How to Recover From Penguin 2.0 Using Free Tools

Most bloggers, web designers and freelancers in general don’t want – nor need – to pay expensive monthly subscriptions for SEO software. That’s not to say that using paid tools would make it that much easier anyway. The Penguin update is notoriously hard to bounce back from.
Many webmasters are still assessing the damage (or windfall) to their Google rankings. We’re in the early days and Google is far from finished. It still has yet to devalue upstream links from link spammers (tiered link builders, take note), which I personally think will be a game changer, especially for competitive niches.
Matt Cutts and the Webspam team are also actively evaluating feedback, so expect more movement in the search engine results page (SERPs) soon. As reports start coming in in the next few months, we will truly see how “jarring and jolting” this update has been (although an early report by the always-insightful Dr Pete of SEOmoz suggests 2.0 had less impact than its predecessor). It is expected to affect 2.3% of English (US) queries to a significant extent.

Why Penguin Was Unleashed

Google’s Penguin first waddled into view in April 2012. Penguin is a filter that sits on top of the regular algorithm and tries to catch webspam or more specifically, link spam. Many people get confused about the differences between the Panda and Penguin updates. Here’s a quick explanation:

• Panda penalizes you for publishing thin and duplicate content
• Penguin penalizes you when other websites with thin, duplicate or irrelevant content link to you

For example, Penguin will penalize you if your links come from a page that looks like this:

As you can see, the content has been spun beyond recognition and the anchor text is completely unrelated to the rest of the copy. It is an exaggerated example, but it serves to drive the point home.

Casualties

At the time of the first coming, Penguin affected around 3.1% of search queries. There have been several refreshes over the past year as Google continues to refine its algorithm.
Here are what sites hit by Penguin 1.0 have in common:

• Over-optimized anchor text
• Links to and from ‘bad neighbourhoods’
• Too many links from irrelevant sites
• Black or grey hat tactics such as comment spam, links from spun content, guest posts from questionable sites etc

The best ways to determine if you have been affected by any previous Penguin updates is to check your rankings immediately after an update or to correlate any drops of traffic with known release dates (you can use Barracuda’s Panguin Tool).

And Then There Was Penguin 2.0

Penguin 2.0 is more comprehensive and goes much deeper. While Penguin 1.0 only looks at the links to your Home page, Penguin 2.0 will look at links to your internal pages as well.
If what we’re reading all over the Internet is correct, Google is trying to reduce its reliance on anchor text as a relevancy factor. Instead, it seems Google wants to give the relevancy of the content of the site linking to your website more weightage (which is a step forward in our book).
We expect a lot of SERP movement in Malaysia, where the go-to SEO tactics (for companies at least) are directory link building and press release syndication.
Google also released the Penguin spam report form. If you’re seeing spammy websites ranking in your niche, you can send them a report. They seem to be acting on it (and quite quickly) so now is a good time to send one.

What To Do If You Have Been Hit

Like we have said before, it’s early days yet so a lot of it is still speculation. We won’t know for sure until there has been a case study of an actual Penguin 2.0 recovery (and that will probably take months). Even then, it may or may not work for you – Penguin recoveries seem to be few and far between.
But if you have been hit, there are certain steps you can take to try to recover. These are:

1. Performing a Link Profile Analysis
2. Removing Suspicious Links
3. Building Penguin-Safe Links

We have to warn you though, it’s not a quick fix.

1. Performing a Link Analysis

The first step is to conduct a thorough backlink analysis. This involves having a look at all the links pointing to your website, both in its entirety (i.e. your backlink profile) and individually, to determine what might be harming you.
Before you start your analysis, we suggest you create a spreadsheet with the following headers:

• Website Name
• Website URL
• Anchor Text
• Email
• Contact Date #1
• Contact Date #2
• Contact Date #3
• Status

As you go along, you can start collecting the contact information for the webmasters you need to contact to remove the links you don’t want. In order to conduct your link analysis, you have to use a backlink analysis tool. While the best ones so far are paid, there are several free tools out there you can use as well.
Here are the tools that we will be using today:

• Google Webmaster Tools and /or Bing Webmaster Tools (both free)
• Ahrefs (limited free use and paid)
• Netpeak Checker (free)

Don’t expect to get comprehensive data with any of these tools, even if you do decide to shell out money for them. Each has its own limitations and will never provide you with the same quality of data that Google has at its fingertips. Your good judgement and experience will come into play as you analyze your links.

Is Your Anchor Text Over-Optimized?

The first thing you’re going to do is to determine if you have been punished for over-optimizing your anchor texts. This means that the majority of the links pointing back to you are using your targeted keywords as the anchor text.
But how much is too much? While there isn’t a global number, it seems that most SEO thought leaders believe 60% of your anchor text should be branded while only 20% should contain the keywords you want to rank for.

• 60% branded anchor text (e.g. Cloudrock)
• 20% exact anchor text (e.g. seo)
• 20% miscellaneous anchor text (e.g. click here)

However, this will differ from one vertical to the next. Examine the links of the top results for your particular niche. What are their percentages of branded keywords and money keywords (the keywords they are targeting)? That’s a good way to find out the threshold for your niche.

Check Anchor Text Over-Optimization (Ahref)

Next, we are going to use ahrefs’ Backlink Checker (the free account) to quickly show you how to do a (limited) backlink analysis. If you like the product, you should consider subscribing for the paid version.
(#1) Go to ahrefs.com.
(#2) Register for a free account. You get more searches if you register.
(#3) Enter your URL.

(#4) You will see the results page below. Take a moment to study your backlinks. Every analysis you do will count towards your daily limit.

(#5) You then click on the ‘Anchors’ tab to have a look at your anchor text distribution.

(#6) Sort your anchor texts in descending order.

This quick analysis will help you determine if you have a problem with your anchor text distribution.

More Tools

There are other backlinks analysis tools you can use of course, such as Link Diagnosis (free) and Majestic SEO (limited free use). The data you get will differ. That’s not a problem for our purposes because we just want to gauge the relative weights of the anchor texts to see if we have a problem.
You can then start removing low-quality links with exact match anchor texts while building higher quality ones with more diverse anchor texts (from a variety of sources, of course).

2. Identifying Harmful Links

Now that you’re done looking at your link profile, it’s time to find out which particular links might be harming you. Here are some warning signs:

• Is the link coming from an inappropriate website (for example, an adult site)?
• Is the link coming from a link farm (a site created just for SEO)?
• Is the link coming from an irrelevant site?
• Did the link result from your participation in a link scheme or link wheel?
• Did you pay for the links (for example, advertorials)?
• Is it a site-wide link (footer or side bar links)?

We will also be looking at the toolbar PageRank (TPR) to gauge if the link is a good one. Just remember that the TPR is updated only once every few months. This means you won’t know if the site has been penalized by Penguin 2.0 until the next PageRank update, expected to be sometime in June.
It’s fine if you have some links coming in from unrelated sites or niches. Just make sure they don’t make up the majority of your backlinks.

Finding Suspicious and Harmful Links

(#1) Download and install Netpeak Checker.
(#2) Go to your Google Webmaster Tools accounts and log in.
(#3) Click on Traffic > Links to Your Site

(#4) Under the ‘Who Links the Most’ section, click on More. Click on Download this Table.
(#5) Now, open up Netpeak Checker and select the options as the screenshot below. We will explain the options in a bit.

