Bing SEO – How Does it Differ from Google

16. April 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Bing Vs. Google · Tags: , , , , , , ,

Well I am sure we’re all just about sick and tired of hearing about Bing? Have we all given it a whirl already? :)

Despite the widespread attention I thought I would do a post on it anyway but as always from a 100% SEO point of view. What I really want to do with this post is look at what makes a site rank No.1 on Bing in comparison to Google? What SEO techniques are going to get you exposure on Bing that won’t necessarily do the same for you on Google.

In true SEO Wizz style I picked a keyword and took a look at the top ranking sites on Bing and Google.

“seo services” was the keyword, I figured we may as well keep it relevant plus this is a highly competitive keyword, with a top ppc price of £3.77, not overly high but competitive enough for our purposes.

Ok, we put together the following figues, take a look over them we’ll try to explore them a little.

The two sites I looked at are as follows:-

Whitehatmedia – ranked 1 on Bing

and

Smart Traffic – ranked 1 on google

bing seo

Right let’s break this down a little.

On Page Factors

The Google site is slightly better optimised on page but in my opinion the differences are not enough to suggest anything major. Maybe Google takes into accounut on page optimisation more than the new bing search engine.

Every time I do these comparisons the top Google sites always seem to implement the meta keywords, yet they don’t use them to determine rankings anymore, right? I’d keep using them anyway, what’s the harm.

Off Page Factors

This is where we see clear differences between the 2 sites.

The Google No.1 has a massive link popularity and a better link diversity. The Google site even enjoys a more focused anchor distribution.

It’s nice to see the younger domain doing better on Google, half the age of the site on Bing :)

Linking Pages

The pages that link to a site have always played a major role when ranking for keywords. On Google the idea is that you should acquire links from pages that are as relevant as possible.

This part of the table shows that the Google site has a higher percentage of links from pages with the keyword in the body, however the bing site has more links from pages with the keyword in the title tag. Is this the key to better Bing rankings?? Could be.

Looking down the table it is quite clear to see what Google focuses on and why sites rank higher on Google. Link popularity, diversity, anchor distribution. On the other hand it is quite interesting to note that the site with the higher PageRank does better on Bing.

So top tips from SEO Wizz…..

If you want to rank higher on Bing:-

  • Make your domain age increase :)
  • Try to acquire links from pages with your keywords in the title tag

To be fair both of these tips would help your Google campaign but it seems that more emphasis is put on these factors by Bing.

Another thing I noticed was that both sites have implemented heavy article marketing, so keep writing and distributing that keyword focused content, it works.

Created by Omaha SEO Company also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

9 SEO Tips for Attractive Web Design

09. April 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: SEO Web Design · Tags: , , , , ,

SEO: time-intensive, ever changing, and highly misunderstood. Creating a website design that is appealing, while also search engine friendly, is one of the hardest parts about SEO web design.

If you’re a designer, are your designs really search friendly?

A lot of misconceptions about SEO still exist in the web design community and many designers, who have at least some knowledge, are often acting with outdated information. Once a designer understands the value of SEO, there is still the concern of how to keep a design attractive, while also being search friendly.

Designers love beautiful websites and SEOs love optimized content and code, but neither should fool themselves, because these days, both matter. In that spirit, I’ve put together a list of 9 SEO tips that help keep your stunning website optimized for search engines. Instead of focusing on SEO design basics, I’ll be covering some design-focused SEO tips, to show how SEO and beautiful design elements can co-exist.

1. It’s not the same old SEO

SEO can be hard to keep up with, because it is always changing. Today, SEO doesn’t mean a site has to be ugly.

First, forget everything you’ve learned about keyword meta tags and keyword stuffing, because those days are over. This is a great thing for designers, because search engines are looking for great content, written in natural language. Metrics, like keyword density, which make sites look hideous, are a thing of the past.

If you’ve been a designer for several years, start fresh and learn search engine optimization from a source that keeps up with all things SEO. Don’t let out-of-date SEO practices make you think pages have to be riddled with repetitive keywords.

2. Links talk

Links tell search engines what pages are about. This holds true on-site as well as off-site. The words you use in your designs to link to other pages do matter. The web has matured and no longer needs to be told “click here”.

This is just another form of the dreaded “click here”. There is an opportunity wasted here, where the designer could link out with the keyword-rich headings like “HR solutions”. The “learn more” link is great for users, but leaves search bots blind to what is on the other end of that link. As a human, we make the connection, and know that this link is about “HR Solutions”, but you’re telling search engines it is about “learn more”.

CSS can be used to keep the style, but the site would benefit from either linking the major headings, or changing the link text to something like “Learn More about HR Solutions”. This would drastically improve the site’s internal linking, with minimal impact on design.

3. Design is linkbait

This is great news for designers. Much of the life of an SEO is focused around baiting links from the link-giving portion of the web. The amazing thing is that this portion of the web loves great looking websites. Great design improves credibility and the user experience.

If you design great sites, use services like The CSS Gallery List to get your site submitted to CSS showcases across the web, or at least do it by hand.

4. Look at search bots as browsers

Earlier I mentioned how using “learn more” leaves a search engine blind. Considering a search bot as a disabled user or another type of browser, is exactly the type of approach needed for search friendly web design.

Search bots are extremely disabled and unintelligent users who use a dreadfully outdated browser. This user’s ability to understand your site may mean the difference of thousands or millions of dollars for a business.

One of the best SEO tips I can give a designer is to test as if Lynx was one of the web’s major browsers. If you can properly navigate your site, and understand its content in a browser like Lynx, then you are on your way to being a great SEO web designer. Other tools, like the Web Developer toolbar, really help test a site without elements like CSS, images, and JavaScript.

Keep up on the Google webmaster guidelines, so you know the limitations of this highly impaired user of your site. Focus on creating beautiful designs that gracefully degrade for this limited web user, “the search bot.” Or, instead of designing the site and working backwards, start with the lowest common denominator (the search engine), and work up.

Let’s Get Tactical

5. Smoke some hash

#

That little symbol, the hash mark or pound symbol, is an extremely powerful SEO tool in the hands of a developer who knows what to do with it. The hash mark creates an element in the URL that is not considered unique by the search engines, so it is dropped.

There are a lot of great ways to use this. I’ve seen it used well on sections where new pages hardly justify having a unique URL. One example I’ve seen recently is a “people” section where only minor content changes are seen on each page. The designer assigned each employee’s profile with “#name”. These multiple, near duplicate, pages are all seen as one page by the search engines. There are plenty of other great uses for the hash.

