seobridges.com

No matter whether you’re a social media novice, aficionado, or expert, there is bound to be something in this book you can glean from. It’s a great resource for teachers and students, and it covers all of the basis from blogging to the importance of a social media plan.

If you’ve read this book, let me know your thoughts. I’d love to glean from you, and learn what has and has not worked. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, you can buy it below.

The Social Media Survival Guide by Deltina Hay

You can learn more about Deltina by visiting her website, Social Media Power, or following her @Deltina.

Stay social, my friends!

Erick

If there are two things you like, it’s free and it’s lists. Blogs with lists of free stuff always get the most views. I try to write my blogs in list or bullet point format as much as possible, but I don’t list free resources (i.e. other sites) as much as I once did. If I list a social media or related start-up and that start-up goes under or is acquired by a larger company, I am left with a broken link. And that’s not good for SEO.

Recently, someone contacted me about trying their site and writing a review. Someone else asked me to review their book on social media marketing, which I will post within the next week or two (e-mail erick @ seobridges . com if you’d like me to review your book, site, or product).

I stopped focusing on posting lists of free resources because while it is great for my initial SEO because it attracts visitor, it is potentially bad for my overall SEO because those sites may cease to exist or the URL may change.

While I may post the occasional review of a social media or social media related site, which has been around for a while, that’s not my focus. My focus is to help you understand the principles of SEO and social media marketing. Yes, I will continue to give you tools, when it’s appropriate; but understanding those principles will prove of higher value to you over time.

What do you find most valuable about my blog?

Stay social my friends!

Erick

Hootsuite uses it, Scribd uses it, and several other sites use it to be more search bot friendly and interactive for users. Here’s a list of the most social link types, attributes, and elements in HTML5.

Article Element – This tells search bots when content is related to other content, such as with blog comments.

Cite Element – This cites sources and is a great way to give credit where credit is due.

KBD Element – Under certain circumstances, this can be used as a voice command.

Embed Element – This represents integration with non-HTML points, such as applications or other interactive content.

Link type “Author” – This can be used with link, a, or area elements and creates a hyperlink. When used with the a or area element, it indicates further information about the author of the article. When used with the link element, it indicates information about the author of a page.

Link type “Help” – This can be used with link, a, or area element and indicates that the referenced document provides help. When used with the a or area element, it indicates help for the article. Within the link element, it indicates help for the page.

Link Type “Pingback” – This may be used with the Link element and creates an external link resource to let authors of other blogs or articles know you referenced their information.

Accesskey Attribute – This generates keyboard shortcuts that activate elements.

If you’re an SEO, you should know the basics of HTML, and you should be aware of the upgrades in HTML5. If you don’t, W3 Schools is an excellent place to learn.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

For SEO and webmasters concerned about recent updates to Google’s algorithm, I recommend reviewing Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Google favors well designed websites, original content that adds value, and links to reputable websites. Think of a website like a house.

An architect doesn’t design a house so a person walks into the garage when they open the front door. In the same way, a website should welcome visitors, let them know what the site is about, and encourage them to discover more.

An architect designs every room with at least one door to and from another room. In the same way, each page of a website should be accessible from at least one static text link; and the page titles should tell users where those links lead.

Just as an architect designs a house with windows to allow visibility, an SEO should submit their website to search engines and link to relevant websites. This will allow potential visitors to see your site and current visitors to find relevant information.

And just as a contractor adds certain appliances to certain rooms, you should add content that is relevant to specific pages. Don’t talk about widgets if the title of your page is gadgets.

Finally, just as any good contractor should make sure all of the plumbing and electrical in the house functions right, you want to use good coding and make sure all of the links work.

If you follow these rules, your site will maintain its integrity no matter how often Google changes its algorithm.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Adam Singer of TopRank Blog said of BlackHat Social Media, “The intention of being black hat is getting better results faster.”

Have you ever seen a tweet from someone you don’t recall following?  Those are those people who bought thousands of Twitter followers, and you happened to be one of the Twitter followers they bought.  That’s immediate grounds for us unfollowing them and reporting them as a spammer.  Or have you found that someone added you to a group page without your permission?  Facebook allows people to add people to groups, which is intrusive and a very good reason to unfriend someone.

So, what does the future of social media marketing look like?  It will become more compartmentalized to combat black hat social media.  Google is integrating links that people’s friends and followers tweet into search results.  When you search for a term, each page results in the top ten ranked results via SEO.  On the same page, below those ten results, there are ten results from people you follow on Twitter.

This is great for boosting SEO with quality links and content via Twitter; though, it will also lead to a higher necessity for reputation management.  It will lead to people needing to be more diligent about following quality Tweeters, so that, in turn, they attract more quality followers.  It will also lead to people or companies spending less money to buy fans, followers, and friends and more time posting quality content via search engines or other quality tweeters.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Yesterday, a British woman shattered all of my preconceived notions of Brits always speaking perfect English.  After centuries of hearing Brits make fun of us Yanks for speaking a substandard form of English, I heard a Brit use improper grammar.

It’s a grammatical mistake I hear people use often.  It usually begins around the 2^nd grade when children’s teachers correct their students, even though their kids used the right word.

So, here it is.  She used “I” when “me” was the correct word.  If any of your teachers told you “I” is always the correct form, they’re wrong.  “I” is subjective, and “Me” is objective.

In other words, you use the subjective form “I” when you are going somewhere or doing something, such as in the sentence, “You and I are taking the dogs to the park.”  But you use “me” when you are the object, such as in the sentence, “Will you take the dogs and me to the park?”

An easy way to remember it is to take out “dogs.”  You wouldn’t say, “Would you take I to the park?”  The word doesn’t change from “me” to “I” just because you add dogs or any other noun.

