Facebook has a save feature that lets you save links, places, music, books, movies tv shows and event posts.   The save feature works on both Facebook and the mobile version.  But remember, the save feature doesn’t work for regular status updates and photos. It is just for the status updates with .

Save Content From Your Facebook Feed – On both your computer and mobile device

To save a link you want read later, click the down arrow in the upper-right corner of the post and choose Save “Name of Article.”

To Find your saved articles

On your computer, check the sidebar under Name and you’ll see a link called Saved.

On Your Iphone click the more button at the bottom of the app and you will see a the Saved Link.

If your business has a Facebook presence this is good news.

Your content now has an opportunity to be saved for later!   Previously the audience might see your post and be interested but perhaps didn’t have the time to read your article immediately. Once your article was out of sight, it was pretty much forgotten. Now if your audience sees something they are interested in, they can save it and easily come back to it later.

Remember though, If a Facebook post doesn’t have a link preview, readers can’t save it. SO you will want to make sure your status updates include links to your blog posts and website.

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What this question really translates into, is at what frequency should I post new content to attract and retain readers?

My answer is always, as much as possible!

If you want people to visit your site regularly, you are going to need to add fresh new content constantly.  Much like you would not buy a newspaper that was just a repeat of yesterday’s news,  readers are not going to return to your site if there is nothing new to see.

That being said, I think it is important to set some realistic posting goals and do whatever it takes to reach these frequency goals.

Most small business owners don’t have the luxury of having a dedicated person to manage their content creation.  This means posting a new blog post every day would not be a realistic goal and one you will likely end up failing at.

Perhaps, your blog is going to be more of a weekly newspaper, or monthly periodical. That is fine, as long as you are consistent in your posting. Not keeping your posting goals can frustrate your readers and may cause them to stop visiting your site.

What are the Advantages of High Frequency Blog Posts?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Blog posts create new entry points for your website and allow you to optimize for a variety of keyword phrases that may bring new visitors to your site.   Blog posts allow you to focus on your keyword phrases in a much more targeted manner.  Not only do site visitors have an opportunity to arrive at your site on any of your regular web pages, but each of your blog posts becomes a potential portal to your website.

Position Yourself as an Expert

Blogging frequently will help position you as an expert in your market.  Sharing your knowledge and expertise will keep visitors coming back to you for more information.   When they have questions, they will know where to look for answers and who to contact.

Generate Readership (Repeat Visitors)

Much like you grow an email list, it is important to grow your blog readership, particularly if you plan to monetize your blog.  Adding frequent content is a great way to get visitors to subscribe to your feed or to return to your site.  As your readership grows, you can use your blog posts indirectly promote your products or services.

Social Media Marketing

More content means more opportunity for your visitors to share your content. Make sure you have made it easy for your site visitors to share your content on popular social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr). Social media sharing of your blog posts will help drive traffic to your site and will help with SEO by increasing your search engine rankings.   (Tip – make sure you are sharing your blog posts on your own social media profiles too!)

Ideas for Generating Blog content

Coming up with fresh ideas for your blog posts can be one of the biggest challenges for small business owners.  I like to keep a notebook where I write down your ideas as they come to me.  This way I can look back through my ideas to choose a topic to write about.

If you have lots of ideas you can create a content calendar where you can plan out your content for the next several weeks, months or even the full year.

Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block

• Answer the frequently asked questions that you receive from clients or prospects
• Share information on new products or services
• Share daily information about your business operations or successes – what new projects are you working on?
• Provide how-to information
• Scan industry news and share information
• Invite guest bloggers (From the industry or from your staff)
• Done-for-you blog posts – Hire a content creator on a regular or one-time basis to supplement your own blog posts.
• Ask your clients or customers about their biggest challenges
• Interview industry leaders
• Brainstorm with staff or colleagues
• Review your analytics and write about commonly search for terms.

I am sure you can see advantages of consistently adding frequent content to your website and how it can help generate new traffic and repeat traffic to your website.

What is your biggest challenge to creating new content for your blog?  Share it in the comments below.