6. Use SEO friendly JavaScript

Any time you touch technologies like JavaScript, you need to tread carefully. I love Javascript technologies, and all the amazing things we can do with them, but they can create huge problems.

Traditionally, AJAX is not SEO friendly because calls are made through JavaScript, which cannot be executed well by search engines. The result is that the content is never rendered or indexed by search bots. I like what can be done with jQuery, since you can have html link navigation in place (for search engines), and still have jQuery effects.

If not done correctly, you can run into problems though. For example, jTip, which is a nice little Jquery Tool Tip, can create some nasty problems. The tooltip is nice and all, but the static html links point to a page that looks like this.

That is the whole page. This page has no title and no link back to the site. This can create multiple near duplicate versions, which can be indexed in the search engines. This also creates many hanging pages on a site. I did an audit on a site recently that used jTip extensively. The site had over 80 pages indexed in Google, with only one sentence per indexed web page. None had titles, and none linked back to the domain.

Creative design solutions can allow a designer to use jQuery while still being search friendly. Check out Jon Raasch’s post about how he used jQuery to Animate his portfolio in a very search friendly way.

7. Flash is OK, sometimes.

Ask your average SEO about flash and you’ll be told how horrible it is for SEO. Ask someone who casually follows SEO news, and they’ll tell you flash can now be crawled. So how should a designer approach flash?

While Google is improving, you should not depend on Google to figure it all out. Here are some basic Flash rules to keep in mind.

  • Do not include an entire site on one page.
  • Do not use flash as the navigation.
  • Do not include important content in flash.

Search engines are nearly blind to flash, so do not use it for important page elements. Use of flash for design elements and non-important content is ok.

Flash can be used in a search engine friendly design. You can enhance web fonts by using slfr. Since the flash does not replace the HTML content, but styles it, search engines are still able to read the titles. It’s even Google approved.

8. CSS image replacement

CSS image replacement is one way to make a site look great, while also being search friendly. There are a couple different ways to do this, but the biggest concern boils down to intent.

Google says:

“If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages.”

The two words to focus in on here are “perceived” and “intent”. During a manual review Google will try to interpret your intent; a practice that has come under fire recently whenGoogle profiled SEO.

I think CSS is a common tactic and a fine solution to SEO web design. If your intent is to improve the visual experience, and you make this intent clear, you should be fine. Do not use this method to stuff keywords or manipulate with hidden content.

9. Have great linking with footers

If you have a design that will be compromised by the inclusion of a robust navigation above the fold, a solid footer is a great solution.

Sometimes footers get the job done, like Yelp’s boring, but effect footer. And sometimes they highlight content you want to rank, like the footer over at We Build Pages. But, they can also look beautiful, impressive, and creative.

Bonus Tips for Designers!

Three mini bonus tips that are exclusively for designers to use to promote their business.

Many designers drop an attribution link in the footer of their designs like so:

“Website Designed by Creative Company Name”

Here are 3 Mini SEO Tips

  1. Include a keyword in that attribution link. Stop linking your company name only and at least include the “Website Designed” portion. Even better, use something like “Designed by: Company Name – A New York Web Design Company.”
  2. Once you design a few sites with your keyword-rich attribution link, change the wording. It doesn’t need to be drastically different, but create some variation. Do this periodically.
  3. Create a pre-sale page on their site that features a testimonial and links back to your site. Then, link to this pre-sale page site-wide from the footer of their design. This will help you avoid the negatives of the run of site links, while getting a link from a page with a lot of internal PageRank flowing to it.

If you’re a designer, I hope these tips help you find some elegant design solutions to common SEO design problems. If you’re an SEO, I hope these tips are something you can forward to your designer.

I’d love to hear any tips or techniques you use in your designs to handle complex design needs in a search engine friendly manner. If you have any great SEO tips, ideas, or questions please leave a comment.

Created by Omaha SEO Company and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

How to Use HTML Meta Tags

06. April 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Meta Tags · Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

Want to get a top ranking in search engines? No problem! All you need to do is add a few magical “meta tags” to your web pages, and you’ll skyrocket to the top of the listings.

If only it were so easy. Let’s make it clear:

  • Meta tags are not a magic solution.
  • Meta tags are not a magic solution.
  • Meta tags are not a magic solution.

Meta tags have never been a guaranteed way to gain a top ranking on crawler-based search engines. Today, the most valuable feature they offer the web site owner is the ability to control to some degree how their web pages are described by some search engines. They also offer the ability to prevent pages from being indexed at all. This page explores these and other meta tag-related features in more depth.

Meta Tag Overview

What are meta tags? They are information inserted into the “head” area of your web pages. Other than the title tag (explained below), information in the head area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Instead, meta information in this area is used to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what “character set” to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content.

Let’s see two common types of meta tags, then we’ll discuss exactly how they are used in more depth:

 

Meta-example

In the example above, you can see the beginning of the page’s “head” area as noted by thetag — it ends at the portion shown as.

Meta tags go in between the “opening” and “closing” HEAD tags. Shown in the example is a TITLE tag, then a META DESCRIPTION tag, then a META KEYWORDS tag. Let’s talk about what these do.

 

The Title Tag

The HTML title tag isn’t really a meta tag, but it’s worth discussing in relation to them. Whatever text you place in the title tag (between theandportions as shown in the example) will appear in the reverse bar of someone’s browser when they view the web page. For instance, within the title tag of this page that you are reading is this text:

How To Use HTML Meta Tags

If you look at the reverse bar in your browser, then you should see that text being used, similar to this:

Meta-title

Some browsers also supplement whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name, as you can see Microsoft’s Internet Explorer doing in the picture above.

The title tag is also used as the words to describe your page when someone adds it to their “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” lists. For instance, if you added this page to your Favorites in Internet Explorer, it would show up like this:

Meta-bookmark

How did that little Search Engine Watch logo also show up? Everyone always asks. The article below provides more help:

Creating Your Own Favicon.ico Icon For IE5
Web Developer’s Journal, March 7, 2000
http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/favicon.html

But what about search engines! The title tag is crucial for them. The text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page (see the Search Engine Placement Tips section for more details). In addition, all major crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.

For example, this is how Teoma lists the page you are reading:

Meta-teoma

You can see that the text “How To Use HTML Meta Tags” is used as the hyperlinked title of this page’s listed in Teoma’s results.

In review, think about the key terms you’d like your page to be found for in crawler-based search engines, then incorporate those terms into your title tag in a short, descriptive fashion. That text will then be used as your title in crawler-based search engines, as well as the title in bookmarks and in browser reverse bars.

