It’s that time of year again, and as 2010 draws to a close I thought I’d take the opportunity to share with you my thoughts on the world of SEO in 2011. Following are the SEO practices which I think will remain important in 2011, as well as the factors that I think will become more significant over the course of the year.

Practices that will Remain Important

1. Building Links from Different IP Addresses

Building links from a wide range of different IP addresses will almost certainly remain an important SEO practice. Remember: it’s not just the number of links that you build but the amount of IP addresses that you get links from that will determine your PageRank.

2. Building Links from High PR Domains

Building links from domains with a PageRank higher than 3 will remain a key SEO practice because these will continue to provide the best links.

3. Ensuring Google Indexes as Many Links as Possible

Although no SEO can claim that every one of the links that they generate will get indexed, it is still important to rely on a good method to ensure that Google indexes as many of them as possible.

Whether you add an XML sitemap using Google’s webmaster tools, link from a blog post with an RSS feed, link via an authoritative social media profile or use a social bookmarking service, make sure you have a way to increase the amount of links that get indexed.

4. Carrying Out Thorough Keyword Research

No matter what changes we see in the world of SEO, keyword research will still be THE most important part of your SEO. This is one practice that is not going to diminish in importance any time soon.

Factors that will Become More Important

1. Changes to Google Local Results

Local searches are becoming increasingly important to Google’s algorithm, and as such we are likely to see a greater emphasis on optimising for local results. According to Google itself, 20% of searches are now “related to location”, and the annual Local Search Usage Study by TMP Directional Marketing and comScore puts the amount of local search queries this year at 8.3%.

Google is now reflecting this in its results pages, and I think it’s inevitable that Google local listings are going to become even more important over the course of the next year.

I’m expecting a lot of my SEO clients in 2011 to ask for optimisation of their Google local listings above that of their actual websites because their main keyword targets will trigger local results and therefore push organic listings further down and off page one. To see this for yourself, just make a quick search for ‘leeds architects’ on google.co.uk.

2. Greater Integration of Social Media with SE Rankings

There is a lot of debate going on at the moment about how social media is affecting Google rankings. One of the biggest debates centres on the ‘Like This’ button that Facebook introduced during the year.

The Facebook Like Button argument concerns the challenge that Facebook is posing to the search engines by blocking their ability to index sites through limiting how much of the web they can track at any given moment. It is unknown how this will play out, but watch out for more debate over the coming months.

This year I have also noticed that my Twitter pages are growing considerably both in terms of their PageRank and the quality of the links through to my main website. I think it’s now certain that Google will factor tweets, recommendations and other social media mentions into its algorithm more throughout 2011.

3. Continued Growth of Mobile Search

We are almost certain to see continued growth in mobile search throughout 2011, and as such new platforms like the iPad and its Android competitors could well represent the best monetisation opportunities.

Google recently revealed that its mobile search was up 130% in Q3, and Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP at Google, is quoted on mobiThinking describing mobile as “the future of search on the internet”. In addition, an analyst for RBC said back in June that by 2012 mobile search could grow to 20% of all searches as opposed to 9% this year (see TechCrunch for further details).

With mobile search being talked about in such terms, we can certainly expect to see large growth in this area.

Keep Ahead of the Changes

As well as continuing to focus on the SEO practices that will remain relevant in 2011, try to keep up to date with any new trends in the SEO world. By keeping your finger on the pulse, you will ensure that you stay ahead of the game whatever changes we witness in 2011 and get the most from all your campaigns rather than getting left behind.

It’s been a little while since I’ve written and I apologise for the delay in posting. It’s been hectic, (fun hectic), since returning to the UK.

A few people have been asking me to write a little more about blog carnivals – which you may recall I’ve previously mentioned as a great way of building good links. So here goes….

When you hear the word ‘carnival’, music, dancing, games and costumes are probably the first things that come to mind. Well now there’s an online carnival in town and, although it might be low on dancing and merrymaking, if you’re serious about your blogging then it could well be worth checking it out.

Welcome to the blog carnival.

What Exactly Is a Blog Carnival?

