Internet Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Web 2.0 Optimization
web 2.0 optimization
The posts here look at web 2.0 optimization
What is Web 2.0 Marketing?
06 months ago
Web 2.0 Marketing Basics
Web 2.0 Marketing
There is plenty of buzz about the new “Web 2.0.” But in reality, many of us do not know too much about the fullness of its impact, especially where marketing is concerned. Just to get the point of the new web think about sites like Wikipedia, Ning, de.licio.us, facebook or Flickr. It’s all about getting everyone on the same page. (No pun intended!) It’s a two-way traffic exchange between the internet market and the user. No longer do users sit idly and simply read content, they can add some of their own. We are talking about a social web experience where we are all allowed input. Social networks that are constructed around one goal can quickly become powerful. The question remains then, “How can I use Web 2.0 as part of an effective marketing scheme?”
As the internet becomes more socially based, there are many marketing tools. Most of these social platforms are free to use and can help create valuable links back to the main business site. It’s all in how you choose to use each type of social media to your benefit.
Facebook for Marketing
Facebook is probably one of the most popular Web 2.0 tools. It is relatively easy to gather a group of friends that have shown some level of interest in your business or your products. Facebook can be used to share information on various products, give away incentives like freebies or drive some traffic to your site.
Squidoo for Marketing
Facebook Marketing
Squidoo is another great platform from which to work. Users create a “Squidoo Lens” that is filled with content and images pertaining to the area of their expertise. This site has comment fields where readers can leave comments or links. Links back to other pages, such as a main website or a contractor’s site can be added to the content as well.
Twitter for Marketing
Twitter is a site where a user gets the chance to make a mini-blog. Even though they limit each “Tweet” (message) to 140 characters, there is room to send out a real-time tweet to let customers know of a new product, blog post, business development or information. Links can also be attached to drive traffic to the site you desire. This is a very valuable tool and very simple to use. It can be a very effective tool to use to stay in close contact with your clients.
YouTube for Marketing
YouTube Marketing
Don’t over look other platforms, such as YouTube. This is a great tool, but it’s not for everyone. This site is a great way to turn multimedia into a marketing tool. The caution here though is to not just put up some boring sales pitch. It can be useful for using video marketing if you can upload an interesting or even humorous video that will make viewers want to check out your site.
These are just a few of many social marketing tools that are available to your business. The Web 2.0 social networking tools have various types of applications and appeal to different audiences. But they can all be used for marketing.
The main point is that in this new web 2.0 world in which we live businesses need to think outside the box in order to get their message out to the public.
SEO for Squidoo
57 months ago
Squidoo can be a powerful internet marketing tool. The founders wanted to design a platform that would work for web 2.0 optimization
Squidoo
and be a lot easier to use than the popular blog sites. The developers wanted to make it a “human” site where at least one small part of the web would make sense. They have grown to more than 3 million unique visitors each month. Squidoo has over 125,000 pages that have been built by over 65,000 users. For those who are pursuing Web 2.0 promotionand want to use social marketing to help a website or blog rank higher in search engine results a Squidoo lens creation should definitely be on the list.
To properly use a Squidoo lens you will want to pick an appropriate URL extension and title. Make sure that it will be relevant to the site you wish to link it to as well. Then use some of your targeted keywords or keyword phrases as the module titles. When search engines look at the titles or sub-titles they will interpret them as headings when indexing the Squidoo lens. When writing the content for the modules, use a good SEO keyword density. This means you should incorporate keyword phrases into the text so that they make up about 3 percent.
Another way to capitalize on a Squidoo lens is to set up the Google Blog Search Module properly on your lens. If this feature is set up correctly the descriptions and links will have your keyword phrases included and this will boost SEO.
A Squidoo lens can be used as a Web 2.0 promotion tool to boost your web sites in search engine results. A lens is a very powerful optimization tool because of the rank Google has given to it. Any links that come from a Squidoo lens to your site or blog is considered a relevant, or quality, backlinks. Because the quality of the link is recognized by Google, it will help your blog or website get indexed in Google search results quickly and will get your pages to rank higher.
To use Squidoo to its fullest potential you will want to set up a lens, which is basically a one page web site. Add some basic link building to get some traffic to your lens and ultimately to your site. The lens needs to be on an interesting subject. Perform some basic keyword researches to form long tail phrase to name your lens. Create a content rich lens, which includes images and covers the topic well. Set up the lens so that visitors are directed to your primary site. These back links are considered quality back links by Google. This will help optimize your site for search engine results.