The Meta Description Tag

The meta description tag allows you to influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag (these are listed on the Search Engine Features page).

Look back at the example of a meta tag. See the first meta tag shown, the one that says “name=description”? That’s the meta description tag. The text you want to be shown as your description goes between the quotation marks after the “content=” portion of the tag (generally, 200 to 250 characters may be indexed, though only a smaller portion of this amount may be displayed).

For this page you are reading, I would like it described in a search engine’s listings like this:

This tutorial explains how to use HTML meta tags, with links
to meta tag generators and builders. From SearchEngineWatch.com,
a guide to search engine submission and registration.

Will this happen? Not with every search engine. For example, Google ignores the meta description tag and instead will automatically generate its own description for this page. Others may support it partially. For instance, let’s see again how this page is listed in Teoma:

Meta-teoma

You can see that the first portion of the page’s description comes from the meta description tag, then there’s an ellipse (.), and the remaining portion is drawn from the body copy of the page itself.

In review, it is worthwhile to use the meta description tag for your pages, because it gives you some degree of control with various crawlers. An easy way to do this often is to take the first sentence or two of body copy from your web page and use that for the meta description content.

The Meta Keywords Tag

The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy. How does this help you? Well, for most major crawlers, it doesn’t. That’s because most crawlers now ignore the tag. The few supporting it can be found on theSearch Engine Features page).

The meta keywords tag is sometimes useful as a way to reinforce the terms you think a page is important for ON THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT. For instance, if you had a page about stamp collecting — AND you say the words stamp collecting at various places in your body copy — then mentioning the words “stamp collecting” in the meta keywords tag MIGHT help boost your page a bit higher for those words.

Remember, if you don’t use the words “stamp collecting” on the page at all, then just adding them to the meta keywords tag is extremely unlikely to help the page do well for the term. The text in the meta keywords tag, FOR THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT, works in conjunction with the text in your body copy.

The meta keyword tag is also sometimes useful as a way to help your page come up for synonyms or unusual words that don’t appear on the page itself. For instance, let’s say you had a page all about the “Penny Black” stamp. You never actually say the word “collecting” on this page. By having the word in your meta keywords tag, then you may help increase the odds of coming up if someone searched for “penny black stamp collecting.” Of course you would greater increase the odds if you just used the word “collecting” in the body copy of the page itself.

Here’s another example. Let’s say you have a page about horseback riding, and you’ve written your page using “horseback” as a single word. You realize that some people may instead search for “horse back riding,” with “horse back” in their searches being two separate words. If you listed these words separately in your meta keywords tag, THEN MAYBE FOR THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT, your page might rank better for “horse back” riding. Sadly, the best way to ensure this would be to write your pages using both “horseback riding” and “horse back riding” in the text — or perhaps on some of your pages, use the single word version and on others, the two word version.

I’m using all these capital letters on purpose. Far too many people new to search engine optimization obsess with the meta keywords tag. FEW crawlers support it. For those that do, it MIGHT! MAYBE! PERHAPS! POSSIBLY! BUT WITH NO GUARANTEE! help improve the ranking of your page. It also may very well do nothing for your page at all. In fact, repeat a particular word too often in a meta keywords tag and you could actually harm your page’s chances of ranking well. Because of this, I strongly suggest that those new to search engine optimization not even worry about the tag at all.

Even those who are experienced in search engine optimization may decide it is no longer worth using the tags. Search Engine Watch doesn’t. Any meta keywords tags you find in the site were written in the past, when the keywords tag was more important. There’s no harm in leaving up existing tags you may have written, but going forward, writing new tags probably isn’t worth the trouble. The articles below explore this in more detail:

Death Of A Meta Tag
The Search Engine Report, Oct. 1, 2002

Meta Tags Revisited
The Search Engine Report, Dec. 5, 2002

Still want to use the meta keywords tag? OK. Look back at the opening example. See the second meta tag shown, the one that says “name=keywords”? That’s the meta keywords tag. The keywords you want associated with your page go between the quotation marks after the “content=” portion of the tag.

Inktomi says that you should include up to 25 words or phrases, with each word or phrase separated by commas. More advice from Inktomi can be found on its Content Policy FAQ.

FYI, in the past, when the tag was supported by other search engines, they generally indexed up to 1,000 characters of text and commas were not required.

Meta Robots Tag

One other meta tag worth mentioning is the robots tag. This lets you specify that a particular page should NOT be indexed by a search engine. To keep spiders out, simply add this text between your head tags on each page you don’t want indexed. The format is shown below (click on the picture if you want to copy and past the HTML for your own use):

Meta-noindex

You do NOT need to use variations of the meta robots tag to help your pages get indexed. They are unnecessary. By default, a crawler will try to index all your web pages and will try to follow links from one page to another.

Most major search engines support the meta robots tag. However, the robots.txt convention of blocking indexing is more efficient, as you don’t need to add tags to each and every page. See theSearch Engines Features page for more about the robots.txt file. If you use do a robots.txt file to block indexing, there is no need to also use meta robots tags.

The meta robots tag also has some extensions offered by particular search engines to prevent indexing of multimedia content. The article below talks about this in more depth and provides some links to help files. Search Engine Watch members should follow the link from the article to the members-only edition for extended help on the subject.

Image Search Faces Renewed Legal Challenge
The Search Engine Report, August 22, 2001

Other Meta Tags

There are many other meta tags that exist beyond those explored in this article. For example, if you were to view the source code of this web page, you would find “author,” “channel” and “date” meta tags. These mean nothing to web-wide crawlers such as Google. They are specifically for an internal search engine used by Search Engine Watch to index its own content.

There are also “Dublin Core” meta tags. The intent is that these can be used for both “internal” search engines and web-wide ones. However, no major web-wide search engine supports these tags. More about them can be found below:

How about the meta revisit tag? This tag is not recognized by the major search engines as a method of telling them how often to automatically return. They have never supported it.

In Conclusion

Overall, just remember this. Of all the meta tags you may see out there:

  • Meta Robots: This tag enjoys full support, but you only need it if you DO NOT want your pages indexed.

  • Meta Description: This tag enjoys much support, and it is well worth using.

  • Meta Keywords: This tag is only supported by some major crawlers and probably isn’t worth the time to implement.

  • Meta Everything Else: Any other meta tag you see is ignored by the major crawlers, though they may be used by specialized search engines.

More Resources

At the bottom of this page are more resources about meta tags, including tutorials and meta tag building applications. But first.