(#6) Click Load; copy and paste the domains you downloaded from Google Webmaster Tools into the box that pops up.

(#7) Click Save and then the Start Check button on the bottom left corner.

Netpeak Checker Parameters

Okay, so now about the parameters you chose for Netpeak Checker:

As of this writing, the last Toolbar PageRank update was on 4 February 2013. If a website has a PageRank of 0 and was created after that, it means that it’s a new website and hasn’t had its TPR updated yet. If it has been around for years and still has no PageRank, then that might be a sign that it’s a low quality site.
A solid sign that it’s a bad link is if it has no pages indexed in Google. This means that it has been de-indexed, and you really do not want a de-indexed site pointing back to you (or vice versa). Now, go through each domain and try to determine which links might be harming you. Add those into your spreadsheet.

The Netpeak Checker has a few other useful metrics you could use but I’ll leave that to you to check it out.

Let’s say you want to have a look at the exact page on the domain where you link occurs. You can use the following Google operator:

• site:exampledomain.com link:yourlinkedurl.com/page

Theoretically, you can use the link: operator to find all the sites linking back to you. But it doesn’t work for us. Let us know if it does for you.

3. Removing Suspicious Links

At this point, you have looked at your link profile and identified the links you need to remove. So let’s get them off your website! There’s an easy way, and a hard way.

Contact Webmasters to Remove Unwanted Links

Once you’ve identified the links you think may harm you, your next step would be contacting the respective webmasters and requesting them to remove those links.

• Create a Gmail account specifically for this link removal
• Create a canned email template to save time
• Start contacting the webmasters to remove those links

Some webmasters do not have their contact details on the website. You can look up the domain info using Domain Tools. If that yields no results, well, you could outright guess – webmaster@domain.com is a popular webmaster email address.
Wait a week for a response before you send a reminder. Remember to be polite; there’s no motivation for them to remove the link other than to be helpful (or sympathetic). You might even come across some webmasters who will request you pay a ‘processing fee’ to remove those links.
Never ever pay! Seriously.
You can disavow those links in the next step. And report those webmasters to Google, of course.

Use the Google Disavow Tool as a Last Resort

Google released the Disavow Tool sometime last year after many complaints about the initial Penguin update. What the tool does is to tell Google that you don’t want any of those links counted.
Try to avoid using Google’s Disavow Tool until you have exhausted all other options.

There will be times when you want to use a machete instead of a scalpel i.e. remove all links from an entire domain instead of individually. You can then use the domain: operator.
There are many guides out there that will teach you how to use the Disavow Tool. Here is a great one:

• Google Link Disavow Tool: The Complete Guide

A Note on Footer and Other Site-wide Links

I’m sure there are many web designers here who have placed a site-wide footer links on their clients’ websites. These are a great source of referral traffic. You might have used your company name as the anchor text or you might have used a keyword-rich one such as “Web Design Malaysia”.
As Matt Cutts explains in one of his videos, Google’s algorithm does a good job of discounting such site-wide links. For example, a footer link that appears on every page of a 1,000-page website might be counted as only one link from that website to yours. However, problems might occur if your client’s website is under review and you are using a keyword-rich anchor text.
I would advise you to employ a branded anchor text and use the nofollow tag on such footer links. The nofollow tag tells Google not to pass any PageRank through the link (this is something you HAVE to do for advertorials, by the way). You still get that all-important traffic without the risks. Besides, site-wide links aren’t really much help in getting you better rankings anyway.

4. Building Penguin-Safe Links

Hongkiat.com already has a great beginner’s guide on link building so I won’t go into too much detail here. The important thing to remember about building links in a post-Penguin world is that you have to have a natural (or natural-looking) link profile.
The key to having a natural link profile is diversity.

• Domain Diversity – Get links from many different domains, preferably with different TLDs, rather than a lot of links from a few domains
• Link Type Diversity – Get different types of links (Web 2.0s, in-content, blog comments etc)
• Social Signals – Get social signals back to your site (+1s, Likes, Stumbles etc)

Diversity Wins

Ensure that your anchor texts are also diverse. Use a mix of these types of anchor texts:

• Branded (Cloudrock)
• Naked (www.cloudrock.asia)
• Miscellaneous (visit our website, click here)
• Mixed (Learn more about SEO at Cloudrock)

Of course, the creation of unique, relevant and useful content should be the foundation of any good link building campaign. But that’s another topic on its own.

So Now, Just Wait…

Alright, you have done all you can do for now. That is, unless you want to send in a reconsideration request as well. However, note that the Penguin penalty is an algorithmic penalty. That means you will only be able to see an improvement when the next Penguin update rolls around.
This is unlike a manual penalty, where sending in a reconsideration request is a must. Here’s the link though if you would like to send one anyway. If you do decide to send one, remember to be as detailed as possible and outline all the steps you have taken.
Will you recover your previous rankings? Probably not. This is because your previous rankings were artificially inflated by those spammy links. But it does give you back your ability to rank again.
Original article in hongkiat.com
How to Recover From Penguin 2.0 Using Free Tools

Content Syndication – The Way To Crush Your Competition In 2013

2012 – A Year Of Turmoil
In years gone by in the wonderful world of SEO, ranking for keyword phrases was quite a bit simpler than it is today. Can I get an amen, people? Can I get an alleluia?
Those were the salad days, the proverbial Garden of Eden. Those days are gone forever, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t crush it online.
We all need to simply acknowledge that some big changes have occurred in our industry. And remember, within big change there is big opportunity. So, let’s crush it, shall we?
If you’ve been doing SEO for any amount of time, you already know all about Google’s little, evil laboratory and all the changes they’ve been throwing at us. Things are getting more and more complex every day. And, you know what? That’s just fine. Things are peachy when you can measure what Google is up to through vigorous testing and roll with the punches. Think relevance, my lads and lassies.

Relevant Sites Didn’t Matter As Much In The Past
So, what is Google up to exactly? Well, in the past Google didn’t look very hard at off-page contextual relevance when critiquing where a website was getting it’s links from. They didn’t seem to care. A link was indeed just a link, no matter where it came from (barring receiving links from gambling and pornography sites, which have pretty much always been a big no-no, in case you might have been wondering.)
So, as the practice went, an SEO could get a link with the anchor text – “sports car” – on a website about giraffes and they’d be good to go, especially if the page was a high page rank (PR) page, with low outbound links, on an authority site, and so on and so forth. Most of you know the drill.
Things have changed a bit now. These types of links still work (raise our rankings for our chosen keywords) and, without a doubt, we all still need high PR links from authority sites. Outbound links on a page are still a factor as well. But the non-relevant links don’t work as well as they used to.
Google realizes that sites about giraffes may link out to sites about sports cars at certain times. If we take a look at big authority news sites, well gosh, these sites link out to and receive links from many different sites. With authority news sites, relevance becomes pretty much impossible – and, you know what? These sites still rank quite well for many various keyword phrases.
Google knows this, so it will probably never completely devalue links from less relevant pages/sites. Following me? It’s all about weight.

