Social Media Marketing Tips

<p> On may 29th, 2007 I published <a href="http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/05/29/top-15-social-media-marketing-resources" title="Top 15 Social Media Marketing Resources">this article</a> about 15 Top Social Media Marketing Resources which was picked up by Web-Pro news and got a lot of traffic and buzz: that was right after I reserved socialmediasystems.com (it was available then for under 9 dollars!) and formed Social Media Systems LLC in March of 2006. </p> <p> Now, as is usually the case with me, there are a million copy cats out there claiming to be experts in &#39;social media marketing&#39;, as traditional SEO becomes outdated (related article: see <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/blog/the-slow-death-of-seo-as-we-know-it/">The slow death of SEO</a>). </p> <p> Now, since things have changed so much again, that it is time to update the list: 50 Social Media Marketing Resources you cannot be without: </p> <p> </p> <p> 0.0 <a href="http://twitter.com/" title="twitter global chat">Twitter.com</a> is all the rage - global chat with instant Google search rankings! Hook it up with your digg.com tohappen automagically! </p> <p> 0.1 <a href="http://ideapals.org/" title="ideapals.org free crm, project management, jobs, rsvp">Ideapals.org</a> - the best features of Linkedin, Meetup, and Basecamp - share and get ideas, find and post jobs,meet locally and online, start or expand a business, manage a project: it is all connected, and it pays in NODs (natural overtures of distinction) </p> <p> 1. <a href="http://roboform.com/" title="robo form password, bookmark, and identity organizer and browser plugin">RoboForm</a> is still on the list: with literally hundredsof profiles, all with usernames and passwords, I honestly do not know what I would do without Roboform to keep track of them: i can even create an identity for a client and automatically fill in the details into any number of web forms for them: I use the paid version but there is also a free version for the beginner. </p> <p> 2. <a href="http://tubemogul.com/" title="Video syndication, distribution, statistics">Tubemogul.com</a> Very cool, you upload your videos to one place, and they are automatically syndicated to up to 20 others in optimized format, including Youtube and Google video! You can track statistics about your videos and do all kinds of cool things, a must have for video bloggers. </p> <p> 3. <a href="http://veoh.com/" title="Videom Storage and Sharing site">Veoh.com</a> Like TubeMogul, Veoh allows you to fill in a couple of usernames and passwords for Youtube and Google (but not as many), but Veoh has a very robust and attractive video player which displays the video nicely on your website, and allow for channels that make it very easy to show a streaming medleyof videos that you group together. We have had some issues with loading slowly at times ( with their explosive growth is size), but they are worth looking at for aesthetics, and we still use them some. In some cases you want the videos to be hosted and played on your website streaming right from Youtube for the sake of the rankings boost you get from the click-through traffic. </p> <p> 4. <a href="../../../" title="RealTown Localized Real Estate oreinted social media communities">Realtown</a>: Realtown is owned and fed by the owners of Real Estate Magazine (RISMedia.com), Epro, Lowes, InternetCrusade and many other established icons in the Real Estate industry. they have just re-done their site (went live in October) with new modern social networking features, and they are about to become the forums and local news areas for RISMedia.com with their new site launch. Any group at Realtown will rank immediately for longtail searches, just as those areas of RISMedia.com do now: I know this because I was consulted on how to insure that, and I tested it last week in my first post: it took less than an hour! They have established a way of dividing up neighborhoods by population instead of Zip codes, and they are about to go live in the communities area. I encourage the reader to join, join a group, heck start one, get into the Realtown store while there is room! What they are attempting to do (the grass roots localization of the web) has been attempted before, but I believe they have the resources and the software to pull it off, and they will have the reach any minute!. </p> <p> 5. <a href="http://plaxo.com/" title="open social contact management sync profiles">Plaxo</a>: Plaxo is kind of an online open-social contact management hub, which recently added profiles and many modern features to its already accessible from anywhere excellent Internet based contact management application - you can import your contacts from Outlook, Linkedin, Google, Yahoo and others - then sync them with the same and your cell phone, so that you can always stay in touch with many interactive features and restore everything at will - wonderful -plugs right into my Outlook. </p> <p> 6. <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/blog/2010-top-new-social-media-marketing-tools/Meetup.com" title="Social netoworking with teh whole world at will, with local actual meetup events and clubs">Meetup</a>: Social networking with the whole world at will, with actual local meet up events and clubs in person, great, I have contacted and secured businesss here and it is free. Why re-invent the wheel, start your local leads or affinity group here: it can feed your website, and you will rank instantly on google for the name of your profile! </p> <p> 14 of the 15 recomendations from last year still apply: we must have picked them well: here they are: </p> <p> 7. <a href="http://activerain.com/israeli" title="Social Media Networking for Realtors">Activerain - social networking profiles and blog for Realtors and vendors</a><br /> Most people do not notice that you do not need to be a Realtor to join, you can be a vendor like me, and the profiles and blogs are not bad for Search Engine Placement link-building campaigns. </p> <p> 8. <a href="http://alexa.com/" title="Alexa, the webinformation company">Alexa - Traffic and Website Statistics and Archived Information and Reviews</a><br /> An Amazon.com company, we use it to get quick information about any website according to everyone who has the Alexa toolbar - which collects a wealth of information and statistics. They also archive old websites, and provide links to reviews on amazon.com. </p> <p> 9. <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/" title="Associated Content Syndicators">Associated Content - Associated Content is a buyer and seller, syndicator of user-generated, user-filtered content</a><br /> One of the most successful and well traveled sites on the web, this site is a must for branding and link building: your clout and pagerank build as an author - you can even get paid for content, although that is not what I use it for. </p> <p> 10. <a href="http://del.icio.us/israelrothman" title="del.icio.us social bookmarking site">Delicious - social bookmarking, link-sharing</a><br /> You install a toolbar that allows you to keep a set of favorites online where you can access them from any computer, and share them with the world, if you like, as an online resource. Excellent for traffic building and link-popularity, I recommend that you add and use the toolbar. </p> <p> 11. <a href="http://digg.com/users/IsraelRothman/news/dugg" title="Digg.com sopcial bookmarking site">Digg.com - social bookmarking popularity-driven site:</a><br /> This site is great for traffic-building for your articles and blogs, and also for link-popularity for your main site and blog: users submit, describe, review, and rank each others preferences. It is also great for getting real-time feedback on what people actually like and do not like about what you and/or others who write stuff that you read may have to say. </p> <p> 12. <a href="https://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home" title="Feed aggregator Feedburner">Feedburner - a feed aggregator that allows you to monitor various statistics about your feeds,<br /></a>make them available in every format to your visitors, even sell advertising fed into the feed. </p> <p> 13. <a href="https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal" title="Google keyword picker tool">Google Adwords Keyword Tool - find out what words are searched for, and how much competition there is to rank for those words</a><br /> To use it intelligently, you must understand the concept of pack mentality: we track trends in key industries like real estate and get to where the market is going first; many Realtors search daily for the same things, but they are not always each others target market - so be careful how you interpret the results from such tools. </p> <p> 14. <a href="https://www.google.com/analytics/home/?hl=en" title="Google Analytics">Google Analytics Account - track everything through Google</a>:<br /> Again, it is essential that you understand that maketing is not just about what is happening right now, but also about what is changing, and what is about to happen; that being said, these are the most reliable numbers about your website, who visits it, what page they enter on, what page they exit on, and a wealth of other information. </p> <p> 15. <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/searchengineplacementguru" title="Linked in business to business social networking">Linkedin - most well-known business-to-business social networking site</a><br /> Linkedin was originally for job and employment placement services - it is a very full-featured business-to-business networking site. </p> <p> 16. <a href="http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/IsraelRothman/" title="Mybloglog.com blog syndication community">Mybloglog.com - Blog syndication, networking, tracking, resources, and communities</a><br /> Everyone with a blog should be here, and I highly recommend some of their tools, like the one that lets you see who has read this lately at the right of this page! I visit and network with them! </p> <p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/blog/2010-top-new-social-media-marketing-tools/">&gt;&gt;More here&gt;&gt;</a> </p>