If you’ve been following the “Next” buttons to read the numbered sections of the Search Engine Submission Tips guide in order, you’ve now reached the last page. Congratulations!

There’s still more information you might find helpful, however. Please review the rest of the articles on the SEM Basics section for additional assistance with search engine marketing issues.

In addition, do consider becoming a Search Engine Watch member, for access to even more information on search engine marketing issues.

Now, here are those additional meta tag resources and articles.

Meta Tag Generators, Builders and Evaluators

SiteUp’s Meta-Tag Generator
This is a software-based package for Windows that creates meta tags. It is a freeware package — no registration fee required.

Meta Tag Builder
This form allows you to create very complicated meta tags using much more than the keywords and description tags, if you wish. Note that it will place a commented credit line into the tag. This can easily be removed, if you wish.

Created by Omaha SEO Company also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

What’s Better – On-Page SEO or Link Building

05. April 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: SEO vs. Link Building · Tags: , , , , ,

 

Every week, without fail, I hear someone ask where they should put their SEO budget – in on-page tactics or in link-building. Unfortunately, there are plenty of SEO companies and consultants lining up to give them the answer – and that answer just happens (“coincidentally”) to be whatever the company/consultant is good at. When you’re an expert with a hammer, you start to think you can nail anyone (wait, that’s not right).

Here’s the honest answer that no one wants to hear: “It depends”. No one wants to hear it because they’re back where they started – having no idea what to do next. Instead of leaving you stranded or trying to sell you a hammer for your box of screws, I’m going to walk you through 4 cases and explain how I’d allocate your budgets for each one.

What Is On-page SEO?

To add to the confusion, “on-page” can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Here, I’m taking a  very broad view – it could mean keyword research, writing good TITLE tags, internal linking and crawl architecture, or even content creation. For the purposes of this post, on-page is anything you directly control in the code or content of your site.

Case #1: The Authority

70% On-page, 30% Link-building

The Authority is an established site with a solid, trusted link profile and usually a good base of content. In many cases, it’s a site that’s evolved “organically”, which is a fancy word for “without a plan”. The Authority could be suffering from any or all of the following:

  • Keyword research is 5 years out of date
  • Keywords are cannibalized across many pages
  • Internal links have grown like weeds
  • Site architecture doesn’t reflect business goals
  • Page TITLEs overlap or are duplicated
  • Old but valuable (i.e. linked-to) content is 404’ing

In many cases, no one notices, because The Authority’s strong link profile and solid content keep it ranking well. The problem is that you’re sitting on a gold mine of untapped potential. Of course, The Authority should keep building solid links, but a shift (even for a few months) to really planning and focusing on on-page issues, from keyword research on up, could produce huge dividends.

Case #2: The Perfectionist

30% On-page, 70% Link-building

The Perfectionist often comes out in new webmasters. They’ve read 500 SEO blogs and are following all the “rules” as best they can, but they’ve become so obsessed with building the “perfect” site that they’ve hit the point of rapidly diminishing returns. The Perfectionist wants to know how to squeeze 0.01% more SEO value out of an already good URL by moving one keyword.

It’s time for The Perfectionist to remember the 80/20 rule – there comes a point where your on-page is good enough, at least for now. You have to get Google to your site to put that on-page magic to work, and that means building links. It’s important to develop content (which is why I’ve left on-page at 30%), but put almost every other on-page tactic to the side temporarily and spend a solid 6 months developing and implementing a link-building campaign

Case #3: The Hot Mess

90% On-page, 10% Link-building

The Hot Mess is a Google engineer’s fantasy (or possibly nightmare). She’s broken every single rule of on-page SEO, which worked fine for a while, but then came “May Day” and “Panda”, and now Google is even talking about penalizing her for optimizing too much. The Hot Mess has let something spin out of control, including:

  • Blocked crawl paths and bad redirects
  • Massive URL-based duplication
  • Excessive internal search, categories, and tags
  • Aggressive ad-to-content ratio
  • Extremely “thin” content
  • Nonsensical site architecture and internal linking
  • Keyword stuffing that would embarrass 1998

In some cases, this could be “over-optimization” and an attempt to manipulate the search engines, but in other cases the Hot Mess is just that – a mess. Whatever the cause, put down everything and start fixing the problems now. Chasing new links without fixing the mess is like having your carpets cleaned while your house is burning down.

Case #4: The Bad Boy

10% On-page, 90% Link-building

Finally, there’s the Bad Boy – he’s broken every rule in the Google link-building playbook, and they’ve finally noticed. This could be a large-scale devaluation or a Capital-P Penalty, including:

  • Paid links
  • Link farms, networks and exchanges
  • Excessive low-value links
  • Aggressive anchor-text targeting

If you’ve been bad enough, you could be talking a serious ranking penalty or even de-indexation. At that point, all the on-page tweaks in the world won’t help you (I left 10% just to keep the site up and running). You have to fix the problem and address the problem links. Bare minimum, you have to stop doing what got you into trouble and show a pattern of positive link-building. You may even have to file for reconsideration. The fix can be tricky, and depends a lot on the situation, but until you fix it, the Bad Boy isn’t going anywhere.

Created by Omaha SEO Company also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Top 10 Free Google SEO

02. April 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Google SEO · Tags: , , , , ,

1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool

This handy tool allows you to see the actual search volume that certain keywords have in Google for the USA and the rest of the world. When selecting your primary and secondary keywords, you can get a better idea of what words or phrases will attract the most traffic to your website. The tool also gives you insight into the average cost-per-click for each keyword. This is helpful to determine what keywords are the most profitable if you plan to profit with your website from Google’s Adsense program.

2. YouTube Keyword Tool

Your SEO campaign will likely include streaming video to help skyrocket your website through the Google rankings. Just like keywords for your content, Google makes it easy to find the best keywords to use with your videos. You have complete control over the country, demographic, age group or special interests. You can export the list of keywords that you select directly into Adwords to find out the approximate cost-per-click.

3. Google Webmaster Tools

Think of Webmaster Tools like having a personal coach with you informing you what your website is doing wrong. Everything from broken links to crawl errors can be tracked using Webmaster Tools. An entire suite of tools and analytics is available to help you keep your website running smoothly while maximizing your SEO results.

4. Google Page Speed

Know what happens when your website is too slow? Your website visitors go elsewhere to find what you could not offer with your slow website. Google Page Speed defines the reasons why your website is too slow and shows you how to fix the problem. Compressed images, incorrect CSS and removal of redirects make a big difference in page speed.