Now Relevant Links Hold More Weight – They Are Critical To Killing It In The SERPS Now
Google has become more sophisticated and is using a lot more discretion in “weighing” where we’re getting our links from. With rigorous testing, more and more professional SEOs are finding that getting links from relevant sites holds a lot more weight nowadays. If you do some testing for yourself, it’s very likely you’ll come to the same conclusion.
Links from relevant pages and relevant websites have more weight, no matter the anchor text or the PR on the page. It’s long been suspected that Google was heading in this direction, now it’s simply been confirmed. And SEOs that are using relevant sites for links are killing in the search engines right now. They’re crushing it. Game over.
Therefore, in 2012 (and beyond), getting links from relevant websites and relevant pages (relevant to our own site’s content) has become even more important to ranking highly. And it appears that the direction that Google is taking right now that this will become even more important in future updates.

Guest Posting Is So Much More Important Now – Cozy Up To Your Competitors
So, where do we get our links? Do we set up a bunch of Web 2.0′s (blogspots, tumblrs) with relevant content and link back to our money sites? No way! Not a chance! These are akin to link farms. These simply aren’t the best links anymore. Google knows these sites are often used by link spammers.
Right now they’re looking very closely for links from actual competitors, sites in your same niche. Doh! That sounds kind of scary, right? Competitor sites. That’s right, they’re looking for links from other sites in your niche. It’s time to get cozy with your competition and work together.
So, how are we supposed to get these sites to link to us? And why would they want to link to us? They are competitors after all. A-ha! Great questions, you’re one smart cookie, aren’t you?
You get sites to link to you by writing content for their site. Write high-quality content for other sites in your niche and give it to them, in exchange for a link back to your site. In fact, you can do guest posts for other sites and have those webmasters guest post on your site as well, it’s very much a win-win situation. The more the merrier.
Google really wants sites to link to each other. Gone are the days when we don’t want to link to other sites (this has been true for quite some time). We actually rank higher when we link to sites in our niche. Of course, many of you may have known that already, just a refresher.

Bottom Line – Links Are About Traffic Not The Link
The old guest post is more important and valuable than ever before. People are killing it with guest posts right now, because these links are so powerful. It’s much less about the amount of links right now with Google – it’s about funneling traffic to the right places from the right places. Google loves that. They love relevance.
The fastest and easiest way to find guest post opportunities is by using software. With a good, speedy, reliable piece of software, you can scrape Google for potential guest posting opportunities. And while many other sites are building crappy Web 2.0 links that don’t count for much, you’ll be building links with real weight. You really are a smart cookie.

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Glen Hooke, Post from: SiteProNews

The Way To Crush Your Competition In 2013

Know Your Landing Pages

By identifying your best content, you quickly learn two things:
1. Which pages are most worth promoting.
2. How you can improve on your future content.
But how can you identify your best content? With this article, I’ll avoid weighing in on which metric in particular is most important (be it sales, pages per visit, etc). Instead, the focus will be on how to interpret your analytics without relying on “most” as an indication of “best.”
For example, a page that results in more sales may simply be doing so, because it has more visits. That says nothing about whether it’s the piece of content most worth promoting.
This is going to be an advanced article, involving spreadsheets and standard deviations, so it might not be for everybody. I’ll try to keep it step-by-step and fairly easy to comprehend but, even then, it’s worth asking how much time you want to invest in analytics, as opposed to outreach and other activities.
Take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, and choose your time wisely. This is going to be most useful for sites with a decent amount of resources and a lot of analytics data to work with. With that in mind, let’s get started.

Analytics

1. Start by getting as much data as possible. Head up to the top right portion of analytics and expand your date range. I would advise expanding it to include everything from the day you first set up analytics on your site up to the present day.
2. In the left sidebar, click through content, site content and landing pages.
3. Stick to comparing apples with apples. At the top left corning of analytics, click advanced segments and select search traffic, then click apply.
4. Make sure the data you’re going to export includes more than just the traffic. Above your graph you will see a visits vs. select a metric. Click on select a metric and choose your metric of choice, such as pages/visit.

Building Your Spreadsheets
There’s no denying it, this step’s a pain. If you can build an application to pull this off for you, I’d advise doing it. The steps below assume you selected pages/visit, but it could be a metric.

1. Make sure you are only viewing search traffic (or a different source if you prefer, just make sure all the data is from the same source). Click on the page at the top of the list, then go to the top of the page and click export. For a spreadsheet, you will typically want to select CSV.
2. Open up your CSV and scroll way down the page to the bottom of your day, visits, and pages/visit stats. In the cell below your pages/visit data, type “=stdev(” and highlight the data from this column, then type “)” and hit enter. Make sure that you only highlight the data that comes after analytics started recording data from the page. This will give you the standard deviation of the sample, which is basically a measure of how much the pages/visit fluctuates.
3. Repeat this process for all the landing pages that you want to consider. I know, it’s a pain and not always worth it.
4. Go back to analytics, and export a list of all the pages you are considering.
5. Create a “standard deviation” column. Copy the standard deviation of each page and paste it into this column.
6. Create a “confidence interval” column. A confidence interval tells you how reliable your data is so that you can avoid favoring statistical flukes. Excel has a function for this. At the top of this column, type “=confidence(”
7. Excel’s “confidence” function requires three values. The first one is the “alpha,” which determines how accurate you want the results to be. To understand what this means, if you type “0.01” you can expect one out of every 100 of your results to actually fall somewhere outside of your confidence interval. There’s a good chance you don’t want more than one fluke in your data. If you were comparing 50 pages, then, you would want your alpha to be 1/50, or 0.02, or smaller. Type “;” after you enter your alpha.
8. The next thing Excel needs is your standard deviation. Click on the cell from your standard deviation column, and type “;”
9. The last thing Excel needs is the sample size. In this case, it should be from your visits column. After you click on the cell from this column, type “)” and hit enter.
10. Click on the square at the bottom of your “confidence interval” cell, and drag it down to the bottom of your data.
11. 11. Now create one more column, called “minimum pages/visit.” Subtract your confidence interval column from your pages/visit column to get this value.
12. Select the full table and sort your spreadsheet in descending order by “minimum pages/visit.”
13. That was a chore, wasn’t it?

Why do all this? The end result of your efforts is that you will know which landing pages on your site produce the most pages per visit (or whichever metric you decided on).
Why can’t you just sort it this way in analytics? Well, you can, but the problem is that analytics (and this infuriates me) doesn’t offer any data on statistical significance. When you sort the pages by pages/visit, most of the pages you see have just one or two visits.
If you have limited resources and don’t have time to use the method discussed above, it is possible to filter the results by a higher number of visits. For example: Above the results, click on advanced, and change landing page to visits. Adjust the command to say include visits greater than 50, or whichever number you feel works best.
The problem with this is you are forced to “feel” your way through the data, and work off your hunches. Is 2.6 pages per visit with 56 visits really better than 2.2 pages per visit with 1,036 visits, or is there a good chance it’s a statistical fluke? You have no way of knowing without using the procedure discussed above.
You will have to weigh your options to decide where your resources and time are most valuable. Sometimes it’s best to simply identify what appear to be your 10 best pages and focus on them, knowing that some of them are probably flukes. As you promote those pages you will collect more data so that you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Don’t forget to pass this along if you found it useful.

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Carter Bowles, Post from: SiteProNews:

How to Use Public Computer Safely

In just five years, the global Internet population has grown from 1.319 billion to 2.26 billion thanks to people searching, emailing, instant messaging, social media-ing, gaming, shopping, and banking.