A blog carnival is a kind of ‘travelling’ blog consisting of a single post that contains links to a selection of other blog posts in a particular niche. Each blog carnival is set up by an initial organiser who chooses the subject area, the submission criteria and where the carnival will appear. Different bloggers then volunteer to host the carnival on their own blogs each week, fortnight or month, depending on the carnival.

Bloggers then submit their posts to the host for consideration in the next carnival, and the host collates these submissions and decides which of them to feature. If your blog gets chosen, you will receive a link to your blog post which will normally be accompanied by a short description or comment.

Find Carnivals & Submit Your Posts

There are many different blog carnivals on every subject imaginable, and you can find all of them at the Blog Carnival website . Head to the carnival index (click on ‘More blog carnivals…’ at the bottom of the home page), find a suitable topic and then visit the profile page of a carnival by clicking on its name. Here you’ll find out more about the topic, the guidelines for submission and the schedule for hosting, as well as previous carnivals so you can take a look at what’s expected.

Once you’ve found a carnival that looks suitable, sign up to the website (it’s free) and then simply submit your posts to your chosen carnivals (you can submit the same post to multiple carnivals if you want). It’s a relatively simple process, and if you’re lucky your post will get chosen to appear in the next carnival.

Top Tip: If you don’t run a blog BUT have some good articles on your website, go ahead and submit these. Use the url to the exact page where your article exists on your website, ie http://www.yoursite.co.uk/yourarticle.html and you should find they are treated exactly the same as a blogpost.

An Excellent Tactic for Building High-Authority Links

The main reason that you as a blogger/website owner would want to submit your posts to a blog carnival in your niche is that it is a fantastic way to generate high-authority links. The host of the carnival will often have a high PageRank, and on top of that, because all blog carnivals are ‘human edited’, Google and other SE’s consider them a very high authority link to have. In short, your SE rankings will benefit!

As a secondary bonus, readers who find your post via the carnival and consider it worth reading might provide you with additional backlinks that you would not have gained without appearing in the carnival in the first place.

More Reasons to Join the Carnival

Building high-authority links is one of the main benefits of submitting your blogs to a blog carnival. But there are a number of other reasons for doing so:

Traffic Boost – many of the carnival hosts generate a lot of traffic to their blogs, so it stands to reason that if your post gets included you can expect to see a traffic spike.

Increased Exposure – a blogging carnival is a great way to attract target readers within your niche who may end up becoming regular readers.

Authority – the fact that someone has chosen your blog over many others increases your authority in your niche.

Networking – by getting involved in blogging carnivals you can make new contacts and network with other bloggers, which can often lead to new opportunities.

The Carnival Awaits

If you haven’t explored blog carnivals yet then it is a great way to get some powerful links, boost traffic and increase your blog’s exposure. It’s free, easy and won’t take long to make submissions once you get the hang of it, so try it out for yourself.

You may remember back in April earlier this year I posted a methodology of getting your new website indexed by Google within 7 days or less. This method still works very well, BUT I wanted to share with you a new technique I’ve been using recently to good effect.

First off, a quick reminder on why we need to index

One of the most important skills you can master as a web marketeer is the ability to index new sites quickly. As we discussed in April this year, Google needs a reason to include your new website within it’s database and an even bigger reason to do so quickly.  The best reason for Google to index your site quickly is for the god of search engines to find that other websites are already talking about (linking to) you.

To check if Google has index your website, simply type your url within inverted commas into the Google Search box, (ie “yourdomain.co.uk”). If Google has already index your site, your url should appear towards the top of the search results, if not top. Once your indexed by Google, you can then check where you rank for your target keyword(s). Your initial ranking will tell you how much work you now need to do in order to hit page 1.

Getting indexed is something, as web marketeers, we need to be able to do quickly and efficiently. We want to save our energy for the task of link building ONCE we are both indexed and have an initial ranking – usually, we need all our energy for link building!

So, here’s a new technique I’ve been using recently to push new urls into the Google database, if followed correctly it should help you do the same and usually within 48 hours.

Domain Information Sites

There are many sites that exist purely to provide information on a specific domain. Usually, these sites allow you to query a domain and then receive instant information on that domain, often relating to age, traffic and SE rankings. Once a domain is queried on these websites, many of them actually create an ongoing record of that url in order to offer better information should anyone query the same domain at some point in the future. This means that these sites also create an webpage for these domains queried, all with a link back to the actual url. Now, these may not be great ‘keyword rich’ links in terms of SEO value, BUT they are great links to get a domain indexed and, best of all, they take only a few seconds per site to create.