<h2> Local Web Design Firm Gets It: Local User-generated, User-filtered Content is the Key to Rankings </h2> <div id="image_big"> <div> </div> <div> <div title="By giving away free blogs in Tulsa, Oaklahoma, BuilditDigital.com can create organic search engine rankings for clients"> By giving away free blogs in Tulsa, Oaklahoma, BuilditDigital.com can create organic search engine rankings for clients </div> <div> <a href="http://rothmanmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/tulsablogging.jpg"><img height="144" width="300" alt="tulsa blogging" src="http://rothmanmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/tulsablogging-300x144.jpg" title="tulsa blogging" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-434" /></a> </div> </div> </div> <p> This is what it is all about the race is on to capture <a href="http://builditdigital.com/">Tulsa Oklahoma&#39;a business blogging activity, and Tulsa local Web-design and social media marketing firm Builditdigital.com</a> is way out ahead!<br /> They obviously get that it will be the first ones to capture <a href="http://builditdigital.com/">Tulsa</a><br /> Tulsa Oklahoma Free community Blog<br /> Tulsa, OK 74101<br /> United States of America<br /> <a href="http://builditdigital.com/">Oklahoma</a> Area Businesses Community Blog activity and user-generated, user-filtered content that is rich with local words, addresses and real content that is local Tulsa Oklahoma key word - rich content that will dominate searches like Tulsa Oklahoma Web Design on Google and the others. </p> <p> The days of simple META tag creation and easy rankings are almost over, so you had better get a presence soon or your ship will have sailed! <a href="http://builditdigital.com/">Builditdigital.com Tulsa</a> <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/theme/572/oklahoma.html" rel="&amp;content_type=theme&amp;content_type_id=572" title="Oklahoma">Oklahoma</a> <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/topic/2337/web_design.html" rel="&amp;content_type=topic&amp;content_type_id=2337" title="Web Design">Web Design</a> firm and Social Media Marketing Agency will dominate <a href="http://builditdigital.com/">this Tulsa</a> <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/theme/572/oklahoma.html" rel="&amp;content_type=theme&amp;content_type_id=572" title="Oklahoma">Oklahoma</a> <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/topic/2337/web_design.html" rel="&amp;content_type=topic&amp;content_type_id=2337" title="web design">web design</a> search, and <a href="http://tulsablogging.com/">local searches for local businesses, by creating an aggregate of local content at Tulsa</a> <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/theme/572/oklahoma.html" rel="&amp;content_type=theme&amp;content_type_id=572" title="Oklahoma">Oklahoma</a> Area Businesses Community Blog ! </p> <p> By providing local businesses with free blogging, and by aggregate posting of local content from clients, they will dominate local searches ;-) Just like John Kitts does at Cityscoop.us: this is the power of MU Wordpress. </p> <p> It is all over but the crying LOL: now, what niche will you race to?! </p>

