Nah... bacalah

Webmasters can benefit from the growing traffic of social bookmarking websites.

By David Leonhardt

Social bookmarking is a phenomenon that has caught on like wildfire, yet there are still many website owners who have no idea what it is, let alone how you can use it to increase your website leads, sales, subscribers and even your repeat visitors. Get ready to ride the next wave of Internet marketing.

Everyone knows that a bookmark is a piece of paper that marks a page so you can find it easily again. Most people know that a computer bookmark is a link on your computer that marks a web page so you can find it easily again.

A social bookmark is a link that marks a web page so you can find it easily again, but also so you can share it with others (that's why it's called "social", usually by posting it to one of several dozen social-bookmarking websites.

Social bookmarking is all the rage these days, with websites like Del.icio.us and Digg and Dzone and Reddit and Furl and, well dozens if not hundreds of others commanding a presence among the top traffic generators on the Internet. People like to bookmark their "finds" and they like to show off their "finds" to others. Hence bookmarking, hence social bookmarking.

Webmasters hoping to capture the attention of today's Internet user should heed the signs and recognize the phenomenal opportunity presented by social bookmarking. In a follow-up article, I will explain the "how-to"s, but here are five types of marketing advantages ofsocial bookmarking.

REPEAT VISITORS: Considering that many people do not buy/register/contact/take action on their first visit to your website, repeat visitors are a necessity (not to mention laser-targeted prospects!) You can get more repeat visitors to your website if they can find your website again. That means getting them to bookmark your website, either on their computer or on the social bookmarking site of their choice. The more bookmarking options you offer, the more visitors are likely to return. The easier you make it for them to bookmark your site, the more of them will. However, you really must have quality content, or nobody will want to bookmark your page.

VIRAL BOOKMARKING: When somebody bookmarks your website on their own computer, they share it with, well, themselves. It's a private thing. But when they bookmark a web page on a social bookmarking, it's more "social". Other people will see it. Other people might share it. Other people might even bookmark it. Websites like Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia and SpicyPage are ideal for this. In fact, many of the biggest users of a social bookmark website are often users of several. However, you really must have quality content, or nobody will care that somebody else has bookmarked your page.

VIRAL LINKING: When somebody sees your link at a social bookmarking website, they might bookmark it...or they might add it to their own blog or portal or fan site. Suddenly one person's bookmark becomes several links to your website, presumably from reasonably well-targeted sources of traffic. However, you really must have quality content, or nobody will want to blog somebody else's bookmark.

SEO-FRIENDLY LINKS: Many of the social bookmarking websites offer no direct SEO value. The links might feature the NoFollow attribute. Or the mea robots tag might be set to NoFollow. Or your bookmarks might not show on unique URLs. Os the links might use a redirect script that search engine spiders don't follow. But there are some social bookmarking websites that offer SEO-friendly links.

SEO-FRIENDLY LINKS ELSEWHERE: Even if a link from a social bookmarking website is not SEO-friendly, don't underestimate its SEO potential. There is a whole industry growing just to game Digg and Del.icio.us, knowing that if a website's bookmark can stick on the home page for an hour or two, it will mean dozens or even hundreds of inbound links from reasonably relevant blogs and portals and fan sites. And this is natural linking, the kind that search engines love! However, you really must have quality content, or whose going to post a link to your website just because they found it bookmarked?

ABOUT THE WRITER:

David Leonhardt is an effective SEO writer and SEM consultant. Read the David Leonhardt SEO marketing blog, specifically the social bookmarking blog post that inspired this article.

Labels: Informasi, Teknologi, Tips

By David Leonhardt

Maggie knows how to find what she wants. She lets her fingers do the walking - not in the Yellow Pages, but at Google.com. She wants to learn about bread baking, and you have just written Bread Baking Made Simple, and you sell some great baking tools. The good news is the Google and other search engines exist for one simple reason: to help Maggie find your website.