Here’s a few to try, simply type your domain at the end of each of these urls (to replace YOURDOMAIN) the cut and paste into your browser:

http://www.tagurls.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.urladex.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://whois.domaintools.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.aboutus.org/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.reddit.com/domain/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.quantcast.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://stimator.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.cubestat.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.YOURDOMAIN

http://www.statbrain.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://whoisx.co.uk/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.folkd.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.talkreviews.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://wholinkstome.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.aboutthedomain.com/YOURDOMAIN/

http://websiteshadow.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.valuatemysite.com/www.YOURDOMAIN

http://www.markosweb.com/www/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.xmarks.com/site/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.dnscoop.com/YOURDOMAIN

You can find many more useful websites like the above by searching Google for results on ‘domain info’, ‘evaluate domain’, ‘whats my website worth?’ or any similar queries. Building your own database of such ‘fast indexing’ resources is something I whole heartedly recommend.

Google have recently launched their new Instant Search technology. Today, I’ve found a little time to really play with the new search interface, here’s some first impressions I wanted to share with you.

What Is Google Instant?
Instant is Google’s new search technology that literally shows search results as you are typing in your search keywords. This means that the top ten results actually alter as you type! Visually, it’s quite impressive and I’d also say it offers the browser much more possibility as they can view the kind of results they are going to get from a keyword before committing to actually querying it.

This all sounds, and is, wonderful, but of course there are a couple of  things to bear in mind, as least for these initial days of the new look search. For Google Instant to work you have to be logged into your Google account and your connection speed has to be adequately high (which isn’t always the case here in Buenos Aires….). I would also imagine that most people browsing the web right now on their phones don’t quite have the connection speed to run Instant properly? This will of course change, as might the need to be logged into a Google Account to run Instant search.

With those two points in mind, here’s my first thoughts on Google Instant, all of course made from a purely web marketing point of view

Three Things I’ve Noticed So Far About Google Instant

1. More Reason To Target Suggested Keywords: Similar to personalised search, when you type a keyword into Google Instant, the search box ‘instantly’ offers a number of anticipated guesses as to what your search is going to be. Where Google Instant differs from personalised search is that as should you type or hover over any of these suggested keywords, Google ‘instantly’ alters the results to reflect that keyword. This means that should you optimise your site for any/all of these suggested keywords, you have the opportunity to capture the eye of the browser as they ‘hover over’ keywords, this is in addition to the browser actually selecting to search keywords as before. Instant has the potential to make good keyword research EVEN more important and better rewarded than it has been to date. (Click to enlarge image below).
   
2. Top Two Listings Are Now Even More Desirable: The top two results of any organic search results page has always been desired positions. Now, with the extra space that Google Instant takes up on the page, the top two organic results are the only ones onscreen when viewing a results page via a 15″ laptop screen. Before Instant, the top three results were clearly visible on a 15″ screen and personally, I have noticed little difference in click through from being position 2 and 3 on Google. I now wonder if that’s about to change given that position 3 is now not always on screen?
3. Position 4 on Adwords Is Now More Visible: When Google Instant makes keyword suggestions, this pushes down the top 3 sponsored links and the top organic results onscreen. To me, this also has the effect of making the 4th sponsored ad far more visible than it was before, and more visible than the top 3 ads.  If I were looking to truly optimise my money on Adwords for a given keyword, I’d now experiment with finding the right cost per click to appear position 4 and see what kind of click through this ad position now brings.

Overall I like Google Instant, I find it adds to the browser experience of using the search engine.  Across the web there are a whole load of differing opinions about what Google Instant means for the browser, the web and of course for SEO. I believe that part of being in the online world is adapting to the changes and advancements this exciting world always has. Where there is ‘change’ there is always ‘chance’ and that’s exactly why I think Google Instant offers a number of potential opportunities for everyone in the long run.

For now,  I’m going to spend a little time watching Google Instant, monitor how it is received and try to anticipate what developments seem most likely given browser reception, there’s definitely a ‘chance’ or two in there somewhere!

If you have read a handful of my previous posts, you will no doubt be aware of my belief that the most important part of SEO is the initial keyword research. Keyword research is a two fold process – not only do you need to know exactly what keywords attract regular traffic each month, you also need to know whether targeting a specific keyword is realistic in terms of cost, time and work involved.

There are many keywords which have such ferocious competition online that ranking page 1 with a new website would take such huge resource that any investor would be unlikely to see breakeven, let alone profit for some considerable time. In such instances, it is often cheaper and easier for a wealthy investor to look at buying one of the high ranking businesses/domain names.

However, no matter how competitive a niche maybe, there are always gaps. Uncovering these gaps is truly what separates successful online marketeers from the rest.  Following on from our last post which looked at ways of uncovering the most ‘profitable’ keywords from your research, today we’re going to look at how to gauge what competition exists online for your chosen ‘profitable’ keywords.

To make this task much easier, I highly recommend the excellent SEO plugin for Firefox. This is a free application that simply involves signing up to the SEOBook website. Once installed, open up google.co.uk (or .com) and search for one of your chosen keywords. You’ll notice that as page 1 of your results appear, the SEO plugin gives you a number of useful values on the website’s listed, including PageRank, no of incoming links, any listings in DMOZ or the Yahoo directory and more.

In an ideal world, the page 1 results for your chosen keyword would have:

1. URL’s with Low Numbers of Links. At the very least, one website with a low number (less than 250) links – as reported by Yahoo/SEO for Firefox – appearing within the top 5 listings is a good sign.
2. No Meta Title Keyword Targeting. No, or only 1 or 2, websites with the actual keyword written directly into the title. For example, if you were targeting ‘buy cheap shoes’ you would hope to see a  Google Results page as below (click to enlarge).
3. Web 2.0 Pages Ranking. Additionally, you would also hope to see a web 2.0 page (most likely an article) ranking within the top 10 results. Look out for listings from EzineArticles, ArticleBase and GoArticles which tend to rank highly for lower competition keywords.
4. New / Young Domains. Ideally, at least two of the listed page 1 domains will be 3 or less years old.

If you can uncover a keyword that reflects all of the above, you have a real hot SEO opportunity! Usually, your keyword target will have page 1 Google competition that reflects one or two points form the above, but not all four.  At this point it is more useful to look at your keyword competition in terms of what you should avoid competing against.

Here are the competition factors that are very hard to outrank with a new website:

1. Keyword Rich Domains. If all of the possible keyword rich domains for your target keyword (eg buycheapshoes.co.uk/.com/.net etc) have been snapped up and you see them ranking page 1 for your keyword, your in for a very tough SEO fight.
2. Aged Domains. If all of your page 1 competition have domains that are over 5 years in age, your shiny new website is going to have big problems persuading the mighty G that your just as trustworthy.
3. High Page Rank. Whilst PageRank may not be as key a factor as it used to be, it’s still very tough to push your new website past websites with PR of 4 and above . Ideally, for your target keyword you would hope to see a website with PR 2 or below ranking well.
4. Lots of Links. If every website on page 1 has over 2K links then you have some serious link building to do. If this high link number comes in combination with no 3 (ie high PR), then your battle is harder still.

Overall, most keyword choices comes down to thinking over the gaps that a keyword may have and balancing this against the beefier sites you see listed on page 1. Sometimes you may find that the top 3 listings are taken up by aged domains with high PR and lots of incoming links. There may however be opportunity to push into the page1 listings beneath these online giants. For high traffic keywords, such a  strategy can be worth pursuing. The important factor is to know what kind of fight your getting into before you step into the SEO ring.

One of the most important factors behind commercially successful websites is their ability to discover profitable traffic channels for their online products. Whilst Google’s Keyword Tool can help us oncover keywords that have regular traffic, it’s another skill to then go on and define which of these keywords will have the best conversion from ‘traffic’ to ‘sales’.

Hopefully, some of you will have already read my post from March this year on using Google tools to find better keywords. Certainly any website that becomes commercially successful has an element of luck involved. However, here are a few tips to help delve further into your keywords in an effort to uncover the ones that truly have SALES value.

