SEM | Omaha SEO Company

How to Use HTML Meta Tags

06. April 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Meta Tags · Tags: Google SEO, HTML, Meta Tags, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, www.omahaseocompany.com

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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):

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:

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Dublin Core – Tagging the Web for better search and retrieval
WebReference.com, Nov. 5, 2000

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.

Advantages of Pay Per Click Marketing

30. March 2012 · 8 comments · Categories: Pay Per Click Marketing Advantages · Tags: Google Ranking, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, www.omahaseocompany.com

Pay per click advertising has many advantages over the organic search results. Here are just a few:

Instant Traffic – Pay per click advertising can provide instant traffic to your website. After you set up your account, you see the results immediately. Moreover, if you are willing to outbid your competitors, you are almost guaranteed a top position (assuming you have a decent ad and your landing page is relevant). With regular search engines, nothing is guaranteed. It may take months for your site to get listed in the search engines, and even if it does get listed, it may be buried so far down in the search result pages that nobody will ever find it. Achieving a top ranking in regular search engines takes time and patience — so much so that companies must devote considerable staff time to it.Targeted Traffic – Traffic generated by pay per click advertising is usually more targeted than from organic results because webmasters can control the keywords that they are found under.

Control & Flexibility – Pay per click advertising offers you greater control and flexibility than regular search engines. As an advertiser, you have complete control over how much you are willing to pay for increased traffic. You can place bids based on your marketing goals and your budget. Moreover, since many bidding mechanisms are live and update your website’s ranking immediately, you also have flexibility. For example, if you currently hold the #5 spot in a pay per click search engine, and notice that on Mondays and Tuesdays your stream of visitors slows to trickle, you can increase your bid on those slow days to get a higher ranking and consequently more hits. The possibilities are endless.

Top Pay Per Click Engines

While Yahoo SM and Google AdWords cover over 80% of the market, other pay per click engines are vying for recognition. Here is a list and a brief description of some of the more notable ones.

Google AdWords - AdWords are text-based ads that are displayed next to Google and AOL search results. These text-based ads function on a pay per click basis and are referred to as AdWords. Google rewards well-targeted, relevant ads therefore the top position is not always held by the top bidder. Google also offers banner ads, flash ads, video ads, and much more, which would be listed on thousands of independent websites through their content ad network.

Yahoo SM (Search Marketing) (formerly Overture) – Overture was a pioneer in its field. Formerly known as Goto, Overture burst onto the scene in 1999 defying critics who believed the venture would fizzle with consumers, due to irrelevant search results. Overture became Yahoo Search Marketing in 2005. Today, Yahoo SM allows webmasters to choose their own descriptions and titles, helping to drive highly targeted traffic to their websites.

Choosing Pay Per Click Advertising

Choosing whether or not to use pay per click advertising is an individual decision for each company. Here are just a few things to consider when choosing whether or not to use pay per click advertising:

Industry - Consider the uniqueness of your product. Do you sell something that lots of other sites also sell, or is your product hard to find? You may already have an advantage.

Visitor-to-sales Ratio - Take the time to figure out how many visitors you need to make one sale. Then calculate how much a visitor is worth to you (in dollars). This information will help you to decide how much your maximum bid will be for a click-through.

Competition - What marketing strategy does your competition use? If your top competitor is a big advertiser onYahoo SM, you may want to consider bidding for a top position there as well.

Marketing Budget - Do you have enough money to make pay per click advertising part of your marketing campaign, or should you stick with free search engines? Remember that even though pay per click is relatively inexpensive per click-through, if there is a lot of competition for your keyword, it may not be as cost effective as you think. Make sure to do your math.

Submissions - Who will be handling your pay per click account? Your in-house staff? Your webmaster? Your mail clerk? Bidding on the wrong keyword will not only cost you money, it will cost you traffic. Outsourcing to a PPC management company is a good way to stay ahead of your competition. A reputable PPC management company will help you decide which engine is right for you, will help manage your pay per click account, and will make informed decisions based on solid experience.

PPC Management

When it comes to search engine optimization, experts can get better rankings faster. Search engine optimization (SEO) experts focus on search engine optimization and link building strategies full time. That expertise helps them get long-term results. SEO experts can help you implement the right Internet marketing strategy to fit your website and industry.