5. Google Insights

Insights lets you into some of the secrets that Google knows about search volume, search trends and search patterns over a predetermined course of time. You can estimate seasonal trends, target demographics and select niche categories to get more insight into what web users are searching for online. Who doesn’t love Google!

6. Google Places

Every business with a physical presence should get listed on Google Places. Part of branding your website online is making user searches easier. Google Places allows uploads of photos and business information that is very useful to someone researching products or services that you can provide.

7. Google Analytics

You can monitor every detail about the traffic that comes to your website using Google Analytics. The data will probably surprise you at first because it is in-depth and very useful. If you want to know what SEO is working and what is not, the data from Google Analytics tells you exactly what you need to know. You will learn everything about user visits, tracking sales conversions, why users click out of your website and more.

8. Google+

Google+ is social media platform that allows you to connect with people around the world for networking, sharing information and building your online presence. If you have a Facebook and Twitter account, you need to have a Google+ account. Branding yourself online is easy with Google+ and one of the easiest ways to get high PR backlinks for your website.

9. DoubleClick Ad Planner

Want to know what your competitors are using against you? Ad Planner by Google is all that you need. You can search competitor websites, you can get access to page views, you can read statistics to help you reverse engineer your competition to send some of their traffic to your website. Keyword intelligence is very crucial to your SEO success.

10. Google Trends

Finding a niche is not always easy especially when there are millions of Internet marketers doing the same thing. Google Trends gives you a heads up over your competition by letting you in on the most trending topics each day. You can use the trend data to find a niche and develop your products or services around a hot trend before the rest of the world finds out about it.

I hope this list helps you expand your SEO success. You can stop fearing your competition and start making your competition fear you!

Created by Omaha SEO Company also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Pay Per Click Marketing – The Disadvantages

29. March 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Pay Per Click Marketing - Disadvantages · Tags: , , , ,

Pay per Click, PPC search engine advertising is considered by many to be one of the most affordable forms of marketing on the Internet. PPC advertising is used to generate leads by directing target traffic to a marketer’s website landing page, so the marketer can convert this target traffic into immediate sales; or future sales at a later time. To date, this marketing is a billion pound industry.

There are some pitfalls and disadvantages to using Pay per Click advertising companies. If there were no disadvantages to this advertising, then everyone would be using this method; yet, many Internet marketers do not use it.

In brief, marketers will bid on keywords to use in small ads they create, that the PPC Company will display for search engine users when they use the marketers’ chosen keywords they selected to use in the ads. Within these ads is a link to the marketers’ unique website, for interested parties to click on.

When the search engine user, uses a particular marketer’s keyword in the search engine, that ad shows up alongside the other results for the user to choose from. If the user clicks on the marketer’s ad, they are taken to the marketer’s website. The marketer then pays the PPC Company for that unique click. If the user sees the ad, but does not click, the marketer does not pay.

Some of the disadvantages to using Pay per Click advertising have to do with the company being chosen for the marketing campaign. Many companies have much bigger advantages over other smaller companies.

A smaller PPC company might not be “connected”, in the sense of having the ability to display your ad for good exposure when your keywords are being targeted by people looking for your type product. Also, some PPC companies simply do not have the skills to operate their companies as well as a lot of the larger ones. To date, Google’s AdWords is the top runner of PPC companies on the Internet.

Many people have lost thousands of pounds on PPC advertising by simply not having a clear understanding of the complexity involved. It takes a while to learn how to bid properly, create compelling ads that are relevant and using these methods effectively in a marketing campaign. Prudence is the key when new to any marketing method.

One main disadvantage to using this advertising has a lot to do with your market. If you are not trying to appeal to a niche group, this could have you in direct competition with a few hundred other marketers for select keywords.

Nothing is more frustrating than trying to bid for keywords, that many other PPC marketers already have top positions for themselves. At best, you may end up at the bottom of the page’s search results; unless you want to spend a lot more money, trying to out-bid your competition.

Although you can generate a lot of target traffic to your landing page, recent studies have shown that the conversion rate of PPC marketing techniques, to be lower than other marketing methods, like article marketing.

If you get 100 hits on your landing page from PPC advertising, but only one sale, then that says something. Especially if you were using article marketing before, and this method was converting 8 hits into sales, per 100 hits for you.

Overall, the main disadvantage to PPC advertising is taking the time to learn all the complexities involved with it. Too many people have jumped right into it with their eyes closed and ended up wiping out their marketing budgets in short time. They tried, they died.PPC advertising is something everyone should test the water on, before jumping in, head first.

Created by Omaha SEO Company also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