<p> <span dir="ltr" id=":1iv">2new plugins I would install on every wordpresss site<br /></span> </p> <div id=":1qn" dir="ltr" class="kl"> 1. Widget Context (allows you to specify which pages a widget will show up on, IE front page, just posts etc) </div> <div id=":1qo" dir="ltr" class="kl"> 2. Query Post (you can sort posts in a widget by any criteria you want ) </div>

<p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/">From The 2010 Rothman Guide &gt;&gt;more here&gt;&gt;</a> </p> <p> a. <strong>Not very:</strong><br /> Then you should hire someone who is, or quit now. Chances are that there are people more passionate and talented than you who are doing it already. You have to be passionate about it to compete with them.. You will need to love this enough to devote the time and attention to the project that are necessary for success. (Online marketing, and business in general, are time consuming, and competitive). </p> <p> b. <strong>Enough to make money</strong><br /> Make a decision about much time you can dedicate, because you are almost always going to be competing against dedicated entrepreneurs who devote all of their time to the pursuit of their dreams.. Unless you are somehow blessed with low-levels of competition (for instance you may be pursuing a geographically specific business, like a local dentist; or a super niche topic like classic Corvette restoration), you will need to dedicate time to the project, and there is no reason to start what you cannot finish, and/or win at.<a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/"><img height="450" width="600" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-219" title="money" src="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/money.jpg" alt="money" /></a> </p> <p> c. <strong>Very passionate. I live, eat and breathe it.<br /></strong>Excellent: You have a chance for success! </p> <p> d. <strong>It&#39;s what I will do for a living</strong><br /> Good: you spend some time already: you have a current knowledge about the market. You can incorporate your knowledge, talent, and expertise into a steady stream and improve your web presence with the value of that up-to-date content. It will be easier for you to maintain a daily routine If it is supporting you. Effective Internet marketing is about the creation and distribution of constantly updated real content. </p>

<p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/">&gt;&gt;from The Rothman Guide to building successful websites&gt;&gt;</a> </p> <ul> <li> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/202306_business_gesture.jpg"><img height="225" width="300" title="202306_business_gesture" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-337" src="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/202306_business_gesture.jpg" alt="202306_business_gesture" /></a><br /> Group all of your requests, like edits on features and send them all at once. You&#39;ll save the developer&#39;s time-- the time they need to make the edits </li> <li>Do not expect them to understand your verbal description of the graphics or look you want </li> <li>Prepare example sites and example graphics of what you&#39;re looking for. Send those along with any written descriptions </li> <li>Prepare a list of questions - if you have them - send them an email in advanced to phone calls or in-person meetings so they&#39;ll have time to prepare to answer your questions properly and fully </li> <li>Evaluate the design company based on merit and history before discussing specifics </li> <li>Choose someone to trust based on experience </li> <li>Listen to input from your chosen trustworthy project manager </li> <li>Do not ruin the effectiveness of the result by over-specking the work to arbitrary mandates that may increase the cost and/or reduce the effectiveness of the finished project </li> <li>Don&#39;t make it difficult to tell you the truth by being arbitrary because you do not want to believe it: a quality adviser will tell you things that you do not want to hear, because they are true </li> </ul>