People are now submitting 3.5 billion more Google queries and sending 322 billion more emails than they were in 2007; posting 2.4 billion more Facebook status updates, photos, videos, and comments since 2009; and ordering 9.7 million more Amazon items in a singular day since 2006, according to cloud security firm Trend Micro.

But with increased activity - and mobility - comes increased risk. Trend Micro counted 6,300 new unique Internet threats per day this year, compared to only 57 in 2006. Spam leads the pack, with 5.2 billion reported cases per month in 2011, followed by more than 5 million new instances of malware and 10.4 million bad URLs added to the Web last year.

Read More>>

Engagement Tactics for Social Media

Social media marketing has become an incredible power in the world of online marketing. And why not? With an estimated 65% of Americans reporting that they utilize social media sites, these types of networking hubs have become the perfect place to reach out to any type of
audience you wish to target.

Social media sites also allow businesses, big and small, to show a more personal side of their brand. These sites open up different avenues to creatively reach current and potential customers. Many brands put their own videos, photos, articles and even coupons on their social media sites to encourage engagement and boost sales.

However, each of these sites feature different ways to reach out to a broad audience. In order to properly utilize this area of SEO, social media marketing must be approached in a smart and strategic way. Some of the top social media sites include Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Depending on the type of business you run and the overall goal you have for your social media campaign, not all of these sites may perfectly help you convey your business message and overall philosophy. Below are some brief outlines of what types of marketing campaigns each of these sites works best for, followed by some helpful tips to boost engagement on each specific social media site.

Facebook
Facebook is a social networking site that allows companies to create “Pages” to represent their brand. With the semi-recent transition to the timeline format, Facebook brand pages read almost like a yearbook of accomplishments for the company. Facebook is ideal for companies that are looking to create a more personal and open relationship with their clients. Many companies post photos and videos of new products, employee events and updates to their page. Facebook also allows brands to host contests and conduct polls.

Tips for Engagement

1. Post at the Right Time of Day – Studies have shown that more people are active on Facebook during the weekdays. Many studies have also shown that posting between 11am-4pm EST is the most effective.

2. Ask a Question – Status updates that ask for the opinion of your fans typically illicit more likes and comments. People like to share their thoughts and feel that they have an influence on the brands they love.

3. Utilize Visuals, but Keep it Simple - It’s important to not just make posts that are purely words. Relevant photos, videos, and other graphics have been shown to increase fan engagement. But it is important to keep these posts simple. Fans tend to become less engaged if you post multiple photos in a row, so choose wisely, and give your fans time to enjoy each unique post.

Twitter
Twitter is a 140-character playroom for celebrities, brands, politicians and many others to express their thoughts and promote ideas in a quick and simple way. Twitter gives you the ability to design a personal page with a photo, 140-character biography and complete control over the background wallpaper. Twitter’s simplicity is why so many people use it to quickly catch up on news from friends, their favorite companies and even their horoscope. Twitter is ideal for companies that wish to share quick links back to their website or blog, promotions, and reach particular groups or people through the use of hashtags and direct messaging.

Tips for Engagement

1. Pay Attention to Hashtag Trends – When you are exploring your Twitter homepage, pay special attention to the lower left hand corner of the page. There you will see a small list of terms marked with a “#” and labeled “Trending Now.” These terms are called “hashtags” and they are used to group together tweets sent out on the same topic. Be sure to pay attention to these and when you see any that pertain to your business, include them in a Tweet with a link back to your website.

2. “RT to Support!” – The “Retweet” is a great way to increase engagement and gain more followers. When someone “retweets” something you post, it becomes visible to all of his or her followers, and it can continue to move from there. Adding “RT to Support” or some other variation like #RT or #Retweet will help encourage others to retweet your post and therefore lead to more retweets and visibility for your brand.

Google+
Google+ is an interesting combination of professional and playful. In some ways, it works like Facebook, allowing you to provide status updates and post on your friends’ pages. However, it has some other features unique to Google+ that allow it to be used as a purely professional resource as well. With Google+ you can separate people into different groups making it easy to create targeted messages based on who you want to see them. Google+ is best for companies that wish to target different types of people and also for those looking for a social networking site that combines playful and professional.

Tips for Engagement

1. Use the “Circle” Feature – This feature allows you to group people on your friends list and send specific marketing messages to them.

2. Comment Often – Be sure to engage with others. When someone shares an article pertinent to your industry, thank him or her and share the link on your own page. Hopefully they will return the favor.

3. Be Sure to Checkout Hangouts - Different brands will host video chats or “live-streaming hangouts” to help connect better with fans. Attend often and consider hosting your own.
By utilizing these social media sites for the correct purpose and in the right way, you can significantly impact your online marketing goals. Knowing the direction to go in will help you work smarter, not harder and put you far ahead of the competition.

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Article by Stacey Hammel. WebFindYou

Outraging Website Owners By Omitting Image Content

There’s an old saying: The more things change, the more they remain the same. I would agree with that in today’s culture if just one word were different.

As a child of the sixties, yes, a flower child, I was a product of Timothy Leary’s mantra which served as my generation’s guiding light: “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.” Translation: “Get Enlightened and Be Your Own Person.” Reinforced by every countercultural phenomenon during that generation, from Woodstock to the Beatles, from Andy Warhol to Peter Max, from Mick Jagger to Twiggy, the more different you were, the more famous you became.

When I embarked on my marketing career, some ten years later, this mode of thinking was still de rigueur, the prevailing cultural trend.

In today’s world, however, being different is no longer a good thing. At least, not when you are a business on the Internet. If you aren’t on Facebook and Twitter, you’re considered so last century. Keeping up with the latest on Pinterest or Tumblr? No? Better get with it. If you blink, you may miss something! And, above all, Google rules. If you don’t abide by all things Google, there are stiff penalties to pay.

As a new twist on SEO, (search engine optimization, for those of you who are still back in the sixties), Google has recently introduced Instant Preview, an image of a representative web page which can be conveniently activated by hovering over the trigger arrows which appear to the right of search results. For some, this has been a wonderful enhancement, allowing people to quickly scan the page to decide if they should commit to a visit. For others, like me, my website home page has suffered the indignities of Google’s image editing process which has resulted in a page with a large empty white space where my newly created slideshow should appear, something I worked on for months to replace my previous Flash files which were problematic for Google to recognize in addition to browsers on mobile or other Flash-phobic devices.

I admit I was late to address the Flash problem, to “dumb down” my site as I sarcastically alluded to it, but, hey, I work for a living and often find myself immersed in some industrial detail for weeks on end to earn my paycheck. I find it incomprehensible that only two months after launching my new website, I am discovering that my Flash fix has created a new problem. After some extensive research, I have learned that if your website includes an image of a cat, for example, and your website is all about cats, then Google will gladly allow the cat image in its Instant Preview. However, if your website is only using the cat image as a pictorial analogy or symbol for some abstract idea, then Google will omit that image to avoid misrepresenting your page. Okay. Begrudgingly agreed. I see the logic.

The solution would be to have Instant Preview capable of showing my creative slideshow in its animated entirety so that its composite images add up to the correct representation of the website as they were designed to do. But for now, I suppose Google hasn’t arrived at that technological juncture so I am now stuck with the job of redesigning (further “dumbing down”) my website (again!) to stay competitive in the Instant Preview market. So much for trying to be different.

