Top 5 UNUSUAL Search Engine Optimisation mistakes

 I assume we all know about usual SEO mistakes – lack of original content,  not having sitemap and robots.txt,  wrong alt image text attributes,  accidentally keyword stuffing, etc. But there are many mistakes which are less known and not considered by many of website owners, even SEO companies.

  



Putting Important Text As An Image

There are so many beautifully designed websites on the Internet. But, there is something strange with them. How many times it happens to you, when you want to copy part of text from some page, and put your cursor over it, you can’t select it? That is because some ‘smart’ web designer rendered whole page into gif or jpg image!!! Maybe website looks awesome, but search engine robot will not find any searchable text on page. Therefore , rankings will be catastrophic! Don’t do that, at least don’t let the designer to render whole page into image. Avoid changing your most important headlines into images.
 
Flash websites and JavaScript 

Similar thing. It might be attractive for users, but not to search engines. If you really want that your site is Flash based, you should provide an HTML version as well  for search engine. Google spider can’t read flash, therefore can’t index it. If you want to find out more about flash tips, read this article about optimizing flash sites.  


JavaScript: Search engines do not read it. In case you have JavaScript menu, then you should necessarily  build a sitemap. Also, consider to put the links in a “noscript” tag  because of “Crawling”.




 Same Title And Meta Description On Every Page Of The Website

Let users and  search engines know about every page on your website. Each page is unique. Each page has its own special function.  So, change the title and meta descriptions  to match the content on that particular page. It is possible to optimize each page  of website for couple of a important search phrases. You can take huge  advantage with this method  and rank well for several search terms  at the same time, targeting few longtail phrases for each page.

Neglecting the Old URLs while redesigning your website

People used to find  pages o your website based on the information that search engine robots compiled. You will trow away all the traffic you built up before, if you get rid of old URLs. Robots  will send people to pages that no longer exist. You should avoid it.
If you have to make redesign, just stick to the same structure that your old site has. Keep the same url addresses for the new page. In case you don’t want to keep old structure of your website, then use so called  "permanent redirects": Make a .htaccess file which  will tell search engines to permanently redirect traffic from an old url to a new url. Doing that, you will send a "signal" for search engines, which will soon change their listings from the old urls to the new urls.
 
Dynamic URL’s without keywords in it.

Many  people have  CMS such as Joomla or Drupal. CMS use dynamic urls with all kinds of random letters  and random numbers in the url. The words in your URL are very important signals to search engines what that page is about. Wordpress, for example,  allows you to control your urls. Search engines read words like humans so your URLs should be readable to both humans and spiders.
 
"Splash Page"

Splash pages can have amazing design, but they are disaster when it comes to SEO, because  spiders are looking for text, but there is no text on a "splash page." Home page of website is the most important page. That page has the best chance of being optimized.Don’t  use it to place some nice picture. I am sure you know that search engines don't like splash pages very much.Also, huge majority of people are annoyed by clicking and clicking to finally view the content. Splash pages – one of the things you must avoid, except if you are making them just on affiliate purpose.

Why is Social Networking so Efficient in Website Promotion?

It has become very difficult for surfers to find the most relevant sites to their queries. Even Google’s results even though the best compared to other search engines often are not the most relevant. In an effort to avoid this clutter, web users are coming together in social search engines such as Rollyo.com to create a searchable collection of websites with useful content. 

There are many different types of online communities that you can join and most will help you get a certain amount of traffic to your site. Also, there are many simple ways to obtain one way links: directories, articles, press releases, and most importantly- social bookmarking. 
Let's get one thing straight: Link exchanges are a thing of the past. The only time when link exchanges work is when they provide useful information and products to your customers. Otherwise, link exchanges are nearly useless. 
Social Bookmarking is present and future of internet marketing. Now is 2012, you can't do SEO without SMM (Social Media Marketing) . Social bookmarking  gives YOU all of the power.  In social bookmarking, you store links to your favorite websites online so you can access them from any computer that you are using. The important thing is you can make your collection of links public so that others can also use them. You select a site and use a social bookmarking website to gain one automatic backlink. Then, you add tags to the listing. The secret here is that you get a link to your site on every single tag page as well. You must make sure that your website offers unique, relevant, highly valuable content. If it does, other people will bookmark your website as well. The more people bookmark your site, the better traffic you will gain from that social bookmarking website.
Social Bookmarking is the best way to create an internet buzz about your products or your company. If you offer unique content that people will find useful, you have outstanding odds of ending up on the front page of social bookmarking websites. If your link is on the frontpage, you will receive a large amount of traffic for the effort.