<p> There are major changes underway int eh Real Estate industry: I have been hearing more and more about my clients opting out of the local MLS because of outdated modes of doing business, outdated software, and anti-competitive practices in the industry: so I decided to do a Little research this morning, and five minutes yielded this: </p> <p> <a href="http://toreal.blogs.com/toronto/2009/11/competition-bureau-acts-to-cut-mls-fees.html">From this article in Toronto Real Estate Intelligence:</a> </p> <p> &quot;Details of a settlement have yet to be decided, but the bureau&#39;s findings are expected to have a profound impact on the real estate industry - by permitting more innovative discount brokers into the market while allowing sellers to list their properties less expensively on the Multiple Listing Service. </p> <p> With a membership of more than 96,000, Ottawa-based CREA is the largest real estate organization in Canada and represents the majority of the nation&#39;s Realtors. </p> <p> &quot;The Bureau is concerned that CREA&#39;s rules have restricted consumer choice and limited the scope of alternative business models,&quot; says an internal memo by CREA president Dale Ripplinger. &quot;Unfortunately, the Bureau seems to believe that CREA&#39;s rules ... create restrictions and barriers.&quot; </p> <p> The bureau launched its investigation in 2007. Consumers have complained in the past about high realty fees and the need for more affordable services. The vendor of an average-priced $400,000 home in Toronto can pay a commission of as much as 5 per cent, or $20,000. </p> <p> &quot;This is absolute, total vindication,&quot; says Lawrence Dale, an owner of now-defunct Realtysellers, a Toronto-based discount broker that closed in 2006. &quot;Once they&#39;ve reached their settlement it means that the average guy on the street will be able to choose their real estate services and pay less for them.&quot;&quot; </p> <p> There is much more, but let me skip to the chase: i have been beating this drum for ten years: that the MLS&#39;s for the most part are doing an absolutely terrible job for their members: if you have a progressive MLS, or have opted out, here is a blueprint for successfully getting your listings out there, then using them as tombstone style ads forever bringing you traffic when they are sold: </p> <ul> <li>Have a blog and RSS feed that originate from your website, available in every possible format to cater to overseas as well as US clientele </li> <li>Blog your listings, and/or other peoples listings you want to sell </li> <li>Digg.com your blog posts (do not over-due the bookmarking sites, it can hurt you: digg.com is safe) </li> <li>Digg.com can sync with your Facebook and twitter accounts, be your own subscriber and Facebook and tweet your diggs </li> <li>Tweeting will put your stuff instantly on top of Google organic search for that day, so be thoughtful about timing, and the title of your posts, diggs (IE: location, location, location, new real estate listing) </li> <li>When it is sold, mark it sold, and leave it there to be a tombstone ad documenting your effectiveness. </li> </ul> <p> There you have it, the down and dirty skinny from yours truly! </p>

