Social Media Optimization’s impact at your Web site

June 28, 2007

Social Media Optimization’s impact at your Web site

Over the last year or so, "social media" has quickly become the next "big" thing online. A plethora of social communities with names like Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Wikipedia and YouTube have popped up to connect people who share common interests.

As impressive as all that may sound, what does it actually mean to you, the operator of a small- to mid-sized ecommerce site? What benefits can you reap from social media optimization (SMO), and how should you approach it?

First, let’s review what SMO is. In a nutshell, social media optimization is the use of any sort of content that creates buzz within a specific community and attracts audience participation.

A good example is Digg. At this site, Digg community members identify news stories and articles they like by "digging" them or express dissatisfaction by "burying" them. The upside is that stories with a large enough number of "diggs" make it to the front page of a Web site that can attract literally thousands of visitors within a very short time period.

Let’s take another example. StumbleUpon is a service by which users suggest Web sites they like in specific categories so other users can randomly check them out at their leisure. The name comes from the site’s toolbar, which allows people to "stumble" from site to site within the preferred category. If you create a profile and consistently recommend interesting sites of good quality, then your recommendations will begin to carry weight and eventually may help you promote your own Web site.

Each social media Web site has its own twist and attracts a slightly different audience. Each is likely to have different requirements for content or Web sites if they are to be "optimized."

The benefits of exploring these opportunities include large surges of traffic (landing on the front page of Digg brings as many as 20,000 visitors within a few days), potentially hundreds of new backlinks that can help in your other SEO efforts (viral content spreads quickly and attracts attention from others), and company exposure to a brand-new audience.

Social media optimization is an intricate and complex process. Here are a few resources for additional information:

The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization: 13 Rules of SMO

Building a Large Audience For Your StumbleUpon Account

References:

1. Articles on Social Networking | Web 2.0

$The New Influencers: A Marketer\'s Guide to the New Social Media$

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under Marketing, Search Engines | Leave a Comment

Web Hosting — IPowerWeb Announces Biggest Sale EVER!

June 27, 2007

To celebrate the Fourth of July, IPowerWeb has announced its biggest sale EVER!

IPowerWeb’s normally-priced $7.95/month Pro Plan hosting package will be discounted to the extremely low price of $4.95/month. That’s almost a 40% discount!

This discount is available for their 12-month and 24-month plans. Hosting accounts will renew at regular rates.

This sale won’t last long. It is a limited-time offer, expiring July 6th at Noon (PST) .

One of our websites, TheCertificationHub.com has been hosted by Ipowerweb since 2000 — and we are very satisfied with Ipowerweb’s services.

Ipowerweb is one of the best web hosting companies on the Internet — A first class hosting company which we highly recommend.

Here is what you get:

300 GB Hosting!
2,500 Email Accounts
Website Builder
Free Domain Incl.
Host 6 Domains in 1

Limited-Time Offer! Hurry! Deal Expires July 6th at Noon (PST)

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under Marketing, Promos, Web-Dev-Design | Leave a Comment

Insider information about Google’s ranking algorithm

June 19, 2007

The New York Times has recently published an article about Amit Singhal. Amit Singhal is in charge of Google’s ranking algorithm. The interview reveals some interesting facts about Google’s ranking algorithm.

Google knows that its algorithm is not perfect

"Tweaking and quality control involve a balancing act. ‘You make a change, and it affects some queries positively and others negatively,” [...] ‘You can’t only launch things that are 100 percent positive.’"

"[...] Any of Google’s 10,000 employees can use its ‘Buganizer’ system to report a search problem, and about 100 times a day they do."

Why Google changes its algorithm

The article lists a concrete example why Google could change its algorithm:

"Recently, a search for ‘French Revolution’ returned too many sites about the recent French presidential election campaign — in which candidates opined on various policy revolutions — rather than the ouster of King Louis XVI.

A search-engine tweak gave more weight to pages with phrases like ‘French Revolution’ rather than pages that simply had both words."

If you want to get high rankings on Google, it’s important to know whether you should use your keywords as a phrase or as separate words on your web pages.

This can be different for different keywords. Fortunately, there is a way to find out how you should use your keywords on your web pages (see below).

PageRank is just one of many factors

While PageRank was very important when Google was new, Google now uses many more factors to determine the rankings of web pages:

"PageRank is but one signal. Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years."

There are many factors that influence the ranking of a web page on Google. If you want to get high Google rankings for your website, then you have to work on all of these factors.

How can you optimize your web pages for Google’s algorithm?

Which factors are important for Google? Does your website have these factors?

You don’t have access to Google’s internal tools. How can you find out whether it is better to have the words "French revolution" as a phrase on your web pages or if you should use both words separately (see example above)? Which other factors are important for high Google rankings?

That’s why we developed the top 10 optimizer tool. IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer demystifies Google’s ranking algorithm by analyzing the top ranked pages. IBP tells you in plain English where to put the keywords on your web pages and which factors lead to top 10 Google rankings.

The information is specifically for your website, your keywords and for Google (you can also select other major search engines). If you haven’t used the top 10 optimizer with your web pages yet, give it a try.

Search Engine News

Google improves search for fresh document
Google eBay - data on the tiff.
AdWords quietly rolls out IP blocking as a new feature.
Google’s government aid.
Google Search plugin without personalized search.
A conversation with Google’s personalization guru.
Local Search for the United Kingdom launched.
Google & Yahoo battle in search roulette.
Google’s breakneck changes stoke privacy fears.
Microsoft launches improved MSN Mobile.
Clustysearch engine goes mobile.

Article Content - Courtesy: Axandra.com

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under Search Engines | Leave a Comment

Conversion Rate Optimization Vs. SEO

June 16, 2007

By Frederick Townes

Within the e-commerce sphere, the “mind games” between site owners and search engine designers have focused on search engine optimization (SEO). After all, you can’t make a sale if visitors aren’t reaching your site. However, as the web marketplace grows exponentially more competitive, attention among webmasters and site owners has turned to conversion optimization – converting site visitors to buyers.

Conversion optimization has nothing to do with SEO. SEO is designed for spiders and bots. Conversion optimization is based on two factors only: the needs and motivations of human site visitors and persuasive site content and design to encourage humans to make a purchase or perform some other action. Any other considerations are sub-sets of these two factors in conversion optimization strategies.

Measuring Human Motivations and Site Effectiveness

SEO is based on the development of numbers (metrics) that are immutable. Numbers are numbers, there’s no debating that. The interpretation of site metrics, on the other hand, is a true combination of art, science and testing.

Assessing conversion rate optimization must apply a completely different approach to data gathering and the accurate, actionable assessment of the cold hard facts (percentages and such) that are the basis of SEO.

How, for example, do you quantify the emotional response of visitors? What method do you use to collect utile data? And how can you apply the scientific method to the analysis of human motivators and to site designs that will appeal to and persuade those motivators. Go read the rest of the article

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