If you write a blog, blogs, articles, or any other Web content, correct grammar is important.  And if you hire someone to write any type of Web content for you, just because they know the rules of SEO doesn’t mean they know the rules of grammar.

Stay grammatically correct my friends,

Erick

Our Free Search Guide lists 19 search factors users can use on Google to deliver more personalized results to save them time and money, increase their efficiency and profitability, and lead to better search and user experiences for everyone.  Google is the most popular website in the U.S., but so few people realize its absolute power.

The search factor we use the most is the “Related” factor.  If you find a site you like, and you want to find more like it, type “Related:http://www.anysite.com”.  Some of the results may have nothing to do with the original site, but the feature is meant to be like “Similar” button on your Google results page.

You can also use the “Related” factor to find similar sites with a specific features.  For instance, we wanted to find a site like Constant Contact that allowed us to keep in better touch with our friends and fans on Facebook.  We typed “Related:http://www.constantcontact.com Facebook,” and the first result was VerticalResponse.com.

We offer a personalized search engine on our Free Search Guide page.  For now, it is tailored to people who want to search for anything to do with SEO, Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Technology, and other related searches.  We will update it within the next several weeks, and we’d love to know how we can make it more user friendly for you.  Of course, we may add another search engine or two for those users with different purposes.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

I’m going to teach you how to target your visitors to get more out of your blogs.  Here are some statistics for you: 23.24% of all traffic to my site comes from referring sites, many of those visitors come from social networking sites, and 5.79% of all visitors to my site come from Facebook.  The numbers go on, but I won’t bore you.  Except for one: 87.3% of all people who visit my site from Facebook are new.  If you want to follow along in Google Analytics, go into your profile, set your analytics tool to a certain date range, then select:

Traffic Sources >> Referring Sites >> Facebook (or whichever referring site you want to use).

Find the blue box that says “Referral Path”.  You may see one or more paths from your chosen referral source to your site, depending on how viral your message went.  Facebook isn’t as viral as Twitter.  So, the path to your Facebook page is probably first.

After you click there, click on the squiggly lines to the left of visits, which will reveal a graph of when people went to my site.  Below the graph, above where you just clicked, you’ll notice you’re in the “Site Usage” tab.  Below that is the blue word “None”.  Click on that, look over to last word in the first column, and select “Landing Page”.  Now, another box titled “None” will appear to the right of “Landing Page”.  Click that, click “Visitor type”, and check out what pages are attracting new and returning visitors.

So, it should look like this:

None >> Landing Page then look to the right None >> Visitor Type

This will tell you what types of visitors from Facebook (new or returning) are landing on which pages in your site.  Now, you can play with these two filters to find out quite a bit about the users who come to your site from your chosen referral site.  This graph also shows how long they’re staying on those pages, the average bounce rates for their visits, and how many pages on average per visit people who go to those particular pages are going to.

There’s much more you can do here, but I am going to let you explore.  You can also follow the same steps with Twitter, Google, or any other medium.  The point is to focus one type of visitor, figure out what type of information attracts that type of visitor, and use that to your advantage.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

After you’ve identified which pages result in your highest bounce and/or exit rates and you’ve fixed those pages, move on to see where you’re getting the most love from.  If you’re watching your analytics on Google, they categorize your visitors according to direct traffic, search engine traffic, referring sites, and other.  If you’re unsure of what these are, I explained them in this blog: The X and Y Factors of SEO.

Since everyone knows search is dead, you can disregard what your analytics says about Google sending the most (or a large portion of) traffic to your site.  All Web analytics platforms have just not updated their systems to show that search is dead, and Google (being dead itself) is of course going to tell you that they send a large portion of traffic to your site.

If you’re name is Sheldon Cooper, you probably didn’t get that that last paragraph was sarcasm (Bazinga!).  For the rest of us, since a large portion of our traffic comes from search engines, we want to pay attention to our content.  I blogged about this last week in a blog titled, Google Analytics and Keyword Density.

The point is to figure out who’s sending you the most amount of traffic and pander to their every whim.  Okay, don’t pander to their every whim, but figure out what you’re saying that attracts people from those sites to your site.  What specific blogs or pages are they going to?  What are you talking about?  Talk about those topics more.  What are they talking about?  Answer their questions, and involve them in discussions.  Find out what the people want to know, and tell them what they want to know.  It’s that simple.  Kind of.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Since the goal of Google Instant is to help people find information faster, I think it is doing a good job. Google is sending more people to pages on my site that directly address their questions. Of course, that means they don’t need to search around as long, so they leave sooner. That is a mixed blessing. I don’t mind if people find their information faster and leave sooner, but I do mind that it’s caused a jump in my bounce rate.

After you’ve identified which keywords work best on your site, optimize for those keywords. If you want to attract a local readership, determine which keywords brought in people from your surrounding area. If you just want anyone from anywhere, then use those keywords. But be careful to make sure you add content that adds value. By adding content with value you will decrease your bounce rate.

Speaking of bounce rate, since Google launched Instant, my overall bounce rate has increased by 12.25%, but my bounce rate from search traffic has decreased by 12.64%. So, that not only means that people who are finding SEOBridges through search engines are finding what they need faster, but it also means they are finding more value in what they are finding.

Now, I want to get my bounce rate from other sources down, which means I want to pay attention to specifics. Another metric you will want to look at is your top landing page compared to your top exit page. Determine what types of searches are causing an increase in your bounce rate. If it’s referral sites, maybe you need to describe your site better to their visitors. If the bounce rate is coming from social media, maybe that audience isn’t interested in that type of content. Investigate a little, and you’ll find the answer.

People leaving a certain page may or may not be a good thing. You may have provided them with the information they needed, or they may have just gotten tired of looking. Make sure to add valuable content, know your audience, and you won’t need to worry about the whys.

Stay social my friends,

Erick