Awesome Social Media Optimization (SMO) Tips for Webmasters

With more and more consumers logging onto networking websites like Facebook and Twitter, The need for incorporating social media tools into a website and marketing strategies is becoming highly important for webmasters and companies alike. But every now and then I meet someone who asks me “Hey how do I use these social media optimization tools correctly?”

That is when a thought struck my mind saying “Hey that could a good subject to write on”. So, I thought that in this post I will cover how to bring the power of social media to your website and also how you can maximize the effectiveness of your site’s social media features.

# It’s time to bring in the twitter birdy

Twitter is the friendly birdy next door, and it can help you tell your visitors that your website is alive and kicking. Therefore, it is a good idea to add in a twitter stream to your website, because it will make your website appear fresh, even if you haven’t added anything new to your website.

You might think that just adding a twitter button to your website would be good enough but there is a catch in that. See, if you just add a twitter button to your website, it will mean that every time a visitor clicks on that, he/she will leave your website completely and will be redirected to your twitter account. And the bad part is that they might never return. Yes, it happens.

So, adding your twitter stream is a better alternative as it keeps your visitor on the website and the visitor is not redirected anywhere, simply because your stream is now running live on your website. Also, put in some additional features like the ability to connect to their own accounts directly from your website and re-tweet your posts to their account, and you could ensure optimum user participation and socialmedia optimization. 

#Make your Website Revolve Around Your Brand

Your website is how you will reach your potential customer and it is always a good idea to make your website brand central, and by brand central I mean make your website a concentrated central point for everything that is related to your brand on the World Wide Web. Just like we discussed Twitter above, make sure to incorporate Facebook as well. And if you or your company has posted videos online on video sharing websites like YouTube, then make sure you embed those videos on your website as well.  Basically, bring in everything that you have online to one single centralized hub.  

Showing feeds of conversations that people are having about your company, videos that people have been tagged with your company name, the positive reviews etc. Basically it helps to keep the visitors engaged and also helps you to show the positive feedbacks in real time as well as respond to negative feedbacks fast and more effectively, which is of course very essential as any social media consultant would advise you.

# Don’t Bloat your Website with a Social Media overload

When it comes to social media optimization, it can be very tempting for a webmaster to fall for what I would like to refer to as ‘A social media trap’ and what it means is ‘when a webmaster begins to include even the social media sources that are irrelevant to his website.’

An example of which can be a YouTube video of a low quality uploaded by you and might not be good to share with your visitors. Also, a Twitter account associated with the website which has not been updated in ages is not good to be featured in the Twitter stream that we discussed earlier. So, my advice would be to only include the most relevant social media streams and content on your website.

But that’s just me. I mean there are tons of other methods that can be implemented and suggested by any other social media analyst like myself, but these are just a few of them that I thought would prove beneficial for anyone looking forward to bringing in the power of social media onto their websites.

If you have any suggestions or questions, I would be more than happy to hear them. Please leave a comment for me below and I will surely get back to you amigos.

Stay Blessed! 

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Tips for Website Designing That is Tailored for the Market

No matter what your targeted niche is, it is very important for you to ensure that you have a website that is tailored for the real world market. I have been providing website designing services for a very long time and have worked with many bigshot clients on some really prestigious projects.

I have seen a lot of websites online, where people have invested a lot of money but the website didn’t pay off. And what’s the use of having a fancy, high-cost website, if it is not helping you sell stuff or market your services.

Today i will discuss some key points with you on how you can ensure an effective web design and provide optimum benefits from your web designing services…

#Perform an Industry Analysis

I believe that the key to creating websites that are tailored for the market is to perform an effective analysis of the industry that you are targeting with your website. The concept of the website design should be according to the dynamics of that particular industry as no two buyers are the same. Remember, a theme that works for a company that makes pens, might not work for a company that makes cars or airplanes.

# Going through a competitors website

I personally always prefer to go through my client’s competitors websites, when i am about to start working on a design for them. Trust me, it will not only help you to understand the industry better but also the design aesthetics that industry follows. You can take my word for it, if you make it a habit then it will boost your web designing skills and overtime it will become easier for you to decide on a design for any industry.