If you do not offer outstanding content on your website, you will still gain the all important one way links to your website. Even negative reviews of your site will not change the ways the search engines see your link. Search engines look for new relevant content. All you have to do is provide it to them!
The most important aspect of social bookmarking is spam. Spamming of search engines is on the rapid decline, because search engines have become smarter than most of us. Most sites allow their users to either vote on the importance of a site, or allow them to ignore you and your site slowly goes away. Don’t ruin this great opportunity for the other internet marketers out there. Social bookmarking is based on the idea of a sites popularity being decided by the visitors of that site. Make sure you are adding important sites that you use every day to these sites, as well as your own personal websites. Social bookmarking is meant for the entire community to enjoy. You should cater your bookmarks to a person that would find them, not the major search engines. You can be sure that the search engines will figure out how to find social bookmarking spam, just like they’ve found all of the other spamming methods.


Some ways for increasing traffic to your website through Social networking sites:


1) Blogs - Most blogs allow you to post comments. You can achieve a free back link for simply commenting on a story. 
2) Friends- The more friends you have in your network, the more visibility you will have when promoting. 
3) Clipart and Screensavers -  Offering these for  free is also a good way to get more traffic (if you have skills to make them).
4)Content -  If  you write about interesting topics, you are going to do well on the social networking sites. People seem to like top 10 lists, top 20 lists, etc. I suggest that you look at digg.com to see what gets the most diggs.
You can also increase traffic through through Profile Pages, bulletins, etc. Social bookmarking sites such as delicious  or Squidoo are  very popular as well, and you can definitely use them to promote your site. 

Be a part of a few of the more popular social networking websites. These memberships will be only destined to build your own network and not of overt marketing. As your social network grows you can invite your contacts to join you on the social networking website. This should start a sequence reaction that will get them inviting their own contacts and so on. Finally your network will grow to a point where it becomes truly helpful.

Youtube: (Psycho) Killer Strategies- Qu'est Que C' est (fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better)

YouTube is the most popular online video website. It is so popular,  when asked about video sites 99% of  people automatically respond with YouTube. YouTube give Internet users the ability to share their own videos with the rest of the world.  This is something amazing. In addition to being free, YouTube is also popular because it is easy to use. You do not have to be an experienced Internet user to enjoy online entertainment.  YouTube in social media sphere presents powerful weapon for viral campaigns.  It is very powerful social site. Due to its extremely viral nature, YouTube is a great  tool for Internet marketing, because, there is no better way to advertise to literally millions of people than YouTube. You can maximise all internet marketing opportunities using it. There are few tips  and tricks many people often  oversight in YouTube strategy. 

* Strategically place your video.

A strategic placement of  videos in your YT channel  will raise people’s interest. Make it a top-watch video using various SEO tricks (I usually buy 2-3 Fiverr gigs for YouTube).  Chances that  your video will appear on YT's home page, generating more possible interest. This .This is true benefit of real viral campaign over YouTube, because your video clips  will be watched and passed on by many people.

 * Don’t Forget Video in Your Title (and Title inside your Video)

 Make sure your title contains all the relevant keywords to your business, because the title of your video is really the most important piece of information which  you can provide to YouTube. Most searchers include the word "video" in search,  so including this word, can skyrocket rankings of your YT videos.

* Free Analytics Data with YT  Insight Feature

YouTube offers free analytics data where you can see discovery data, that shows you how people are finding your videos, including the links they followed to get there. Very  interesting. Beside  that, Insight feature offer data statistics on demographics, views and subscribers, for every uploaded video.

* Creating of definite genre for video clips. 

It  depends on what kind of target audience you intend to create the video for. For example,  more classic presentation will suit the professional and working market. Keep that in mind and make clips shorter than 5 minutes. Also make  people  curious about your business  or product. 