<h2 style="margin-top: 2px;"> <a href="http://activerain.com/blogsview/1420177/2010-updated-102-ways-to-make-your-website-not-suck" rel="bookmark"><br /></a> </h2> <ol> <li> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/thumbs.jpg"><img height="209" width="627" title="thumbs" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-406" src="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/thumbs.jpg" alt="thumbs" /></a><br /> Make sure a new visitor can discern the who, what, where and why of your website within three seconds </li> <li>Write original content </li> <li>Make your posts scan-able </li> <li>Use pictures and other visual content </li> <li>Use a custom theme </li> <li>Have easy and multiple subscribe options </li> <li>Include blog author information </li> <li>Don&#39;t use too many categories </li> <li>Reference old posts and topic history </li> <li>Use spell check </li> <li>Link out to other relevant material, but not too many on the front page </li> <li>Have an opinion </li> <li>Use humor </li> <li>Write lists </li> <li>Make sure your blog&#39;s top post has content that will appeal to a first time visitor </li> <li>Use categories and keywords that actually describe your posts </li> <li>Identify the look for your blog, e.g. whether you want a corporate or informal look </li> <li>Market your blog content </li> <li>Encourage community building with <a href="http://ideapals.org/" title="free community,HR,Project management">third party services</a> </li> <li>Respond to comments in the comments section of your blog </li> <li>Give links to other interesting blogs and articles </li> <li>Don&#39;t overload the site with ads </li> <li>Have a blogging strategy </li> <li>Use a unique domain name </li> <li>Brand your blog </li> <li>Don&#39;t steal or duplicate other people&#39;s content </li> <li>Organize your categories </li> <li>Cite your sources </li> <li>Join conversations on other blogs and continue them with follow up posts on your blog </li> <li>Be controversial, but courteous </li> <li>Use a personal voice </li> <li>Write with passion </li> <li>Tell stories </li> <li>When writing about tips, show examples </li> <li>Try to merge advice with examples and stories whenever possible </li> <li>Write series of posts </li> <li>Write consistently </li> <li>Don&#39;t apologize for your opinion </li> <li>Provide resources to on topic sites </li> <li>Update your old posts and pages if possible </li> <li>Post updates to old posts and pages in new &quot;update&quot; posts </li> <li>Join on-topic communities and get involved in other conversations </li> <li>Be friendly </li> <li>Moderate spam comments </li> <li>Moderate overly negative or flaming comments if it&#39;s a business blog </li> <li>Don&#39;t go off on religion (unless it&#39;s a religious or strictly personal blog) </li> <li>Don&#39;t go off on politics (unless it&#39;s a political or strictly personal blog) </li> <li>Talk to your readers in second person occasionally, e.g. &quot;what do YOU think?&quot; </li> <li>Use humor to liven up dull material </li> <li>Use personal anecdotes to liven up dull material </li> <li>Get the audience involved </li> <li>Ask for contributions </li> <li>Listen when you get contributions </li> <li>Encourage user generated content </li> <li>Always have comments turned on </li> <li>Check your anti-spam software for false positives (everyone hates it when they spend time to comment and it disappears) </li> <li>Link to direct sources </li> <li>Give credit when you reiterate other people&#39;s ideas </li> <li>Recognize other quality bloggers and sites </li> <li>Don&#39;t be afraid to critique low-quality competing blogs or companies; the Blogosphere thrives on conflict </li> <li>Use catchy titles and keyword strings so you have sexy content as well as posts that can be found via a keyword search </li> <li>Use bulleted and numbered lists </li> <li>Use the bold and italic styles, but only one sentence or less at a time </li> <li>Use offbeat sources as well as the MSM (it&#39;s the Blogosphere; talk about other people&#39;s opinions) </li> <li>Write about what you know </li> <li>Write about what you&#39;re learning (just make sure to disclose that you&#39;re still learning to avoid backlashes if you misrepresent something) </li> <li>Write about where you think things are going. </li> <li>Write about where you think things have been </li> <li>Simplify complicated concepts, use easy language </li> <li>Cut the fluff </li> <li>Enable full feed </li> <li>Write content that isn&#39;t completely disposable </li> <li>Don&#39;t overdo the sensationalism </li> <li>Provide easy social bookmarking options </li> <li>Provide easy social media voting options (e.g. digg, reddit, netscape) </li> <li>Manage your blogroll or links </li> <li>Change things up once in a while </li> <li>Leverage new technologies </li> <li>Change your blog&#39;s look and theme at least every few years ( web design trends change) </li> <li>Keep the same naming conventions </li> <li>Have consistent navigation </li> <li>Use sub-navigation when appropriate to break general categories and pages down into more specific ones (categories pages, etc.) </li> <li>Use breadcrumb navigation </li> <li>Comment on press, links and awards the blog has received (let the readers know how you&#39;re doing) </li> <li>Disclose sponsorship or paid advertisements </li> <li>If you provide top ten lists or link lists please include why you found those resources valuable compared to the infinite other sources online </li> <li>Put sources, posts, and other information in context for new users / visitors </li> <li>Don&#39;t assume readers or visitors understand every acronym and neologism. Link niche words to Wikipedia or other references. </li> <li>Make your links stand out so they&#39;re easy to find </li> <li>Make your call to action stand out </li> <li>If you don&#39;t have a call to action, then make the blog&#39;s purpose very apparent. </li> <li>Monitor the Blogosphere for news and info on your blog topic; information moves faster through blogs than in the MSM (main stream media). </li> </ol> <p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/102-ways-to-make-your-website-not-suck/" title="The Rothman Guide to building succesful websites in laymans terms" target="_blank">From The Rothman Guide: &gt;&gt;more here&gt;&gt;</a> </p>