The post How Often Should I Blog? appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

• I just launched a new website yesterday and my website doesn’t show up when you search on Google! What the heck did my web developer do (or not do)?
• My site has been online for 2 weeks and I still can’t find it in a search.  Is this normal?
• I can only find a couple of my webpages in a Google search. How long until my entire website is indexed?

There is no quick and easy answer to any of these questions.  

In fact, it is important to note that websites are not automatically added to Googles search results and there is no guarantee that any site will be indexed and included by. Google uses a complex algorithm to determine what sites and pages to index and include in their search results.  That means that same algorithm is excluding websites from their search results.

However, unless your website is making use of black hat SEO or violating other Google best practices,   your website should eventually be indexed with no issues.

Unfortunately, there is no fixed time period for your site to be included in Google’s search results. Typically, it can take anywhere from 4 days to 4 weeks (or more) to be indexed.

What can you do to help speed up your inclusion in Google’s search results?

• Create a XML site map and submit it to Google through Google’s Webmaster Tools. This will make it easy for Google to find and crawl all your website pages.
• Make sure that every page is reachable through a text link. This can be part of your site navigation or inline text links.
• Make sure your social media profiles link to your website and be sure to use your social media accounts to post links to your site or specific pages on your site.
• Think about what words your site visitors might use to when searching for your website and make sure those words are used in your site content.
• Make sure your <title> elements and image alt text are relevant and accurate.
• Get some quality inbound links to your site.  Inbound links are links from other websites or social media sources.  Make sure these links are coming from relevant websites.  Caution – Links from non-relevant or spam sites will actually hurt your website’s search results.
• Make sure your website is free from broken links, programming errors and bloated code.

Of course, even once your website is indexed, it doesn’t mean that your site will be performing well in google Searches.  Being indexed means that Google has found and crawled your site and has added you to their search results, but it doesn’t mean that your site is on page one for those results.

Getting to page one will involve more strategic SEO planning and optimization and is a topic for another day.

If you are struggling getting your website indexed or want to perform better in the search engines, feel free to contact me, to discuss your situation.

The post How Soon Will My Website Show Up In Google Search? appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

Changes to search engine algorithms has made social media interactions an important component in determining search engine rankings.   This means that your social media activity can influence and improve the search results your website receives.  So if you want to get or continue to get high search engine rankings you are going to have to include social media in your SEO plan.

Why social media needs to become a critical component of search engine optimization strategy.

Get your content indexed faster

Social Media links can help search engines find and index your website and blog content faster. Analysis of the relationship between Google and Twitter has shown that Google bots visit new content within 1.5 seconds of the content being tweeted compared with 2.5 hours when you only link to the new content in within your site.

In fact, indexing time can be cut by as much as 50%.  That means content that may normally take 8+ hours to be indexed by Google, may now only take 4-5 hours.  If you receive more than 3 retweets your times get even better.

Get higher search engine rankings

Shares, tweets and likes help show that your content is popular therefore implying it is new, relevant, and useful which can lead to better search engine rankings.  Google’s rank algorithm looks at the credibility of your website and you will receive better rankings if your site is considered an authority in your industry.

One measure of your authority is two-way engagement between you and your followers.  It is not enough to just build a large follower base you need to establish meaningful and ongoing interactions with your followers. You can’t just rely on automatically sharing your blog posts on social media networks.  You must make an effort to actively engage with your followers.

Personalized Search Engine Results

Search engines personalize search results by showing different results to each user based on their search history and their social connections. Your website should get higher rankings for persons connected to you socially.

For example, two people (Rob and Gary) are both doing an internet search for silly cat videos.   Rob may see results that feature a story that his friend Alison previously shared and Gary may see results that his friend Carl previously shared.  The search engines are trying to make sure the results are relevant to each individual and in the most basic terms if your friend liked something, you might like it too.

So you can see how important it is to be building a network of followers that will help get your search results, in front of both your followers and their connections.

Faster indexing, higher search engine rankings and personalized search engine results are just three reasons why social media is no longer just option for internet marketers; social media has become necessary for achieving better search engine results.

The post Why small business owners can’t afford to ignore Social Media any longer appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

Broken links can be a source of frustration for your website visitors and can actually impact your SEO efforts.

