SearchEngineOptimisation.com, only one way up

A question that concerns any social media business user is how much time social media marketing, SMM, should take up. When it comes to Twitter, or even Facebook, it’s far too easy to get carried away. Instead of draining your time resources, you need to plan.

Spending all day on Twitter makes no sense. At the same time, only dropping in once a day means your marketing plan won’t move forward. So how much time should you devote to tweeting?

The answer will depend on an extent to your confidence with content. If you’re able to dash off a tweet in five minutes, then doing this ten times a day will be no problem. For less confident content writers, half an hour each day spent on planning is a better idea. The important thing to remember is to restrict the time spent: if you find you’re spending more than an hour each day on Twitter, you’re in trouble.

Why not just once a day?

It would be much easier to just drop into Twitter once a day. Campaigns on other social media sites can work well with this level of activity. Twitter doesn’t. To keep your audience interested, you need to tweet at least three times a day, but remember that some of these should be casual comments.

Twitter and other social media sites can be huge time-wasters, but only if you don’t have strategies and protocols in place. It’s a good idea to talk to your SEO company, or us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk, before working social media into your SEO schedule.

One of the factors for sites that weathered the recent Google algorithm changes was links. A good, well-rounded link profile generally helped a site ride through the changes that Google’s Farmer Update wrought. Although content was a driving factor for sites that were affected, it seems that links could have played a major part in sheltering some of the sites that survived unscathed.

So, exactly what kind of links are we talking about? Although any good link profile is likely to help you get through an algorithm change, there is a bit of a knock-on effect when you have a lot of industry links. If your link givers haven’t done so well after the change, your link profile’s value goes down.

The remedy for this is to build your link profile on a broad base. High quality, one way link building shouldn’t focus just on links from your industry, but links from a whole variety of sources, including local organisations, business associations. Social media links are a good resource as well, when you can get them. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk about how to use social media optimisation as part of your organic SEO plan.

To keep track of the breadth of your link building, it’s a good idea to keep a spreadsheet. This will help you to track your links and hunt down those that are more of a hindrance than a help. It will also help you see, at a glance, whether your link profile base is wide enough to hold up through industry and search engine changes.

Charts and other infographics have been a common sight over the last few years on the net. Realising that text-based content was no longer catching attention, various site owners began using infographics to catch the eye. Overuse has sadly diminished the effectiveness of this popular SEO tool, but they can still work to build online reputation. All you have to do is avoid the following.

1. The boring infograph. Infographics aren’t internet reputation solutions if they aren’t interesting. Any SEO agency will advise clients to boost natural links with interesting content. This applies as much to infographics as anything. A badly-chosen topic or a bad treatment can mean your work is wasted.

2. The ugly infograph. Similarly, graphics don’t work well if they are badly designed. Many graphics do work well with a simple design, but if they look like something worked up in Microsoft Paint, they’ll fail.

3. The wallflower infograph. If you’re going to go to all the effort of creating a good-looking, interesting infograph, you don’t want it sitting unnoticed. Make sure you connect infographics with keyword-rich, well-promoted content so that they get attention. Promote your new infographs through your social media streams, and mention it in comments on related articles.

At Searchengineoptimisation.co.uk, we can help you avoid all of the above. Of course none of this will work if you haven’t planned the subject of your infograph well. The most successful infographics are those that explain a complicated subject in a simple manner. Look for the gaps of understanding in your industry, and you’ll find your infographic niche.

E-commerce sites can have a hard time with search engine optimisation. Not only are e-commerce sites more difficult to optimise, they have pages that can be hard to boost organically. A search engine optimisation company will have a few tricks up its sleeve, but site owners going it alone can find the going difficult. Luckily, there are things that are easy to do to boost those tricky e-commerce pages.

*Entertain them. One of the problems with e-commerce pages is that they tend to be very marketing-focussed. This is fine for internet users looking to buy products, but not so fine for site owners looking for interesting things to link to. Give potential linkers something to use by posting demonstration videos or reviews.

*Give them extras. A resource a lot of e-commerce site owners ignore is the products themselves. When customers are looking for products, they’re likely to be interested in extra information. Offer a how-to PDF.

*Hold a competition. This is a classic marketing tactic, and it works well for quick one way link building. Stick a competition on your main product page, and watch the links flow in. Discuss the uses of competitions for SEO with us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk.

*Beat your competitors. Finally, attract attention as well as links by beating your competitors in terms of quality content. This is particularly true for product pages. When your competitors post the standard manufacturer description, outstrip them with an original description and better product information. Add a review or two and you will have consumer sites linking to you in a flash.

Social media is big. Every search engine optimisation agency will agree on that. What SEOs can’t agree on is just how site owners should participate. Some experts will tell you to concentrate on one main social media profile. Others will tell you that you can only succeed if you participate on multiple networks. With a major time investment at stake, it’s incredibly frustrating to have so many differing opinions on the line.

As with anything, there are pros and cons to each side of the argument. Social media networks tend to feed off each other at some level, so site owners investing time in multiple networks will have an easier time getting their name known. On the other hand, social media networks are notoriously difficult to get into in the early stages, so a big investment is needed. Another problem is that competition for attention is high. But on the other hand, the rewards can be big once a site owner is established…

The list of positives and negatives could go on forever. While it is important to have a social media presence, that presence is worthless if you don’t actually participate. The answer really lies in negotiation between the time you can afford and the advice of the provider of your SEO services, such as those we provide here at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk.