* Your Logo in Video.

Video  should contain your logo or your company name. Make sure that the finished clip will give out the message you want to spread.

* Tagged Keywords in Video

YouTube  is also organised on a tag word basis. More tags you use, the better, because you'll be maximising the possibility that your video shows up on a related search. Write a unique, keyword-rich description that includes a URL to your website.. Make sure to put the URL towards the beginning of the description.

* Create a High Definition video

YouTube  have plenty of storage space and bandwidth too. Main reason why they limit the length of the videos is to  prevent people from possible uploading copyrighted videos.

Why HD videos instead of SD? Because, if someone spent more time creating a HD video instead of SD, then the content should be equally good. That is marketing psychological trick, to get inside people’s head. High Definition (1080) or even so called “HD Ready” 720, would be good enough. Invest time, energy and efforts to create outstanding video. It is worth it. 

My personal list of most useful tips and tools for Twitter

Google still indexes much of the content on Twitter, especially user profiles. Then Considering all of that, I would say that Twitter  might be the single best Internet marketing tool  especially for link building purposes. Twitter is a very powerful tool for viral marketing when it is used well.

Here are some tips for using Twitter more effectively:



* Create a complete profile. Be sure to set up  Twitter account with your  face as the avatar. Tweeter followers have more trust  when they see a face instead of logos and stupid pictures. This  is crucial for conversions.
* Try to include your keywords in the first thirty characters of your tweets, and make sure it looks natural. You can use URL shorteners.
*Use keywords anywhere in your profile wherever it makes sense. Put a link back to your site in your profile. Attention: if you don’t have a website that you are proud to be associated with, then don’t link to it.

* Don't forget to use Hashtags. Hashtag is the # symbol, which helps a lot in categorising tweets. You can find brief tutorial what hashtag means at this website . You can use it as a service too, which is it's basic purpose.
* Schedule your tweets. Tweeting can be very time consuming. Instead of that, you can create "illusion" of presence, by scheduling your tweets, and post it when your followers are most active. There are plenty tools for that. I tried several. Tweetdeck, for example, is very well organised. I use it as a desktop application. Furthermore, you can use Twuffer,  which is online tool for scheduling tweets.  My personal favourite is TweetWhen although Twittimer isn't bad.
* Find targeted followers. Twellow is a search directory for finding people by profession or other attributes. Tweepi is similar tool, but maybe with little bit more complicated interface.

* Feed your Twitter! You will schedule most interesting and most important tweets at time your followers are mostly online. But, you can also feed your tweets with one simple technique:
- Head over to Google alert and put some queries. Import to your Google Reader, or some other RSS reader you prefer. Then, go to Twiterfeed and start your campaign . Name your campaign and copy URL of your RSS feed (right click on your RSS feed icon in Google alert). You can choose your update frequency, post prefix and suffix, keyword filter etc-  from  advanced settings. You can even connect your Facebook, or Linkedin profile.
* Check the power of your Twitter account. Use a TweetGrader. 
* Local networking! NearbyTweets are tool which can help you to find possible competitors from your area, who are tweeting about same topics as you are. Very useful tool for networking.
* Investigate social impact of your Twitter. Search for a url or  phrase (even Tweet name or hashtag) in TweetReach. It will show you how many users you've been reached for your last fifty tweets.
* Retweet, retwwet, retweet!!! The retweet is the spine of  Twitter. It is very possible for one tweet to reach tons of other users if it’s retweeted enough and by the right people.Retweets allows messages to move rapidly throughout the system.

PS. If you consider start retweeting, you can start with RETWEET ME :)

What Facebook marketing tips Gurus don't want you to know

Social networking sites such as Facebook are increasingly turning into the first place people go when they get on the Internet.  Facebook is global phenomena and great place for viral campaigns as that. Many marketers make mistakes - they are strictly professional. Sometimes is good just to find some funny video to share, which is not related or loosely related to your products or business.

Ask your audience to post questions - another great strategy for better networking. You are giving them reason to answer which means more connectivity between you and your friends/ fans , or should I call it right way (since it is about marketing) - customers. One of the best ways to get your fans talking on Facebook-  is to ask interesting questions.Ask something what is entertaining and easy to answer. Don't forget it. 