12 Rules for Choosing the Right Domain or Company Name:

19. March 2012 · 9 comments · Categories: Domain Name, Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

  1. Brainstorm 5 Top Keywords
    When you first begin your domain name search, it helps to have 5 terms or phrases in mind that best describe the domain you’re seeking. Once you have this list, you can start to pair them or add prefixes & suffixes to create good domain ideas. For example, if you’re launching a mortgage related domain, you might start with words like “mortage, finance, home equity, interest rate, house payment” then play around until you can find a good match.
  2. Make the Domain Unique
    Having your website confused with a popular site already owned by someone else is a recipe for disaster. Thus, I never choose domains that are simply the plural, hyphenated or misspelled version of an already established domain. I still believe that Flickr desperately needs to buy Flicker.com – I hear kids in their 20′s tell parents in their 40′s and 50′s to see photos on Flickr and always envision that traffic going straight to the wrong domain.
  3. Only Choose Dot-Com Available Domains
    If you’re not concerned with type-in traffic, branding or name recognition, you don’t need to worry about this one. However, if you’re at all serious about building a successful website over the long-term, you should be worried about all of these elements, and while directing traffic to a .net or .org (as SEOmoz does) is fine, owning and 301′ing the .com is critical. With the exception of the very tech-savvy, most people who use the web still make the automatic assumption that .com is all that’s out there – don’t make the mistake of locking out or losing traffic to these folks.
  4. Make it Easy to Type
    If a domain name requires considerable attention to type correctly, due to spelling, length or the use of un-memorable words or sounds, you’ve lost a good portion of your branding and marketing value. I’ve even heard usability folks toute the value of having the letters include easy-to-type letters (which I interpret as avoiding “q,” “z,” “x,” “c,” and “p”).
  5. Make it Easy to Remember
    Remember that word-of-mouth and SERPs dominance marketing (where your domain consistently comes up for industry-related searches) both rely on the ease with which the domain can be called to mind. You don’t want to be the company with the terrific website that no one can ever remember to tell their friends about because they can’t remember the domain name.
  6. Keep the Name as Short as Possible
    Short names are easy to type and easy to remember (the previous two rules). They also allow for more characters in the URL in the SERPs and a better fit on business cards and other offline media.
  7. Create and Fulfill Expectations
    When someone hears about your domain name for the first time, they should be able to instantly and accurately guess at the type of content that might be found there. That’s why I love domain names like Hotmail.com, CareerBuilder.com, AutoTrader.com and WebMD.com. Domains like Monster.com, Amazon.com and Zillow.com (whom I usually praise) required far more branding because of their un-intuitive names.
  8. Avoid Copyright Infringement
    This is a mistake that isn’t made too often, but can kill a great domain and a great company when it does. To be sure you’re not infringing on anyone’s copyright with your site’s name, visitcopyright.gov and search before you buy.
  9. Set Yourself Apart with a Brand
    Using a unique moniker is a great way to build additional value with your domain name. A “brand” is more than just a combination of words, which is why names like mortgageforyourhome.com or shoesandboots.com aren’t as compelling as branded names like bankrate.com or lendingtree.com. SEOmoz itself is a good example – “SEO” does a good job of explaining the industry we’re in and creating expectations, while “moz” gives a web association, and an association with being free, open, and community-driven.
  10. Reject Hyphens and Numbers
    Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to give your domain name verbally and falls down on being easy to remember or type. I’d suggest not using spelled-out or roman numerals in domains, as both can be confusing and mistaken for the other.
  11. Don’t Follow the Latest Trends
    Website names that rely on odd mis-spellings (like many Web 2.0 style sites), multiple hyphens (like the SEO-optimized domains of the early 2000′s), or uninspiring short adjectives (like “top…x,” “best…x,” “hot…x”) aren’t always the best choice. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but in the world of naming conventions in general, if everyone else is doing it, that doesn’t mean it’s a surefire strategy. Just look at all the people who named their businesses “AAA… x” over the last 50 years to be first in the phone book; how many Fortune 2000′s are named “AAA company?”
  12. Use an Ajax Domain Selection Tool
    Websites like AJAXWhois and Domjax make it exceptionally easy to determine availability of a domain name – just remember that you don’t have to buy through these services. You can find a name you like that’s available, then go to your registrar of choice.

Created by Omaha SEO Company

How to Promote and Maintain your Facebook Business Page

16. March 2012 · 33 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , , ,

 

Now that you’ve created a Facebook page for your business, you need to grow your fan base. Before getting started, however, know what your goals are. What do you want the fan page to accomplish for your business? Collecting a large number of fans is great, but you have to decide whether you’re happy with exposure alone, or whether you want fans to become customers. Do you want your Facebook page to help you sell more products and services?

Having a lot of fans may not increase sales immediately, but it should at least increase the strength of your brand through reputation management, improved customer support, and the conversion of fans into advocates. Over time those tactics can grow sales. Your initial goal, however, should be to expand your reach, provide relevant information about your business, influence potential customers, demonstrate that you have authority in your field, and engage fans.

Attract People

Invite Contacts and Friends to Become Fans

Get started by attracting fans. Facebook pages have a feature that allows you to invite contacts to become fans of your new business page. Go to Edit Page, click Resources on the left, and then select Tell Your Fans.

Invite friends and contacts to become your Facebook fans.Invite friends and contacts to become your Facebook fans.You can upload a contacts file or search your email accounts for people using Facebook. Your contacts file must be in the CSV format, and it can’t contain more than 5000 records. You can also search your Web email contacts. (Note that Facebook doesn’t support Gmail currently. However, you can export your Gmail contacts as CSV, and then import them into Facebook via Upload a contact file.)

Some contacts will become fans of your page, while others will ignore the request. It’s best to send the request only once; otherwise, you risk annoying potential fans. You can, however, offer an incentive or a reward for becoming a fan, which I’ll discuss later.

Other methods of giving people the opportunity to find out about your Facebook page include embedding a link in your email signature; adding information about it on your business cards, website, and marketing materials; and posting a sign in your office.

Add a Facebook ‘Like’ Box

I also recommend adding a Facebook “Like” box to your website. You can do so by going to Edit Page, Resources, Use Social Plugins and selecting Like Box. Fill in the fields and then click theGet Code button. After you copy the code and paste it into your company website, visitors can “Like” your Facebook page directly. Facebook’s ‘Social Plugins’ section under ‘Resources’ has a number of useful tools for websites, too.

Target a Specific Niche

After you start to grow your Facebook fan base, you can target a specific demographic. This may be the group most likely to become your fans–or you might want to focus on growing your customer base in other ways. I’ll discuss this topic further when I look at Facebook Insights (see the next page).

Develop Relationships With Similar Businesses

Add a Facebook 'Like' box.Add a Facebook ‘Like’ box.If you develop relationships with similar businesses on Facebook, they may provide information and useful links, or even refer people to your business and help in promoting it.

For example, you can share their links on your site as they reciprocate by promoting your Facebook posts. If you cultivate strong relationships or have businesses that you recommend–such as a graphic designer who associates with your Web development firm–then you can add that party’s Facebook page to the “favorites” list on your own page. You can easily put any other Facebook page on your list by scrolling to the bottom left and findingAdd to My Page’s Favorites.

How to Update Your Page

Obtain a Unique Username

Now that you’ve started adding some fans, focus on making your Facebook page interesting to your visitors. First, grab a unique username for your Facebook page to replace the long string of numbers that make up your page ID. (Luckily, Facebook no longer requires that you have 25 fans before you can create a unique username.)

Start on this page to select a username. Note that once you set this name, you can change it only once, and you can’t transfer it to another page–so, before you start, confirm that you’re logged in and using your Facebook page under your business name rather than your personal name. Taking this step will prevent your accidentally assigning your business page name to your personal Facebook page. Also, check Facebook’s guidelines for what kinds of usernames you can use; your first choice may already be taken.

Explore Ways to Update

Facebook allows five types of updates.

1. Information about your business: You can post information about specials, sales, recent news, and other items of interest. If you have a blog, you can also add links to your blog posts. I’ll discuss later how to automate this process.

2. Links to other sites: Other websites may have news and articles that interest your customers. I frequently posts links to other sites that have new content pertinent to my business.

3. Questions: Your fans want to belong to a community. Asking them questions about your products and services, as well as items that they would like to see, helps to engage your fans, which will in turn increase their loyalty to your brand.