There is no consensus about the level of commitment you need for social media management. The truth is, for SMM, the decision has to rest with you. Small amounts of participation are better than overcommitting.

Any your search engine optimisation company will advise that good content is a way to get ahead in today’s internet. The search engines have been pushing for better and better content over the years, as have internet users. In order to impress the search engines – and your site’s users – you need to find ways to make your content shine out from the rest.

It’s not easy to be witty and original all the time. For those days you can’t dredge up some sparkling commentary, here are some easier ways to make your content stand out:

*Subheadings, bullet points, numbers and other block-busters. Every SEO company uses these in content to create flow and catch the user’s eye. They’re worth a mention here, though, because they really do work. Just be sure to vary your use of them to avoid monotony.

*Images. Images are underrated by site owners and even by many SEOs. It’s amazing how an image can make a relatively ordinary piece of text stand out. You can make further use of your images by optimising them for Google Image Search. Talk to our experts at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk about this aspect of search engine optimisation. As with subheadings and bullet points, though, overuse makes for boring pages.

*Socialisation. Linking your new post in with your social media plan is a fantastic way to grab some more attention and to make the post itself look better. How? By embedding your social media widgets in the page. These widgets can be great SEO tools, creating buzz both ways.

Many SEO experts sing the praises of .edu links. These links, coming from academic institutions, tend to carry a fair amount of weight with the search engines because, presumably, they can’t be bought. If you’re engaging in a high quality link building campaign, it’s likely your SEO agency has advised you to pursue these links if you can. The trouble is, they’re incredibly hard to get.

Being links from educational organisations, .edu links are different from other forms of links. It’s difficult to organise some sort of exchange with the sites involved, because generally you don’t have anything that they want. ‘Generally’ is the word here. The trick is to find something that they do want. There are two common ways to get in:

*Fundraising. Every educational institution is interested in fundraising, or has student organisations that are. Offering up products and services for a fundraising effort can usually get you a link. Just investigate the causes your targets have going.

*Students. The student body of any school or university is a wide-open gateway for link building. Universities, in particular, usually allow a certain amount of student space on their websites. Contact the various studient bodies, student bloggers and student publications when you’re link building. Links are easily obtained via the usual methods this way, and you can discuss methods with us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk.

Links with the magic .edu are difficult to get your hands on, but by no means impossible. Just employ a little creativity, and you could land some valuable additions to your profile.

It takes more than technical SEO these days to get to top spots in the SERPs. Particularly if you’re in a high-competition industry, you need to work every angle you can get. Luckily, with social media hotting up like never before, there are plenty of angles to work. If you want an effective campaign, you need to know how to engage with the social media to build up your site’s authority.

Social media services are a common addition to organic search engine optimization as they can build links and make contacts. The most important thing that social media brings to the table, however, is the building of a site’s authority. As any search engine optimization company will tell you, it’s not as simple as joining a social media network. You have to fully engage:

*Create. This is likely to be a part of social media you’re already engaged with. Content creation is a major part of any SEO campaign, and you can discuss this with our team at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk.

*Chat. Just as important is the contribution of chatter. Social media users love to be commented upon, and this is a sure way to make friends.

*Lurk. Not everything is about activity. Watching others can give you some valuable insight into how to succeed.

*Critique. Offering criticism is a great way to spark interest when you feel your campaign is low on energy.

*Collect and review. To make your social media campaign pay off, analyse what you see and use your insights in other areas of your campaign.

Multilingual sites can be a real hassle for SEO. When you’re dealing with content in two or more languages, you have to worry about how the site will read for not one, but many versions of Google and Bing. The main question is whether to separate out your languages into different sites, or to keep it all together.

Separate: Once upon a time, the average SEO company would recommend that you separate out the languages on your sites, creating new sites for each language. This meant complications for SEO link building and other factors, but it worked out better in the end. This is no longer your only option.

The original reason for separating pages was the difficulty search engines had when dealing with languages. It was simpler and more efficient to keep sites all in one language when possible, avoiding possible confusion. Google has been adding some improvements to the algorithm to provide automatic translation. While it’s not certain that this will take care of all the issues involved when working with a multilingual site, it’s likely to help such sites’ communication with the search engines.

Consolidate: If you do consolidate the various languages on your site, you still need to be careful, and you can discuss this with our experts at www.SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk. Mixing languages on pages is still problematic. Tactics for different search engines need to be considered, and different markets must still be kept in mind.

The festive season is a major event for online retailers, but with so much competition it can be difficult to secure that boost in sales you may have counted on. Just a few minor touches can increase your sales at any time of year, and they can assist with your SEO, too.

*Use your front page. A bad habit many businesses get into is treating their home page like a general advertisement, rather than the prime internet real estate it is. Linking to your most popular products from the home page helps with your internal SEO link building, allows easy access for customers, and can help promote other products via deeper links.

*Create connections. A great way to further boost sales is to create links to less-popular products at the secondary level. This is a fairly standard tactic for retail sites. However, a lot of retail sites fall down with this method because they don’t provide relevant product links that will interest customers. Use your related keyword research to put forward products that are truly related. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk about this.

*Don’t skimp on descriptions. Internet shoppers have very little to go on when making their decision to purchase. If you want to sell products beyond those your site users are specifically searching for, you need to use your product descriptions, product photos and product information to best advantage. Product descriptions are also a good way to assist your organic search engine optimization by linking related keywords together.