May 9, 2013

Don’t overlook LinkedIn in building your new business

9 ways to leverage the power of LinkedIn

Guest post by Cara Aley

The right digital marketing strategy is important for every new business. Many new business owners focus their efforts mostly on Facebook and Twitter and overlook how useful LinkedIn can be in the launch and building of awareness for their businesses.

Below you’ll find multiple ways in which you can use this powerful networking website to help successfully promote your new business.

Create a profile for better SEO

1LinkedIn is one of the more search engine optimized websites. Simply creating a profile on LinkedIn for your business will ensure that it is pretty quickly one of the first links people will see when they search for your business (this is good for both SEO and reputation management, pushing other links down further in search results).

In creating your profile on LinkedIn, you can provide a company description, a separate product description page, and other links (including one to your website). Use keywords in your company and product descriptions to ensure SEO opportunities. Continue reading →

April 24, 2013

Using social media to enhance your brand’s reputation

Maintain your social profiles for better search results

Guest post by Cara Aley

With your company focused on its business goals and set up on social channels, it’s critically important that your online business reputation be one that is polished and positive. As you’re likely to be in the market for new customers, clients, partners or investors, it’s important that when they run a Google search on your business or startup, not only are you properly search engine optimized but that meaningful and positive results appear.

Social media as a marketing strategy is an important method for ensuring that this happens, and should be prioritized as much as or more than any other marketing strategy. I’ll explain why.

Understand SEO

Social media profiles are critical for search engine optimization (SEO). You know what SEO is. (See Socialmedia.biz’s series on online reputation.) Now it’s time to start building those social media profiles in order to improve your SEO. Continue reading →

March 5, 2013

What’s the value of a Facebook like?

Increase your fan base with an SEO approach to social media marketing

Target audience: Marketing professionals, SEO specialists, businesses, nonprofits, Facebook administrators, anyone with a Facebook page.

Guest post by Rowan Casey

Everybody with a Facebook Page wants to have millions of likes, but unless you are a celebrity or the owner of a famous business, you’re probably still working on increasing your fan base.

However, even if you are among the least famous of people, your chances of having thousands — or even tens of thousands — of likes is still within reach. For many Facebook Pages, this is because there are a variety of methods of buying likes or obtaining Facebook fans through paid advertising and promotional methods. Still working on upping your ‘like’ count? Keep reading. Continue reading →

February 13, 2013

The real benefits of guest blogging

Photo by Global Innovation Game via Creative Commons

Establish yourself as an expert through guest posts

Guest post by Moosa Hemani
SETalks.com

Guest blogging is riding high right now and the whole Internet Marketing sphere is buzzing with talk about it. Some people consider guest blogging to be a powerful tactic, while others disparage the idea, saying that guest blogging is misunderstood and people are misusing it.

Who’s right? I recently did a cartoon post on my blog discussing how guest blogging is powerful and how it is misused by many who have failed to understand the scope of awesomeness in this practice. Continue reading →

December 20, 2012

How to optimize your Facebook fan page SEO

7 key ways to push your Facebook page to the top of search engine results

Guest post by Nathan Latka
Co-founder, Heyo

There are a lot of rumors going around about the proper ways to optimize your Facebook fan page for the search engines (SEO). Some people suggest using keywords in the filenames of your uploads, and others say you need to have every URL you own linked to your fan page. If you’re anything like me, you don’t particularly have time to sit around and search for a tip here and a tip there, only to find out weeks later that it did you no good.

This post provides a few more tips on optimizing your Facebook page for SEO right now.

Choose the best name for your Facebook page

1This may sound like a no-brainer. However, it’s the most basic step when it comes to optimizing your brand on Facebook, and is also the most important.

There is always the temptation to stuff your fan page name with tons of keywords, like “Bob’s Bakery – Muffins, Bagels, Cookies, Breads – Catering & Events.” In actuality, having a name like this can hurt your viral growth rate inside Facebook. If you appear too spammy, your fans will be less likely to engage with your page, let alone share posts and updates with their friends. In fact, people can even hide your updates from their news feed – the horror!

Don’t be too generic, either. Facebook’s intent behind fan pages is that they represent real businesses, brands, personalities, etc. By choosing something too generic, like Travel, Sports, Fishing, etc., you run the risk of Facebook shutting down your ability to post updates and reach out to new fans.

Quick tip: The first word in your fan page title is given the most weight by Google.

Continue reading →

November 12, 2012

10 tips to take advantage of Google+ for SEO

Leverage the power of Google Plus to increase visibility

Guest post by Cyrus Shepard

It’s no secret. When engineers built Google+, they constructed an SEO juggernaut to dominate search results above all other social platforms. Although Facebook and Twitter are essential to marketing efforts, both restrict Google from accessing much of their data. This limits their SEO effectiveness.

Not so with Google+. Continue reading →