On the other hand, if your PPC management team is good, you will make money right away. Investing $1 and getting back $2 is a no brainer. We have seen companies quadruple their profits in less than 6 months.

While PPC advertising can be a cost effective way of driving traffic to your website, it is important to remember that organic search engines receive the bulk of the clicks. Interestingly, there are studies that show that having a listing on the first page for both the organic and the PPC results increases the chances of someone coming to your site by about 30%. A recent study done by Enquisite showed that PPC advertising converts 50% more often than organic results.

While PPC advertising certainly demystifies the optimization process, managing accounts not only requires a marketing strategy, but a substantial investment in time. A good PPC management team can help you choose the right keywords to bid on, ensuring that you maximize traffic and minimize cost. They can also help you monitor and update your bids, maximizing your ROI and putting the most money possible into your pocket.

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

45 Web Builders to Creating Free Websites

21. March 2012 · 5 comments · Categories: Free Web Developers · Tags: Google Ranking, SEM, SEO, Website Developers, www.omahaseocompany.com

Looking for a place to create a free website? There are plenty of resources that allow you to create you own website, blog, wiki, or social community without having to know any programming language. These free website creation sites allow you to easily create a site, customize the design, add content, and use a custom URL.

Take a look at 45 best web builders to create a free website.

Wix

I personally don’t have a lot of experience with Wix, but it seems like a very neat way to create free flash websites. They have separated themselves from the rest, since most of the free site builders only let you create html pages. One of the most advanced solutions for people without any coding experience to build powerful and good looking site easily and fast.

Google Sites

Hey its Google and they are letting you create a free site….so do it. As usual, Google makes it extremely easy to build a free website with cool integration features like Google Docs, Google Calendar, and RSS.

Windows Live Spaces

Webs

Google Knol

Google Knol came out about 2 years ago and even though it has not gotten the same praise as Wikipedia, it is still a valuable resource that you should take advantage of. Free easy to create your own free knol and help position yourself as an industry leader.

Jimdo

Jimdo is a new free website builder that is very clean and easy to use. As you can see in the screen-shot you can create your own url and add text, photos, and custom design.

AngelFire

Edicy

Squidoo

One of my favorite places to create a free webpage is Squidoo. Not only do these pages tend to rank well in the search engines, but you can monetize them by adding amazon affiliate products and links, share easily through Facebook and Tweetmeme buttons and much more.

Yola

Tripod

Wetpaint

Wetpaint is the place to go to create your own free wiki in a matter of minutes. Similar to the other website builders out there, however like a wiki anyone can add, edit, and remove content from the page.

WikiSpaces

Blogsome

Weebly

Hubpages

Hubpages is very similar to Squidoo, in the fact that you can build free pages and they tend to rank very well in search engines. You can also make money by adding affiliate products, links and adsense in your hub. It has all of the cool features that you would need including adding images, videos, ratings and reviews, and the ability to comment.

Piczo

Webnode

Moonfruit

Let’s Eat

For anyone in the restaurant industry, Let’s Eat is for you. Let’s Eat lets you create your own restaurant website where you can add information about your restaurant, menu, hours, location, and more.

Sauropol

GoGoFrog

Launch Splash

Nexo

Roxer

Viviti

Ever

DevHub

SnapPages

SnapPages is the easy drag and drop website creation service. No need to know css to position your site!

350 WebStarts

BlinkWeb

Thoughts

ClutterMe

DoTemplate

ComfyPages

Moogo

GetShopped

Groupie Guide

Hyper Web Enable

Notanent

Blogetery

Blogster

Flooha

FreeWeb

We have tired our best to include all the great services which allows you to build free websites. Don’t forget to give your thoughts about the article via comments section or tweet us at @ Omahaseocompany or Facebook @ Omahaseocompany . We always love our readers feedback.

Created by Omaha SEO Company

How to Promote and Maintain your Facebook Business Page

16. March 2012 · 33 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: Facebook, Google Ranking, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, Social Media, social sites, www.omahaseocompany.com

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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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

50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence On:

10. March 2012 · 48 comments · Categories: Social Sites · Tags: SEM, SEO, Social Media

If your business limits its online presence to advertising banners and blogging, it’s missing out. The Internet provides powerful networking opportunities that allow users to effectively target their audience by logging on to social sites like LinkedIn, Digg and more. Take advantage of these tools by asserting your company’s presence online and reaching more potential customers, business partners and employees.