Google will show Maggie 534,000 resources on "bread baking". Unless she fails to find what she wants on the first page, or top 10 results, she will never find your website listed 124th in the results. (Actually, if she does not find what she wants in the top twenty or thirty results, she is likely to refine her search to "easy bread baking" or "home bread baking").

How do you get into the top 10 results so Maggie can find your website? You might have heard a lot about "search engine optimization" and "ranking analysis" and "algorithms". It all sounds very complex, but it really works on a simple 1 - 2 - 3 principle.

1. A search engine will show Maggie only resources (websites) it has on record. So make sure to submit your site to the key search engines and directories. You do not need to hire somebody who will charge you big dollars to do this. Nor should you fall for any of the auto-submit software or services. This should be done by hand, and anybody can do it. You can do it yourself.

2. The search engine will rank highest those websites it feels are most "important". This means you have to show that your website is most important. There are a few simple things you can do. First, make sure you have content. Text content equals importance on the Internet. Links, both coming in and going out, are key. Connectivity equals importance on the Internet. Get listed in the major directories (DMOZ.com, Yahoo.com, Zeal.com, JoeAnt.com, etc.), as this also is a measure of importance.

3. The search engine will show Maggie the most "relevant" high-ranking resources. Google might rank http://TheHappyGuy.com relatively very high, but it is totally irrelevant to a search for bread baking. How does a search engine know which websites are most relevant for Maggie's search? By the number of times "bread baking" shows up in text on your web page. By the variety of ways it shows up on your page. By number web pages you link to and that link to you with the words "bread baking" included.

Are you ready to roll? Possibly. Some of this you can easily do yourself. But there are three places that are worth spending money to help all the Maggies out there find your website and your book.

The first is choosing the right keywords. It might look simple, but "bread baking" might not even be the best keyword phrase to focus on. It might be "easy bread baking" or "home bread baking". The most searched terms might not be the best, nor the term with the least competition.

The second is to prepare a link strategy. The "link exchange" pages that are getting more popular each day are also becoming less effective each day. Here are just a few of the linking factors that will affect whether Maggie discovers your book:

• The total number of incoming and outgoing links
  
• The importance of the sites you link to and from
  
• The relevancy of the sites you link to and from
  
• Which pages on their sites and on yours are being linked
  
• What you include in the incoming and outgoing links
  
• Where on the page the links are placed
  
• How many links are on those pages
  
• How many pages are linked to or have outgoing links
  
• The ratio of links to content on the pages involved
  

You can implement the strategy yourself, but it is worth hiring somebody to put it together for you. Ask the person what factors she would consider when building a strategy for you. If she does not mention several of the above, your money is better spent elsewhere.

The third place to invest is to have somebody knowledgeable review your html code. Chances are that you have missed numerous opportunities to let the search engines know your website is relevant, and possibly some opportunities to show it is important.

For more free seo-related articles for reprint, please see our article directory.

Permission is granted to republish this article on your website on condition that you include the following byline with all hyperlinks intact:

David Leonhardt is an effective, professional seo consultant and a website marketing consultant. For a free quote, call 613-448-3931, or send us an email.

Labels: Informasi, Teknologi, Tips

By David Leonhardt

From the obvious to the "Hey-I-never-thought-of-that-great-idea-before", here are 10 of the top 52 tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.

Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site. Here is an example of deep linking, in this case to my personal happiness workbook.

Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page

Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

Article exchanges. You've heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Not anchor text. Don't overdo the anchor text. You don't want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, "Gumbo Pudding Pop" occasionally, "Get gumbo pudding pops" as well, "Gumbo-flavored pudding pops" some other times, etc.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It's called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of Last Minute Florida Villas is like a mini-site map?

There you have it: 10 of the 52 Top SEO Tips, a free tip sheet that comes with Don't Get Banned By the Search Engines:

There is a lot more to search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings.

For more free seo-related articles for reprint, please see our article directory.

(not mine, just take it from internet)

Labels: Informasi, Teknologi, Tips