The stats for search engine ranking from comScore came out a couple of weeks ago, and Google has yet again shown its strength as number one. Although overall search queries were down across the board, Google achieved an average of 304,500,000 searches per day in June of 2009 and kept a 65 percent stranglehold on the [...]

So you have a blog. Great, but now what? Blogging can be for both personal use and professional use, and each should follow some sort of guidelines for properly managing the blog. How? I use the social networking site LinkedIn as a way to stay connected to certain fields, like the PR, marketing and communication [...]

By now, a lot of people are aware of the impact social media can have. USA SEO Pros utilizes many of the social media sites to successfully communicate with current and potential customers. While sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are obvious sites to look into in order to promote your business, there are other out there that are less well-known.

Several of these second-tier social media sites can be useful to get more exposure online and to introduce yourself to new audiences. Of course, USA SEO Pros has a Facebook account, but we also use some of these second-tier social sites. We don't mean second-tier in a negative way; we just mean that these sites aren't as popular as the ones top. They could eventually get there but right now they have a way to go.

Our USA SEO Pros Ideni.ca account is pretty interesting. It's a lot like Twitter, but has a very different kind of user base. Identi.ca does get as much of the celebrity/pop users, and it gets more of the programming, web-savvy user. Whatever you do on Identi.ca, don't talk bad about Linux, the community there is hardcore about it, and most of the popular topics surround open-source and Linux in some way.

Another interesting social site is Mahalo. Our USA SEO Pros Mahalo page allows us to create a SERP on the Mahalo search engine that automatically fills up with information about our company. While a lot of the content on the page is automated, it also gives users the ability to switch around and add more content to the page. There are also sections for text, so you can explain exactly what the page you created is about. It's a pretty clever set-up, and can be a cool tool for companies, just make sure you aren’t too biased when you make your page.

There are a lot of second-tier sites that don't quite make the main stream cut. A lot of these sites have something slightly different to offer when compared to the top of the crop. It might be a good idea to go check out some of the less well known social sites when you begin your social media campaign, you might be presently surprised by what you end up with.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Now that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is public and the details have been hashed over by blog after blog, the dust is settling, and we are perhaps getting a clearer picture of what to expect in the future. Bing and Yahoo will keep their own branding, but Yahoo’s search results will be powered by Bing. Great – but [...]

Ever Friday SEOmoz puts together a great video to help people get better at online marketing in some way. I often find that these videos are a great jumping off point to dive deeper into specific areas of the SEO and SEM industry. This week's video had to do with structuring and optimizing your site for the things you're trying to sell.

There are some great points in the video about to focus on certain area of your site in order to bring in and sell the things that you believe will be the most successful. If you have a site that sells thousands of products, it isn't a good idea to try to promote each of those products equally, it would spread yourself too thin. Instead, pick the products that you want to feature and focus on those.

By optimizing for specific products, you're able to get stronger rankings for those and drive more business to your site. It's better to have a few #1 rankings for your products than have all of your products deep down in Google where no one ever looks. If you want to promote specific product pages, you'd go about it in the same way you would promote any other page on your Web site. Make sure to get some good links, good content, and a reason for people to pay attention to the page.

The full video is below, so if you haven't seen it yet, it definiely something to check out. It's tough to go wrong when you're taking advice from Rand Fishkin and company.

 

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Architecture for Commerce with Dr. Pete from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »