JaxWorks Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands

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Finally, day 5 – months later!  Sorry this has taken so long,

Should we consider Twitter to be a marketing tool or is it just for people who have a lot of time on their hands and the need to fill their day?

Think of Twitter as a means to get instant public messages out to your audience, whether it is an audience of colleagues or potential customers.Twitter is becoming an increasingly important platform for online communication.  TechCrunch reported that Twitter is receiving 8 million unique visitors per month and about 3 million messages are posted daily.

How can we use Twitter as a marketing tool?

Twitter As A Learning Tool
If over 3 million messages are posted everyday, are you mentioned in any of them? What about your company? This might be a good time to find out. Twitter provides a search engine that allows you plug-in company names, brand names, topics and even personal names. How is your buzz level? You can also find out the buzz level of other companies which whom you want to do business.

Today, I found out that a phone carrier made a customer unhappy and he Twittered about it. I learned that Weather Underground has some really cool iPhone applications and that the cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory is heavenly!  All that was posted today!  So, whether you are engaging on and participating in Twitter or not, someone may be twitting about you.

Use Twitter as a Bullhorn!
You can use Twitter to post news or updates about your company or products.  Think of what’s valuable to your consumers and let them hear about it. You’ll be amazed how your following will grow.

Promote You
It’s not uncommon for companies to post promotions, sales, or specials on Twitter.  It’s important to remember that Twitter is about conversation and breaking news, so be sure if you are posting promotional information that you make it conversational and personal. If I want an ad, I’ll look for one!

Create Brand Name
Twitter is a fantastic tool in giving your brand a voice and a personality. Being successful in Twittering, you will have to put forth your personality and a unique style. That’s what makes the difference and can increase your Twitter following and make it a successful marketing tool for you.

Let’s Tweet, shall we.  Come follow me by visiting my Twitter profile!

Twitter can be a great way to promote you, your brand or your company. People and businesses use Twitter as a way to connect with fans and promote themselves to millions of people.

But how do you build up a Twitter following? These simple tips will help you get started.

Follow People. The number one way to gain followers is to follow people. Many Twitter users follow anyone that follows them, while others check to see if the profile is active before deciding to follow it. You can find interesting people to follow by doing a Twitter search.  You can also find people on Twellow, a twitter yellowpages, by their businesses or region.

Be Active. Post messages daily or several times a day and make sure what you have to say is interesting and engages people.  If you’re a business, talk about interesting things in your business.  For example, if you are a restaurant, you could talk about the entertainment.   Ask questions, post interesting tidbits, follow other people’s discussions, anything to keep you friends and customers engaged.  There are ways to set up tweets for several days at a time.  Check out 10 Best Twitter Tools, Plugins, Widgets for WordPress blogs to see some of the automatic tweeting sites.  Also, something interesting is automatic posting of Google Alerts to Twitter as a way to gain targeted Twitter followers.

Promote your Profile. Add a link to your Twitter profile to your blog, website and as part of your signature in email messages and discussion forums.

Retweet. When someone tweets something of interest, retweet it. This is a great way to honor someone else’s great information and get it out there in the twittersphere!

Participate in Follow Friday. The Twitter community has many different customs, one of which is Follow Friday, whereby users call out some of their favorite people to follow.

Twitter is sometimes hard to navigate if you are new to it and don’t know the lingo!  Here are some terms you may want to be familiar with when “Tweeting”:

10 Days of Twitter!

Tweet – A twitter post or update – this is known as a tweet.

@ – The @ sign is a way of referring to others on Twitter. You can use the @ sign to send a public message to someone or to refer to or talk about someone else in a tweet.. The @ is useful in helping you find those that are talking about you. For example @JaxWorksSEO means someone is talking to me or about me.

Retweet – Retweet means sharing a Tweet of one user with your followers. Proper etiquette is to use the retweet feature when sharing someone else’s tweet rather than to just post it as your own tweet. A Retweet looks like this RT @JaxWorksSEO.”

Reply – A reply is when you respond to someone’s tweet. It looks like this @JaxWorksSEO. For example you could say “@JaxWorksSEO I’m reading your 10 Days of  Twitter blog” and that would be a tweet that is a message to me that I would see.

Direct Message – A direct message is different than a reply because it is private. You can only send a direct message to someone if they are following you. A direct message looks like this: DM JaxWorksSEO.

Hashtags or # – This is the most common term that people get confused by. Hashtags are words that begin with the number sign and represent a topic or an event. You can learn more about hashtags at Hashtags.org.

Follower – A follower is someone that follows you on Twitter. This does not have to be a reciprocated relationship – a person can follow you without you following them. However, it’s best if you follow your followers back, this way you can both engage with one another.

Blocking – Blocking is when you block a user and they are unable to follow you. You will also no longer see their tweets in your Twitter stream. This is different than unfollowing. When you unfollow someone, it means that they can still follow you, but you are not following them.

Un-following – Unfollow means that are not longer following a user on Twitter. They, however, can still follow you.

Tweeple, Tweeps, Twits, Twerson, Twitterai – These are people who are known as people, members and users of Twitter.Twitterverse – The ever-growing universe of twitter.

That’s it for now – have fun tweeting!

It only takes a few minutes to create your Twitter account so let’s get started!  The most common question is often: “Do I name my Twitter account under my brand or my personal name?”   This is something you need to think about before you begin, but I do discourage you from having more than one Twitter account to manage. This can get complicated and often difficult to keep going in a meaningful way. Only create Twitter accounts that you will have the time to manage, which means actively engaging in. The last thing you want is for someone to find a Twitter account either under your name or brand that is not active.

Follow JaxWorks!

Here are the steps to start tweeting!

• Go to the Twitter homepage , click on the button that says “Sign Up Now.”

• Complete the sign-up information providing your full name, username (which is what you will be known as) your password and email account. I strongly recommend you stay away from cute names, things that are hard to spell or just plain silly. My advice is always that people use their real names, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Shorter is always better, so don’t get hung up trying to use up all the spaces you are allocated.
• Click on the button that says “Create My Account.”
• You can import your email addresses from your Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook email accounts. This is a great way to get started in following current contacts.
• Almost Done!! You need to sign into your account and complete your profile. Go to twitter.com and click the button that says “sign-in.” You will be taken to your Twitter homepage. At the top click the text that says “settings.” This is where you can tell people more about who you are, what companies you represent, and add your url or other link that is appropriate for you. You will also be given options to geotag your tweets, which basically tells others where you are “tweeting” from. Whether or not you choose to do this is totally up to you. There is also an option to protect your tweets – I highly suggest that you don’t use this feature, especially if you will be using Twitter to promote your company and your brand.
• Add your picture. At the top of the settings page, you will see a “photo” tab. Click this and add a photo of you. I suggest using a personal picture of yourself, not a photo of your logo or an icon. Individuals want to see who they are tweeting with. A close up picture is better, so that people can see your face. Avoid using pictures of you and your wife, your cat, your toddler or other “cute” or “group” shots. The best photo to use as an avatar is always just you.  You can also have someone create a custom Twitter background.  JaxWorks will create these for you or you can create your own Twitter background.
• That’s it – you are done, now start finding others to follow.  A great source to use to find others to follow is MrTweet.
• Try to spend a few minutes a day engaging on Twitter – you can split this into two  intervals in the morning and the evening if that works best for you.

Twitter is a free social networking and blogging service that allows you to keep in touch with people through the exchange of quick, frequent answers.  Each post must be less than or equal to 140 characters. You can post these messages using Twitter on your computer or your mobile device.

Twitter calls these short 140 character messages “tweets” or “tweeting.” These messages are broadcast to other Twitter users that follow you and shown on your Twitter profile page. You can also use direct messages through Twitter to your followers, which is essentially a private message.

Twitter is social media that is often used for business, marketing, campaigning, education, politics, legal proceedings, and public relations. Businesses like to use Twitter to promote their products and services as well as provide customer services and listen to be being said about their companies.

As stated in Wikipedia,”Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as “SMS of the Internet . The use of Twitter’s application programming interface for sending and receiving text messages by other applications often eclipses direct use of Twitter.  What we have to do is deliver to people the best and freshest most relevant information possible. We think of Twitter as it’s not a social network, but it’s an information network. It tells people what they care about as it is happening in the world.”

The University of Maryland (yay!  my alma mater) conducted a study, called “The Small Business Success Index“, which found that social media doubled among small businesses in the last year.

This study asked business owners, 500 to be exact, about their use of social media.  61% had used social media in the past year to drive traffic to their businesses and attract customers.

In other studies, 45% of respondents viewed social media and blogging as a lead generation channel of growing importance.  Small businesses are spending 180% more of their budgets on blogging and social media.

According to the study:

• 75% created a company page on Facebook or LinkedIn
• 69% post status updates on Facebook or LinkedIn
• 26% use Twitter to talk about their industry expertise
• 39% have a blog to talk about expertise
  

Blogging was the most used social channel among small businesses.

Social media is dramatically more inexpensive than traditional marketing tools like advertising and direct mail. Social media marketing is a great way for small businesses, who have a relatively small marketing budget, to get information about their business out to targeted customers.  This way, they can compete with large businesses without breaking the bank!

It’s time for you to take your small business to the next level by using social media and a social media marketing plan to attract customers to your business.

Have you ever been to a website where there are so many keywords for SEO purposes that you can’t read it? There is a thin line between having good on site search engine optimization and having a readable and interesting website.

