Social media, as we all know by now, has become a foundational element of any modern business's overall PR and Marketing strategy. The interesting thing about it is, like so many trends online and off, what started out as a purely "social" trend as in, "lets meet and be friends", is becoming increasingly commercialized, the extent that many "traditional" businesses (i.e. those that paid no attention to the web, or web trends, as a marketing vehicle) are having to hire "experts" to come in and essentially do for their businesses what teenagers do out of sheer boredom, or simply for fun.
This particular phenomenon is growing at such a break neck pace, it's getting a little ridiculous. Just 2 days ago I heard a piece on Marketplace (NPR) about major corporate players incorporating Twitter SEO strategies into their overall plan. It was kind of funny listening to the conversation, because they were actually discussing the fine line between sending out tweets that sounded like "impersonal advertisements" vs. genuine messeges with a social value for their twitter followers. Yet, we are talking about a multi-billion dollar corpoaration, spending millions of dollars now per year, on a platform that allows exactly 140 characters per messege...Not much room to draw "fine lines" there if you ask me. In that scenario, how would a tweet originating from that source not come off as commercial, no matter how hip, casual, cool, or laid back they disguise the messege to be?
Anyway, I digress. My focus is on San Diego SEO and Marketing developments, so let me get back to that. I was perusing the headlines today, and noticed that a local San Diego marketing and PR company called Bold PR recently hired Anne Carr to head up their new Social Media Division. Congrats to Anne, she brings an impressive bio and background with lots of diverse, relevant experience.
What I found interesting is that the company's press release expounded on how Bolt was an "early innovator" of Social Media for growing San Diego businesses, and how Bolt's new division promises to "educate local San Diego businesses..." on the power of social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. This is all fine and good, and my intent is not to find fault with Bolt here, but this scenario is one that is playing out not just in the local San Diego market, but accross the entire corporate landscape these days. Just watch the headlines - the "Power of Twitter.." is all the buzz these days.
In other words, in my mind, the question begs to be asked: How far can we take the commercialization of social networking? I have seen and heard plenty of Twitterers and bloggers voicing frustration with what has become a constant stream of impersonal advertisements - essentially noise or spam if you will - on Twitter nowdays, and I personally am experiencing it too. Twitter started as viral, social - not commercial - phenomonon that grew virtually overnight, because of an intrinsic appeal. It struck a cord with people, I believe, because it offered a powerful way to stay connected with like minded individuals, without geographic boundaries (a global quality of the Web itself, of course...)
One example that comes to mind is this: Do we send our children to the playground, on a mission to find leads to sell a car or legal services to? If we did, what would the dynamic of their relationships be? The sad part of this is, I landed by chance on a blog post talking about "top 100 ways to make money offline.."or something to that effect, and one of the items listed was: "get your schoolaged child to help you sell your services..." Might be effective, but...really?
Sunday, May 31, 2009
On Page SEO
This is a great article discussing on page SEO factors. Enjoy!
Before even thinking about your link building strategy, a website owner interested in improving their rank within search engines needs to build the foundation from which all future SEO efforts will be based.
This foundation is called 'on site' SEO where you alter various code elements on your page to make your site is more appealing to Google, Yahoo, MSN and more. This is sometimes referred to as 'spider food' or 'robot food', because they are the tidbits on your website that search engines love.
Lets take a brief look at the top 5 on site SEO that each website owner needs to pay attention to, in order of importance.
1) Using keywords in the title tag of the HTML header. This gives you the largest impact on search engines ranking plain and simple. Keywords within the title tag will be highlighted for a Google search matching those words.
2) Using keywords in text within your website's body. This is the content of your website and if you don't use your keyword throughout, Google won't see your site as relevant as your competition.
3) Using keywords in H1 tags. Though this is an older technique, search engines still take note of keywords within H1 tags as those are generally used for topic headers and important sections of your website.
4) Using keywords in your domain name. This is pretty self explanatory. If you are selling 'fish bait' in San Diego, an example of a good domain name would be 'www.sandiegofishbait.com'.
5) Using keywords in webpage url. Lets say you don't own the website listed above in my last example, though you still are selling fish bait in San Diego. A good url could be: www.domainname.com/san-diego-fish-bait.html
Utilizing these 5 SEO techniques will definitely help you rank higher within the major search engines; however there are many more techniques that can and should be employed on your website that will help you rank higher for important keywords. Please check back to read my follow up article, highlighting the next 5.
Tim Sorweid is the Owner/SEO Jedi of Rise and Shine SEO, a San Diego SEO company dedicated to providing top quality San Diego Search Engine Optimization Serivces to small and mid size businesses throughout the country
Article Source: Timothy_Sorweid
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