1. Adwords Spend
If a keyword has a large number of PPC advertisers, there’s a very good chance that this keyword converts traffic to sales well. If you use Google Keyword Tool to uncover your keywords, you’ll be no doubt aware that you can view average PPC costs on any keyword found. However, I find a more reliable method is to simply use your own eyes and note down how many people actually pay for that keyword.  To do this, open google.co.uk and type in your keyword. Ideally, you would now see a full page of PPC advertisers appearing under sponsored links above and to the right hand side of your organic results (click below to enlarge).

IF you see any less than a full first page of PPC advertisers be wary of this keywords ability to convert to sales. Ideally, you would want to see 3 – 5 pages of different advertisers all paying for their PPC ads on pages 1 – 5 of Google’s results, this is an excellent indication that this keyword is easily monetised.

2. Google Shopping
Google Product Search is the area of the world’s most powerful search engine where you are able to search all of the products uploaded to Google’s Checkout database. This area of Google can be a real goldmine when searching for ‘conversion’ keywords. Type your main keyword into the search box at the top of the Google Shopping page, Google will instantly offer you a number of alternative keywords in a drop down menu that appears almost as you type.

Let this menu hover, write the most relevant of these suggestions down and now go back to Google’s Keyword Tool. Research all of the suggestions for traffic numbers and any further keyword ideas Google suggests. By using Google Product Search intially, you are now feeding the Keyword Tool with keywords that Google has told you have ‘sales’ traffic, hence your keyword results should be more commercially focused.

3. Google Discussion
Finally, after completing steps 1 and 2 above, take your best keywords, type them into Google and click on ‘Discussions’. Are people already talking about your keywords? If so, this final step serves as further verification that your keywords have high potential for sales conversion.

I hope the above tips help some of you to uncover more lucrative keywords for your projects. If any of you have your own fine ideas for keyword research do let me know, I’d love to hear them!

Today were going to look at how to take advantage of regional differences in Google results to find great links for your website. If you’ve ever browsed for your target keywords on google.com and then google.co.uk, you will no doubt have noticed the different results that Google delivers. These differences are of course for very good reasons. Google’s ethos is to give browsers the most relevant and useful results they can, hence it makes sense to give browsers using google.co.uk UK focused results and browsers on google.com US focused results. This theory runs true for every region of the world from Australia, India, Russia, Spain, France and right here in Argentina. Throughout many of our posts to date, we’ve looked at different ways of sourcing great links for your website. To date, all of these methods have been conducted in English. Yet it can’t be, and certainly isn’t, true that all great links come from sites written in English. In fact, there are many great link opportunities waiting out there for you in all of the major world languages. It’s a big, wide world out there and just think how many more links you might be able to source if you could do perform all of your link tricks across a variety of languages? Today, were going to look at how to do just that.

Google Global
All of the regional Google search engines end in the domain extension relevant to that country. Just as in the UK we have google.co.uk, in Spain they have www.google.es, in France www.google.fr, in Germany www.google.de and so on. To find the Google extension for the country your interested in, simply type ‘google COUNTRY’ into your search box. If your using Firefox, this handy extension lets you view results across different countries.

Google Translate Can Be A Very Good Friend
One of the most useful and fastest growing services online is Google Translate. This service allows you to instantly translate a phrase written in English into any of the major world languages. Additionally, this service also allows you to instantly translate any webpage out there from any major language into English. We’ll be using both of these features below.

Translating Your Keywords
In April we discussed a variety of ways to discover links for your website using common keyword terms, such as ‘KEYWORD add url’ or ‘KEYWORD add site’ and so on. It makes sense that these same search strings translated into different languages will deliver a host of new results – some of which will be fine links for your site. To translate a keyword search:

1. Browse to Google Translate at www.translate.google.com.
2. Type your search string in English into the box and select your language to convert it to (click image below to enlarge).

3. Now open up a new browser tab and browse to a relevant regional version of Google, for example if you translated your search string into Spanish go to google.es or google.com.ar.
4. Enter your translated search string.
5. Grab the url for your search result and go back to Google Translate.
6. Now paste into the box your url string and select your language conversion to translate back to English.

