seobridges.com

Recently, I read an article that purported that studies showed social media did not increase traffic to websites. Of course, that was a generalization and is not true of all websites. Though, for the average website, I am not going to argue with it. The purpose of social media is not to increase traffic to websites. If people go to your website because of your social media campaign great, but that should not be your primary focus for delving into social media.

Think of your website like a Starbucks and your website traffic as the foot traffic. Now, lets say because you had a sign spinner or a giant banner or some other means of advertising your store, 1,000 people come into your store on a particular day. 450 of those people buy coffee, 350 come and sit with friends or just read, and 200 just get water or use the restroom.

Of course, you have your overhead, you need to pay your employees, and there are other expenses. Only those 450 people on that particular day paid for all of your expenses for that day. That banner or the guy spinning the sign or whatever other method you used to drive traffic to your site may have driven that traffic to your location, but those 450 who paid for something that day also paid for the 550 who bought nothing or used something without a cost.

Now, think about why you do or do not go back to a particular coffee house. Perhaps its because of good prices, good product, good service, ambience, convenience, you’ve developed a relationship with the baristas, or other. The bottom line is SEO, like that sign spinner or the banner, is about driving traffic; social media is about building relationships and developing loyalty.

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

If you write Web/SEO content, you write.  You may not write well, but you write.  And the secret writing well is stealing from others who write better.  No, I don’t mean plagiarism.  I mean finding out what works and adapting what works to your own writing style.  Any good writer will tell you not to try something new, especially when you are a new writer.  Find out what works, and figure out how to adapt your voice to what works.  Take for example Stephanie Meyer and the Twilight Series.  There’s nothing new about vampires, but she gave them a modern-day twist.  So, what does this have to do with Web content?

First, If you want to decrease your site’s bounce rate, find out what pages have the highest bounce rates, find sites that rank in the top ten for your keywords on the major search engines, go to those pages on their sites where you’re having issues with your bounce rates, and figure out what they do on those pages to keep people around longer.

Second, do the same thing with those pages with the highest exit rates.  Many times those pages with the highest bounce rate will also have the highest exit rates, since people are exiting them within seconds of finding them.  Though, that may not always be the case.  Whether it is or not, figure out what you’re doing wrong, find websites that are doing things right, and learn from them.

If you can learn from them and improve on what they’re doing, you’ll find your bounce and/or exit rates on those pages will go down.  Though, remember, not all exits from a website are bad.  Sometimes, it means the person found what they wanted to find.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

So, let’s get a little deeper into this conversation about what kinds of words you should optimize your site for.  It’s great that you want to optimize your site for the word ‘burger,’ but you will have to compete with 38,300,000 other pages (according to Google at the time of this post).  You could try ‘hamburger,’ but you’d still have to compete with  16,900,000 people.

If your site is about hamburgers, your audience wants to know what you want to say about hamburgers.  Do you want to tell them about hamburger recipes?  Tell them about those, and you’ll only need to compete with 1,730,000 sites.

Remember the old saying, ‘There’s more than one way to grill a hamburger’?  Okay, so the saying’s actually about cats.  Let’s say you want to tell people about great ‘hamburger recipes for the grill,’ then tell them about those.  And while doing so, you’ll only have 602,000 Web pages to compete with.

A word like ‘hamburger’ is a short-tail keyword, and a term like ‘hamburger recipes for the grill’ is a long-tail keyword.  More websites and Web pages will always compete for short-tail keywords, so start off by optimizing for long-tail keywords.  You won’t have to compete as many Web pages to get to the top.

Now, there is a downside to using long-tail keywords.  The longer the keyword, the less chance someone will enter it into a search engine.  Though, don’t fret.  This is for those of you who are just getting started with SEO content.  Start off by optimizing your site for long-tail keywords and then worry about short-tail keywords.

