Social media optimization, a source to become popular
March 27, 2008 5:44 am SEOSocial media optimization, a source to become popular
I was browsing through my school album the other day and a picture of my classmates caught my attention. The memories of all the good times, bad times, the laughter, joy and tears overwhelmed me. The memories were so strong and it felt like it was just yesterday all this was happening. I lost touch with a majority of my classmates and being a mother of two young kids I understand how difficult it gets to meet and catch up with old friends. However, as we all know that it is technology that drives our world today and this has made all things possible for us. I came to know about social media platforms where you can find about almost everybody. Of course, that person will need to have an online profile, but then in today s world everyone has an online identity. Social media platforms have become so huge these days that you will find that many activities happening there. Social media optimization is the one strategy that is being undertaken on a huge scale by online business owners to popularize their site and business. Social media optimization has in fact come up as one of the best strategies that can be used for online marketing. The World Wide Web is overpopulated with online sites dealing with different types of information, selling services, products and many others. The whole ides is to popularize a site so that visitors do not face any difficulty in finding out whatever they are looking for. Most visitors on the web make sure of the search engines to find out anything on the web, so it is important for a site to have high search engine rankings. There are different methods through which one can optimize a site on the web; social media optimization and search engine optimization are some of the methods that are used for this. Social media optimization is one of the very popular methods and the reason for this is the increasingly large number of people who are active in different social media networking platforms like MySpace, Facebook, Orkut and several others. Just take a look around and you will find that the way in which people interact and keep in touch with others has undergone a sea change. So today, if you want to get in touch with your long lost classmates, you do not need to go back to the city or town where you went to school. Just log on to any of the social networking sites and you are bound to come across an online community of your school or college. Even if it happens that you do not come across any community on your school, college or university, you can just create one and make it a platform where you can interact with others. Social media optimization is being undertaken extensively and if you want your site to rank at the top of all major search engine results, this is what you must do extensively and regularly. By the way, I got in touch with many of my school friends through a social networking site.
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Is Click-to-Call what Local Search Has Been Waiting For?
Click-to-call is an emerging contextual advertising format that will help spark the growth of localized search. It links online users to offline advertisers by combining Internet telephone capabilities. Although it has yet to hit its stride as a platform or even pierce consumer consciousness, the biggest interactive names, like Google, Yahoo, and eBay, are positioning themselves for a future in click-to-call. Let s take a closer look. Click-to-call ads (CTC) are delivered, like pay-per-click, through standard online search results. They mostly resemble standard paid search ads, too. The user sees the familiar text in a box, except there is an icon that can be clicked to connect the interested party with the designated advertiser via telephone. This process is fully online until the user activates the CTC functionality by clicking that icon delivered with the ad. Next, the user is prompted to enter their telephone number, which may or may not be already stored with the search engine. Once the phone number is entered, the search engine calls the user and connects the advertiser at no cost to the user. It should be noted that search engines will be adamant about protecting the anonymity of user phone numbers in order to placate any understandable fears of being added to telephone marketing lists. It will be imperative for search engines to build user confidence because trust is precious, especially when introducing new products. Since CTC incorporates phone use through the Internet, VoIP specific companies like Vonage and Fusion will be parlaying their niche of Internet telephony into partnerships with bigger Internet properties, as evidenced by Skype s sale to eBay. Even an online advertising agency like ICMediaDirect.com has to consider the impact of a hybrid service, like click-to-call, will have on search marketing. Isn t it funny how convergence, the calling card of technological progress, can make the telephone cutting edge? Experts aren t expecting great revenue generation straight out of the gate, but click-to-call could be at the forefront of yet another giant tech-based advertising expansion. One area that click-to-call may impact is local search. I believe CTC has enough functionality to ignite the long anticipated surge of localized search as a leading format of small business advertising. For example, if a person finally has had enough of a bad back ” where do they go to find a chiropractor, the Internet? Could be. That s where we can research and get a phone number. Just think what a chiropractor would pay per click of that icon that rings his office and the sufferer simultaneously. And you thought pay-per-click was targeted and relevant? Finding out which businesses will advertise on local search via click-to-call is an easy task ” they re the ones filling the yellow pages of your phone book. These small businesses (think: pizza parlors, law offices, florists) are already heavily vested in local advertising, yet almost none use search advertising because the format has yet to incorporate small business. It s believed that there are nearly 15 million small businesses in the United States today and almost none are benefiting from local search the way that it s envisioned. When geo-targeted search is smoothed out and more popular, and CTC gets rolling, local advertising will realize more convenience and more targeting ” and the world will witness another online advertising revolution. Click-to-call is even more targeted than the pay-per-click search format as we know it today. Advertisers are going to pay more for CTC because anyone who takes the time to call is certainly a higher-percentage paying customer than your basic web surfer who indicates interest. While some web surfers may click ads to satisfy curiosity, few visitors will be clicking icons to make idle talk with businesses ” as far as I can tell, this isn t an issue for businesses listed in the Yellow Pages. Click-to-call is a potent ad format and advertisers are going to shell out top dollars for it. Keep an eye out for developments in this format and be ready to adjust your strategies accordingly.
Joseph Pratt Media Analyst ICMediaDirect.com http://www.icmediadirect.com e: joseph@icmediadirect.com
How to achieve Search Engine Marketing Targets
To achieve search engine marketing targets you need to know SEO concepts and then generate a comprehensive marketing plan to accomplish your website promotion goals and objectives.
Understand Backlinks from Search Engines
Most Search Engine Optimizers understand the importance of the backlinks in order for a website to succeed. Most search engines take into account of the backlinks quality for their ranking algorithm. We will cover the top three search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) here and discuss how they treat backlinks from their point of view.
The most popular search engine, Google, places great emphasis on backlinks. In fact, relevant backlinks is all a website needs to achieve a high ranking in Google result page. Google, however, does not shows all the indexed backlinks when user queries with the link: operator. In addition, Google does not update their backlink index as frequent as their search results.
It is believed that multiple backlinks from a same domain does not have the stack effect in Google. For example, links from forum signatures and directories will have minimum weigh in Google’s ranking algorithm.
Yahoo, on the other hand, chooses to display all the backlinks to the users. A search with the link: operator often reveals most of a page’s backlinks to screen. Although they display most of the backlinks, it does not mean that they value them as much as in Google. Unfortunately, backlinks are not as important as they are in Yahoo than in Google.
Yahoo has introduced a site explorer interface to aid the webmasters in locating the backlinks and other useful information. Yahoo also provides one of the best API for the web masters’ usage.
MSN also offers to display all the backlinks to the user with the link: operator query. The backlinks update in MSN also seems to be the most updated among all the three search engines. It may seems that MSN focus a lot on backlinks but this is usually not the case. Backlinks are not as important as keyword domain in MSN’s point of view.
In conclusion, Google is the only search engine that put a lot of focus on backlinks in their ranking formula and since they are the most popular search engine, backlinks are important for every website. It is recommended to use Yahoo or MSN to check for backlinks because they show a more complete listing.
KC is a SEO consultant with several years of related experiences. His advice has helped several Webmasters to increase their SERP. KC is the founder of USESEO.COM, a site that offers <a href= "http://www.useseo.com" target="_blank">free SEO </a>techniques. At the same time, he runs the only link investment site on the net, <a href="http://www.linkvestor.com/" target="_blank">LinkVestor</a>.