7. Google Translate will offer a new url that when clicked on will deliver your search results, from your foreign Google engine, in English.
8. As in the our April post, browse through these results for places to post your url.

On the example below, there are three places worth investigating for links that would not have been triggered by the English version of my search string (hotels add url). Working through a variety of English search strings translated for regional Google engines will of course reveal many more!

I hope the above method helps you think of many ways you can use all of your search based link building methods across a variety of new languages and regional engines. In essence, anything that’s working well for you in English should work equally as well in Spanish, French, German, Italian and any other language you wish to turn your methods too. Let me know of any great foreign language results you find!

Were here! It was a long journey, I’m only three hours into my ‘beginners’ Spanish course and I still haven’t mastered the art of crossing the road BUT it feels so good to here be in Buenos Aires. This city has the grandeur of Paris or Rome in places and everyday we find out something new about it. There are lots of expats living here, mainly from the USA, and it seems that a large amount of BA expats work remotely, or online. Likewise, it’s not just the expats who love the online here. As ever, my SEO eyes and ears are wide open – it doesn’t take long to discover that, just like back in the UK, the internet plays a huge part in people’s lives here. Here’s three things I’ve noticed already about online Argentinian life.

Facebook Mad
Yep, here in Argentina Facebook rules! Almost everywhere I go, every cafe, every bar, every museum, everyone has a Facebook page. Even the ‘Plaza De Mayo’, the most famous place in Buenos Aires (where Evita Peron addressed the people) has a Facebook page. From a web marketing point of view, I’d say Facebook Ads are definitely worth considering if you wish to promote your website in Argentina.

Fotolog
Cumbio is somewhat of a national celebrity here and all because she posts photos of her life onto the website fotolog.com. Cumbio is a flogger, one of many floggers who post images of their lives onto fotolog.com daily. Flogging is so big here, it’s even a fashion style – fringes grown over one eye, brightly coloured laces and V necked TShirts. If you have read the post titled ‘Create Ongoing Links Indefintely‘ then consider adding fotolog.com to your web 2.0 link list.

BA Expats
BA Expats is a great resource for those not of Porteno origin who find themselves enjoying life in this great city. As briefly mentioned above, the expat community within BA is growing rapidly and google seems to be acknowledging that. This website is only 21 months old and already has a PageRank of 6. Their forum is active, they encourage registration and their links directory is human edited.  Finding a way to link your website from sites like this one is a good thing – such sites attract lots of traffic and, perhaps more importantly, such links tell Google that your website is relevant to current world and online trends.

The old saying ‘a change is a good as a rest’ seems to be proving true for me so far in Buenos Aires. Next week we’ll get right back into SEO focused posts, but for now, I wanted to share the above with you and encourage you to look outside of your usual places for opportunities to promote your websites.

If you read through last week’s post about ‘being social‘, particularly the section about ping.fm, you may have gathered that good work upfront can pay long term dividends for SEO. This especially true if you have more than one website to promote, or if you have ambitions to rank a number of urls on page 1 for the same keyword (we’ll delve more into this last thought next week ) Today, let’s look at three fine ways to spend your time in order to reap long term SEO benefits.

Ping.fm

As discussed last week, ping.fm allows you to update many social media profiles at once. This is very useful for letting both browsers and search engines know about any new content you publish. Additionally, every social profile post is one good link to your new content. Of course, there is some time consuming work in creating all of the profiles you need. However, this is a purely administrative task and requires no real knowledge of SEO, more a familiarity with the internet. As such, it’s an easy job to delegate if you have that luxury. If you’re simply ‘time limited’ right now, then I would suggest you create profiles for at least the following networks: twitter, identi, typepad, vox and posterous.  For an extra boost, note down the RSS feed urls for each of the profiles you create and submit these to as many RSS directories as you can.

SocialMarker.com

Similar in a sense to ping.fm, socialmarker.com allows you to submit your urls to up to 50 bookmarking websites at once. Bookmarking is especially useful in getting new content indexed quickly. As above, it is quite a job to register and approve all of the accounts initially. However, invest a little time now and you will produce a tool that you can use again and again to ensure all new content is indexed quickly and often within 48 hours.