Sites with a lot of broken links may be considered old and no longer maintained and this will hurt your search engine rankings.

What is a Broken or Dead Link?

A broken or dead link is a link that doesn’t work anymore or maybe never worked!   Broken links occur for 3 main reasons:  the page or content doesn’t exist anymore, a wrong url is used in the link or the content requested has moved to a new url and the link hasn’t been updated or a redirect hasn’t  been added to the site.

How to Check Your Website for Broken Links.

There are several tools you can use to make sure your website is free of broken links.

If you have a non-wordpress site, you can use online services such as Broken Link Checker to scan your site and generate a report of any broken links.  You can then use this report to correct any broken link issues with your site.

If you have a WordPress site, you can use a plugin like Broken Link Checker to monitor and notify you of any internal or external broken links on your site.

You should also set up Google Web Master Tools for your website.  This tool allows you to identify any crawl errors that Google has found. (Go to Health > Crawl Errors).  These can be broken links from within your own site or perhaps broken links coming from 3^rd party sites.

How to Fix Broken Links.

Once you have identified any broken links you need to fix them:

• Typos. Sometimes broken link may be a result of a typo or wrong url.  This is a simple as fix. Just find the link on your site and fix the URL.
• Page doesn’t exist anymore. If the page you are linking to is a 3^rd party site that no longer exists, you should remove the link completely.
• Page or content on your own website has moved.   If the website content has moved, you should set up a 301 redirect so that the old link is redirected to the new page on your website.  This is especially important when you do a website redesign and your content structure or url naming strategy has changed.  For example your old structure may have been  www.yourwebsite.com/somepage.html and the new structure is www.yourwebsite.com/somepage/  This change can result in a broken link.

Making sure your site is free of dead and broken links is an important part of your web maintenance.  If you have any questions about broken website links or how to fix them feel free to comment below or send me a message.

The post Finding and Fixing Broken Links on Your Website appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

If you are wondering about the success of your social media efforts on Pinterest, you will be happy to know that this month Pinterest introduced analytics.  With this new analytics tool, you will be able to monitor how users interact with pins that originate from your website.    Pretty cool!

So just what will these analytics tell you?

With the analytics, you will be able to see how many people pinned or repinned images from your site to their boards.    You will learn how many images from your site are pinned or repinned daily and how many people actually pinned or repinned your images.

You will also be able to see the exposure of your pinned images both in terms of impressions and reach.  Impressions will show you how many times your image has appeared on the main Pinterest Feed and reach will show you the daily average number of people who saw your images.

The analytics will also show you how much web traffic your site has gained directly from Pinterest.  Clicks will show you the daily number of clicks to your website and visitors will show you the number of people who visited your site from Pinterest.

Analytics will also show you your most repined images, the most clicked images and the most recent pins.  This information will give you a visual overview showing which of your pins are most popular.

How to Access Pinterest Analytics

In order to access analytics you need a business Pinterest account or you must have a website listed in your profile.

The first thing you will need to do, is convert your Pinterest account to the new look.   Hover over the profile menu and click Switch to the New Look.

Secondly, if you haven’t already done, so verify your website.  If you see your website in your profile with a check mark beside it you are already verified. If you need to verify your website, edit your profile and you will see a verify button next to your website address.  Click the button and follow the instructions. (Basically you will need to download a file and upload it to your website.)

Once you have verified your website you can access analytics.  Just hover over the profile menu and select analytics.

Take your time and review your Pinterest activity!

If you have questions about your Pinterest analytics, share them.

The post Pinterest Introduces Web Analytics appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

In this article, I am going to identify goals you should set for your blog and then provide some ideas on how to accomplish these goals.

Setting Goals for an Engaging blog

It is important to set expectations on how you want your site visitors to interact with your blog.

Goal # 1 – You want to receive frequent and relevant comments on your blog posts

• Are you receiving comments on your blog posts?
• Are you staying up to date on approving comments?
• Do you respond to comments posted to your blog?

If visitors are commenting on your blog it means that they are finding your blog posts interesting and worthy of a dialogue.  It is important to approve comments and to respond to questions in a timely manner.

