How Twitter Is Used In Business
July 1, 2010 by Miranda Jacobs
Filed under Marketing
twitter SEOIn one of our previous posts we mentioned how top 100 fortune companies are using social media in their online marketing strategy . Today we will talk about the benefits of twitter as a part of your internet marketing campaign.
The Twitter site has created a lot of buzz so far and has made it the place to be for celebrities and businesses. It seems like creating a twitter campaign is the right thing to do and Twitter is the place to be. For businesses, it is an attractive platform where the potential for success is available. Twitter is large group of friends and strangers all across different parts of the world creating updates about what they are doing. It means that no matter where you are, people near or far can use Twitter to reach anyone near or far. As Twitter users tend to access the site from all sorts of platforms, from their mobile phones or though the various remote-access applications like Tweetdeck, the estimated big numbers of users on Twitter are likely to be even bigger in reality.
In order to use Twitter effectively you should follow the right people and to join in on the right conversations. For example, you don’t want to follow someone who tweets about things that are irrelevant to you such as what they are watching on TV. One thing to consider is that people won’t want to follow you if you are not sharing valuable information. You can also follow your competition on Twitter to see what services they offer.
Some of the benefits of using twitter with your business:
1. Marketing – twitter provides a link with your an audience. When you release a blog post or a product or service you can announce it on twitter. The people that visit your link may opt-in to your newsletter first before buying your product but it’s a good way to promote something. Just don’t just promote on twitter. Many people really hate that. Keep your mix of helpful articles, fun and promotion.
2. Idea generating – You can brainstorm ideas on twitter by asking for ideas. Your audience knows what it wants you can simply ask them and deliver it to them.
3. Support – if you have a technical or genralised issue, let people know on twitter. It creates an understanding from your followers and awareness of any ongoing issues.
4. Recruit – In case you need someone to help you with something ask your followers on twitter and you’ll get recommendations.
5. Knowledge network – if you follow other people on twitter in your field of expertise you have a huge resource. A virtual knowledge network to ask questions and help others. Some people you help may become your customers in the future. And you’ll learn which makes you even better at what you do.
6. Networking – business is done by networking. Much of my business is because someone referred me. Networking is key and twitter allows you to do virtual networking easily.
7. Feedback – You can get feed back from your follows on your tweets or service.
8. Brand – twitter is just another way to expand your brand. If you don’t do it someone else will. I’ve seen many Bob Proctor copy cats on twitter in the last week or two. I hope the real Bob was one of the first.
Without a doubt Twitter provides some scope for businesses and many social media companies are using twitter for campaigns. Some say that twitter is not for everyone based on recent studies and the data on twitter suggests that only certain type of businesses can benefit from twitter significantly. Research shows that over half of Twitter’s outbound traffic is to content driven sites. Studies indicate that less than 10% of outbound Twitter traffic is to transactional sites like retail. It is important to do adequete research to implement the right seo strategy so that you dont waste valuable time.
Want to find out more about social media and Search Engine Marketing, then visit Miranda Jacobs’s site on how to choose the best SEO for your needs.
Are Search Engine Robots Useful?
March 16, 2010 by Justin Harrison
Filed under Internet Marketing
Search engines employ automated processes or robots, casually known as ‘spiders’ or ‘crawlers,’ to find various sites. They’re an important part of the whole internet infrastructure, but why is that so? What do they do exactly?
Robots actually have the same basic functionality that earlier browsers had. Just like these early browsers, search engine robots do not have the ability to do certain things. Robots cannot get past password protected areas. They do not understand frames, Flash movies, nor Images or JavaScript. Even if you use a robot, you have to click the buttons on your website. They can cease to function while using JavaScript navigation or when indexing a dynamically generated URL. A search engine robot retrieves data and finds information and links on the web.