4. Personal updates: By “personal,” I don’t mean that you should tell customers about your family or home life. Rather, add a distinctive touch that makes people see that a real person is behind the business. This step can be as simple as putting up a Friday post to ask what their plans are for the weekend.

5. Responses to questions: Fans will post questions about your products and services, and they may even leave complaints. This is an opportunity to provide excellent customer service. I don’t ever recommend ignoring customer inquiries.

Integrate With Other Social Sites

LinkedIn applications include one for Twitter, which you can link with Facebook.LinkedIn applications include one for Twitter, which you can link with Facebook.Try integrating Google+, Linkedin, and Twitter with your Facebook page. Automating this integration can make it easier to manage updates, but it can also take the “social” aspect out of social media. Of course, manual posts offer a personal touch but consume more time, so prioritize.

Google+: Currently you can integrate a personal profile on Facebook so that your wall posts show up in Google+, but you cannot perform this procedure from a Facebook page. If you want to integrate the two, you will need to add a Google+ tab to your Facebook page. Go to the Facebook application and then to Google Plus Tab for Pages, and add the application to your page.

LinkedIn: You can’t post directly from Facebook to LinkedIn, but you can send your Twitter material to LinkedIn. That way, if you’ve set up Facebook to post to Twitter, your Facebook content will also appear on LinkedIn. In your LinkedIn profile, click Add an Application and then select Tweets.

Twitter: To integrate Facebook with Twitter, go to this Facebook page. You’ll have control over the type of Facebook posts that are shared with Twitter.

Blog posts: You can integrate your blog posts with Facebook via RSS feed by using a Facebook application such as Networked Blogs. Within Networked Blogs, log in with your Facebook account, register your blog, and complete the sign-up process. You can set up blog posts to appear on your Facebook wall automatically; alternatively, you can choose to set up the feed and then post selected articles manually.

Consider Reveal Tabs

If you design a Facebook page with Pagemodo, a 'Like' gate is the fourth step.

If you design a Facebook page with Pagemodo, a ‘Like’ gate is the fourth step.A popular way to grow your fanbase is to use a Reveal Tab. This is a custom page that shows specific content only to people who have already “Liked” the page. You can use this feature to present Facebook-only offers, such as coupons, a discount code, or a free ebook. To set up a Reveal Tab, you can use a third-party tool such as Pagemodo or NorthSocial’s Fan Offer.

Pagemodo

In my guide to creating a Facebook page, I walk through creating a custom tab using the WSIWYG editor Pagemodo. Pagemodo calls its reveal tabs feature a “Like” gate, and offers the function as the fourth step in creating a new Facebook page. This feature is easy to enable, but it requires a Pro Package (which costs a little more than $13 a month).

North Social

NorthSocial's Fan Offer app lets you create a reveal tab.

NorthSocial’s Fan Offer app lets you create a reveal tab.North Social has a number of applications, and all are included when you sign up (for a fee starting at $20 a month).Fan Offer is the tool for creating reveal tabs for Facebook. Once you sign up, you need to allow access and then connect the application to your North Social account. Unlike with Pagemodo, in Fan Offer you create the reveal tab on Facebook directly.

The Fan Offer application is image-based. You provide one image that nonfans will see, plus a second image for fans. For example, the nonfan image can offer a tease such as “Like our page for an exclusive offer,” while the image for fans will tell them how to get a free item. You will need to make each 520-by-800-pixel image in advance. Once you have the images, however, adding them to the North Social app is a simple upload.

Add E-Commerce to Facebook

Although it’s best to use Facebook primarily for reputation management and customer service, you can also integrate e-commerce and sell your products there. Two types of applications can help you do this, and I’ll discuss a third-party tool for each. One pulls in data from an existing storefront on your website, via XML. The second is a stand-alone Facebook store. If you already have an online store, choose the first method.

Storefront Social

Here's an example of how Storefront Social lets you manage products for a Facebook store.Here’s an example of how Storefront Social lets you manage products for a Facebook store.Third-party tool Storefront Social works with an existing online store. You can import your products via an XML feed or a CSV spreadsheet, or input data manually. Features include social share for letting fans share your product information. The basic plan costs $10 a month, and all plans include a seven-day free trial.

The basic plan doesn’t include an import via XML, and it doesn’t facilitate purchases made on Facebook; instead, when a customer is ready to buy a product, the page will direct them to your Web store. Since you can enter product data manually, you can integrate an Amazon Marketplace, eBay, or Etsy store on Facebook using Storefront Social.

TabJuice

Here's an example of a store enabled by TabJuice.Here’s an example of a store enabled by TabJuice.TabJuice is a free, third-party online storefront that fully integrates with Facebook as a stand-alone store. Features include social integration, sales tax and shipping, accounting features, storefront design, and inventory management. TabJuice also includes promotions and lets you set up discounts that start and end during a designated time.

Once you visit TabJuice and select Open a Storefront, it takes you to Facebook to sign up. You then follow the Quick Start Guide. After designing the store, adding products, and activating the store, you must attach the store to your Facebook page and set up your payment gateway.

Selling Services

If you sell services rather than products, an application like TabJuice is still a good choice because you can customize it for your own offerings, and it isn’t tied to an existing online store. You could also create a custom Facebook page with descriptions of your services that links over to your website for the customer to get more information or contact you directly. The e-commerce applications for Facebook are more tailored for selling products, however, so you will want to be more creative in how you set this up.

Perform Ongoing Maintenance

You’ll be making a big time investment up front by setting goals, creating a custom page, crafting special offers, and establishing an online store. Even if you don’t use these extra features, you’ll want to post links, comments, and questions to your Facebook page regularly, as well as to respond to customer concerns. Depending on your company size and resources, this effort could be weekly, daily, or even hourly. You can make this time more efficient by tracking your page’s progress through Facebook Insights.

Track Insights

Keep your eyes on Facebook's Insights to make more-efficient page updates.Keep your eyes on Facebook’s Insights to make more-efficient page updates.Facebook Insights will help you determine the level of fan engagement, and it will let you know if people are discussing your posts, saying positive things about your company, or sharing your content with their Facebook friends. Divided into four sections, Insights was recently updated to include more data. You can export all of the data from the main Insights screen to analyze later.

Consider Facebook Ads

Advertising on Facebook can be an affordable way to increase the visibility of your business to other Facebook users. You can target each ad based on Facebook user location, demographics, and interests, and you can set a budget. For example, if Insights shows that I have a lot of visitors from Sweden, I may consider creating an ad campaign for users there. Or if most of my visitors are male, I might want to consider a campaign for female visitors in a certain age range.