<h2 style="margin-top: 2px;"> This is becoming a pattern: </h2> <ul> <li>People hire me because my clients typically rank on Google organic search; </li> <li>but they do not tell me that they already bought some other service that did not work. </li> <li>In many cases they have bought multiple services that they do not tell me about. </li> <li>So I do what I do, then, </li> <li>for some reason they do not come up. </li> <li>Then I double check everything, doubling my cost </li> <li>Only to find that they are pinned to the top of page three on the Google organic search they covet </li> </ul> <p> If this is you, don&#39;t ask me to fix it. Do not fill in the questionnaire with duplicate spam from previous campaigns. </p> <p> <strong>Do not expect me to fix the penalized site on a fraction of the budget you used to get penalized in the first place.</strong> </p> <p> My best advice: start over again, and never post duplicate spam anywhere. </p> <p> <a target="_blank" title="thee rothman guide to building succesful websites" href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/">From the Rothman Guide</a> </p> <p> The Internet is filled with websites here and there offering reciprocal linking services, management, or automated software that handles your link building for you. A lot of individual webmasters spend hundreds of hours, and by that account, thousands of dollars (everybody&#39;s time is worth money; just because you do the work yourself doesn&#39;t mean you didn&#39;t invest in your website) trying to get as many links of all kinds as possible. Unfortunately for them, they&#39;re at best wasting their time and at worst hurting their site&#39;s ranking. The problem with most reciprocal linking campaigns / schemes lies on the individual pages that the links are traded and the fact that only the links are there, without any other content. While they might have once affected rankings when search was less sophisticated, spammy link resource pages have little to no inherent value in today&#39;s search engine arena, and Google&#39;s algorithms reflect this. </p> <p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/reciprocal-linking-services-link-trading-websites/"><img height="150" width="152" alt="spam" src="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/spam.jpg" title="spam" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-385" /><br /> &gt;&gt;More here&gt;&gt;</a> </p>

<p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/headsmacking.jpg"><img height="302" width="521" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-420" title="headsmacking" src="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/headsmacking.jpg" alt="headsmacking" /></a>1. Assuming we care about any intro </p> <p> 2. Not optimizing </p> <p> 3. Not enough information on website. </p> <p> 4. No referencing or no links to other areas when referencing. </p> <p> 5. No social media optimization or the ability to consume and share content on major social media sites </p> <p> 6. too much text, not enough images or video. </p> <p> 7. Only having 100% commercial content </p> <p> 8. Not being niche enough </p> <p> 9. Internal Pages are not structured to target any keywords so they&#39;re invisible. </p> <p> 10. Not updating often enough. </p> <p> 11. No call to action </p> <p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/">&gt;&gt;More here&gt;&gt;</a> </p>

<p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/"><img hspace="10" height="150" border="0" align="left" width="152" vspace="5" alt="spam" src="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/spam.jpg" title="spam" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-385" /></a>The internet is filled with websites here and there offering reciprocal linking services, management, or automated software that handles your reciprocals for you. A lot of individual webmasters spend hundreds of hours, and by that account, thousands of dollars (everybody&#39;s time is worth money; just because you do the work yourself doesn&#39;t mean you didn&#39;t invest in your website) trying to get as many reciprocal links as possible. </p> <p> Unfortunately for them, they&#39;re at best wasting their time and at worst hurting their site&#39;s ranking. The problem with most reciprocal linking campaigns / schemes lies on the individual pages that the links are traded and the fact that only the links are there, without any other content. While they might have once affected rankings when search was less sophisticated, spammy link resource pages have little to no inherent value in today&#39;s search engine arena, and Google&#39;s algorithms reflect this. They never come up in the regular search results; I almost never enter a query that returns a resource or link directory page on an individual&#39;s site and when I check analytic data on pages that keep link directories I find almost 0 entrances and 0 page views on those &quot;resource&quot; or &quot;link&quot; pages. </p> <p> Not to mention many of those services solicit links &quot;wherever&quot; they can, which includes sites in &quot;bad&quot; or penalized neighborhoods, and do all sorts of spammy stuff. Many forms of automated software send out spam e-mail templates irritating webmasters in their attempt to beg for reciprocal links and offering worthless links on directory pages in return. </p> <p> Even if one operates a mini link directory full of links, they are most often worthless, no content link pages that don&#39;t help and could hurt. Google may track both trusted and mistrusted websites, giving positive or negative value to each link. They may also have a separate penalty or ranking decrease for sites that match certain manipulation signatures. For example, if 90% of a site&#39;s links are from reciprocals or they&#39;re linking to bad/ spammy sites on their reciprocal links pages, they&#39;re in trouble. </p> <p> I think that even if you make sure not to link to any sites that have mistrust, but still take a site and gain 1,000 reciprocal links in a stereotypical link directory way with pages and pages of 10-20 links with no content other than the duplicated anchor text found on other sites, the website won&#39;t rank for anything and the net result of all that link trading would be nothing. </p> <p> In Matt Cutt&#39;s blog (google engineer and search celebrity), he specifically states that webmasters who abuse reciprocal linking will see negative results. This could potentially be calculated at the website or page level. Any individual site with too many reciprocal links in their link equation (like 1,000) or on the page level (I mean, what value is a page containing 10-20 reciprocals and nothing else?) may have the SEO value of every single one of those links discounted. There may be other penalties as well; search for Google -30 penalty and you&#39;ll find out what happened to some webmasters trying to game Google. </p> <p> If you&#39;re a new site, I would recommend getting some reciprocals, but find a way to work them into something of value, like your website&#39;s content. Link directories and link pages will not help you very much and are a waste of effort. If you&#39;re only getting a few reciprocals, you can put up a link page temporarily, then move on and spend the rest of your time doing the more important stuff like building content and promoting yourself. </p> <p> The most effective way to build links from topic specific, high ranking sites is to write articles (real content) and build profile links that link to your website form high page-rank sites. If you view the source of such a page, and there is &quot;no-follow&quot; written into the link code, the link will not help your rankings with what is called link- popularity. </p> <p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/">From the Rothman Guide to building Succesful Websites from start to Finish - a free online living e-Book</a> </p>