If creating numerous social media and bookmarking accounts is not something you wish to create time for right now, have a look at Onlywire. Onlywire is a cut down version of ping.fm and socialmarker that submits your urls to a smaller number of profiles.

Ezinearticles.com

EZA is the daddy of article directories and definitely one of the best content driven links you can create for your websites. If you have recently created an account at EZA, you may have noticed that it takes up to 2 weeks to get your content approved and published. The good news is that things won’t always take this long. In fact, once you have successfully published 10 – 35 approved articles (the difference in number is dependent on the quality of your article submissions), your account will be upgraded to EZA ‘platinum’ level. From here on, you’ll see most of your articles being published within 48 hours of submission. Hence, it makes sense to get yourself to ‘platinum’ level as fast as you can! I recommend asking your friends, colleagues and clients whether they have any articles they would like you to publish online for them. It’s much easier to publish content your given than content you have to sit down and write – but do be careful, make sure that any article your given meets EZA’s strict guidelines!

If you can find some time to develop these three platforms, you’ll have three powerful SEO tools that you can use over and over again. Next week, we’ll look at how such tools can help you push your website AND strongest web 2.0 urls towards page 1 for your target keywords.

If you have kindly read a handful of my blogposts to date (thankyou if you have!), you might be coming to the conclusion that my SEO techniques centre around not only creating good links to your main website, but also finding ways to boost the power of those very links too. If you also happened to read the post on ‘Creating Ongoing Links Indefinitely‘, you might well know that the various well known social media platforms (ie Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) are some of the most powerful links you can create to your website.

As you have total control over your social media profiles, these pages are perfect places to create links not only to your main website, but also to every blogpost, article, video, podcast and any other pieces of content you publish online.  In this post, we’ll look at how to do that efficiently across a number of accounts and also how to boost the power of your social media profile pages.

Tweet, Facebook, Stumble & Everything Else Your Content

The essence of social media is to give the world quick insights into who you are and what you’re doing right now in your life. The problem with social media of course is that there are not too many things that happen in everyday life that the rest of the world is really interested in…cue ‘just watching Big Brother’ tweets! So, if your going to use social media to promote your business/website, you have to plan when and what you are going to say – a hot topic in it’s own right! For today,  let’s focus on the idea that if you are constantly creating new content to promote your online business then social media profiles are a wonderful place to tell the world all about it.

Firstly, telling the world about your latest article, blogpost, video etc via as many social media profiles as you can means you have a good chance of directing relevant traffic to that new content. Secondly, from a purely SEO perspective, that new content is far more likely to be crawled quickly now you’ve placed a few links to it from webpages that search engines love. Last but not least, a link to your new content from a social media profile page is a good link, if you also strive to build the power of your social media profile pages, then that link just gets stronger as you build.

Automating Social Media

Despite the points above, you’re probably thinking that you just simply don’t have the time to run a boatload of social media profiles. I agree, me neither! We need a little help to ensure our time invested pays dividends. Ping.fm is a free service that allows you to post messages to up all of the major social media networks at once. The only work you have to do is upfront – every social profile you wish to maintain has to be registered and setup. Not a fun job, but one that once done provides an ongoing and  useful link creation tool for any new content you wish to promote. Additionally, if you wish to utilise your social media profiles to promote your website/company news in a  more general sense, setting everything up via ping.fm will make this task far easier also. Well worth the effort I’d say

Boosting Your Profile Power

If you gone to all that effort to setup your profiles and ping.fm, it makes sense to also spend some good time building links to your profile pages. The more link power you can give your social profile pages, the more effective placing your content links on your profiles will be. My two favourite ways to boost social media profiles are:

1. Article Resource Box Links
Most article directories let you place at least two links within your resource box. Assuming that the first link will be to your main website, make the second link to one of your profile pages. You may remember this technique from a previous post, ideally you should make your social media profile urls part of your link action plan.

2. Feed Your RSS
Almost every social media profile has an RSS feed. Grab that feed and run it through the RSS directory submissions we discussed last month.

There is certainly a time element involved in running social media profiles. However, social media domains are (right now at least) favoured places for search engines. Hence, profile pages should play a significant role in your SEO strategy and once created, offer a quick and easy way to promote all new web content you publish.