Politics and Social Media
48 months ago
One of the greatest things about new Web 2.0 platformsis how they have connected the entire world. We are watching as social media begins to play a more prominent role in society. As of the first part of this year, facebook has over 600 million users. There are several instances where social media has been used to spur social or political changes. Think back to the election of 2008, the 2010 elections in Iran and all the uproar that was raised to try to free Sakineh from being executed by stoning. Most of these used social media as a platform or at least a means to transfer information.
Web 2.0 Optimization
Social sites have become platforms to stand up for causes or to respond to current events such as the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And of course we are all watching our favorite social sites for the latest changes in the Arab world and specifically the change of regime in Libya. This may make us consider what type of role they will play in our own nation’s upcoming elections.
Businesses were quick to get on board using social media for marketing purposes. It’s a free resource and it’s an easy tool to quickly reach the masses with any type of information. Just one click of a “share” or a “like” button and it’s on its way around the globe. Don’t think that those running for political offices will miss this inexpensive opportunity!
One state representative decided to use facebook to post his votes in real time. He was able to post how he voted on certain matters that were presented to the House of Representatives and get instant feedback from those he was representing. This adds a totally new connection between politicians and those they are representing. It keeps communication open between politicians and voters. It can actually be an extension of a candidate or campaign.
Candidates use social media to announce their intentions to run for an office; and just recently President Obama was the first president to send a tweet from the white house. Social sites are becoming a new tool in the world of political campaigning. Many politicians are busy at work establishing Twitter, YouTube and Facebook presences.
Social media does not replace some of the traditional campaigning practices, it’s just that it helps politicians seem a little more “human” to those they are representing. But don’t discount the use of websites for politicians. A good blog or website can give voters a good look at what a politician stands for. It’s not a replacement, it’s simply an enhancement.
Architecture for Your Website
111 months ago
Website Architecture
Every website is created to help users find useful information and to help users easily complete tasks. Web design architecture allows you to give yourself enough room for plenty of content by structuring your website. Creative design allows the foundation of your website to be laid for plenty of creative and content.
The architecture of a website design is a very important aspect in the design process. Information architecture is the most critical step in rebuilding or developing any website, in particular one with great website usability and searchability (SEO). Architecture is the creative design and organization of your website, in other words: the layout. Think about how you’re connecting your pages, how they relate and the consistency of the overall site. These are important thoughts you need to lay out when thinking about your web design.
When you begin the website design or redesign process, majority of the initial time is dedicated to the structure and information architecture of the site. We use our graphic web design team to put together a graphical site map to categorize the pages within your website and identify the navigation and additional links. The sitemap is an outline for Premiere Creative’s web design SEO staff to map out the website and organization for identifying various pages within.
The graphical web design information architecture helps you, the client, as well as your web design team to think about the content of the website, what information you want to include as well as fill the gaps.
SEO Tip # 12 Fresh Content
21 year ago
I would like to welcome you to my twelfth SEO tip of the day; here I will discuss the importance of having fresh content.
“Fresh content” means content that is both “fresh” in the sense of new, as well as “fresh” in the sense of interesting’ having fresh content is very important in order to have success with SEO. Google crawls (visits) sites often and it is helpful for you to add new content so that when your site is crawled there is new content to discover.
Fresh content is especially important when looking at a blog, blogs are a dynamic platform and as such should be updated often; to have a truly successful blog I recommend that you write about 10-15 new posts per month and space them out to run 1 post every few days, if you can write more that is good, and the more you write the more often your blog will get crawled/the better your blog will rank in search results. As far as the other meaning of “fresh” it is important for you to write interesting content that people want to read, try to make your content relate to recent events in the news, or an upcoming holiday… for example, if you sell wedding dresses you can write a post about Valentine’s Day weddings that will get posted before the holiday…
1 year ago
Image via CrunchBase
Squidoo has become a leading web 2.0 platform that is used by tons of people both as a “blog like” platform as well as a revenue generating tool for those who are so inclined. This fledgling company, founded by former Google employees is truly on the forefront of Web 2.0!
I invite you to check out some of my most recent Squidoo lenses. If you like these please link to them/”Like” them in Facebook…
Is social bookmarking still important?
32 years ago
The overall importance of social bookmarking has ebbed and flowed like the tides and it is not always clear what good social bookmarks bring to a site. Obviously, if you are able to get to the top page of DIGG, Delicious, or any of the other bookmarking sites you will get many hits, but these days many of the top bookmarking sites are very political and unless you have truly amazing content, or you have a large network of friends that will DIGG what you ask, you are unlikely to ever see the front page. Despite this truth I would urge you to still use social bookmarks, especially for any content rich pages. Make sure that every new blog post has an entry on Digg, and the other top bookmarking sites. Such a strategy will ensure a steady flow of traffic to every new blog post and some of that traffic will surely generate business for your company.
