Can You Protect Your Online Reputation?

We’ve all done things in our lives we regret. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, those things are often found on the internet, available to potential employers, schools and any other person who enters our life. So can you protect your online reputation by having those pages removed from Google’s index?

Unfortunately, it is not as easy as you would hope for. Google clearly states on their website that they do not own the internet. This means that in order to get the pages off of Google’s search results, the website that houses the undesirable information must be changed. Your only hope of getting a change is to approach the webmaster of the offending site to request removal of the page or at least request they block the page from Google’s indexing. Google’s response if you approach them first is a polite, but firm, “We are sorry, but we can’t do anything without action by the webmaster.”

Your only hope is if the information falls into one of the categories that Google is prepared to deal with. They include:

· Social security or credit information in results

· Adult content in results, when SafeSearch has been turned on

· Inappropriate images in video results

Beyond these points, you are pretty much on your own. Once you understand that Google has no control over what is posted to the internet, it does seem to make a bit more sense. Google’s job is to tell you what is out there, not to police what is already posted to the Web.

So what is the best way to protect yourself? Be on your best behavior to keep your reputation intact, and well, if that doen’t work for you… than you’re in good company. If you do have to approach someone to get a page removed, make nice and hope for the best. If that does not work, just make sure you have lots of good stuff to make up for being less than perfect. After all, nobodys perfect J

SEO Investments on the Rise

Search engine optimization (SEO) budgets are increasing as marketing executives gain knowledge of how SEO can benefit advertising and marketing campaigns. eMarketer is reporting that SEO budget allocations are expected to rise in the coming years as compared to other search marketing strategies.

With the decline in the economy, customer acquisition is becoming more and more vital. As the focus on customer acquisition increases, SEO becomes a more vital part of the overall marketing strategy. Because SEO provides a long term strategy for increased consumer presence, it has added value as compared to paid search marketing.

“Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics” reports that SEO growth will grow from 17.7% to 20.3% while paid search will decline from 15.9% in 2009 to 11.3% in 2013. When searching for information, consumers find more value in organic search results than pay per click (PPC) advertising. The value placed by consumers on organic search results garners more clicks on these results thus making SEO a valued part of the marketing plan.

SEO Market Growth

Combining SEO and PPC marketing efforts may result in higher search engine result rankings. Paid search engine advertising offers more immediate results, but in order to see results in the search engine arena advertising must be consistent. SEO marketing results occur over a longer time frame, but result in organic search results more valued by consumers.

In order to gain the most information and knowledge of your results, Web analytics is necessary. Having solid feedback regarding your SEO and PPC marketing efforts will allow you to gage how successful your campaign is. More traffic is only positive if the cost of the search ad relative to the conversion doesn’t reduce your bottom line.

SEO is a bit like a good public relations strategy; it helps to bring top of mind awareness to your site. SEO gets them in the door, so you can complete the deal.

Maximize Your Twitter

Twitter is expected to be one of the only social networking sites to have long term viability. Twitter usage and name recognition has been growing in leaps and bounds. Many are using Twitter not just to stay connected, but to market as well. So how do you maximize your Twitter?

Get an active Twitter account.

Yes it sounds basic, and you may already have one, but don’t just breeze past this section. We have some interesting tips to help you maximize your usage.

For those of you just getting started, open your account at http://twiter.com/signup. Once you have the registration form complete, connect with as many people as you can. They make it easy by allowing you to search your email lists (see below for more information). Customize your profile to show your main website and your, or your company’s, bio information. Don’t forget to set your location, update preferences and how you want to be notified of friends who have joined the Twitter revolution.

Draw attention with a customized background.

Get creative here. Simply click on “Settings” and then “Design” to choose a premade background or upload your own image. If you have a flair for design and a little Photoshop experience you can create a background that speaks volumes about you and your company. Check out some great custom layouts like:

http://twitter.com/JetBlue

http://twitter.com/BBCClick

http://twitter.com/MarthaStewart

Gather friends and follow interesting people and organizations

Finding friends on Twitter is easy. Three options are available.

1. Search Twitter. Use the “Find People” function to search for anyone from your next door neighbor to celebrities to companies.

2. Search other networks. Connect to anyone in your email contact list. Twitter can search through your hotmail.com, Gmail, Yahoo mail or AOL mail contact lists and if your friends use Twitter they can be added to your list.

3. Manual invites. Have friends, co-workers or clients who are not on Twitter? Manually input their email addresses and invite them to be your friend.

Connect your blog to Twitter

One of the best tools to connect Twitter and your blog was created by Alex King. This plug-in will automatically create micro blogs from your WordPress blog posts. Just follow this link for all the information

http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

to download this plug-in click here

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/share-this.2.3.zip

If you blog regularly, be sure to review the instructions and support information.

Monitor your Twitter Rank

Twitter offers the Twitter Grader (http://twitter.grader.com) to show you where you rank against other Twitter members. Once you enter your user name, you will see where you rank among a possible 100 points.

Twitter Grading is based on overall rank, number of followers, your following and updates. The more active you are the higher you will rank.

