Tag Archives: social media

Link Exchange is Dead. Now What?

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Link exchange no longer validLet’s face it. Search engines are not interested in making easy. By definition, is a set of ways to manipulate search results, so why should the?

Google has always made it clear that the best way to promote a website is by focusing on human searchers, rather than on robots and crawlers. In several algorithm changes, it specifically targeted links that serve no purpose other than SEO and content that serves purpose other than SEO and advertising revenue.

So basically, traditional link exchange – you link to my site and I’ll link to yours – is dead. Gone. Buried. No more. You get it.

What now? How should an honest small business use the mighty Internet for some promotion, then? Without swapping links, what CAN we do?

The answer is … (drum roll) … fresh content.

Rather than having a static website, have a content management system (CMS). This is a piece of software that allows you to create and edit the content of your website through your web browser. There are many free ones out there, each with its own following, its own community and its own add-ons. Personally, I prefer WordPress.

Once you have a WordPress site, publishing new content is child play. You log in, click “Add New Post”, give it a title, type in some new and interesting information for your clients and prospects – special deals, industry changes, responses to news items and stories about happy clients – and hit “Publish”. When set up correctly, WordPress will do the rest for you: it will notify the search engines about the new post, update your company’s Facebook page, tweet to your followers and add to the authority and search ranking of your site.

Because Google didn’t just kill link exchange and reconsider page optimization, it also started to promote fresh content and view your entire site as one optimization unit. If you consistently post on a focused set of topics, your site WILL rise, maybe even to the top.

Another important factor is Google+. By many accounts, whatever is shared on Google+ and/or given a +1 is considered favorably by Google and gets a higher search ranking.

So now, SEO is as easy as 1-2-3:

  1. Post fresh, relevant and interesting content that people will read and share
  2. Engage your audience on Facebook (for consumers) or LinkedIn (for businesses) and share your content
  3. Build your network on Google+ and display the +1 button prominently on your site

Of course, you may not have time for all this, but that’s OK. With the help of SEO professionals, you can find the most cost-effective and time-effective strategies and methods for your business and generate high impact content the works for your business.

Have a great day,
Gal

Facebook on Skype

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Skype Facebook tabJust when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder in the scene, they did.

I’ve just had to reinstall Skype for my wife and found out there’s a new version, Skype 5.0. When I was done installing it, the user interface looked very different from what I was used to.

The contact sidebar now shows your contacts’ profile images next to their availability status, making them appear more real and personal and actually encouraging you to give them a call.

There is now a Profile tab, with a status update box at the top and profile photos of your 10 most frequently used contacts. When you post a status update, it is added to your update history below your friend list.

Much to my surprise, it also contained a Facebook tab!

This once free-calling application turned paid-Internet-telephony-solution-for-the-masses is now fully integrated with Facebook, allowing you to check your wall updates, “like” things, post comments and updates, see a list of your friends and call your friends straight from Skype. Alas, clicking any other link takes you to your web browser and into some Facebook page.

Of course, there is now a way to import your Facebook friends into your Skype contact list for good measure, but the Facebook tab makes calling them on Skype so easy, it almost seems unnecessary, even if it does make sense.

This is a very clever way for Skype to gain market share, given Facebook’s enormous reach of over half a billion users. Facebook already has chat, but not Internet telephone with or without video.

Just thought you’d like to know,
Gal

Get Your Site Listed

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Google Search How long does it take to get your site listed?

One of my clients recently found out that, with my help, it can take as little as 6 hours!

I met this young man at a networking function and he told me his website had been launched 4 months before, yet there was no trace of it in Google Search results. In fact, if anyone typed the full site URL into the Google Search box, Google would tell them it didn’t know about the site.

When you try to offer your products or services to people and you tell them you have a website, one of the first things they do to check you out is search for your website. This man had given business cards, sent out emails and used various other ways to let people know about his site and he was embarrassed it was not indexed by Google.

“Leave it to me”, I said to him, “I’m going to do some thing real quick and your site should get picked up by the crawlers a lot faster than it would otherwise”.

I didn’t want to commit to a timeframe, because nobody controls ol’ Googlebot, but I had a good feeling about it.

So I went back home and spent about an hour creating some inbound links to my client’s website. No big deal, right? But by putting those links in places frequented by Googlebot, including sites, some magic soon took place.

After 24 hours, I searched for my client’s site and saw 6 results listed. “Not bad”, I thought, “Not bad at all”.

When I rang him to let him know, he said, “Are you kidding? I got up and checked first thing in the morning and already saw 3 results then. This is such a relief, man! Thanks”.

But actually, one of these search results had been labeled “18 hours ago”, which means it was picked up only about 6 hours after I did my work.

At the time of posting, there are 23 search results for my client’s site, including some PDFs.

Is you site not getting listed? Contact me

Social Networking Success

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TwitterIn the past few months, I’ve gone deeper and deeper into . As the Internet evolves, this medium now provides website referrals with implied trust. Basically, someone you “know” recommends something, so you are more inclined to go check it out.

When you sell something online, or just when you want to get your name out, social networking sites can be great promotional tools for you. Here are some of them:

  • StumbleUpon – very quick to bring traffic, but visitors only stick around if you can really grab their attention. Friends and groups are helpful, but once your page makes it into the SU database, it may get propagated by random users who “stumble upon” it with the toolbar
  • Digg – mostly news items and technology, but famous for bringing sites down due to the massive amounts of traffic sent over a short period of time. Requires time to build a following
  • – a “mini blogging” platform, surrounded and supported by a host of applications for filtering tweets, vetting friend requests and grouping friends. Tweets can go to and from your mobile phone while you are away, as well as to and from your website automatically
  • LinkedIn – invitation-only website for professionals and business people, featuring excellent group discussions and allowing you to build business affiliations, create joint ventures and find strategic clients online. Self promotion is frowned upon, so participation and adding genuine value are the best approach

Of course, there are others, like MySpace and Facebook, and the social interaction can quickly take up all of your time if you are not focused, so you must do your homework before choosing the best social networking sites to promote your website, pick the best tools and consider hiring people to help you do the work, while you are busy selling.

I’m doing quite well out of the social scene and getting good content, good referrals and lots of traffic for several of the sites I promote. If you’d like to get my help with your site promotion, let me know.

Happy marketing,
Gal