Social-Media/Social-Bookmarking Sites

Share your favorite sites on the Web with potential clients and business partners by commenting on, uploading and ranking different newsworthy articles. You can also create a member profile that directs traffic back to your company’s Web site.

Reddit: Upload stories and articles on reddit to drive traffic to your site or blog. Submit items often so that you’ll gain a more loyal following and increase your presence on the site.
Digg: Digg has a huge following online because of its optimum usability. Visitors can submit and browse articles in categories like technology, business, entertainment, sports and more.
Del.icio.us: Social bookmark your way to better business with sites like del.icio.us, which invite users to organize and publicize interesting items through tagging and networking.
StumbleUpon: You’ll open your online presence up to a whole new audience just by adding the StumbleUpon toolbar to your browser and “channel surf[ing] the Web. You’ll “connect with friends and share your discoveries,” as well as “meet people that have similar interests.”
Technorati: If you want to increase your blog’s readership, consider registering it with Technorati, a network of blogs and writers that lists top stories in categories like Business, Entertainment and Technology.
Ning: After hanging around the same social networks for a while, you may feel inspired to create your own, where you can bring together clients, vendors, customers and co-workers in a confidential, secure corner of the Web. Ning lets users design free social networks that they can share with anyone.
Squidoo: According to Squidoo, “everyone’s an expert on something. Share your knowledge!” Share your industry’s secrets by answering questions and designing a profile page to help other members.
Furl: Make Furl “your personal Web file” by bookmarking great sites and sharing them with other users by recommending links, commenting on articles and utilizing other fantastic features.
Tubearoo: This video network works like other social-bookmarking sites, except that it focuses on uploaded videos. Businesses can create and upload tutorials, commentaries and interviews with industry insiders to promote their own services.
WikiHow: Create a how-to guide or tutorial on wikiHow to share your company’s services with the public for free.
YouTube: From the fashion industry to Capitol Hill, everyone has a video floating around on YouTube. Shoot a behind-the-scenes video from your company’s latest commercial or event to give customers and clients an idea of what you do each day.
Ma.gnolia: Share your favorite sites with friends, colleagues and clients by organizing your bookmarks with Ma.gnolia. Clients will appreciate both your Internet-savviness and your ability to stay current and organized.

Professional-Networking Sites

Sign up with these online networking communities as a company or as an individual to take advantage of recruiting opportunities, cross-promotional events and more.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a popular networking site where alumni, business associates, recent graduates and other professionals connect online.
Ecademy: Ecademy prides itself on “connecting business people” through its online network, blog and message-board chats, as well as its premier BlackStar membership program, which awards exclusive benefits.
Focus: Focus is a business destination where business professionals can help each other with their purchase and other business decisions by accessing research and peer expertise. Most importantly, Focus provides open, quality information for all businesses that is freely available, easily accessible, and community powered.
YorZ: This networking site doubles as a job site. Members can post openings for free to attract quality candidates.
Xing: An account with networking site Xing can “open doors to thousands of companies.” Use the professional contact manager to organize your new friends and colleagues, and take advantage of the Business Accelerator application to “find experts at the click of a button, market yourself in a professional context [and] open up new sales channels.”
Facebook: Facebook is no longer just for college kids who want to post their party pics. Businesses vie for advertising opportunities, event promotion and more on this social-networking site.
Care2: Care2 isn’t just a networking community for professionals: It’s touted as “the global network for organizations and people who Care2 make a difference.” If your business is making efforts to go green, let others know by becoming a presence on this site.
Gather: This networking community is made up of members who think. Browse categories concerning books, health, money, news and more to ignite discussions on politics, business and entertainment. This will help your company tap into its target audience and find out what they want.
MEETin.org: Once you’ve acquired a group of contacts in your city by networking on MEETin.org, organize an event so that you can meet face-to-face.
Tribe: Cities like Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, New York and Chicago have unique online communities on tribe. Users can search for favorite restaurants, events, clubs and more.
Ziggs: Ziggs is “organizing and connecting people in a professional way.” Join groups and make contacts through your Ziggs account to increase your company’s presence online and further your own personal career.
Plaxo: Join Plaxo to organize your contacts and stay updated with feeds from Digg, Amazon.com, del.icio.us and more.
NetParty: If you want to attract young professionals in cities like Boston, Dallas, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Orlando Fla., create an account with the networking site NetParty. You’ll be able to connect with qualified, up-and-coming professionals online, then meet them at a real-life happy-hour event where you can pass out business cards, pitch new job openings and more.
Networking For Professionals: Networking For Professionals is another online community that combines the Internet with special events in the real world. Post photos, videos, résumés and clips on your online profile while you meet new business contacts.