Link your Twitter account to social bookmarking sites.

If you are in the Twitter game, be in it to win it. Build up your social networking account by bookmarking your Twitter account to sites such as Digg.com, Propeller.com, Dropjack.com and others.

Take advantage of advanced search features on Twitter

To really maximize your connection with people in your target market, go to http://search.twitter.com/advanced to use the Advanced Search features Twitter offers. In Advanced Search you can search by keywords or phrases, location, names and more.

Resist the urge to connect with everyone you see. Be choosy and select only the best people who actually have good information to share and are likely to accept your friend request.

As you take these steps to maximize your Twitter impact, you will see your social status rise. As with any adventure, the more you keep at it the better the result

Optimize Your Long Tail Keywords

We all prefer our customers to be serious shoppers with money ready to spend. There is nothing worse than wasting valuable time with a customer who isn’t serious about a purchase. Whether at your bricks and mortar location or your website, you want to draw motivated shoppers versus window shoppers. So how do you drive top quality traffic to your website? The kind of traffic that is ready to buy?

SEO (search engine optimization) is an excellent tool to build website traffic and top rankings on Google. But searching on any old keyword isn’t enough. To get the best prospects for your business, you need to focus on “long tail keywords”. Long tail keywords are keywords of three or more words. For example, searching on “cars” isn’t as effective as searching for “used cars for sale under $5,000”.

Long tail keywords work to your advantage because there is less competition for them. With long tail keywords, you get higher search engine rankings more easily. Most importantly, consumers who search for more specific things are more likely to be serious shoppers ready to spend their money.

The reasons to focus on long tail keywords are simple:

Focusing your SEO efforts on long tail keywords will over time, lead to more search engine traffic because you will have more pages indexed.

Long tail keywords will produce higher page rankings because there is less competition for them.

You will find your best prospects through long tail keywords. They’ve already taken the energy to think about what they specifically want or need; now they are on your site. These people are more likely to subscribe to your blog, email blasts and read your advertisements.

Long tail keywords generate higher sales. Shoppers who use long tail keywords are motivated and looking to spend money. Skip past the window shoppers and focus your energy on the serious shopper.

Focusing your SEO energy on long tail keywords will deliver the customer who is most likely to spend money at your site. Isn’t that what we all want?

Internet Marketing System

Do You Need an Internet Marketing System?

With the rise in online businesses and e-commerce, business owners have started to hear the phrase Internet Marketing and need to consider using an Internet Marketing system as opposed to a project-based system to effectively market their business. Without using a strategy to direct visitor traffic to their website, the site owner will not see any sales. By using strategies, the site's visibility increases, thus driving traffic and conversions.

What is Internet Marketing?

IM is the art of positioning a website to show up near the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs), and preferably in the top 10 positions on the first page. Many companies use professional SEO (professional search engine optimization) and SEM techniques to do this. Using various methods to supply backlinks to the target website, using proper keyword structure, and using fresh content are examples of techniques a professional search engine optimization company uses to increase visibility of a website.

SEM, otherwise known as professional search engine marketing services, includes SEO in addition to other methods such as pay-per-click advertising, sponsored advertising and more. Both methods increase overall visibility of a website and promote high visitor traffic so that the site can convert more sales.

Why Use Internet Marketing Companies?

Using Internet marketing companies as opposed to project based website development and marketing has many advantages. For example, an Internet marketing service provider will continue to update the professional search engine marketing services used, but project based services leave a business owner to tend to the SEO himself, if he has the time. An Internet marketing service provider will also turn the business website into an asset for generating sales leads and continuously use web-tracking services to assess a particular campaign's viability.

An SEO will also use website traffic tracking to monitor and analyze visitor behavior and change content to improve conversions related to the site's performance. This method is easy, but time-consuming and what site owner has the time to continuously monitor their site's statistics?

Opting to use a professional SEM or SEO company will not only have an effect on traffic and sales, but it will also effect the way visitors look at the site. They will see it properly maintained and know it is a site they can trust for fresh and reliable content and products. This is one of the many assets of using a professional Internet marketing service instead of a project based in-house approach for any SEO campaigns and web tracking services.

When it comes to Internet marketing services in San Jose, WSI Omega Solutions is your best choice for a professional Search Engine Optimization Company and web tracking services. They are a company that provides complete professional search engine marketing services and they take the hassle out of website traffic tracking and increase the return on investment overall.

SEO Tips for Your Marketing Campaign

17 SEO Tips for Your Marketing Campaign

When you begin your SEO campaign, it can be difficult to separate myth from truth. It seems everyone has different ideas of what works and what doesn't, and even someone who's been in the business awhile can get confused as SEO trends, tactics, and techniques change over the years.

While there may be much discrepancy, these 17 tips for SEO are something most experts seem to agree on. Following these rules, you can avoid some common mistakes and launch a successful campaign.

1. Perform keyword research. This is a very important step in your SEO campaign, before you even begin. Thoroughly research all keywords you may want to use - this can make a huge difference in your strategy.

2. Don't use the same Metas for every page. All your Meta and Title Tags should be unique for each page. Also, make sure to use keywords and write an engaging title.