But, how dare they! One disgruntled web owner asks how Google has the right to tamper with his copyrighted material. Another large corporation rebels by choosing to bar Google from applying its Instant Preview technology on its website altogether through specific coding since its site is primarily Flash content. I, on the other hand, just shrug and resign myself to the realities of the twenty-first century. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

The lesson here is that the name of the game nowadays is conform, conform, conform. But, as an only child who has spent a lifetime doing her own thing, marching to the beat of a different drum, and blazing her own trail through the quagmires of life, swimming in a sea of sameness truly violates the soul.

Yet here we are. The more things change, the more they become the same.
Marilyn Bontempo, president of Mid-Hudson Marketing, based in Holmes, New York, has been developing strategies for business success for more than 35 years. A professional writer and graduate of Bard College, she has won numerous awards for excellence in marketing, photography, graphics and web design. As a specialist in branding, many of her clients rely on her expertise to manage their social media and public relations initiatives. In addition, she handles e-commerce for a number of online merchants not only on their own websites but through eBay, Amazon and others. View her work at http://www.midhudsonmarketing.com

Connect with Marilyn Bontempo Google+

7 Writing Tips for Beginners

This article offers you 7 article marketing tips that are especially helpful for beginners, and you can take any combination of these tips and use them to create your own writing strategy.

1 – Don’t Try to Write an Article in One Sitting
Writing takes time, and there are different stages to it. In the first stage you’ll be jotting down ideas you want to include in your article. In the next stage, you start to write in complete sentences and paragraphs. The next step is the editing stage, and after that is the proofreading stage. Writing takes such mental effort that it would be very hard for you to do all of these stages in one day. Most experienced writers will spread their work out over several days. That way they can approach their article with a fresh mind several times, which produces a higher quality article.

2 – Write Early in the Morning
It’s an interesting fact that many serious writers prefer to work in the early morning hours when their minds are most alert (after a cup of coffee!) and when their working conditions are the most quiet. You may also find that it is easiest to write first thing in the morning, but it never hurts to experiment!

3 – Create a Mini-Ritual That You do Before You Write
This is a little trick that many professional writers use. Come up with some simple activities that you always do prior to sitting down to write. These activities could be as simple as having a cup of coffee while reading the newspaper (that works particularly well if you’re writing first thing in the morning). The mini-ritual helps your mind transition to the task of writing.

4 – Write in a Distraction Free Location
It’s just common sense that it’s easiest to write when you have the fewest distractions. Distractions can come from people, technology (such as email, phone, or the internet), environmental noise, or maybe even something as innocent as a window with a beautiful view.

5 – Prepare Your Topic and Research the Day Before
The hardest part of writing an article is coming up with the topic. When you’re writing articles for article marketing, your topic will always have something to do with the general topic of your website. Still, that leaves a lot of options. That’s why it’s best for you to sit down the day before and pinpoint what topic you’ll write about. Then, when the time comes for your writing session, you can just sit down and start writing.
The same goes for doing research – if you do need to look anything up or gather any information, do it the day before so you don’t get sidetracked during your writing session. Your writing session is just for writing.

6 – Write for a Limited Amount of Time
It’s easy to procrastinate when you know you have some articles to write. Setting a time limit on your writing session can help eliminate some anxiety (you know that there is an end in sight!). It may also help you write more efficiently, as oftentimes setting a time limit can help you focus and motivate you to think and write more quickly.

7 – Make It a Habit to Write with a More Structured Approach, Using These Tips as Your Guide
One of the most positive habits that a beginner can adopt is to have a structured writing routine. You’ll find that it’s easier for you to get started writing and that you don’t overtax your mind trying to do too much at one time.
These are simple tips that any beginner can use to emulate writers who have more experience. By using these tips, you will write more efficiently and improve in your writing skill.

11 New Rules How to Write Winning Web Content

With its latest Penguin algorithm updates, Google has once again redefined the Internet. And the verdict is in: keyword-stuffed, SEO writing is dead.
This is great news for real writers. We can forget about writing for search engines, and write for human beings.
Even better, writers with a good understanding of the web have never been more in demand. If content was “King” pre-Penguin, it is now the undisputed dictator.

The new rules for writing web content are actually no different from those that have been best practiced all along: good content should communicate, entertain, inform and persuade. Good web writing is pithy, opinionated and brimming with personality.

Writing for the web remains different from that of any other medium. People rarely read web pages all the way through. Instead, they scan a web page, picking out individual words and sentences. Writers therefore need to be cunning and deliberate in the way we craft our web content.

Here then are the Top 10 New Rules for Writing Web Content in 2012:

1. Keep It Short & Snappy
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”- William Strunk Jr., Elements of Style
As an unwritten rule, web sentences shouldn’t contain more than twenty words, and a paragraph should not contain more than six sentences.
But don’t be afraid to inject some pace into your writing by varying the length of sentences.
The goal is to convey as much as possible with as few words as possible while still observing the rules of readability and a conversational tone.

2. Write in Plain English
“Plain English is clear, straightforward expression, using only as many words as are necessary. It is language that avoids obscurity, inflated vocabulary and convoluted sentence construction.” – Professor Robert Eagleson
Plain English (or plain language) is all about clarity, brevity, and the avoidance of technical language. This is especially important for the web, so pledge to adhere to these two simple rules:
* Avoid jargon, slang, acronyms or abbreviations.
* Use familiar words wherever you can. (Don’t say ‘commence’ when you can say ‘start’.)

3. Eliminate the Passive Voice
Deconstruct any good sentence, and you’ll find a strong, active verb. Similarly, at the root of most confusing, awkward or wordy sentences lies a passive voice.
Sentences in the active voice are more concise than sentences in the passive. Strong verbs help the reader know who is acting and what is being acted upon. For example:
Her homework was chewed by the puppy. (Passive and dull-sounding.)
The puppy chewed her homework. (Active, clear and concise.)
If you’re guilty of passive-voice usage, here’s a free tool for you: To Be Verbs Analyzer.
You simply copy and paste your text into the box, which instantly generates a list of every time you’ve used the passive voice.

4. Front-Load Your Content
Front-loading means putting the conclusion first – followed by what, how, where, when and why. (If that sounds familiar, it’s because this “pyramid” method is standard practice for journalists.)
The first line of your article should contain the conclusion for the article, and the first line of each paragraph should contain
the conclusion for that paragraph.
This allows your readers to:
* scan through the opening sentence
* instantly understand what the paragraph is about
* decide if they want to read the rest of the paragraph or not

5. Group Ideas Together
Each paragraph should have just one idea, made up of just a few
sentences. This makes it easier for readers to:
* scan
* easily locate the information
* move onto the next paragraph without missing anything pivotal

6. Make Effective Use of Sub-Headings
A main heading tells readers what the page is about. The opening paragraph gives a brief conclusion of the page (because you’ve front-loaded the content). But within the page (or article or blog), break up your paragraphs with sub headings.
Descriptive sub-headings show your readers what each section is about. Sub-heads should be short and logical and help readers find the information they’re after.
There’s no rule for how frequently to use sub-headings, but a good rule of thumb is to aim for one sub-head every two to four paragraphs.