Some websites clearly focus so much on the search engine optimization that their website starts to suffer on the user experience side of things. You have to keep in mind that the whole goal of your search engine optimization is to drive website visitors to your website These customers want information about what you do and they want a good user experience.   I think sometimes search marketers look at analytics information and SEO techniques so much that they forget that unique visitors are actually real  human beings. These visitors want to be able to read about your products or services so they can decide for themselves whether or not to buy the product or service.  All this happens very quickly so if your homepage is more worried about SEO than  your audience, visitors will not enjoy the experience or want to stay on your page.

There are many different opinions out there when it comes to search engine optimization and marketing so it is important to really navigate through them with caution. Not all recommendations are good recommendations. Some could hurt you just as quick as they help you. Stuffing your website with links and really cluttering up the pages could lead to a variety of problems. Not only could load time of your website be really impacted.   Search engines read all the links on your website so if you are spamming them with keywords,  you could be penalized for it down the road.

Always think about your visitors and what they would like to experience when it comes to reading your website content.  Make sure it’s an enjoyable experience!

One of the major aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) is the use of keywords both in the Meta tags of a site and throughout the website content. In particular, the density, the placement and the actual keywords themselves are hotly debated topics. It is certainly no secret that keywords play a vital part in any good SEO program, but because search engines like Google and many others change their algorithms on such a regular basis it may seem difficult to keep up with the current best practice. However, there are some good general guidelines to follow that should always ring true regardless of how you personally approach SEO.

It can be difficult to say at any given time what the keyword rules are when it comes to SEO content writing, but there are always common worst-practice factors that should be avoided completely. That is, search engines like Google will not only ignore your website content but they will actively penalize you for certain things.

Spam – The Big NO!
Search engines do not take spam, or the sites that contain it, lightly. This is the most important thing you should remember. It used to be ‘acceptable’ in the eyes of search engine robots for your content to be 100% keywords with absolutely no meaningful text. However, this practice of keyword cramming or keyword stuffing is now something that does not go unnoticed and you will face a penalty for using this technique. Yes, keywords are important but you also have to provide solid and informational text for your visitors.

So, What Is The ‘Correct’ Keyword Density Then?
Of course, this leads to the question of how to determine what is considered spam and what is considered an acceptable level of keywords within your text and again this is a topic that leads to debate between SEO experts, webmasters and content writers alike. The general belief was that including a keyword within your text with a range of 5% to 10% was best practice. It certainly wouldn’t get you penalized and it made it blatantly obvious that your site was relevant to that topic. However, some believed the figure could legitimately be taken as high as 20% without any negative search engine effects.

Err On The Side Of Caution.
While these high densities of around 20% may not have got you penalized at one time it is increasingly likely that they will be regarded as being geared primarily towards search engines. Search engines do not want to display sites that are created for this purpose; their aim is to display websites that are geared towards visitors. As such, sticking to a lower percentage is likely to produce better results for you.

Playing It By The Rules.
Keeping the keywords to this sort of level is an art, but it is not one that should elude most people. The art, of course, is to combine search engine optimization with informative content that will appeal to your visitors as well. In order to do this it is important that you use natural keywords.

What Are Natural Keywords And Artificial Keywords?
A natural keyword is one that you would use in everyday conversation relating to a given topic. In the case of your website, if you were to sit down and write 500 words of informative content you would find that certain words naturally creep into the article and appear several times. These are your natural keywords, but unfortunately natural keywords may not provide you with the results you require. For example, a little keyword research may prove that a natural keyword of “divorce attorney” is a very well searched phrase but there are also 2 million websites geared towards this key phrase. Further research may turn up the fact that “Find Divorce Attorneys” may be a little less popular with regards to searches but there are only 10,000 sites aiming for this keyword. This instantly improves your chances of being closer to the top of the search results and that coveted top spot.

Replacing Natural Keywords With Artificial Keywords.
So, you now need to go back over the content you have already written and see if the term “Find Divorce Attorneys” appears within your content. In all honesty, it is quite unlikely that it would appear more than once, if at all. You have to make it fit into your content and you have to make it appear to do so naturally. Find the areas where you specifically used the keyword “Divorce Attorney” and see if you can swap the phrases with just a little alteration of the surrounding text.

Start From Scratch With Your Artificial Natural Keywords.
Another method is to look for your artificial keywords before you begin and make sure you have them in the back (or the front) of your mind when you sit down to write your website content. Because you are already thinking of the phrase you want to use you will naturally include it within the content of your site. It’s not a trick, although you may want to consider it a subliminal tactic if you wish, but it will work.

The Result Of Keyword Conversion.
By converting your artificial keywords into natural keywords you should be able to effectively optimize pages towards both search engines and your visitors and this will mean improved search engine rankings as well as improved conversion rates. Even a small increase in visitors combined with a small increase in conversion rates will show a good level of increase in your income so you should not overlook this technique.