3. Don't try to deceive the search engines. Don't overuse keywords, hide text, or create doorway pages. These are unethical forms of SEO. With the current trend of search engines favoring ethical SEO, your best practice is to create a well-thought out web page, that has unique content, and is easy to navigate.

4. Avoid low quality links. Not all links are created equal. Instead of getting links from link farms, research the popularity of websites before getting links from them. Alexa ranks are a good way to check popularity, as well as page rank. However, if your own page rank is rather low, fret not, for this will be explained below.

5. Avoid using links with the same anchor text. Search engines do not like links that use the same anchor text and description that are repeated in short bursts.

6. Don't overdo reciprocal links. Reciprocal linking can be valuable, but only when done in small doses, and if the links are relevant to your business. Also, make sure to have a diverse set of links, including links to blogs, forums, articles, social media bookmarking, and more.

7. Don't become obsessed with page rank. Page rank is only a small part of your entire SEO campaign. The way pages are ranked is actually rather complicated, and is based on many factors. It is possible for a lower ranked page to actually be quite successful and get lots of visitors. So if your page rank is low, don't freak out.

8. Do network with other Website owners. This is a great way to learn, get advice, and exchange links. These relationships can be mutually beneficial.

9. Make site updates regularly. Sometimes, an out-of-date website can be worse than no website at all. Make sure you update regularly with current information, news and events, and fresh content. If you want to catch the eye of the search engine robots, regular updates are a great way.

10. Don't compete for single keywords. Instead, compete for keyword phrases. This will make it more likely that your site will show up as a relevant search result. For instance, if your company sells jewelry boxes, and you attempt to compete for the term "boxes," many people who find your site will be looking for cardboard boxes, hat boxes, and other types of boxes, and will likely not stay on your page once they realize you don't sell what they're looking for. If you compete for the phrase "jewelry boxes," it's more likely that potential customers who are looking strictly for jewelry boxes will find you.

11. Research your competition. It's always good to know what the competition is up to, including what they are doing on their website, where they are getting links, etc.

12. Design your Website to be SEO friendly. There is definitely an SEO strategy when it comes to website design. Avoid heavy Flash and lots of graphics, since search engine robots crawl the text, not images. Good Meta and Title Tags are a must, as well as fresh and engaging content. If you're hiring someone to design your website, look for someone who is an expert in organic SEO.

13. Use text links instead of images. If using JavaScript, text links are important since spiders won't follow JavaScript.

14. Keep localization in mind. There are several benefits to reaching out to the local audience. Aside from gaining local customers, including location-based keyword phrases, like "detriot auto body shop," will help you because you will have less competition for that keyword.

15. Don't ignore the power of content. Nothing drives a Website like good content. Make sure your content is engaging, original, and well researched. Use keywords strategically (so they fit in with the natural flow of text).

16. Always proofread. This step should be a given, yet it's not uncommon to see typos and content mistakes on web pages. Aside from providing incorrect information, mistakes, as well as typos, make a web page and its company look unprofessional.

And most importantly...

17. Don't Give Up! SEO is not accomplished overnight. It can be a long process and takes lots of work and sometimes trial and error. Keep up your effort and don't give up!

Your Website Promotion

Website Free Promotion

You are welcome to A Promotion Guide. If this is your first visit, you might want to take the time to read through this page. I hope that the very important thing for those who has already created a web page or blog and have not yet any traffic to the resource is to read carefully this free step-by-step website promotion tutorial.

No doubts that your site is brand new and that you haven't done any website promotion work yet. Believe us that submitting of the url needs appropriate skills and ware. So, if you have submitted your link to a few search engines or registered your site with a couple of directories it will only gain a small practical effect.

You should know that the promoting of your site takes a lot of time and may involve waiting several weeks or even months to get into certain directories and search engines. Though, a great deal of them is commercial, but there are a lot of free ones. So, you must choose the way you want to register a link manually or using some special software. There is also another way to use assistance of the some special webs which guarantee quick and qualified submission of your link. Anyway the registration in search engines should be started at Google, Yahoo and Bing for free of charge.

But remember, that to Yahoo you can submit a link only in case you are registered and already have an account at Yahoo.com. Though, submitting to Yahoo you also automatically submitting your link to Altavista, AllTheWeb and some other engines as well. We recommend you to read an article about Yahoo-specific guidelines and hints on the internet too.

Here you find some links for free submission to search engines. Several other good links of the catalogues, classified directories and search engines are already given on the Artsgeo weblinks web page.

Thus, they say that “submitting to directories is easy and doesn't require much effort. It's ensuring that your submission will be accepted that makes this task a hard one.”

Very important is also to start submission with the Open Directory Project. While your site has to offer good and unique content to be accepted to the ODP. usually, its editors review sites quickly and won't reject them without a good reason. To mention a few, HotBot, Excite, Infoseek and Lycos submission is also very useful to claim their own share of the searching industry.

In the conclusion, we hope that the information you have read on this blog will give you some fresh ideas on how to improve your ranking and get more traffic to your site.