7. Utilize Lists
If you can, use lists and not long sentences or paragraphs to make your points.
Lists are:
* easier to scan
* less intimidating and more friendly to the reader
* usually shorter and clearer

8. Be “Bold”
Another way to help readers find information easily is to bold important words.
Just as bold text stands out so do italics, underscore and link text. But don’t use these emphasizing methods for more than a few words or a short phrase because it will slow your readers down.
9. How to “Instruct”
When describing an action or task, instruct clearly: Click This Link, Find Out More, etc.
Instructions should also follow a natural sequence of order that is both obvious and consistent.
Try also to instruct in the affirmative rather than negative, i.e. “Please wait for your page to load” instead of “DO NOT PRESS BACK!”

10. Write As You’d Speak
Liberate your writing from sounding stiff, formal and pompous. One of the easiest ways to do this is to write as you’d speak.
You generally should use contractions unless specifically asked not to, as they’re far more natural. For example, would you say: “I will not be able to go to the cinema tonight” or “Sorry, can’t make the film tonight.”
Similarly, usage of the impersonal pronoun “one” gives web content an unnecessary degree of formality. Unless you’re a royal correspondent, avoid “one” and use “you” instead.
And one final bonus rule:

11. Inject Your Own Personality
Amusing, emotional, controversial, scornful, passionate – whatever your thoughts on a subject, try to convey them. This will engage your readers and lend your writing authority.
Tell stories. Be opinionated. Tug at heart-strings. Good writing is fearless. Do whatever is necessary to hook your reader.
And don’t be afraid to break some of the rules of grammar – the kind of outdated rules that suck the very life out of writing, like “never use contractions” and “never start a sentence with ‘and.’”

Tips for Discovering New Article Ideas

A consistent marketing strategy of writing and submitting articles can result in a boost to your reputation and business online. But coming up with fresh, relevant subject matter is not always easy. Fortunately there are easy ways for you to discover new ideas for your marketing campaign content.

1. Blogs
Visit popular blogs that touch on your niche. Read the content and comments and see what people are saying. What questions are people asking about the content already supplied? Can you expand on what is there or write more in-depth articles on the subject? Is anyone asking for information on a certain subject that is not available? These are all things to look for when contemplating your next article idea.

2. Message Boards
With the social site explosion, message boards may not be as popular as they once were but they can still be a good place to find content ideas. Visit each category and see what people are talking about. Ask questions yourself to get more of an idea of what people are looking for. For example: If your niche is gardening, you could ask the board members what type of information is hardest to find on gardening. Get an idea of what people need and have a hard time finding.

3. Social Sites
These days social sites are where most of the action is so follow the trends. Look for voids that a good article could fill. Become involved with social groups and discussions. This will not only help you with your content marketing but with your business as well.

4. Internet News Sites 
Keeping up with internet news sites is important for your business, not only for writing articles but for keeping abreast of new developments, ideas, and technology in your field. Research and write your articles to keep your readers and visitors informed as well.

5. Focus on Your Email
Carefully read all email inquiries you get. What are people asking you about your business? Keep records of all the questions asked and use them for your content marketing.

6. Article Directories
By reading other articles, maybe you can come up with an unusual twist or angle for an overused idea. It sometimes helps to get different views and insights on the same old subject. NOTE: Never copy information or content from other sites, blogs or articles.

7. Subscribe to Ezines
Ezines can be a goldmine of information, ideas and more. You can keep up-to-date on the latest products, programs, biz opps, etc. Some of this information can be used to create an informative article.

8. Do a Survey
Ask your visitors, readers, and customers to answer a couple of questions. Offer them a free gift in return.
For example: What questions do you have about…? What resources do you need and cannot find? What is your number one concern about….? Of course, these questions would target your specific niche so you can zero in on what people are looking for.

9. Ask Yourself
Ask yourself what information you would be looking for. When you look for articles to read, what subjects do you search for? As a reader yourself, you can answer your own questions.

10. Open Mind
Always keep an open mind when it comes to subject matter for your content. I always used to tell myself, people won’t want to know about that or how to do this. Don’t fall into that trap! People want to learn about everything. We are always looking for new information, tips, ideas and resources.

Always carry a small notepad so anytime anything inspires an idea within you, you can write it down and use it when the time comes. Many people get ideas in the shower or lying in bed at night. These are not the best times so have a pad and pen handy!
And remember, people want basic, straightforward helpful information. You don’t need to use big words, fancy storylines or over dramatization. Just be honest and helpful.
 Also, be sure to give your articles a little of your personality, humor (if appropriate) and heart.

Write as if you were just chatting with an old friend.
Articles can be one of the most powerful online marketing methods so don’t let a little doubt stop you from making this big step towards success!

Bing Optimization Tips For Your Website

You thought you were done when you optimized your site for Google, MSN, and Yahoo, right? Nope – the Microsoft Network, MSN, has partnered with Yahoo in a 10-year, $275 million dollar agreement and recently launched Bing. Having gone live in June 2009, it’s instantly very popular.
There’s even talk that it may eventually replace Google as the most popular search engine because it is intuitive and offers users a number of search options.
Early reports also show that Bing users are more likely to click on advertisements than Google users. Time will tell and Google will most certainly have an answer to Bing’s growing popularity. While we can’t predict the future, all signs point to making the effort now to learn SEO for Bing.

Here are the top 6 ways to do that today…

1) Manage Length of Your Content
Make your content longer than 300 words. According to SEO experts, Bing algorithms seem to place a higher value on content that is over 300 words. That means longer blog posts, more content on web pages and longer articles.

2) On-Page Tips for Bing
Optimize your title tags for your keywords and use unique tags on each page. You may be doing this already for Google and Yahoo. Keep it up. Bing really likes title tags and pays attention to them when indexing and ranking your page. If you haven’t been paying too much attention to them up until now, it’s time to start.

3) Bing Linking
Linking is always important in SEO. However, unlike Google, when doing SEO for Bing, pay more attention to building backlinks from highly relevant websites. Also, Bing really likes outbound links and gives a bit more weight than the other search engines do.

4) Keyword Targeting
Bing’s own FAQ page suggests that you target no more than two keywords per page. We suggest you follow this rule. Usually you will want to target one main keyword you are trying to get ranked for and a more long-tail keyword which contains your main keyword in it.

5) Meta Tags
You may have let your meta tags slide over the years because rumor has it Google doesn’t really pay much attention to them. However, Bing recommends you use unique description tags on each page.

6) Continue All Other Good SEO Practices
Good SEO for Bing does have some differences than Google, but good SEO practices still need to be followed too. For example:
* Use H1 tags
* Use text navigation links
* Use keywords in your URL

There’s a bit of disagreement between experts. There are some reports that indicate Bing places value on longevity. The older your website, the more respect Bing seems to want to give you. However, other sources cite that younger, newer sites, have the advantage. Regardless, whether you’re a brand new site or a website that’s been around for years, put the above practices in place and be patient.

As an internet business owner it’s always good to pay attention to what the big three are doing, the big three being MSN, Yahoo, and Google. And when two of them team up then that most certainly deserves a change in strategy. As the months pass and Bing continues to grow, there will likely be some additions or changes to how SEO for Bing will work. They may change things up and decide one day to index and rank websites differently. Stay tuned for further developments.