One psychological trick you can implement to increase your news feed optimisation: invite your fans to promote their own pages on your Facebook wall. They will know how to appreciate that. 

Create a online calendar of engagement program. Give your fans an opportunity for "special insider" information about new products. In that way  you will feed them with new information about marketing plans. At the same time, you will 'feel the pulse' of  audience for future products. 

You can learn so much from this IKEA viral marketing campaign 

Create promotions and coupons: Don’t just limit the promotions to the first time someone engages with your company,. They will lose interest. You can put periodically things on sale, in order to keep people coming back.

Complete your profile. Design a custom Facebook page. If you don't know how, there is a plenty of 'Facebook custom page gigs' on Fiverr. Your Facebook page could be as good looking as a custom webpage design, really.  

Promote your brand with targeted Facebook advertisements. It works. If you are not sure how to do that, or have no experience, check this Facebook help.

Always reward your referrals! Offer gifts or discounts for a successful referral. You can really benefit from the network of your fans. Include them and get them proper reward.

Group chats. It is time consuming but is equally effective. 

Post user experience and encourage them to do the same. That can earn a lot of trust for you and your products.

Integrate a shopping cart! When your Facebook fans Facebook are convinced that your brand is good enough, a shopping cart becomes very handy. It can seal the deal right away.

Use the benefits of Facebook Market place!!! You can can advertise  product sales or services .You can also search for new employees there. 

Tag your fans in photos. Simple, but very powerful for engaging. You can even ask them to tag themselves. That can be a part of a promotion game. Lenny Kravitz uploaded pictures of his concert in Italy  three years ago. Then he asked everyone to tag themselves. This gave him excellent  publicity.

Use Facebook Insights. Gurus never told you about that, huh? Export the Facebook Insights data to an Excel or simply export it on Google docs. With Facebook insights, you can see which status updates performed best and get a sense of what’s most popular on your fan page.  

Integrate Social plugins to your site. You can integrate Facebook Connect Plugin in your blog or website. That  will enable Facebook users to leave comments on your blog without registering. Very useful.

At the end, check this two Facebook  pages. Maybe it will give you some ideas for your own. 

H&M - click here 

Red Bull - click here 

14 Useful Tips for Increasing Your Impact on LinkedIn

Linkedin become one of most powerful social networks, especially for job seekers. It is not just about uploading your CV and searching for job opportunities. LinkedIn is one live and breathing social network which is constantly changing and improving. Yet, free membership can benefit you a lot. There are few tips and tricks for using LinkedIn effectively:

1. Complete your profile! It is the most important thing and backbone of your successful LinkedIn presence. Almost 80% of  poll participants said LinkedIn helped him a lot for researching people and companies, also to contact them and assure in their capabilities. More than 65% reconnect with past business associates. Half of them build new networking relationships with members who can  influence potential customers. Include tour education, and professional summary statement. Use bulleted points for better readability. 

2. Join groups. Ask and answer questions. That is a gold mine for business people. Visit the LinkedIn Answers page where you can answer questions that other LinkedIn members asked. There is a good learning center about LinkedIn answers. Don't forget to participate in groups or even start your own. Display the badges of groups that are pertinent to your job area,

3. Automated LinkedIn features. Group members can add an RSS feed to a group, which become very useful in case you have your own blog, and want to publish new blog content. You can add value to the group publishing the article from your blog, and establish yourself as an expert in that field. This tactic will dramatically increase your blog traffic. 

4. Email status updates. What are you waiting for? Sign in! It is the easiest way to see what your connections are doing each day on LinkedIn network.

5. Leverage  third-party applications for LinkedIn. When you finished set up your profile, search for third-party applications that can maximise your presence on LinkedIn , This application can sync your WordPress blog posts with you LinkedIn profile. Full listing of available applications for LinkedIn is available HERE. This is one of my favourite apps which help me to learn more about my contacts. Use Company Buzz which allows you to monitor buzz about your products or business.

6. Your professional headline- Great headline will encourage visitors to your profile to read further. Spend some time and think about your headline.