# Go Through the Demographics of the Targeted Market

I have always made sure that I design websites which complement the targeted demographics of a particular client. If you are a designer and want to bag some great web designing projects, then you have to make sure that you meet this criterion. See it’s quite simple, for e.g. if you have been assigned to design a website that is about kids bicycles and you have designed a website that looks mature and seems to be targeting older people, then it will become a very bad example of website designing on your part. So ensure that you are closely following the demographics during the design phase.

# Testing your Design

It is the most important stage of website designing; you need to make sure that your creation is fit to go live. And in order to do that, you need to first test your concept on an experimental basis. A good way to do that is to include volunteers from the age group that your website is targeting and get their reaction on the design that you have created.

Good reviews will mean you are good to go, whereas negative reviews will mean you have to rework on some of the aspects of your website. Trust me; it might be time consuming but every great website designer knows that it will help them build credibility in the market in the long run.

You can ask any web designer or if you know someone from a web designing company, then you can personally go and see how those guys work. Believe me, it is not just me, but any experienced web designer will advise you on doing the same what we have discussed so far.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and views with me, and if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line folks!

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Tips for Aspiring Bloggers to Optimize a Blog for SEO

Being an avid blogger myself for a couple of years now, I have never underestimated the power of search engine optimization to get my blogs to rank high on the search engines. Since i am a guest blogger for many companies, I make sure, that i incorporate a whole lot of keywords into my blog posts and help drive in traffic to the company blog that I am writing for. After all, that is what professional bloggers writing for different companies, targeting different niches do…

Well, today I will lay out the importance of writing seo friendly blog posts for anyone who aspires to be a professional blogger. See, professional blogging is a competitive field and unless you are blogging for yourself, you need to incorporate keywords into your posts and also need to know exactly why writing seo friendly blog post is so important in the first place.

Everything apart, let me lay out some points that I have learnt over the years…

# Companies Blog solely to generate traffic

When I started blogging, i made a major mistake of ignoring seo keywords and wrote what my heart felt. On a typical day it would have been great isn’t it?? After all, blogging is all about being expressive…

The only problem was, on that particular day, i was working on my first blogging assignment for a major footwear brand. Not such a good idea now, is it? And of course I was criticized for being an amateurish everyday blogger and blah blah blah!

As I had just started on the path of professional blogging and didn’t have a clue about the importance of search engine optimization, i walked out of there and went to meet my friend, who had been blogging professionally since a year then, and that is when I learnt the most important lesson…

“Companies blog solely to generate traffic” and that’s the bottom-line. So every aspiring blogger who wants to blog professionally needs to know how to incorporate seo friendly keywords into their blog posts, and at the same time, the post needs to be engaging enough for the reader. Companies need to generate traffic and a blog does that for them much better than their static website and helps them speak to their target audience in a casual and friendly manner.

# The keyword density needs to be kept in mind
One major factor that a professional blogger needs to keep in mind every time he is writing a blog for some company is to ensure adequate density of keywords for search engine optimization to function properly. Too many keywords and the blog would be spammed by search engines and too less would render it invisible on the search engine rankings.

So, you have to make sure that you are incorporating keywords in just the right amounts, for any online marketing company to help optimize that blog post that you have just written. So, start practicing this keyword density thing right now, and with practice and time you will know exactly when, where and how many times you need to use the keywords assigned to you by the company you are writing for.

The competition is stiff and with thousands of people aspiring to become a professional blogger, what you do and what you don’t is going to set you apart from the rest. Please do share your views with me and let me know if you have any questions… Take care!

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How Online Reputation Management (ORM) Services Help You?

As a blogger and an active participant on every known location on the internet, there was a time when every time I used to hit up the World Wide Web, I used to find some nasty comment or forum where I had been bombarded with negative comments. And that’s just me; imagine if I were running a company and such negative comments and reviews for my company had been making the rounds of the internet. After all online reputation management services were only a dream back then.

If it were a few years back, there would have been nothing I could have done about it and had wished and prayed to god saying “Please god do something, so the people ignore these comments” but I always knew nobody would have ignored it anyway. And we all know how disastrous a negative comment can prove for a company.

