds or thousands of sites offering information on the same subject. Simply adding more pages won’t keep people coming back…to do this, you must:

  • When compared to other sites on the same subject, your site’s content needs to provide more value
  • Add great content frequently and let people know you’re adding new stuff in the near future to keep ‘em coming back
  • Invite your readers to leave comments and suggestions to engage them with your site
  • Take full advantage of social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to get people talking about your content amongst their friends

To summarize, content driven sites need to stand out from the pack in order to maximize conversions.  Basically speaking, your content has to be good enough for people to want to come back again and again.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day, Writing for search engines | No Comments »

Twitter Now Fastest Growing Search Engine with 24 Billion Searches per Month

Friday, July 9th, 2010

What a difference a year makes!

This time last year, Microsoft’s Bing enjoyed the title of fastest growing search engine, experiencing 22% growth in its first year of existence.

But now, Bing can no longer claim that mantle as Twitter CEO Biz Stone proclaimed at the Aspen Ideas Festival this week, a gathering of the nation’s leading intelligentsia. Stone says Twitter is exceeding 800 million searches per day, which translates to 24 billion per month – almost twice as much as Bing and Yahoo combined!

(Last month, Bing had 4.1 billion searches and Yahoo had 9.4 billion)

Of course, this is nowhere near Google with over 88 billion searches a month but it’s quite respectable.

Lately, it’s been said you can jumpstart indexing of new content by posting it on Twitter in addition to your site since Google is constantly refreshing feeds from Twitter. With this newest data, you can safely assume many people are turning to Twitter to search for answers to their questions, news on current events and information on products and services.

Stone says Twitter has intentionally been trying to play this kind of angle – serving as not only a social network but a search engine as well. He argues there are many misconceptions regarding Twitter, saying that it’s “not a social network” but “…more like an information network or a source of news.”

Either way, Twitter is quickly becoming a relevant way to search for information online…we’ll see what some of the reports from comScore and others say when they come out. But if there’s any validity to Stone’s claims, you best consider how, when and if it’s wise for your business to jump in.

Evaluate the demand and presence of your industry on Twitter to get a better idea of when and how much effort you should put into it.

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4 Ways you can get New Content Indexed Faster

Monday, June 14th, 2010

When you’re cranking out great new content, you don’t always have the time to sit around and wait for Google to come and index it. Being passive like that can get your site left in the dust by more proactive SEOs and site managers.

Normal crawling is reliable – just not quick enough sometimes…very inconsistent in other words.

Being reliable is great but if you’re 5 minutes late for the train, all the reliability in the world won’t matter if you’re inconsistent – show up early some days and late on others.

So, what can you do to get new content indexed faster in the search engines?

Continue reading for four tips on getting your site content indexed faster and check out the video below for more.

Update your XML sitemap and “ping” Google, etc.

Your XML sitemap is basically a file containing links to all of the pages on your site. Unlike an HTML sitemap, it is only visible to the search engines. Updating this file with links to new pages provides the search engine spider a one-stop place for finding everything on your site. So to get indexed faster, update your XML sitemap when you post new content. But instead of waiting for the spider to come, ping them through Google’s Webmaster Tools and let them know you have updated your file. If you ping, they will come.

Use Pubsubhubbub protocol

Pubsubhubbub protocol is a server-to-server web hook-based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol that you can place in your site’s coding. You can create your own public or private hub that news aggregators like Google Reader, Friend Feed and Feedburner can use to find your new content. You can plug-in your Wordpress blog utility and Superfeeder to automate this process. Whenever you post new content to a PSH-compatible site, these aggregators will immediately be notified of your site’s new content.

Create a “tweet” on Twitter

We recently discussed this on SEOe – Can Twitter Get a Site Indexed in the Search Engines All by Itself? While it’s not a long term solution, “tweets” on Twitter can provide your site that initial boost to get the spiders to come and index your new content. Considering Google is now indexing “tweets,” simply posting an announcement of your new content will immediately be picked up by the search engine.

Ping-o-matic

Ping-o-matic is a service that allows you to “ping” a bunch of different web services and notify them of new content on your site, much like ringing an alarm bell to alert the world to your new stuff. Ping-o-matic is linked up with different blog directories and news aggregators like PostRank, News Gator, Bloglines, Google Blog Search and more.

It’s to your advantage to find different ways to get your site’s content crawled and indexed as quickly as possible. Your competition is likely working hard to do the same thing so you don’t want to be passive and think that great content alone will bring home the bacon. If a competitor is working hard to get their content indexed quickly, they will leave you in the dust quicker than you can blink.

Check out this video SEOMoz produced on the heels of the SMX Advanced conference for more.

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Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

5 Ways you can optimize your ‘Tweets’ for Search

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

It’s become clear from different blog posts and forum discussions that simple ‘tweets’ on Twitter can give your website the initial indexing and ranking boost it needs in the search engines.

We spoke the other day about whether Twitter is a good tool for getting your site indexed and ranked. While it can provide you with a good boost initially, you have to sustain that energy by following up with a good crawlable site that includes compelling, keyword-rich content.

So how can I optimize my ‘tweets’ for search that can translate into a good boost for my search engine rankings?

Continue reading for 5 steps you can use to optimize your ‘tweets’ for search.

1. Front Load Tweets

Treat your Twitter post like it’s a Meta description tag. You only have 140 characters to make your splash so be sure you put the most important part of your ‘tweet’ at the beginning.

2. Anchor Text

Be sure and get your anchor text into the URL you’re linking to from your ‘tweet.’ If you’re using a shortening service like bit.ly or j.mp (uri’s), use the custom naming options to get your anchor text in there. Use hyphens to separate words but don’t overdo it!

3. Custom Named Uri’s

When using a shortening service like bit.ly, you can take the first three words of your page’s title and use them as a custom uri, if appropriate. Start your ‘tweet’ with the URI and lead into the rest of the title and/or sentence, like a precursor. You can also include the URI in the middle or end of a sentence – it all depends on the document title.

4. Retweets

You can also recycle old ‘tweets’ that are still relevant. Front load retweets and unlike original ‘tweets,’ place credit at the end rather than the beginning. Other than that, treat retweets like you would a regular ‘tweet.’

5. Retweet Scrubbing

Go through your ‘tweets’ every so often and fix any case issues or typos you may find. You can even edit the title if the ‘tweet’s’ originator changed the title based on the destination document. This change fragments the meaning of a ‘tweet’ in some ways. Twitter’s new retweet feature prevents this from happening but doesn’t allow scrubbing.

These are just a handful of tips to get you started on harnessing Twitter to boost your site’s indexing and ranking potential. You would be surprised at what you can do in 140 characters or less!

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