Goal #2 – You want people to link to and share your content

Ideally, you want your visitors to share your content on Facebook. Twitter, Pinterest and other social media networks.

Goal #3 – You want visitors to subscribe to your feed or revisit your blog regularly

When you are providing valuable and frequent content your site visitors will want to subscribe to your RSS Feed or will revisit your blog.

Goal #4 – You want to build ongoing relationships with potential clients/customers.

The ultimate goal for your blog is to build a relationship with the website visitor.  If you have done a good job using your blog to position your business as an expert in the field, your visitors will transition from a visitor into prospect.  This will happen as the visitor signs up for your mailing list or contacts you for more information on your products or services.

Achieving Your Goal for a More Engaging Blog

Here are 10 tips for increasing visitor interaction on your blog:

1. Make it easy to comment – Don’t be afraid to ask your visitors to leave comments and make it easy for them to do so.  Don’t make your site visitors jump through hoops or turn over their first born before they can leave a comment.  Use a good spam filter like Akismet to help combat your spam and make it easy for visitors to leave a comment.
2. Make it easy to share – Make it super easy for your visitors to share your blog content.  Add share buttons for the popular social media networks, so your visitors just have to click a button.
3. Ask questions- Give your visitors a reason to respond by asking questions.
4. Use polls – Add a poll to your blog post so you can collect your visitors opinions on a particular topic.
5. Use giveaways or contests – Encourage visitors to share your content with a giveaway.  Ask your visitor to comment or share to enter to win. For example:  Use Twitter Hashtag #mybathtimefavorite to let us know, in 140 characters or less, which of our bubble bath scents is your favorite and be entered to win a $50 prize pack!
6. Be funny – Humor is a great way to engage visitors.  People who laugh and enjoy your content will want to return to read more. Share clever comics or memes that relate to your business.
7. Tell stories – Make your blog posts relatable by sharing stories that your visitors can identify with.
8. Use a catchy headline – Make sure your blog gets read by using a catchy or clever headline to attract attentions.
9. Be on topic and current – Visitors don’t want to read about something 3 years after it was relevant. Make sure your content is of interest.
10. Make the blog post easy to read – Make sure your blog post is easy to read by using short paragraphs and bulleted lists.  Include quality pictures and graphics to break up long sections of text.

Do you have other ideas on how to make your blog more engaging?  Share them with me!

The post 10 Tips for Making Your Blog More Engaging appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

1.  Think of a phrase or saying that is easy for you to remember. As an example, let’s use “I Like Bacon”. Take the first letter of each word ILB. Then add a couple of numbers that are easy for you to remember, let’s use 25. Next, add some characters like *#. Finally, add a small letter or two.

ILB*#25at

Now, that’s a good password! Take these ideas in any order you choose and have fun creating a powerful password.

2.  Another idea is to take two words like Black Dress. Insert numbers, characters and small case letters to create your own unique password. Example: *Black#Dress!

3.  If you Google “Password Generators” there are several tools that will create passwords for you. These won’t be as easy to remember as in steps 1 & 2. However, they do produce strong, secure passwords.

In some cases you may be limited to 8 or 10 characters for a password. Once you have a good technique for developing great passwords you will never draw a blank again.

It’s really tempting to use the same password for all of your accounts. I recommend using passwords that are completely different for your bank accounts and site access. Everyone who has a website should have their site access. If you don’t have that – ask your web person to provide that to you. Your bank account and website is a prime target for hackers. Keep them at bay with secure, strong passwords.

Choose a date every year and change all your passwords on that date. A date you will remember. A birthday, anniversary, holiday or January 1^st.

Do you have a good strategy for creating passwords? Post a comment and we will all learn something from your ideas.

The post 3 Steps for Creating Strong Passwords appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

Do you know what social media platforms will best reach your customers?

How often do you need to make posts?

Where do I come up with new content ideas?

If social media is starting to feel like social mania, here are some tips that will help you develop a social media plan that will have your business thriving.

