As you know its been a while since I last did a proper blog post on this site, and I want to apologise for me being quiet for such a long time…

To kick off the new year I would like to start by blogging about Google’s new +1 button, which is supposed to compete against Facebook’s Like button.  For those of you who are still unaware about Google’s new social venture, feel free to read this article on Search Engine Land.

Obviously, this is going to have tons of reprecussions for SEO as we all know that Google or should I say search on a whole is becoming more social.  Just recently, Bing launched new Facebook Like button functionality in their SERPs.

So how does this affect us???

The Google +1 Experiment

I managed to join the new Google +1 Experiment and did a tiny experiment. I took a page I knew was struggling in rankings for the keyword “africa vacations”, etc. and +1′ed it. That was on Friday (we all know search engine bots crawl over the weekend)

Today I had a look in analytics and this is what I saw:

Search traffic for the keyword “african vacations” improved dramatically. This meant that my rankings for this term had improved as well, and sure enough I found myself ranking at #7 for the term “african vacations” on Google.com

The Results:

• A page that has been +1′ed in Google will improve in rankings, but:
• The keyword you want to improve rankings for must appear first in your page title.
• The page must have lots of good backlinks pointing to it with the targeted keyword in the anchor text.
• The profile that +1′s the page must have good social rank

With regards to Social Rank, Google +1 uses Twitter and Gtalk contacts as a network. So this means if you have lots of followers in Twitter, etc. You will tend to have a higher Social Rank and therefore have a larger amount of influence when it comes to getting your rankings up by using Google’s +1.

In conclusion, it is still early days and Google might be making some changes to the way its going to rank pages using social statistics within its algorithm, although I hope this blog post gets some other SEO’s out there thinking about this.

Do you guys think that Bing’s SERPs will change due to the Facebook Likes integration?

Sadie

]]> http://iamsocialicious.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/google-plus-one-and-seo-2/feed/ 1 Sadie analytics http://iamsocialicious.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/ozami-internet-directory-a-one-of-the-few-quality-ones-available/ http://iamsocialicious.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/ozami-internet-directory-a-one-of-the-few-quality-ones-available/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 07:47:03 +0000 iamsocialicious http://iamsocialicious.wordpress.com/?p=181 ]]> Most webmasters out there are getting a lot of their traffic from search engines, however UK web directory era is not gone yet. Although there is a plethora of directories that offer free and instant approval for submissions, the quality of those very directories is very low, hence the low traffic received from its and almos no SEO value.

Ozami web directory was launched as being a « clean » resource for people to search and actually find decent information and for business owners and webmasters to take full benefit from a high quality directory. Although anyone is free to submit a website to Ozami, that does not guarantee an approval while any site must meet some standard and strict criteria of editors, being a human edited directory. Actually, this is one of the few directories created manually, with html coded pages for that the sites listed there benefit most from the back link they put in this directory.

Inclusion in this directory is not for free, but it also has a money-back guarantee if the website does not get the approval. The only fee someone has to pay for inclusion in Ozami directory is £30. Along with listing a website in a high-quality directory, visitors can also enjoy the articles from the Ozami UK guide section or Ozami blog, so that they combine work with entertainment when surfing through this directory.

The difference between Ozami and other directories is that the first one will not accept any website to be listed only for financial gains while most Internet directories are making bulk approvals for pockets to grow, and that is what makes a quality web directory to stand and present itself as a guest for top of the web sites.

This forum was first launched in 2004 and hit the online environment as a community created for webmasters to share personal thoughts and suggestions on different tools used for promotion and search engine optimisation and a webmaster marketplace where they can sell tools. Since then, the Webmaster Serve has steadily grown and it became a great place for beginners to learn about webmastering and for advance folks to find appropriate materials that could help them in acquiring more skills.

More than that, Webmaster Serve has created a place for the seo guys to share and learn new tricks on how to promote best their online businesses, the UK SEO forum area. Even though in this area anyone is welcomed, UK webmasters will have more benefits from visiting it while it focuses more on UK market.