For more information on keyword research, see the following info:

• Five Steps to Effective Keyword Research
• Keyword Research Techniques You Might Not Use, But Should
• Keyword Research Tools for SEO

If content is king and new content helps you with your search engine rankings, a great, easy, and fun way to put more content on your site is by blogging.

With the onset of blogging in the industry, personal journaling had been a common ground for people to share their passions with others all over the world  Generally, blogs are created for personal use. Like a journal, people can write their daily adventures, sentiments, and whatever ideas they want to express online.

With the advent of business websites, blogs have gradually taken the limelight in providing businesses a chance to boost their productivity and their presence online.   Business blogs are, basically, created to advertise the services or products of a certain web site or online business in order to increase online sales or for search engine optimization purposes.  Business blogs are also a way of promoting the company so that readers will know that your company exists online and what services and products your business offers. With blogs, entrepreneurs are able to establish a name in the virtual market through articles that can be very useful to readers, with the added benefit of creating new content at the same time (a great search engine optimization tactic!).

So, if you are thinking of creating a blog, whether for business or for pleasure, you need to know some tips that could help make your blog interesting and productive.  When writing a blog, consider your audience.  If you’re doing a personal blog, write about subjects that you’re interested and passionate about!  There are always people who are passionate about the same thing you are and you will find and connect with them!  If you are creating your blog for business purposes, consider your target market when writing the blog.  Use your blog to impart useful information to others about what you do or how the services and products you offer can benefit them.  At the same time, use keywords that apply to your services and products so Google can find you!

Make sure your blog is easily readable and make it informative, amusing, or controversial.  If possible make it interactive, allowing people to place comments on your blog.  This way, you can get the impressions and reactions of people who are reading the blog.   Another great idea is to add video clips, podcasts, and images to make the blog accessible and enjoyable to a wider range of people.

Have fun with your blog, make it entertaining and informative, and write about your business.  This way, you will be having a good time, giving people important information, and adding content to your site for search engine optimization purposes at the same time!  Also, give people a lot of ways to connect with you by offering your blog on RSS feed or by email, connecting with you on FaceBook or Twitter, or giving them free information in exchange for their email address.

Blogging is a great way to reach people, exchange ideas, get information about yourself or your business out there, and have fun.  What are you waiting for?

Some interesting blog links:

Create a free blog

Directory of the best blog sites

Start a blog with WordPress

Free and paid blogging plans

Twitter blog

Official Google blog

Whether it is the print, electronic or cyber media,  good copy can do wonders for a search engine marketing campaign. In this cyber age, the Internet is considered to be the greatest means of communication between people around the globe. It used to be that more people relied on outbound marketing techniques like direct mail, email span, and commercials.  However, that has changed because people have the means to block out these forms of advertising.  When people want products or services now, they look for them either through the web and search engines, or by asking people they know on social media sites.  Web businesses must realize that they need to leverage these forms of inbound marketing in order to compete in today’s business world.

In search engine optimization, good copywriting and web content is a must for online success. Effective content is the one that manages to grab attention, create interest, build desire, and then lead to action (from users). The use of powerful and persuasive words to drive target audiences and generate sales has become the norm with websites nowadays.

Online business owners specially hire content writers to revamp the text matter on their websites, and make it more appealing to Internet surfers. This form of writing is known as SEO copywriting. The main purpose behind this service is reaching out to a target audience,which is comprised of your potential buyers.

The best part about writing for the Web is that it has no time or space constraint. News websites do have the urge to meet deadlines, but in general, almost all websites can simply go on and on, creating additional pages at will. However, to achieve SEO success, they do need to adhere to search engine guidelines even when writing text for web pages.

Being a virtual medium, the ‘emotional connection’ between buyer and seller is at  minimum on the web. Therefore, it is necessary to establish that relationship with the help of the written word, keeping in mind the needs of the user as well as the dissimilarities between two different mindsets.

In simple terms, copywriting for Search Engine Optimization means re-writing the text on a website page in such a way that it appeals to a web surfer, along with being compatible to search engines. Working on this requires specialized skills,especially when it comes to judicious use of keywords. One should remember that  good web page content does not have to be flowery or laden with complex words. Instead, it has to be simple,easily comprehensible, and keyword rich.

Don’t be content if your website is amazingly designed and well-structured, adorned with proper links and easily navigable. All your efforts will go down the drain if your content is not appealing enough and doesn’t manage to hold the user’s attention. At the end of the day, the success of your search engine optimization campaign lies in bringing targeted traffic for the long term. Thus, put in extra efforts and money in building your site’s content and driving the correct targeted traffic to your site rather than the site design alone and see the difference it makes.