But thankfully, today you can do what I couldn’t do back then. Yes, finally you can get rid of all those negative comments about yourself on the internet, and start with a clean slate. All you have to is leave your worries to an online reputation management company and you can put all your worries to rest.

I have hired the services of an online reputation management company myself and today I can boast of a completely clean and positive image online. Online reputation management services can help you…

Repair the Damage

Remember when I said I used to pray to god to repair the damage?? Well, guess what, ‘God only helps those, who help themselves’. And online reputation management services are a lifesaver when it comes to repairing the damage that has been done to you or your company. How?? Well, by….

• Removing all the negative comments about you on the internet
• Managing socialmedia pages and keeping your customers and blog/website visitors connected about the latest news about you and your company.
• Keeping lines of communication open between you and your existing customers/visitors and also enables potential new customers/visitors to take part in the conversations.
• Bringing in positive critique from customers/visitors, since now you they can easily get their words across to you, so they will be much happier about it. Isn’t it?

And that’s just one point and that I have covered there, because there are still a lot of things that come under online reputation management. Soon I will be covering the other vital aspects of this unique service.

Till then leave some comments for me to read and reply to. I absolutely love suggestions and questions, so feel free to shoot them my way.

Have fun! :)

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Why You Need Social Media Marketing?

I am sure you must have heard the term social media marketing or social media optimization on previous occasions too. And also the fact that smo has been creating ripples across the web for many years now. I personally was skeptical about this whole trend up till two years back and was only concerned about getting my blog, Search engine optimized.

Until i saw one of my friend’s blog getting far more views per month and a readership that was far greater than what i had for my blog. I was really surprised at the whole thing, since my friend had just started writing a food blog a few months back, and I had been writing a travel blog for almost a year back then.

And it was only because I had absolutely ignored the social media marketing aspect and had only concentrated on the search engine optimization part all along. But now it is a different story altogether, because now my travel blog has a whole lot of readership and has the loyal following that i had always craved for. Smo services are absolutely necessary in tandem with seo services both have different functionalities altogether.

Let me break it up for you…. Social media marketing helps you by

# By targeting visitors even when they are not searching through search engines

I guess you must have paid attention to the tiny thumbnail like ads, when you use Facebook, YouTube or any other open platform. Yup, that my friend is a direct result of social media marketing, it’s quite obvious that we all know that people do click on them, and land up on the official website or Facebook page of that particular individual or website that is being promoted. And it happens when people are not actively searching through search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing.

I know that a lot of people who are novices, have this notion that what if the money that they are spending on smo services end up being wasted on displaying ads to individuals who might  not actually be interested. Well the answer to that is simple…

# Check your Facebook

You definitely must have seen the ads that show up on your profile for e.g. ‘eminem’ (and you happen to be a fan), ‘Harley Davidson’ (you love cruisers). See the pattern; the only ads that show up on your profile are those in which you are genuinely interested.

See Facebook is an open platform and recently it has become the favorite for companies that deal with smo services. Sure Facebook does not sell your personal information to advertisers but when you sign up for an account and even after that you keep updating your interests from time to time.

And that is how smo works, a social media marketing company is clever enough to make use of every single penny that you spent to target the audience that can benefit your company, based on their interests and demographics. Further a social media marketing company helps you by… 

# keeping lines of communication open between your company and your customers

Your customers and website visitors want to speak to you and a Social media marketing company gives them the chance to talk to you by maintaining Facebook pages, twitter accounts and periodic newsletters that they might send to your customers and subscribers.

Basically they make sure that the power of an open platform is used to its optimum efficiency and people can let you know what they like and what they hate. And also the suggestions that might want to give.

Social media optimization gives you an opportunity to talk to your customers/subscribers. And make sure that you appear concerned about the needs and worries of your existing as well as potential customers/subscribers. This way you can build up market reputation faster and more effectively.

Smo services are not a new thing really, and it is as of right now being used by corporates and even political leaders and celebrities are using it. If you have any questions regarding smo or there is any other sort of confusion in your mind, then just leave me a comment and I will get back to you guys.

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How to create a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendly post?