Along with being a search engine optimisation and marketing focused forum, Webmaster Serve is also a great place for information and news about web hosting industry, some of the members even running businesses in this field. Any offers and discounts related to web hosting can be found on this forum, being kept up to date by the guys that are part of this community. And with the offers from the web hosting area of this forum also come very useful threads like how to choose a web hosting company, what to look out for when searching for a web hosting plan and so on.

This forum has it all, but the search engine optimisation area is great for website owners to learn how to promote their businesses and services in search engines, and all this is possible thanks to that great community that has grown around the UK webmaster forum – Webmaster Serve.

The web hosting section of Temi’s blog is quite exciting. It compared web hosting, domain name registration and other web hosting tips including hosting comparison section which helps you make up your mind about which web hosting company to use for hosting your website.

There is a technology section which looks into technology from basic telephony to VoIP tools such as the popular Skype and other instant messaging too. They are not only a great way to communicate with your friend but and exciting and cheap way to engage with your website visitor.

The web directory section of Temi’s blog give you information about web directory, from how to start your own web directory to some of the best web directories to submit your website to. Temi also have a contact page from where visitors can contact him and find out information about any of the topics he covers at his website.

If you are looking to set up a website, find information on how to move a flagging website forward or looking for webmaster information in general, Temi’s webmaster blog should be your first port of call. You can also suggest you website to the directory section of Temi’s website.

You can also leave feedback about any article you read on the blog using the built in feedback widget built into each of the post featured on Temi’s Uk webmaster blog.

There are 3 main constraints on any project, i.e. Time, Scope and Budget. Successfully completed projects are completed in time, within scope and within budget constraints. So how does this apply to SEO?

Well when you are an SEO team working in remote offices you need to co-ordinate your efforts in order to get the best results. This means sticking to budget and time constraints for certain milestones, as well as remaining within the scope of the project, i.e. the SEO strategy/plan.

Here are some links to cool online project management software:

• BaseCamp – A premier project collaboration service that many top companies utilize. Features include the ability to create and manage projects, private or public to-do lists, milestones, messaging, upload and share files, time tracking, notifications, time reporting, assign administration rights to people, admin rights for projects, admin rights for to-do lists, RSS, whiteboards, chat, calendars, assign milestones, design templates, activity stream, corporate branding, assign deadlines, commenting, drag and drop interface, and message boards.

• Central Desktop – it’s straight forward layout and the various different workspace types such as project management, wikis, databases, project blogs, and user forums.

• 5pm – Includes projects/tasks tree, Gantt charts, deadline assignments, groups, private projects/tasks, notifications, client login, project and task sorting, file uploads and attachments, time tracking, time reports, RSS, corporate branding, iCal integration, email integration, 256-bit SSL data encryption, contacts import tool, API, drag-and-drop functionality, auto-archiving, reminders, and the ability to import data from Basecamp.

In order to properly manage and SEO campaign, you need to first outline your SEO strategy with objectives and goals. Goals need to be SMART, i.e. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timed, which means that each section of your SEO strategy would then have time and scope and budget.

Using project management methodologies would ensure that you stay on-track with your SEO strategy and that you meet your objectives.

Sadie

This made me think that maybe, our world cup organizers don’t know about how to set out a successful digital marketing strategy, which is why I have decided to put in my 5 cents and layout what I believe needs to be part of a successful digital marketing strategy:

1. Extensive Keyword Research – You need to know what keywords receive the larger amount of searches. Choosing the best keywords to target gives you a better chance of getting increased visits to your site. There are many keyword tools out there that allow you to get an idea of which keywords are popular, as well as trends and user interest. You can use the following tools (to name a few):
   • Google External Keyword Tool - Google-specific Keyword Research
   • SEO Books Keyword Tool
   • Google Insights - User Interest
   • Google Trends – Trending Topics
   • Google Traffic Estimator ( PPC)

   You are more likely to have success from long-tail keywords than from your primary list of chosen keywords, as more specific keyword-phrases lead to higher conversion rates.