An Article from SPN By Adam Bauthues 

Important Quotation from Best Marketter

- Adam Urbanski, TheMarketingMentors.com – “Most people like to overcomplicate things and then they become overwhelmed by too much information and the complexity of what they are trying to create. My advice to all my clients and to everyone reading this is this: map out a simple action plan and work diligently to implement it.
My favorite saying to all my students is this: If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly to start with! It’s implementation over perfection!”

- Chris Knight, Ezine Articles Blog – “Set your goals higher than you think you can achieve and then don’t worry about the ‘how you’ll achieve it’… Whatever you think most about expands. If you’re committed, you’ll find a way to pull off the results you’re seeking.”


- Denny Hatch, DennyHatch.com – “If you do e-mails, remember 94% of e-mails are Spam. Your e-mail effort is one mouse-click away from oblivion. Make sure your FROM line is believable and spend a lot of time–hours and hours–on your subject line. Be sure to use the seven key copy drivers–the emotional hot buttons that make people act: Fear – Greed – Guilt – Anger – Exclusivity – Salvation – Flattery. If your copy is not dripping with one or more of these, said Seattle guru Bob Hacker, tear it up and start over.
Be sure to lace your copy with the 12 most powerful and evocative words in the English language: you – save – money – easy – love – results – health – easy – proven – safety – discovery – new. ‘Free is a magic word,’ said the late guru Dick Benson. However, use ‘FREE’ in a e-mail subject line, and the Spam filters will kill it.”

- Drew McClellan, Drew’s Marketing Minute – “Do Less. One of the most tempting aspects of marketing is the veritable smorgasbord of different marketing tactics that you can toss into a marketing plan. It’s almost overwhelming.
Many marketing professionals make the very understandable mistake of believing that more is better. But they’re wrong.
You will be vastly more successful if you do less, but do it better. Pick 3-4 marketing tactics that you think are really going to be valued by your audience and drive the behavior/action you’re looking for. Then, figure out how you can do them in an extraordinary way.
100% consistency. 100% relevancy. Do less. But do them better.”





- Jill Koenig, GoalGuru.com – “If you want to create massive changes in your life, you must arrange and design your life so that your Goals and Dreams are at the Forefront of your day, instead of them being an afterthought.”




- Jill Konrath, SellingToBigCompanies.com – “Do what you love. But that’s where many people struggle. They don’t know what that is. I always tell people to pay attention to what they’re interested in. If you’re online, what are you reading? If you buy books, what subjects are you exploring? If you volunteer for extra projects at work, what’s the common denominator? If you do way more on a work project than was expected/necessary, what pulled you so deep into the subject?
These are all indicators of our talents and interests. Follow them. That’s where you’ll find the greatest satisfaction & joy in life.”

- Jim Connolly, JimsMarketingBlog.com – “Learn how ‘The Law of Return’ works. Never try to take out from a situation, until you have put something in. Don’t expect the reward BEFORE the work. That abs machine won’t flatten your gut in 30 days – that diet won’t make you skinny in a week. You have to sow the seeds and tend the land before you can reap the harvest! Whenever you try to fool The Law of Return you fail.”


- Jim Connolly, JimsMarketingBlog.com – “You cannot promise the marketplace a high quality service and yet charge a bargain-basement fee! If you do, you will send people a mixed-message, and it will lose you business every time.
Everyone knows that quality never comes cheap – that if something looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true! Make your services as valuable to the marketplace as possible and then charge accordingly.”


- John Carlton, John-Carlton.com – “Find a source of info you can trust, and get busy with proactive movement. Few marketers succeed on their own — my own circle of friends, colleagues and co-marketers is vast, and includes everyone you’ve ever heard of. Even so, there are just a handful I consider “go-to guys,” who I call up first with a problem or question. It’s the concept of the “mastermind group” — don’t go it alone, but instead gather people around you who share your passions and ambitions.”

- John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing – “Become a journalist – no, I’m not really suggesting that you join the staff of some publication, but the acceptance of new media tools like blogs and podcasts has turned the marketing tables – so take advantage of the allure of a reporter and start a blog and podcast and request interviews with industry leaders, community leaders, authors and maybe even your biggest prospects. Instead of asking for a meeting to demonstrate your product, ask to feature your prospect in your next blog or podcast episode. You will automatically change your status in their eyes, enhance your role as an expert and create great content for your marketing materials.”

- Joy Gendusa, PostCardMania.com – “Keep learning and reaching for knowledge. The internet is constantly changing. Listen to others that have ‘been there done that,’ and make sure you make them clarify what the heck they’re saying! There is so much new terminology being created daily in regards to the internet, and it can be so daunting. Don’t think you sound stupid because you need to clarify data.”

- Matt Shobe, MattShobe.com – “Find and surround yourself with smart people you like and who complement your strengths, and good things will follow. I think this holds true whether you’re just starting out in an internship or summer job, an entrepreneur with a few partners, or a senior executive of a major corporation.”

- Michael Fleischner, MarketingScoop.com – “Marketing is everything and everything is marketing! The key to a successful marketing campaign, business, or even career, is knowing that you are always communicating. This is not to say that you have to be overly cautious, but rather think about the implication of your messaging.”


- Michel Fortin, MichelFortin.com – “Time and time again, I’ve told many aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and mar­keters that a USP is what dis­tin­guishes you from the pack. It increases per­ceived value, exper­tise, and cred­i­bil­ity – with­out need­ing to state it outright.
Just by being 10% dif­fer­ent, unique, orig­i­nal, or spe­cial is enough to make you stand out like a sore thumb in an over­crowded, hyper­com­pet­i­tive marketplace.”
- Robert Fitzpatrick, FalseProfits.com – “This research has shown that the MLM business model, as it is practiced by most companies, is a marketplace hoax. In those cases, the business is primarily a scheme to continuously enroll distributors and little product is ever retailed to consumers who are not also enrolled as distributors.
Financially, the odds for an individual to achieve financial success under those circumstances rival the odds of winning at the tables in Las Vegas.”

- Dr. Sabrina Schleicher, TapThePotential.com – “Lead with your strength. When it comes to marketing, choose one or two approaches that come naturally and easily to you. Don’t waste your time trying to force yourself to market in a way that feels forced. You’ll just procrastinate and become frustrated with yourself for not marketing yourself effectively. Focus on developing those approaches to marketing that you enjoy. Learn all you can about the ’secrets’ to using those approaches successfully. Be strategic in your marketing. It is much more effective to use one or two approaches with target markets, than to try multiple approaches.”

- Siamak Taghaddos, Grasshopper.com – “People don’t like to be sold. If they did, they would spend all their free time in car dealerships. Instead, people want to be informed, they want to be educated. You’ll find your best customers are those you educate about your product or service and who then decide to purchase it because it is a good fit for them.
Prospects who buy your product/service but are not educated about your offering will be disappointed. They will not be return customers. Worse, they will tell others how they got ’sold’ by you. In the Internet age, this can quickly be very destructive to your business.”

- Scott Shane, Author of Illusions of Entrepreneurship – “The data shows that most entrepreneurs compete on price, but doing this leads companies to perform worse. New companies are better off competing on service, quality or some other dimension.” (Source of above tips: SmallBizTrends.com)

- Tim Berry, Planning Startups Stories – “One of the most expensive myths in marketing is that lower price produces higher volume. That might be true for coal or gasoline, but not for most businesses. Lower price means, well, ask yourself: do you always eat at the lowest price restaurant? Buy the lowest price clothes? Do you drive the lowest priced car? Pricing is your best statement of value.”