 Created by Omaha SEO Company

How to Use Google+ for Business:

15. March 2012 · 9 comments · Categories: Google+ · Tags: , , , , , ,

Setting up your Google Plus Business page

When setting up your Google plus business page, Google allows users to choose an accessible Gmail account. Google plus doesn’t currently allow for multiple accounts so you want to be sure everyone who will be using the account and monitoring the page has access to the e-mail account.

When it is time to setup your business page, follow the Google page wizard (similar to the Facebook wizard). It will help when setting up your profile. After selecting a category for your business page, you will then need to fill out all of the other pertinent information about your business. Next, you can customize your public profile. Since the default setting is public, you want to keep the information concise and descriptive.

Google recommends optimizing your business page and sharing links before beginning the promotion process. To further optimize your page, continually interact with other members on Google plus and keep the information you share up to date.

Optimize Profile

When it comes to optimizing your profile, it’s important to share links, photos and other information whenever you can. Google plus is designed for photo and content sharing, but when it comes to sharing you will want to select photos that will ignite conversations and increase viral spread of your content. When promoting your Google plus business page, you will want to link it to other pages to increase your ranking. Two places you might want to promote your page would be on your website and on your company blog. Having links on your blog and website will help increase your ranking in the Google plus algorithm which will help grow your fan base. As with any form of promotion you want to ensure that what you are doing is providing results!

How Google Plus Changes Search

Google plus changes search by improving Google intelligence. Google will soon be able to understand trends and how people interact within their circles. Google will be able to adjust rankings to reflect individual searchers interests based off of their Google plus accounts. Google is taking its improved search results quality and decreasing the amount of spammers by monitoring the behavior on the Google plus pages. This is changing how you they build the traffic based on the +1 button location. For example, the +1 button reflects the page where it sits. If you create a paid search campaign that directs searchers to several different pages, each +1 vote will be broken down by each individual page address. Since each +1 vote will be broken down by each page address it will affect quality score. Which means, every time a page is moved or the address is changed the +1 count will reset.

When it comes to click-through-rates, the Google plus button lets searchers know when other searchers have found a page they have viewed helpful. People are more inclined to click on pages with “good” reviews rather than a page with no reviews.

Direct Connect

When using a search engine, Google has added a “+” feature to make it easier to search for specifics on Google plus. By adding a “+” in front of a search, searchers will be taken directly to the appropriate Google plus page. Add the direct connect code to your company’s website in order to prove you are the “official page”. This can be done by clicking “connect your website” under the “Get started” tab on your Google plus business page. Google plus direct connect is determined by a direct connect algorithm which is influenced by promotion of Google plus within your site.

If you need a hand go to Omaha SEO Company and give them a call.  I highly recommend them.

15 Ways to Market your Business on Twitter:

14. March 2012 · 5 comments · Categories: Twitter · Tags: , , , , , ,

How TO USE TWITTER FOR BUSINESS:

1. Customer Service – Call centers and online chats can be good for customer service questions, but what about the quick questions that customers don’t want to have to sit on hold in order to get answered? Enter Twitter. Many companies including Comcast and Jetblue have been able to effectively use Twitter for answer customer concerns.

2. Lead Generation – You have to eat. This means generating lead and revenue from your social media marketing efforts.  Twitter can be a great source for lead generation. Share blog posts, ebooks and webinars with your Twitter community. Make sure you are using landing pages to collect leads for registrations to your webinar and ebooks.

3. Market Research – Research has always been a marketers best friend. Sometimes you need an in depth market research project. Other times you need less information but you need it fast. This is where Twitter comes into play. Asking questions to your Twitter community can be great free way to gain some insight on an issue.

4. Trade Show Marketing – Every marketer wants their trade show booth to be a hit. Use online communication to drive offline interactions. You the conference hashtag in your tweets and promote offline gatherings and contests on your Twitter account to raise awareness of around your efforts on the trade show floor.

5.  Sales Enablement – The more information a sales person can gather about a lead the more qualified of a conversation they can have. By including Twitter profile data in your marketing database and your customer relationship management software, you can provide your sales team with recent tweets from their leads. This helps them to build trust faster and close the deal.

6.  Message Testing – When you are sending out a big email promotion or working on wording for a presentation you want to make sure that you are framing your message correctly. Let Twitter helps. Come up with several option and use retweets and clicks to determine which version of the message resonated the most with your audience.

7.  Building an Email Marketing List – Email marketing is still a major channel. make sure to sharing ways for Twitter followers to join your email list in an effort of increasing the chances that you can convert them into lead for your business.

8.  Search Engine Optimization – Social media will only get more and more important in search engine optimization. Bing for example has a deal with Twitter to display data in its search engine and also uses Twitter data in its ranking algorithm. B sure to use the keywords from your search engine optimization strategy in your tweets to help ensure search engines understands your core areas of expertise.

9.  Understanding Trends – If you are a local or regional business it can be important to understand what is hot and top of mind in your area. You can use this information to come up with creative promotions and offers. Twitter’s local trending topics can provide interesting insight into what your area is talking about right now!

10. Reducing Sales Cycles – Lead nurturing isn’t just for email.  With a behavior based marketing automation system you can send personalized Twitter messages to leads to provide information that can move them through the sales cycle faster and reduce the length of the cycle.

11. Business Development – Business development is often about making connections and getting introductions. Twitter can help with this. Need a contact at a company? Try asking your Twitter followers: “Can someone introduce me to the [Insert Postion] at [Insert Company]?”

12. Customer Retention – Retaining existing customers is important to the long-term health of your business. Sometimes though unhappy customers won’t directly communicate their problems. Use Twitter Search to monitor terms related to your business to help spot unhappy customers and solve their problems.

13. Public Relations – Many journalists use Twitter. Use JournalistTweets.com to find journalists in your industry on Twitter. Instead of sending them worthless pitch emails, begin to build a relationship with these journalists on Twitter to gain media coverage.

14. Competitive Research – Twitter has some of the best application programing interfaces (APIs) on the web and data on the service is public to all users by default. This makes it easy to pullout valuable information. Use a Twitter client like Hootsuite to monitor keywords about your competitors and gather information about them.

15. Growing Other Social Media Communities – Make sure to cross promote your Facebook and LinkedIn company pages on your Twitter account. Provide an opportunities for fans of your business to engage with your business on their preferred network.

This is by no means ALL of the ways you can use Twitter for business, but it is a solid start.

What would you add to this list?

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