   

2. Quality Content -The importance of having quality content on your site cannot be stressed enough. Not only does quality content make your website more “sticky”, it also attracts natural backlinks that will help with your SEO. Make sure that your spelling and grammar is perfect and that the tone reflects the personality of the company.
3. Site Design -  There are 3 elements that need to be taken into consideration when it comes to site design, namely:
   • Usability - your site needs to be user-friendly and intuitive, with clean navigation having important content no-less than 3 clicks away as a rule of thumb.
   • Conversion Optimization – The layout and design of the site needs to be optimized to yield higher conversion rates, this can be done by testing up until you find the perfect layout. You can read more about conversions here.
   • SEO - Make sure you have search engine friendly site.
4. Use the appropriate marketing channels – Know your business objectives before you decide on which online marketing channels to include in your strategy, for example, social media doesn’t work for everyone.  There are many channels to choose from, for example:
   • Search Engine Optimization
   • Paid Search – Pay-Per-Click Marketing (PPC)
   • Social Media Marketing
5. Understand Your Analytics -  You need to fully understand your analytics data before you know what to do with it.By understanding your analytics you can pin-point areas you are lacking as well as new opportunities, for example, new keywords to target, or which pages have the highest Bounce Rates. This allows you to fine-tune your strategy for improved results.

Keeping these in mind will allow you  to make the most out of your digital marketing strategy.

Sadie

Desperately searching for a Google Wave invite?? Well, look no more because I have invites to give away to 8 lucky readers, all you have to do is do a blog post on your site telling me why you are Socialicious!!

Here are the criteria:

• You must have a valid blog, i.e. older than 1 year
• You must link back to http://iamsocialicious.wordpress.com using the text : Digital Marketing
• Blog post must be at least 250 words in length, and is permanent.
• Blog post must motivate why you are socialicious enough to get an invite!
• Leave a comment after you complete with the URL of your post so that I can check it out!!!

Okay, start writing guys…

Sadie

The Current Environment

• Bing has launced its own Twitter search.
• Google Has launched Social Search

Twitter SEO Tips

1. Make sure to use relevant keywords in the first few words of your tweet. The “lead-in” of each tweet appears to be important for SEO.
2. Make use of # tags, for example #keywords  that are relevant to the site.
3. Optimize your Twitter page’s “Bio” line so it includes the most important, mission-critical phrases for your brand. Your bio is consistently indexed so its contents are what provide your Twitter page with its core relevance.
4. We would need to build the link reputation by adding a call to action on the site, asking users to follow us on Twitter.

Sadie

Its been a while since I last posted on Socialicious – I want to take this opportunity to apologise to my regular readers..hope none of you removed me from your readers..LOL. My excuse is that I have been very busy working and learning…and I want to share what I have learnt with you, so here goes…

E-commerce SEO is very different when you compare it to other industries. Here the focus is just not on rankings but on SEO conversions and SEO ROI.  Great SEO conversion rates can only be attained when there is , in my opionion, a perfect balance between your on-site and off-site factors. So here are a few tips I’d like to share with you:

Tip #1 -Remove ALL Duplicate Content on Your Site

This can be in the form of duplicate product descriptions or duplicate page titles and descriptions as a result of pagination and sorting. These are surefire was to find duplicate content on your site:

• run a Xenu scan and then to sort the page titles, you’ll then find all pages with duplicate page titles.
• You can use the following searches in Google to detect duplicate product URLs

site:mydomain.com inurl:productID
site:mydomain.com intitle:"my product name"

Duplicate product pages cause the following issues (at least):

Page dilution in the search indices. It’s not uncommon to find sites with dozens or even hundreds of product duplicates; with Google crawling and indexing a finite number of pages (domain dependent, of course), this is critical to resolve.

PageRank split in the link profile. Duplicate pages can attract links on their own, too, and these need to be consolidated to maximize a product URLs external links.

Never use supplier product descriptions on your online shopping site…EVER!!! Cause guess what? Everyone else is doing the same damn thing!