 - Tinu Abayomi-Paul, FreeTrafficTip.com – “Search engine traffic is fantastic when you can get it. But don’t rely on search engines alone for traffic to your site. If you added just one more traffic tactic that gets you as much traffic as you get from search engines, you’ve doubled your traffic. And if sales go up at the same rate, you’ve doubled your income too.”

Giude to Customize Twitter Backgrounds

There are a great deal of Twitter users adopting a policy of consistent branding and positioning carried across from other Webspaces, e.g. Websites, eStorefronts, etc., by employing customized Twitter backgrounds. This would seem to be defined as best practice, as many marketers advise keeping the process of branding both homogenous and persistent transversely through availed channels.

Customized backgrounds lend an air of professionalism to one’s Twitter account. Also, followers tend to be encouraged when they see a touch of personalization and branding. By following these few easy-to-understand steps, you too can be the proud owner of an upscale, bleeding-edge Twitter site!
Several factors must be considered when creating a custom background (the following suggestions and instructions are based on the use of Adobe Photoshop and presume familiarity; if needed, the reader is referred to the Adobe Photoshop tutorials site.

Size
There are two sides of the background which can be customized; right and left (note: the entire background will be one image). By keeping the graphic content of the right side width at 210 pixels (2.917 inches), and the left at 217 pixels (3.014 inches), all branding elements should fit within these two distances from the edges; height should be kept at 809 pixels (11.236 inches). The entire customized Twitter background graphic should be 1439 pixels (19.986 inches) width by 809 pixels (11.236 inches) height. As this is a Web document, resolution should be 72 pixels/inch. The resultant branding message will then be visible in both the “new” Twitter interface as well as the current version. While the space above the feed could conceivably be utilized in the overall creation of the graphic, this could prove problematic. Nevertheless, adventurous designers may wish to toy with this concept.

Background color
The option available that can be used to match the customized background color. It can be found in the Twitter navbar (located at the top of the site) by accessing Settings > Design > Change design colors. When the Change design colors option is accessed, and background, text, links, etc., are chosen, a color selector is provided for the user. In the selector is a dialog box wherein a hexadecimal value can be entered. This value is easily determined in Photoshop, and by matching the values no difference will be detected between the customized background and that supplied via the Twitter interface, as inequalities in coverage may occur.

Sidebar color
By matching the sidebar color to that of the background color (process described above), the information provided by Twitter in the sidebar section, e.g. name, number of tweets, following, followers, et al., will appear to float freely (note: by using a white background color [hex value = #ffffff], the feed itself will float; selecting both background and sidebar colors as white will eliminate page bordering altogether – this is how the Grannelle Twitter site has been fashioned [when employing this method, the sidebar border {appears as a delineation between the feed and the sidebar} can be eliminated by changing the color value to white also, if desired]).

Text and Graphics
All data such as hypertext, phone numbers, etc., are part of the total graphic. They cannot be accessed, copied, or pasted. However, by providing matching information accessible from the sidebar, such as that supplied for the Bio and Web headings (found in the uppermost portion of the sidebar), constancy can be achieved. Repetition of use of the profile picture is also helpful for uniformity. Twitter text and link colors can be selected from the Change design colors preferences to accent those in the customized background, though care should be taken to use contrasting hues. Bear in mind that users experiencing color vision deficiency (color blindness) may encounter difficulty in distinguishing certain color selections.

Total File Size and Format
The total size of the file must be smaller than 800k. GIF, JPEG (JPG), and PNG file formats are acceptable. While the customized Twitter background graphic can be tiled (repeated across the page), it is not suggested for this method.

Using Photoshop, simply create a document with the aforementioned measurements, building content for the left and right sides of the graphic and choosing background color. Include text information, pictures, and other desired images and illustrations. Adopting a consistently matching background color, create a new document, again with previously described dimensions. Copy and paste the left and right (merged) images onto the appropriate sides of the image. Save the final product. The finished background can be uploaded in the Design section, Change background image, following the same procedure as formerly instructed. By playing with and trying out these ideas, users can have a polished and professional Twitter site!

Tips For Optimizing WordPress

While WordPress is a wonderful and popular CMS, it is not designed for SEO without a few tweaks. Thankfully, optimizing WordPress is easy enough to do with the help of some minor changes, free plug-ins, and even SEO-friendly WordPress themes. Here are five optimizing WordPress tips will help you create a more SEO-friendly website.

1. Make sure you are visible to search engines. I know, I laughed when I came across this tip, too, but it is actually excellent advice. Privacy settings can trip up the best of us, and apparently some WordPress themes block search engines by default. In your Settings menu, go to Privacy and confirm that “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers” is selected. If it isn’t, change it now. While you are there, find your way over to your default article settings, which you can find in the Discussion section. Make sure you check off “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)” & “Allow people to post new comments on new articles.” Spend some time with your comment settings, too. Trackbacks and pingbacks are essential to link building and comments will help you connect with your readers. 

2. Customize your URLs aka “Pretty Permalinks.” We have all seen those awful URLs that end with a string of convoluted numbers that do not mean anything to anyone other than the domain server. Instead customize your URLs so people see the post title instead. Under Settings, go to Permalinks, select Custom Structure and enter “/%postname%/” in that field. Under the Optional section, enter “category” in the Category Base field and  “tag” in the Tag Base field. Voilà, now you will have pretty permalinks! 

3. Optimize your content. While you may not be able to afford the services of an SEO management firm, you can still benefit from some standard SEO practices. Quality content with keywords will make it easier for people to find you. A keyword is a word or phrase someone inputs into a search engine, such as,  “WordPress” or “WordPress SEO tips.” If you are thinking about optimizing WordPress, you should have a strong sense of what keywords are relevant. Use those keywords in your post, the title, and your tags. Make sure when you use these keywords, however, that it makes sense and flows nicely. Otherwise, you will come across as a shady spammer and not a reputable source.

4. Use SEO plug-ins and an SEO-friendly WordPress theme. There are plenty of tools out there that have been developed specifically to optimize WordPress. WordPress’s own “All-in-One SEO Pack” is an excellent way to start. You will also come across mentions of WordPress SEO by Yoast, Scribe SEO, and SEO Slugs plug-in, to name a few. You don’t have to install them all, but the right plug-ins can make all the difference. Likewise, you can find plenty of free SEO-friendly WordPress themes. A common element to these themes is an emphasis on headings tag structure. Sure, you can tweak your H1, H2, and H3 tags manually, but if you can find a theme you like that already does it for you that is one less thing you need to do.

5. At the end of the day, content is king. When you are creating content for your website, you want to make sure that it is entertaining and informative. Write about relevant things that will interest your readers. If you find something useful, link to it. If you can integrate compelling images into your posts, do so. Proofread for spelling and grammar mistakes. Quality content requires a significant investment of time and energy, but it is well worth it. All the optimization in the world will not make a difference if your content is rubbish.

Optimizing WordPress is easy enough with a few tweaks. While there are several SEO-friendly changes you can make, these five essential tips are a good place to start. Article Courtesy of  search engine optimization firm Wpromote