Niche Social-Media Sites

Consider linking up with one of these social-media sites to narrow down your business’s target audience. You’ll find other professionals, enthusiasts and consumers who are most likely already interested in what your company has to offer.

Pixel Groovy: Web workers will love Pixel Groovy, an open-source site that lets members submit and rate tutorials for Web 2.0, email and online-marketing issues.
Mixx: Mixx prides itself on being “your link to the Web content that really matters.” Submit and rate stories, photos and news to drive traffic to your own site. You’ll also meet others with similar interests.
Tweako: Gadget-minded computer geeks can network with each other on Tweako, a site that promotes information sharing for the technologically savvy.
Small Business Brief: When members post entrepreneur-related articles, a photo and a link to their profile appear, gaining you valuable exposure and legitimacy online.
Sphinn: Sphinn is an online forum and networking site for the Internet marketing crowd. Upload articles and guides from your blog to create interest in your own company or connect with other professionals for form new contacts.
BuzzFlash.net: This one-stop news resource is great for businesses that want to contribute articles on a variety of subjects, from the environment to politics to health.
HubSpot: HubSpot is another news site aimed at connecting business professionals.
SEO TAGG: Stay on top of news from the Web marketing and SEO (search-engine optimization) industries by becoming an active member of this online community.

General Social-Media Sites

The following social-media sites provide excellent opportunities for businesses to advertise; promote specials, events or services; and feature published, knowledgeable employees.

Wikipedia: Besides creating your own business reference page on Wikipedia, you can connect with other users on Wikipedia’s Community Portal and at the village pump, where you’ll find conscientious professionals enthusiastic about news, business, research and more.
Newsvine: Feature top employees by uploading their articles, studies or other news-related items to this site. A free account will also get you your own column and access to the Newsvine community.
43 Things: This site bills itself as “the world’s most popular online goal setting community.” By publicizing your company’s goals and ambitions, you’ll gain a following of customers, investors and promoters who cheer you on as you achieve success.
Wetpaint: If you’re tired of blogs and generic Web sites, create your own wiki with Wetpaint to reach your audience and increase your company’s presence online. You can easily organize articles, contact information, photos and other information to promote your business.
Twitter: Is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question, “What are you doing?” by sending short text messages 140 characters in length, called “tweets”, to your friends, or “followers.”
Yahoo! Answers: Start fielding Yahoo! users’ questions with this social-media Q&A service. Search for questions in your particular areas of expertise by clicking categories like Business & Finance, Health, News & Events and more. If you continue to dole out useful advice and link your answer to your company’s Web page, you’ll quickly gain a new following of curious customers.

Job Sites

If you want to secure high-quality talent during your company’s next hiring spree, you’ll need to maintain a strong presence on popular job sites like the ones listed below.

CareerBuilder.com: Reach millions of candidates by posting jobs on this must-visit site.
The Wall Street Journal’s CareerJournal: The Wall Street Journal’s CareerJournal attracts well-educated professionals who are at the top of their game. Post a job or search résumés here.
CollegeRecruiter.com: If your firm wants to hire promising entry-level employees, check CollegeRecuriter.com for candidates with college degrees.
Monster: Post often to separate your business from all the other big companies that use this site to advertise job openings.
Sologig: Top freelancers and contractors post résumés and look for work on this popular site.
AllFreelance.com: This site “offers self-employed small business owners links to freelance & work at home job boards, self-promotion tips” and more.
Freelance Switch Job Listings: Freelance Switch is the freelancer’s online mecca and boasts articles, resource toolboxes, valuable tips and a job board.
GoFreelance: Employers looking to boost their vendor base should check GoFreelance for professionals in the writing, design, editing and Web industries.
Yahoo! Hot Jobs: This site is often one of the first places that job seekers visit. Post open opportunities and check out informative articles and guides to gain insight on the hiring and interviewing process.
Guru.com: Build your company’s repertoire with top freelancing professionals by advertising projects on this site, otherwise known as “the world’s largest online service marketplace.”