Be in it for the Long Haul

It is important to understand that the benefits of social media are not instantaneous and it often takes time and a lot of hard work before you reap the rewards. You need to be prepared to make a commitment to your strategy and give it a chance (several months to a year) to blossom.   Of course there are indicators that you are making progress, for example,  increased engagement, or a growing following etc.

Make a Schedule

You need to create a comprehensive social media schedule and stick to it.   Haphazard posting will not keep your fans interested and certainly won’t help build your fan base.  In fact, most social media failure is a result of infrequent interaction.   Plan some social media posts in advance and use tools like Hootsuite to schedule them, but don’t forget to be spontaneous and share your thoughts as you have them.  Did some new products arrive? Share some pictures.  Did a customer compliment your staff? Share the story.  Did something funny just happen? Share it!

Know your Target Audience

There are many social media platforms to choose from and it is important that you know what social media networks your customers are using.   Look for your customers or products on popular networks to help identify where you already have an audience or presence.  It is completely okay to not have a presence on every social media site. Let’s face it most small businesses don’t have a social media army on staff and trying to manage too many networks is a recipe for disaster. It is always better to focus on one or two networks and do them well, than it is to try to do them all and end up doing them poorly.

Create Engaging Conversations

The information you are sharing will be critical to your success.    Don’t be limited by textual information, share pictures, infographics, videos and more.  It is fun to create teaser content to encourage followers to interact with you. “Guess who dropped by our office today?”  or “Facebook Fans, check back tomorrow for a sneak peek  product launch of our new A5632 Widget!”   Remember social media is all about starting a conversation and engaging your customer. Be sure to respond to customer comments and questions.  Successful social media marketing is a two way street.  If you have trouble coming up with fresh new social media content, don’t be afraid to get help.

Don’t let social media marketing get you feeling overwhelmed.  Use the tips above to develop a successful social media strategy for your small business.

Do you have other suggestions on how to develop a social media strategy? Share them below.

The post Avoiding Social Media Mania appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

A visitor sitemap is typically an orderly index of all your pages and is readable by the general public.  An XML sitemap is coded up using Extensible Markup Language (XML) and shares additional information with the search engine and is hidden from the general public.

What additional information does the XML Sitemap share?

An XML sitemap shares important information about each page (url) on your site:

• the date of the last update to the page
• how frequently the content of the page changes
• how important the page is in comparison to other pages.

Are there SEO benefits to adding an XML Sitemap to my site?

Absolutely! There are a few SEO benefits to adding an XML Sitemap to your website:

• Your sitemap can list all the pages on your site.  This is particularly useful on very large sites or sites with complex navigation.
• You can submit priority information about the pages on your site so the most important pages are more likely to be indexed.
• You can let search engines know how often the content changes and when the content changes so the search engines can crawl your site in a more efficient way.

Adding an XML Sitemap to your WordPress site.

There are several plugins you can use to add an XML sitemap to your site. These are my favourite two:

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin automatically generates and updates your XML sitemap when you make changes to your site.  It also provides the ability to manually add non WordPress pages to your sitemap.  Finally, this plugin also notifies the major search engines when you have added new content to your site.

Yoast SEO Plugin – If you are already using the Yoast SEO Plugin you already have the ability to add an XML sitemap to your site.  Just enable it in the dashboard!  This plugin also notifies the major search engines when you update your site.

Creating an XML Sitemap for non-WordPress sites.

You can still have an XML sitemap on a non-WordPress site but unless you install automated XML software it means more work for you.  To set up an XML sitemap manually, you can use an XML sitemap generator like http://www.xml-sitemaps.com which will create the XML file for you.  The only thing is you will need to recreate the file every time you update or add to your website. Bummer!

Take things one step further with Webmaster Tools

If you use Google Webmaster Tools or Bing Webmaster tools to monitor your site, you should submit your XML sitemap to them.  These are great tools to help monitor and assess the health of your site.

An XML sitemap is simply one SEO tool and is not a guarantee that any or all your pages will be indexed based only on your sitemap.  Google suggests that XML sitemaps are simply a hint for the search engines so it is not a replacement for a comprehensive SEO strategy. It is simply one more tool in your tool box!

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