Think of writing Web content as exercise.  Using long tail keywords is the warm up that gets you ready for the heavy lifting.  If you try to use the weights without stretching, you could injure yourself.  And if you try to optimize your site for short-tail keywords without spending time learning the art of SEO with long-tail keywords, you could injure your chances of optimizing for those short-tail keywords.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Recently, I read a blog that purported that SEO content is all but dead.  This blog listed 15 ways in which a person could use social media marketing to spread their message across the Webiverse.  One of the ways suggested was to write articles and post them on article submission sites.  I commented on his blog that he contradicted himself because article writing is a form of SEO content.  Less than an hour later, the blogger e-mailed me and told me he would not approve my comment because he disagreed with me and my website was his competition.

Before that day, I had never heard of his website, so I found it humorous that he considered my website his competition.  I know who our competition is, and just because another website optimizes for a few of the same keywords we do does not make them our competition.

In this case, we were both optimizing our websites for the keywords, ‘Social media Marketing,’ but that doesn’t make them our competition.  That would be like McDonald’s and The French Laundry considering each other competition.  If you Google the words ‘social media marketing,’ you will eventually come across this website, but that website is no more my competition than McDonald’s and The French Laundry are each other’s competition.

In the same way, just because this other website also offered social media marketing services does not make them our competition.  At SEO Bridges, we put a personal touch on our services, meaning we know many of our current and prospective clients.  Our competition is those companies that focus on the same customer base we focus on, not a company in New York or India that optimizes for the same keywords we optimize for.

I believe whoever said, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” realized their enemies were those people who could reach out and betray them, not those people thousands of miles away.  In the same way, your competition is not a website optimizing for the same keywords you’re optimizing for.  Your competition is not a business that offers the same product(s) or service(s) you offer.  Your competition is those companies that focus on the same customer base you focus on.  If you consider every website on Google that optimizes for the same keywords you optimize for your competition, you’re going to lose sight of the needs of your customer base.  And when you lose sight of the needs of your customer base, you become your own competition.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

So, first thing’s first.  I owe TweetDeck an apology.  I said in yesterday’s blog they don’t allow users to schedule Tweets.  Their latest version, which was never updated on my computer, does allow users to schedule Tweets.  So, I apologize for the misinformation; though, if my computer did not automatically update TweetDeck, there are probably millions of other computers operating outdated versions.

Moving on . . . . If you want to drive traffic to your website, try writing a blog.  It doesn’t have to be everyday, but write one at least once a week.  Don’t just let it sit there.  Tell the world.  If you just write your blog and expect search engines to do all the work for you, you won’t get many views.

Various social bookmarking sites and niche social networking sites integrate with sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  That makes it easier for social media gurus, ninjas, and connoisseurs to let the world know about their blogs and other pertinent information.  Also, those Twitter clients I mentioned yesterday integrate with larger social networking sites.

Think of it like standing on a stage in the center of an NFL football stadium filled with tens of thousands of people.  The football stadium represents Twitter, Facebook, and whatever other social networking sites you use to attract your audience.  The audience . . . well, they represent your audience.  You can shout your message and a few hundred people may hear you, but several thousand won’t.  You’d have a much easier time getting your message out to those tens of thousands of people if you set up microphones and speakers.  Social bookmarking is like those microphones and speakers that allow you to get your message out to a wider audience.

Any thoughts?  How do you use social bookmarking?

Stay social,

Erick

Last week I talked about the importance of integrating your SEO content and social media marketing.  I also mentioned it’s important to make sure your site is designed to be SEO friendly.  I mentioned it, but I never explained it.

The other day, I talked to a Web designer whose clients we write Web content and handle the social media marketing for.  We talked about his latest project in comparison to a website he wants to model that project after.  He asked for my thoughts of what we could learn from the model site in integrating SEO into his latest Web project.  I’ll tell you what I told him and more.

Quick SEO tips for Web designers:

1. Make your text readable – It’s best to use simple black and white text, but just make it as readable as possible.
2. Buttons – Let search bots know where they should go.  If a link leads to your services, title it ‘Services,’ not ‘What we do.’
3. Use Bold Text – Tell the search bots what’s important about your site, but not too much.
4. Add a site map – An XML for the search bots and an HTML site map for your users.
5. Registration period – Okay, this one isn’t really Web design or SEO related, but it’s a good tip.  If you only registered your site for a year, search bots won’t consider you very serious.  Register your site for at least five years.