7. Cross Promote. Promote your LinkedIn profile on your other social network profiles. Connect everything you can.
8. Include links to your most valued articles. I used it for my most comprehensive 101 seo term . Now it is ranked on first place in Google  for that query.

9.  Choose a 'custom URL' . Default format of URL of your page is something like  www.linkedin.com/pub/67/46a/000. If you don't know how to create custom URL for LinkedIn, here is detailed instruction.

10. Include specific keywords. Iif a recruiter types them into a search engine, he’ll be able to find you.

11. I personally use Google Chrome LinkedIn Toolbar . It has some nice extra features: you can comment on other people's updates and even share articles right from the toolbar. You should try it if You are using Google Chrome browser.

12. Save your searches!! Not many people know about this very useful trick. If you are looking for potential employees or employers, this is a must-have tool.  To save your search, just run your "search for people" in the bar, then click on ‘save search’ along the top right.

13. Manage your work projects! Yes, it is possible to do, although many people don't know about that. Install ManyMoon software, and e every past dialogue or task will be accessible through this app for easy management. This software also allows you to integrate Google docs, and Google aps. In that way, you can share documents. I strongly recommend this tool.

14. Use "advanced search" ! Using this tool, you can search for people , but also  search professions, industries, and much more as well. Combine it with (12) "save your searches". I bet Gurus haven't told you this :)

I fought the Blog and the Blog won (Link building tactics for your blog)

When we talk about so called offsite SEO i.e. link building, we are referring to the links on the other websites that point back to your blog, as well as your site's internal linking structure. Incoming links and internal links and are both very important for your rankings in search engines. Now, let's take a look at some of the link building methods blog owners should be doing.

Blog contest.
How you set it up? It is up to you. The aim is to get people to link back to your site. You can give bonus contest entries to everyone who links back. Another good method is to find websites that promote current and upcoming blog contests. Submit your contest to them as well.

Blog's URL as a forum signature
Forum posting is another good way of getting other sites to link to you by adding your website addres) as a forum signature.First of all- read the rules regarding signatures. You can find one of many high PR forums list here .
This also can be very time consuming, so instead of searching for quality forums to post your link signature, you can simply hire someone who will do it manually, or even order on Fiverr gigs like this. 

Social bookmarks and news submissions
Use services without rel=nofollow. Show links to services like  Folkd or Blinklist. Always have in mind that social bookmarking services will mostly make a copy of what you bookmark including a do follow link back to your blog.

Website and blog directories
It is such an underestimated method. Ok, I admit that this strategy is somewhat devalued but it is still great way to get some backlinks. For example, botw.org  has specific directories. If directory has a high pagerank and also has a relevant category put a link to your blog in their listings. Head over Google and search for "blog directories". You will see a lot of them. Some bloggers will accept links to almost any blog. Others are maybe aim to more targeted audience.

Guest posting
The most valuable method at the moment. You can do it ion both ways: First is to write article and offer it to the other blog owners via networks such as MyBlogGuest. You can put your link in author byline after the article with your desired anchor.
Another way to promote your blog is to do it reversible way - Head over to My Blog Guest and find some useful articles for your blog from other writers. They will get their backlink in byline, you will get more quality content on your blog: win-win situation.

Blogroll
A common method for building backlinks: just swap links with another blog's blogroll. Be careful, not all blogrolls are the same. Some bloggers are very selective about which blogs they will put into their blogrolls. You need to check the blogroll of every blog which ask to be added to your blogroll.

Post comments to related blogs which are placing high in the search engines
Don't just spam it. Nineties are over. Instead of it, leave thoughtful comments.

You can also try high valuable method to build links using public data. It is hard to get listed, but it is worth of effort. 

Use a Wordtracker Linkbuilder tool  to find blogs that are part of larger media. Making a link campaigns with this Wordtracker tool can show some very interesting link prospects. 

Back ontopic: Large media blogs contain lots of fresh content and links. Therefore, blogs like that are very popular in search engine results.
To be honest, I must admit I don't have much success with large media websites, because they can often be hard to contact. You should on blogs on media sites. They are usually more accessible.