For any Free Consulting or Quotes: Omaha SEO Company

7 Reasons why Social Media is important for your business:

09. March 2012 · 7 comments · Categories: Social Media · Tags: SEM, SEO, Social Media

One of the biggest mistakes a small business can make is ignoring the usefulness of social media. Some believe that social media is only for kids. Others feel that a social media site like Facebook will only lead to competition with their own websites. Some business owners believe it’s just not worth their time, quickly losing patience when social media doesn’t immediately impact their bottom line.

Here are 7 reasons why social media is very important for your business.

1) Become a part of the conversation - People are finding more ways to make social media a part of their daily lives. If you want to appear relevant with the latest advances in technology, potential customers want to see you on the websites where they’re spending their time. It’s estimated that every 20 minutes, Facebook members ‘like’ pages 7.6 million times, and research showsthat 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks.

Without a presence, you’ll not only appear un-savvy, but if you have no social presence catching your audience’s attention, your competition is free to dominate this rich and valuable marketplace.

It’s easier than ever to share your favorite business with a friend.

2) Brand recognition –Marketing 101 teaches you that you need to be where your customers are. Social media allows your company to reach huge numbers of potential customers in places where they can naturally stumble upon your brand while casually browsing social sites.

It’s important to get your name and message out there, and keep them out there. Some studies show that a person will need to hear a company’s name at least nine times before they decide to trust and respect it. New consumer research shows over 50% of Facebook fans and Twitter followers say they are more likely to buy & recommend a company than before they were engaged with that company via social media. Not only that, but their recommendations are more likely to resonate within their social networks, as the message is seen as coming from a trusted source, rather than from an advertising campaign.

3) Increase your real estate on major search engines - Social media sites have become quite prevalent in search, and in many cases, integrated with search engines’ results pages. Looking for a new local restaurant? A Google search is likely to reveal the social media pages of area restaurants, such as Facebook, Twitter, and even Urbanspoon and Yelp! Review pages, where you can see what your friends and other local diners thought of each restaurant. Creating social profiles rich in keywords and quality content can help generate traffic to your social media, and in turn, your company’s website.

4) Niche marketing – Finding your target audience can be one of the hardest parts of any type of marketing campaign. Using social media outlets, you can create social media profiles and viral messages to target current and potential customers based on specific interests and demographics.

5) Generate site traffic – By linking your social media pages to your company’s website and creating interesting, stimulating messages that engage your social circles and promote sharing of your message, you can generate traffic to your website that may otherwise be unattainable.

Recent reports show that 78% of information shared and word of mouth referrals online come from Facebook, and that Facebook and Twitter boast click-through-rates for shared content that are virtually untouchable by other forms of online advertising, at 287% and 1904%, respectively. Of course,results may vary, but in the end, social sharing can be a huge source of online traffic.

6) Monitor your brand – By being a part of the conversation online, you can dictate some of what is being said about your business and help protect your online reputation. You can respond to negative (and positive) reviews, comments, and tweets, and correct any inaccuracies that may exist.

7) Make your events… EVENTS – Sites like Facebook allow for the posting and sharing of events. While with print media or even email marketing campaigns, someone may see a flyer for an event and take note, they can also easily ignore the message.

Sites like Facebook lend “social proof”, by allowing users to see which of their friends are attending events, and what they think of them. Is it your grand opening? Are you hosting or sponsoring a fundraiser or charity event? Why not extend the invitation to your social circle? You may be surprised at the results!

These seven reasons are only the tip of the iceberg of how social media can help your business. As social media continues to expand into every nook and cranny of our everyday lives, your online presence will continue to be more important to the long-term viability of your company. In 2012, you can’t afford to risk falling behind your competitors. If you haven’t taken the plunge into social media yet, there’s no time to waste.

by Omaha SEO Company

What is SEM?