The robot makes a list of the web pages in the system at the ‘submit a URL page, then searches for these web pages in order from the list the next time it goes on the web. Sometimes a robot will find your page whether you have submitted it or not because other site links may lead the robot to your site. Building your link popularity and getting links from other topical sites back to your site is important. The first thing a robot does when it arrives is to check for a robots.txt file. This file tells the robots which sites are off-limits. Usually these are files that should be of no concern because they are binaries or other files that are not needed by the robot.
Links are collected from every page that is visited. These links are used in following those links to other pages. The robot gets around on the World Wide Web by following links from one place to another.
Once the spider has gathered all the information it needs, and based on how the spider is set up in the search engine, it will index the site information and send it to the search engine database.
A robot ‘reads’ your site by collecting data on any visible text, on tags you may have in the coding of your page, and on any links available. These are the things that determine what the search engines ‘think’ your content is about, so these are the things you really need to pay attention to when building a site that you want to have high visibility in search results.
Search engines don’t update instantly from moment to moment. No, their database updates can vary in the exact timing. However, once you’re in there, the bots will make a point to visit you frequently so as to pick up on updates and the like. If your site is down at the time the bot may not be able to update your site in the search engine database, so do keep that in mind. So, robots may be scary things in movies, but as you can see, as far as the internet goes they’re nothing but helpful tools to guide us in going from site to site. Embrace them, learn how to help them be more efficient, and work with them to get your web site highly-ranked so that you can maximize your visitors.
Justin Harrison is an internationally recognised Internet Marketing expert who provides world class Search Engine Optimization to website owners. For more information visit: http://www.seorankings.co.za
How To Optimize Your Website
December 31, 2009 by Justin Harrison
Filed under Business
The pages and position on a page that a website appears when a user searches for a specific key term is determined by search engine optimization. Websites that are properly optimized appear at the top pages and rank highly than others. Search engine optimization (SEO) is important to any company or individual who has set up a website. This is because it determines how your website will rank for a given keyword search.
Search engines consider different factors such as the keywords used, the links in the website, the \”freshness? and relevance of the content, and so on when ranking websites. Having a high page rank will increase the chances of visitors stopping by at your website and this is important if you are to make sales. SEO is important as many people do not know the individual web addresses of the companies providing the products or services they require. Hence, they usually search for a keyword or key phrase related to what they want. SEO will help you optimize your website so that it appears on the first pages when the relevant keywords are searched.
You need not make huge monetary investments to get your SEO program going. You could hire an SEO expert or tie up with a firm, to get all your SEO work done. Doing SEO on your own is another very good idea. It is very easy to learn the tips and tricks of SEO. Once you have decided to do your SEO yourself, you would spend absolutely no money for your SEO campaign. You are not supposed to pay any money to the search engines for ranking your website higher.
To optimize your website, you have to use the appropriate keyword in the appropriate places. The Title tag, images tag (\”alt? tag), headings, and content of your website must contain your keyword or key phrase. This will make it easier for the search engine to determine that your website is related to a certain keyword and hence rank you highly for that keyword. Ensure you space the keywords evenly on the webpage so that you are not penalized for keyword stuffing. The keywords should be used as part of a sentence and not alone. This makes it easier for your visitors to read and understand your content, and is a safe SEO practice.
Having keywords in your webpage is not enough to bring you the traffic you require. You should consider other methods of optimizing your website. Some of these include link building, participating in blogs and forums, article submission to niche directories, among others. Linking the pages of your website together is called internal linking. This enables the search engines to easily crawl and read your content. You can also link your website to other websites that are related to you in terms of the services of products they offers. Here, you link to the website and the website links back to you. This is known as back linking and is important if your website is to be ranked highly.
Some of the established companies do not invest time and money into SEO, for they do not find it lucrative. They choose different methods such as PPC. However, SEO is worth a try, if you have the time and commitment to do it. If you have the same, then your answer to the question, ?is SEO the right choice?? should be \’yes\’.
Justin Harrison is an internationally recognised Internet Marketing expert who provides world class Search Engine Optimization to website owners. For more information visit: http://www.seorankings.co.za
