SEO Hosting Blog

If you want more people to organically link to your website, more visitors to your website and more buzz about your brand, here are ten tips for increasing the viralness of your brand and website:

Don’t Forget About Forums: In the age of Facebook, it’s seems like internet marketers have gotten the idea that they are too cool for forums.  Although Web 2.0 style social networking can be a great way to promote your brand and website, forums are actually more popular than ever before.  As people spend more time on the Internet, they become more comfortable participating in activities such as forums.  The great thing about forums is that they attract people who are really passionate about a specific topic.  Therefore, if you invest some time and become an active member of a forum community, you can begin promoting yourself to the types of people that will go out and tell others about your brand and website.

Create a List: Sure, you may see internet marketing blogs complaining that Top Ten lists are overused, but outside of that extremely small percentage of people, the general population finds Top Ten (or any other number) lists to be very useful.  I mean, this is a Top Ten list and it obviously has your attention!
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Brand building is one of the most important marketing exercises your company will ever engage in. Without a unique brand that connects with customers, your company will be just another face in an overcrowded market. If you wish to experience true success, you have to build a brand that offers consumers something they’ve been missing.

Traditionally, brand building has been done mostly through advertising. While you can certainly use advertising to gain leverage for your brand, there is another new method many companies are using- social media. Social media has become a powerful tool for communicating information to one another. But how does it perform as a brand building technique?

• Blogs- Usually when we discuss the importance of blogging, we talk about how much Google appreciates the fresh content. But blogging is important for another reason. What you say in your blog directly affects how people view your brand. Your blog needs to be a leading resource for your target audience. Don’t bounce around from topic to topic, but instead stay focused. Use your blog to establish your brand as a trusted adviser.
• Social Networking- Social networking is undoubtedly the hottest Internet trend over the last few years. Millions of people throughout the world participate on at least one social networking site. It’s a great way to communicate with a large group of people who you share common interests with. Social networking is great for band building because it puts you in total control of how you present yourself. Everything from your avatar to the friends you align yourself with is completely under your control. Think about how you want to appear to your target audience, and create a social network profile that meets those requirements.
• Forums- Industry forums provide another great medium for building your brand. You can use forums to establish your company as a leading authority in your industry. To effectively build your brand, comment only in threads where you have something of value to add. Remember, simply throwing your name out there to be seen isn’t an effective way to build your brand. Brand recognition doesn’t equate to brand strength.

Social media can definitely help you build your brand, but you have to develop a sound strategy first. Carefully plan your every move on these social media sites to ensure you’re sending the right message to your audience. 

I’ll admit it: I used to be a feed reader addict.  Although I didn’t have over six hundred feeds in my reader like Robert Scoble, I did have over two hundred.  I felt like the more feeds I could add and follow, the more I could learn, which would allow me to be more productive/successful.

While this sounds good in theory, I eventually had to admit to myself that my feeds were actually having the opposite effect of what I intended.  Instead of helping me to be a better internet marketer, I realized that I was spending way too much time trying to stay on top of my feeds.  Not only was I being less productive, but all of the time I was spending reading feeds was taking away hours that I could have been spending on billable work. (more…)

I have often speculated whether or not having your content submitted or bookmarked into social networks and bookmarking sites could improve your site SEO. I know for a fact that you can for sure increase traffic to the individual pages and sections of your site that have been submitted or bookmarked. However, in doing so, does it actually help your site become more search engine friendly?

It would be silly of me to claim that I am truly an SEO expert. I am honestly not. I have much more experience in search engine marketing rather than search engine optimization. For those who don’t know, indeed, there is a huge difference between the two. A search engine optimization expert is one who specializes totally in making a web site truly a search engine magnet. A search engine marketing expert, in my opinion, is an individual who specializes in writing content for the exclusive purpose of ranking well in the search engines for certain targeted keywords or phrases. (more…)

SEO should be invisible: to Google and to the everyday user.  As soon as you’re looking for a way to “fool” Google you’re going to be writing content and preparing SEO in a way that doesn’t anything but.  In my experience, the best way to accomplish SEO is to try to rank naturally instead of forcing the issue.

Perhaps this is the way I work as a writer: but writing by attempting to add keyphrases to your paragraphs can make the writing – and reading – process awkward.  By all means, you can go through the content after it’s done and add targeted keyphrases, but having this be your sole intention for the content will come off as unnatural and may very well be regarded as spam by Google – if not now then in the future. (more…)