08. March 2012 · 30 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: Google Ranking, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an umbrella term that describes the different methods you can use to make your Web site more visible on search engines so that you can drive more traffic to your site. SEM blends organic (i.e., free) search engine optimization (SEO) with paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to increase exposure for your Web site.

SEO focuses on designing and optimizing your Web site so that your site will rank higher within the organic search results pages — the list of Web sites that pop up when you conduct a search. Basically, search engines such as Google or Bing look at a page and try to decipher the most important or relevant information on the page.

SEO revolves around figuring out what keywords people will use when they are looking for the types of services and/or products you provide, and then using them in your Web pages and content so that search engines accurately index your site and people can easily find it. When you use SEO techniques, you are not paying the search engines to appear on or to secure better ranking their site, you are simply optimizing your content so that it will naturally place higher in search results.

In contrast, paid search or PPC advertising involves paying search engines so that your site appears as a sponsored link in the small text ads that appear on the top and right-hand side of a search results page — think Google AdWords. While you can display your ad on Google or another search engine for free, you pay the search engine vendor every time someone clicks on your link.

The search engine vendor positions your site on the results page based on a combination of how much you are willing to pay-per-click, and a subjective quality assessment of how important your ad is in relation to others on the page. This quality measurement includes factors such as the percentage of clicks on your ad and how many times the search term appears in your ad.

Why Should You Care?

What good is your Web site if you’re not driving traffic to it? You invest in a Web site to help educate prospects and customers and to promote your products and services. But if people can’t find it, you will not get the kind of results you want from your Web site.

Both organic and paid search techniques can help you drive traffic, but each method has different pluses and minuses. For instance, while you invest time (and maybe money, in the form of an SEO marketer or a service) to optimize natural search results, you’re not paying the search engine vendor for every click-through. In addition, people click on organic search engine results much more frequently than they click on PPC ads, because of where they appear on the page.

On the other hand, a PPC campaign can typically ramp up traffic to your site much more quickly than organic SEO. So, if time is of the essence — you need to drive holiday sales — PPC is likely to help you get better results.

Many businesses find it most effective to combine both SEO and PPC approaches. For example,

PPC helps you quickly test keywords to see which search terms work and which don’t. As you discover which terms work best in a PPC campaign, you can also incorporate them into your organic SEO approach.

What to Consider

Web searches are becoming the top way for both consumers and businesses to research and shop for products and services. Consequently, small businesses are rapidly shifting their marketing initiatives from traditional media to digital marketing media tools, including SEO and SEM (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.
(Click for larger image).

These marketing tools are often less expensive to use than traditional marketing options such as print advertising and direct mail. A small investment can help companies significantly boost marketing reach and return. SEO and SEM give small businesses more visibility into whether they’re reaching their target audiences, easier ways to track and measure payback on their efforts and the ability to rapidly adjust and refine campaigns and outreach as needed.

However, search engine marketing techniques involve both art and science, and are evolving at a rapid pace. What works today won’t necessarily work tomorrow. To stay ahead of the competition, consider services that are tailored to your specific market and needs.

For instance, LotusJump.com helps small businesses optimize organic search results for hundreds or thousands of keywords to generate more qualified leads. The service automates the process of building more qualified leads based on more specific “longtail” search terms. If have a retail business, for example, you can create keywords specific to the hundreds or thousands of products that you sell.

If you own a local business, say a bakery or tree service business, you care about services that help you reach your local market. WebVisible.com, for instance, buys advertising space from multiple media providers and ad networks, and it provides many types of online marketing solutions, including fully managed search advertising, banner/display advertising, call tracking solutions, custom landing pages, promotional URLs and more.

Using the WebVisible platform, small businesses can target local advertising more effectively. Yodle.com, meanwhile, focuses on local services businesses, helping them to create a Web site, develop an effective SEO campaign across the Web, and to help make the phone ring when prospective customers find the business through a Web search.

The Web is becoming our virtual shopping mall. Small businesses that understand different types of organic and paid search approaches, and use those most relevant to their business, will have a big advantage in bringing in traffic.

This can be a tedious process if you don’t know what you’re doing, for a free consultation click on: Omaha SEO Company and send them an email or give them a call.