There are more, but those five should keep you busy for a while.

Any other ideas?

Stay social,

Erick

We’ve focused on making connections with potential clients, our website’s recent redesign, adding content to our static pages, and other side projects.  Now, we want to focus on getting more content on our dynamic pages, so we’re blogging Mondays through Fridays.

Yesterday, I talked about considering your customer base in your social media marketing efforts.  Now, the question is how do you do that when writing SEO content?  It’s simple.  Okay, it’s not simple, but it is vital.

We’re all about integrating our clients’ social media campaigns with the content on their websites.  We’re also big proponents of writing content that reflects the design of the website. Integrating your site’s design, content, and social media marketing will allow you to create Web strategies that reach your customer base.

One of our clients recently wanted to optimize for a particular word.  We optimized for that word, except for one page that had no products specific to that keyword.  We told the Web designer and the website owner the reason we wouldn’t optimize for that keyword.

Search engines dislike it when websites use words on pages that have nothing to do with those pages.  Our SEO content strategies play according to the rules of search engines’ algorithms, because without search engines there would be no such thing as SEO content.  Be leery of any content writer who wants to put content on your website’s pages that doesn’t reflect what that page offers. They either don’t understand this concept, or they’re using black hat SEO practices.

I’d love to hear your comments.

Erick

This last weekend, I went to a small café. I walked through the doors of the once 19th century home, ordered a coffee, and found a seat. Moments later the barista brought my coffee to me and asked me if I’d like a menu.

All I wanted to do was sit, drink a cup of coffee, and catch up on some work. All he wanted to do was capitalize on me sitting at one of his tables and make money.  I ordered a bagel with cream cheese, caught up on some work, and left when the lunch crowd started pouring in.

I recognized and respected their business model was not for people to order one cup of coffee and sit with books open for hours. Though, they made room in their business model to make customers like me feel comfortable.

Leverage your website and social media marketing so your customer base feels comfortable with who you are and what you offer.

Their purpose for interacting with you or your website may not align with your business model, but your business model should always align with the reason they interact with you.

At SEO Bridges, we understand our customer base may not understand what SEO (Web) content and social media marketing are, why they’re important, or how to best use them. That’s why our content focuses on educating people who come to our website.

Speaking of which, we’re working on an e-book. I’d love to read your comments.

Erick

Throughout the last several years, programmers have developed WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Web design platforms, allowing everyone to take their piece of the Web. Among the most popular of those are WordPress, MovableType, and Wix.  I believe that of all of those sites that allow everyone their piece of the Web, one will revolutionize the way in which we interact with each other through social networking.

For the past couple of years, ever since the iPhone went on the market, everyone has wanted the latest app. In fact, the saying goes, “There’s an app for that.” A while back, Evan Williams (CEO of Twitter) referred to Twitter as being part of a social networking environemt. If sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others are part of a social networking environment, then people who use those sites and connect them to their websites responsibly are social media environmentalists.

During the evolution of websites that allow people to develop their own websites, third party developers have added apps and widgets that allow people to integrate their websites with various social networking accounts. Those third party apps must be supported by that site; though, people want more security in knowing that the apps and widgets they put on their sites won’t harm their sites or their computers.

Finally, one WYSIWYG platform (Squarespace) has developed their own apps, giving everyone the ability to design their own website and the confidence in knowing where their apps came from. And because of this innovative WYSIWYG platform, I believe 10 years from now, we will look back on the Internet in the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century as the decade of Social Media Environmentalism.

In the future, I hope to see Squarespace develop apps and widgets for various other social media sites. And I hope sites such as WordPress, Movabletype, Wix, and others will follow.

For now, we the people of the World Wide Web want apps for that and everything else, and we don’t want to have to worry about our security. Squarespace just started a new trend—Social Media Environmentalism—and those who build their sites using Squarespace can pride themselves on being some of the very first Social Media Environmentalists.

Let’s get a conversation going.  Let me know your thoughts.

Erick