Duplication caused by pagination and sorting is also a bitch! I read this great post on the Blue Acorn blog that really helped…

Basically the advice I got was to use AJAX for sorting and filtering and JavaScript for pagination, and to follow this up with a custom no-follow on each page link. To explain further, you will have one page listing all your products and use CSS  to make it seem that your products appear on different pages, you will then use Javascript to “navigate” between these pages. We only use AJAX for sorting as this would just bring up subsets of the same products.

Remember that each individual product needs to have a unique URL..one man, one vote!!!

Tip #2 : Improve indexing by flattening your site and inter-linking

If you have a site with thousands and thousands of products you need to find a way to get all of your products indexed in Google. A great way to do this is to implement a recommendation engine similar to Amazon.com or to employ cross-selling (which you should be doing anyway). This also results in related links to relevant products or product categories which will aid the search engine spiders through your site. Be sure to remember the golden rule :

ALL IMPORTANT CONTENT NEEDS TO BE AT LEAST 3 CLICKS AWAY.

The 3-clicks is a minimum..following this rule leads to increased accessibility as well.

Tip #3: Improve your site’s usability and load time!

You need a shopping site that’s designed in a way so that it is easy to find your products and in the quickest way possible. Always remember that the competition is always a click away. A site that loads fast and is user-friendly is like chocolote mousse to a search engine spider and the little critter will spend more time indexing pages on your site, meaning you get more products into the SERPS thereby increasing the amount of keywords you rank for, and the more keywords you rank for, the more likely it is for your customers to find you!

There are many ways to decrease your site’s load time such a decreasing image resolutions, etc.

We can do the following to decrease load time:

• Try not to have too many images in a post: 1 or 2 are just fine, unless you write about photography!
• Try not to have very large images in your posts: Larger the size of the image, the larger would be the file size. And the longer it would take to load.
• Actually resize the image, not just through HTML attributes: If you find a large image (say 1200 * 800), and want to display it only as a small image (say 500 * 333), don’t just use the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes of the IMG tag to reduce the display size. Reduce the image dimensions physically using an image editing tool, as that would reduce the size of the image (and therefore reduce the loading time).
• Optimize the image for web usage: Use only properly optimized images, as they are smaller in size. At the least, try to reduce the color depth as long as it doesn’t impact the way the image looks.
• Keep scripts in external files.
• Try to keep widgets and badges on a low – badges and widgets not only increase the page load time, but also distract your readers from the content. This impacts the user experience negatively.

By at least implementing these suggestions onto your e-commerce site, you should see some success, although it doesn’t stop there..you need to be pushing and pushing.

Sadie

Doing Social Media you will find that there are certain misconceptions about using emerging media. This post is a list of the top 5 misconceptions:

1) Misconception #1: Social Media is only right for certain brands – Often time people ask me: ” Is social media only right for web services or for “cool” products? The answer is no. Social media is right for every brand as long as the brand is able to find its target audience within a certain platform and converse/interact with it in an effective manner. Of course it may be exciting to do a marketing campaign for Apple than for Charles Schwab but for either one of those brands a targeted social media campaign within social networks and the blogosphere can bring amazing results as far as: Brand awareness, Overall buzz around the brand, traffic, customer loyalty and ultimately revenue. In fact often time it is the “duller” brands that experience the most growth out of social media campaigns because they experience a more substantial change in popularity between their starting point A and their ending point B than the “cooler” brands. Take for example Mint which is an online personal finance service and was just bought by Intuit for $170 Million. Not the most exciting of startups perhaps and yet Mint is a fine example of a company that did a great job in using social media to maximize the buzz around its brand, making its blog magazine-like with articles about tips for young parents and other interesting content. Mint made their content so interesting in fact that users/blog readers promote the brand on their own.