Have you had success with social bookmarks? Please share your stories with us in the comments section.
Twitter still important?
22 years ago
The value that Twitter can potentially bring to your brand/business/website is a topic that can be debated, but simply put, it all depends on the amount of time that you dedicate to the Twitter platform, and the interest that you are able to generate from your followers. The fact remains that having an inactive Twitter account will accomplish nothing, whereas an active Twitter account, one where you have thousands of followers, with whom you communicate regularly can do wonders to generate buzz for your site and can be a great method by which to network, and make valuable business contacts and friends.
The most important thing about Twitter from an SEO perspective is the proper optimization of your account; this means, a profile image (a real picture of you), a website (either your site, your blog, or a link to another web 2.0 page you have set up), and a description, Twitter descriptions are limited to 160 characters, people often try to be cute in their descriptions without saying anything, but if you want a popular Twitter account it is valuable to tell people who you are.
Twitter has a number of useful features that you can use to promote your site, blog… one of my favorites is Twitter feed (this is an independent company that helps users attach an RSS feed to their Twitter account). The way this service works is you set up an account, then add an RSS feed (usually from your blog) and then, every time that you update your blog (your RSS feed is updated) Twitter feed sends out a Tweet to your followers with your blog title and a link to the blog post. If you have dedicated followers, and write interesting blogs this can potentially generate tons of good traffic.
What has Twitter done for you? Please share by leaving a comment.
Q: Should I do my own SEO or should I outsource?
02 years ago
This is a question that many webmasters and most companies that have websites ask themselves at one point or another, and it is a question that has a number of different answers. First of all, a disclaimer, I do make my living providing Quality SEO services for businesses, so I am a bit biased in favor of companies outsourcing their SEO, but despite this you may be surprised at what I have to say, so please read on.
The fact of the matter is that not all websites should outsource their SEO, and not all websites need the same level of optimization; if you (the webmaster or the owner of the website) understand the basics and can implement them yourself, than by all means do it yourself, but understand that you will probably not get the same results that you’d get if you were to hire a top SEO firm, and it would take up much of your valuable time, which may be much better spent providing services to your customers, or selling widgets.
The best way to think about SEO is like this, if you know a little about cars and your car needs to have the spark plugs replaced there is no need to go to a mechanic and pay tons of money, you can purchase your own spark plugs and find simple instructions on how to install them, but if your car has serious mechanical issues you are strongly advised to go to a mechanic b/c even though you may find instructions on how to rebuild your engine, fix your transmission or… doing this yourself would not be worth the time it would take you to learn how to do it. Along this same train of thought, sure, if you are willing to read a few articles you can do basic SEO on your own, and yes, you will likely see an improvement, but, if you want to get results and if you want your site to be fully optimized, and if you are in a competitive industry, you should outsource your SEO to an expert – because even though you can do research and do it yourself, this would take way too much time to learn and would end up costing you business.
Another important thing to consider in this debate is that when dealing with off-site SEO, social media etc… every platform has its own unique way to be optimized, and most of the time there is an under abundance of sources teaching you how to do this (so even if you already use Facebook, Twitter… likelihood is that you are not using these platforms to their full capacity)
Q: What is web 2.0?
02 years ago
Web 2.0 is a broadly defined, obscure term that many webmasters use in order to make their websites look cool. This term came into use towards the end of the dot com bubble and was meant to signify a change in the websites; primarily the ways in which we, as users interact with websites.
Despite the wide over usage of this term, and its, “I’ll know it when I see it nature”, it does have a definition (OK, it can have many definitions, but here is the way I define it) and it does have a role to play in the SEO
arena. A web 2.0 site is one that is dynamic and that allows users to interact with the site; additionally this means that different users can have a different experience of the same website. This can be contrasted with a web 1.0 website, which is static and where each user, from now to eternity (or as long as the site remains online) will have exactly the same experience. (Picture a website such as Amazon, that makes recommendations to you based on your preferences and past purchases).
In terms of looking at web 2.0 from an SEOperspective it is important because Google tends to like sites that have proper web 2.0, this means that these sites are dynamic and allow users to impact the site. Additionally when your link appears on a web 2.0 sites this is seen as a positive thing by Google.
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