<p> The internet keeps &quot;evolving&quot; and search engines and social media sites will take into account more and more data. What will this mean for internet marketers?<a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/923625_archer.jpg"><img height="300" width="200" alt="923625_archer" src="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/923625_archer.jpg" title="923625_archer" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-368" /></a> </p> <p> Although Google is doing some of this now, as technology increases, personalized historical search data and end user behavior analytics (or which site you click on when looking at list of items and how long you stay there) will gradually become more and more important until they spark the next major shift in Internet marketing strategy. </p> <p> I predict technology will take the search market from being &quot;the popular web&quot; to a contest of usability combined with messaging. The stockier your site and the higher percentage of return visits, the more it meets the needs of the users who found it from the keyword searches you&#39;re targeting, the better it will rank. I wouldn&#39;t expect this to happen anytime soon, but it&#39;ll definitely be interesting when it happens. </p> <p> Take, for example, the keyword &quot;blue widgets.&quot; </p> <p> Currently, if you build a site on &quot;blue widgets&quot; and you become popular and encourage a lot of bloggers to link to your site using &quot;blue widgets,&quot; you may rank for that term, even if the majority of searchers finding your site from that search don&#39;t find what they&#39;re looking for and quickly bounce to another site. In the next wave of Search Engine marketing, if that scenario came to pass, Google would understand that your site wasn&#39;t meeting their needs and it would start dropping it in the regular search engine results pages (maybe it would continue to rank well if you applied a filter or did a blog search), while a less popular site that really met the needs of users searching for a specific keyword may start rising for that keyword, even if it doesn&#39;t have anywhere near the link popularity that the previous site had. </p> <p> Very interesting. <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/">&gt;&gt; From the Rothman Guide: More Here&gt;&gt;<br /></a> </p> <p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/"><img height="388" width="312" vspace="5" src="http://www.realtown.com/members/Israel/files/Rothmanguide(3).jpg" alt="The Rothman Guide - a complete giude to building succesful websites" /></a> </p> <p> </p>