2) Misconception #2: Social Media is all about getting traffic and quickly – Social media marketing is a long term process that takes time. Once a brand enters any network such as Facebook or MySpace, it takes time to build that brand’s community. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a community on Facebook. If you want to do social media marketing right and not just spam the hell out of people, you must use conversational marketing to engage them. Conversational marketing is all about conversing with your community. Learning more about their likes and dislikes, listening before speaking and reacting based upon the customers’ feedback. Whoever thinks that he will open a Facebook page and reach tens of thousands of site visitors on the first day, is dead wrong. Brands that use social media to promote themselves will see a steady growth in traffic to their sites over time as their brand names become more and more viral within the networks – due to the increase in number of fans, number of tweets, exposure in blogs, etc. Sure there are different ways which will increase the rate of a brand’s virality on the Web. For example, creating strong social incentives for people on your site which will increase their urge to promote your brand is definitely a factor which will heighten the public’s awareness. You can read more about social incentives in this post I had written last year. However, don’t expect to get thousands of visitors to your site before you’ve been able to build

1) A strong loyal online community

2) A strong incentives system to increase brand awareness. Both these goals take time to achieve. From my experience, it usually takes about three months to start seeing effective results when using social media tools.

3) Misconception #3: “By using social media we will lose control of our Brand’s Image” – Executives (especially in big companies) often think that their employees will go wild and start telling every horror story imaginable regarding their brand because the company will open a Facebook page. So here’s the scoop: People will talk about your brand whether you like it or not. Opening a Facebook page is not going to change it and not opening a Facebook page is not going to make it go away. The question is: Do you want to be a part of that conversation or not? By having a presence in social networks and blogs, you as a brand show your customers and employees that you care about their feedback and that you are there to listen and satisfy their needs. I’ll give you a real time example: My hosting company is Network Solutions. For a few days my blog wasn’t uploading and I started to get very pissed off. I tweeted “Network Solutions Sucks” and specifically addressed @Shashib – the guy who handles Network Solutions’ social media efforts. A few moments later I received a tweet back from Shashib. He wanted to hear what’s wrong and help me resolve the problem. He promised a Network Solutions agent would call me soon. Within a few moments I received a phone call from an agent who helped me fix the situation and upload my site. At that moment, Network Solutions won my customer loyalty forever (or until the next time they screw up ). Real time customer care is something that brands can utilize social media tools for (specifically twitter) like no other marketing tools they have had till now. We’ve already seen amazing examples of customer care from Zappos and Dell. Brands should not be afraid of engaging in honest and transparent conversations with their clients online but rather they should be very afraid of ignoring their customers’ complaints and pretending that everything’s fine when it’s not.

4) Misconception #4: Social Media Is Just a Fad – I often hear people who say that social networks are just a passing fad. This is what I have to say to them: Social media is an inevitable digital evolution of our desire as humans to communicate with one another. It is a desire that we always had and will always continue to have as long as we are human. I had written about this topic in the past. To say that social media is just a fad is to say that communication is just a fad. Here are a few stats that might help to change the mind of those who are still apprehensive: 1) 2/3 of the global internet population visit social networks and time spent on social networks is growing at 3x the overall internet rate, accounting for ~10% of all internet time. 2) Visiting social sites is now the 4th most popular online activity – ahead of personal email! Care to change your mind?

5) Misconception #5: “I don’t need a professional to do social media for me” – Many executives think that they don’t need a professional to help them with their social media activities. They’ll just take a student who has a few hours a week and get him to sit on the social networks and play with their company’s branding. It’s inconceivable to me how on one hand companies can be so cautious regarding beginning to use social media and on the other hand they’ll give the work to a mere student who could ruin their branding in a few hours just to save a few bucks. In order to engage in social media campaigns that are effective and successful, companies should use social media expert services at least in the first few months just to understand the specific rules of each community. One must remember that Facebook, twitter, Mixx, Bebo are all communities with their own set of rules and it is crucial for brands to respect the community’s rules in order to survive. Just like a company wouldn’t take on its PR on its own without consulting with a PR expert first, a company should not delve into social media without consulting with a social media expert. After a few months of training, I believe brands can take the work upon themselves, but they must not forgo the training period as they could do more damage than good for their branding. These are the top five misconceptions I’ve heard regarding social media although I’ve heard many more. I would be delighted if you guys shared in the comments section some of the misconceptions that you’ve heard.

Sadie