Every now and then my readers have asked me about how to write blog posts and articles for their websites that are search engine optimization friendly, but also interesting to read. You must have seen a lot of articles and blog posts on the net that are optimized keeping seo services in mind, but seldom make for an interesting read, as the writer is more focused on the seo friendly aspect more than the readership aspect.

There are a lot of things a blogger needs to keep in his mind to make sure that his readers don’t suffer as a direct result of making the post seo compatible. Because at the end of the day it doesn't really matter if your blog or website is ranking high on the search engines if it doesn't have a decent readership.

A few tips that I can give you to make sure that your blog is SEO friendly as well as makes sense for the readers are…

• Ensure that you write in simple and effective words incorporating keywords where they make sense.
• Don’t just focus on keywords alone as including a whole lot of keywords will lead to your article or blog post being spammed by Google.
• While incorporating keywords into your blog or website make sure that you break your keywords to ensure an effective Search engine optimization friendly article.
• If you think you are not an effective writer in terms of seo, then the best solution would be to hire an online marketing company that can take care of making your posts optimized for search engines.
• Hiring an SEO company can also ensure that you have a dominating online presence and it can also help you reach your users faster and more effectively.

Well I think that the above points can help anyone maintain a top of the line blog which is search engine optimization as well as reader friendly. The basic point that I would like you people to know is that “we must always ensure that we maintain a balance when it comes to search engine optimization as well as readership”.

Just keep in mind that most of the commercially successful blogs or websites on the World Wide Web are most likely to be backed up by a competent online marketing company taking care of their search engine optimization needs. So, it is very likely that somewhere down the line, you will eventually need to hire an SEO company, if you ever decide to benefit from monetizing your blog or website.

Since, without proper online marketing handled by a competent company, you can never actually reap the full benefits of monetizing your blog or website.  Hence, it will become absolutely imperative at some point of time to hire quality seo services.

If you have any questions regarding search engine optimization or which seo company to hire in India, just leave a comment below and I will be glad to reply back to your queries related to search engine optimization.

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Choosing a Web Designing Company

People are often confused when looking for a web designing company to take care of the designing aspects of their website. I mean obviously, even if someone doesn’t actually want an e-commerce website but just a personal website where they can show off their special set of skills, it has to be visually appealing right?

Well, this is where most of us end up being confused as to how to make sure that the company that you decide to hire for your specific needs would be able to provide you with the best overall website designing services for your website.

There are a few certain key points that I would recommend you, in case you are confused like I was a few years back when I decided to get my very own website…

# Custom web designing

It is always a good idea to ensure that you opt-in for a website designing company that addresses your specific requirements. See the thing is that we all have different needs and requirements when it comes to getting a website designed. Remember, when I talked about getting a website just to show off certain skills?  Well, that’s exactly the deciding factor, since if you want to get a website strictly for E-commerce, then the personal thing won’t work for you and vice versa. So it is very important that you choose a company with a strong background in providing custom web designing services.

Since, hiring a company with a strong background in providing web designing services would prove to be a very good investment in the long run because your website will get your word across the World Wide Web.

# Check whether the company has a strong portfolio

When I was seeking out a web designing company to get my personal website designed, this was one of the most important factors, and then again, trust me, it is not really that difficult to check whether a company has a strong portfolio or not.

Every web designing company these days put up screenshots of the websites that have been designed by them. So, you can always check up on that, on the contrary you don’t even need to look at the portfolio. Just a look at the website designing company’s website will give you a pretty good idea how proficient they are in providing web designing services.

How?? Well just check these aspects of designing on a company’s website that is providing web designing services…

·         Is their website easy to navigate??

·         Is there sufficient space for the content to be posted??

·         Does the website follow design aesthetics properly??

·         Does the website look good on older computer screens as well??

See what I mean? Choosing web designing services isn’t rocket science, all you need to do is ensure a few key points and you are good to go. So, I hope that you had fun reading my post and I proved to be of some help to you guys to choose a company that suits your web designing requirements.

I would love to read and reply back to your comments, so if you have anything to say, or you want to ask me a few more questions regarding web designing, just leave a comment and I will get back to you.

Have a great day guys!

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