<p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/laddersteps.jpg"><img width="177" height="244" alt="laddersteps" src="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/laddersteps.jpg" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-351" title="laddersteps" /></a>Once somebody has found your website by way of a search or a link, and they have clicked on your URL, they have already approved the Name of your blog: The most important aspect of internet marketing is crafting the message your blog as a whole tells a first time visitor; sometimes even before they read past the first line. This message comes from the title of your blog, the individual post title, the graphics, and the name. Marketing has many steps, but the most important is determining what message to send and to whom. </p> <ul> <li>What is your story? </li> <li>What does your blog title say and mean? </li> <li>What does your post title say? </li> <li>What do your graphics and message all say together when someone sees them for the very first time? </li> <li>What does your blog message say to it&#39;s reader? </li> </ul> <p> I&#39;m going to give some very specific examples, but before I go into some real life and hypothetical examples, I&#39;m going to clarify something: I&#39;m not just talking about making your website look pretty; <strong>in fact, you can have a very successful website that is ugly or plain and still have beautiful marketing, but that look will have to play into your message, and different looks, different ideas, and different trust factors can add strength to, or kill your ability to market your blog.</strong> Let&#39;s illustrate this with some hard examples: If all the websites could all contain the same article, which one gets read, which one gets put on the social networks, gets bookmarked, gets voted for on digg.com and stumbleupon.com, and gets all the attention online? Now I will give you a specific example of that paradox in context to bring together the overall connection between post, blog, and what message the reader will put together from the combination of thereof. Note that all the examples involve generalization; however, I think you&#39;ll understand exactly what I&#39;m talking about with these hypothetical situations: with the question above (which one gets the attention online): </p> <p> <a target="_blank" title="The Rothman Guide to building successful websites" href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/internet-marketing-crafting-the-message-part-1/">&gt;&gt;Read more here at The Rothman Guide Free E-book&gt;&gt;</a> </p>

<p> <a title="picking great domain names" href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/characteristics-of-amazing-domain-names/" target="_blank">From The 2010 Rothman Guide to building Successful Websites:</a> </p> <ul> <li>short </li> <li>pronounceable </li> <li>spelled as it is sounded*** - If you have a domain name spelled differently than it sounds, you are going to get phone calls and emails from people who went to the wrong site and mistakenly thought it was yours. Also, people have an easier time remembering words they can phonetically say, spell, or sound out. Try it on yourself. Compare yourself with Google, Yahoo, Amazon, MoviePals. </li> <li>unique for what the website does - This is easiest to explain with an example: Imagine all 5 websites that sell movie tickets; which one stands out to you? MovieTickets, TheaterTickets, BuyFilmTickets, ShowTickets, Fandango. Fandango, out of that list is much easier to remember for it is unique in that group. Now if there were a bunch of names like Fandango, the more specific general domain name could be better in that case. Now take a look at this list: Fandango, Zimbando, Dingwoble, CantoMin, MovieTickets. So where to the real lists come from? What other domain names or competing domain names will be displayed in the same list as your website? We&#39;ll get more into this in the Internet marketing section of this guide. For now, the list is going to be of competing websites that are in the same industry, going after your same target market. </li> <li>You can get all the major TLDs that are also available - This is so that no one can copy you, or steal your traffic by copying the domain name. </li> </ul> <p> <strong><em>Interesting fact</em></strong>: we reserved socialmediasystems.com and .org for $8.95 each in early 2006! </p> <p> How did you pick your domain? I personally believe that there is still always a good one if you think about it long enough. </p>

<p> From <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/custom-themes-and-stretching-your-graphic-design-budget/">http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/custom-themes-and-stretching-your-graphic-design-budget</a>/: </p> <p> <strong>Custom Theme</strong> </p> <p> If you want to make your website look completely unique and have full control over the visual elements and you&#39;re using a content management system, you&#39;re going to want to have a custom theme. There are multiple ways you can go about doing this and some services that can greatly reduce the production time involved. You can create a design in photoshop and provide the psd file to a service that converts psd files into WordPress themes for several hundred dollars. If you are not proficient with Photoshop you can use a service like 99designs.com or use a freelancing site to create a custom theme design for you.<a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/"><img height="224" width="300" alt="wallet" src="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/files/2009/11/wallet.jpg" title="wallet" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-307" /></a> </p> <p> <strong>How to stretch your graphic design budget and get the most out of your look.</strong> </p> <p> 1. Use stock photography and stock graphic design<br /> 2. Use public domain and royalty free images.<br /> 3. Modify an existing theme instead of building it from scratch<br /> 4. If you want a custom theme, have a designer create a mockup in photoshop and then outsource the actual coding to a specialty company (see notes). </p> <p> <strong>Web 2.0 visual design styles that are fading out of use:</strong> </p> <p> 1. Drop shadows on in content images. Shiny surfaces<br /> 3. Reflection surfaces<br /> 4. Overly cartoony web 2.0<br /> 5. Drop down menus (breadcrumb is finally taking over for advanced navigation) </p> <p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/">&gt;&gt;more here&gt;&gt;</a> </p>

<p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/" title="Rothman Guide to building successful websites" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/</a> </p> <p> <a href="http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/" title="Rothman Guide to building successful websites" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><img height="388" width="312" title="2010 Rothman Guide to building succesful websites" src="http://activerain.com/image_store/uploads/9/9/6/1/6/ar125959059461699.jpg" alt="2010 Rothman Guide to building succesful websites" /></a> </p>