Search Engine Optimization (SEO) News and Tips

Mobile SEO Best Practices

rank1st — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 16:24:09 +0000

Every year people spend more and more time on their mobile devices and tablets, but many websites still aren’t designed to account for different screen sizes and load times. Mobile optimization takes a look at site design, site structure, page speed, and more to make sure you’re not inadvertently turning mobile visitors away.

More and more people get online through their smartphone and tablet these days. So, it is important that we as designers and developers address how our websites are displayed on these devices.

Some Technical point to be considered while designing your Mobile Friendly Website.

Meta Viewport Tag

The meta viewport is an HTML tag for specifying viewport width and controlling page scale. Using this tag, we can set the page zoom when it is first loaded, the maximum zoom allowed for the page, and also disable zoom capability.

Below is an example of how we commonly add meta viewport tag inside the.

1	name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0;”>

You can also add it inside your stylesheet this way:

@-viewport { width: device-width;

}

The meta viewport tag is an indispensible tag (together with Media Queries) if you are building a responsive website. However, you can technically set viewport meta tag for non-responsive web design all the same.

Media Queries

Media Queries let you shift the styles of your website at specified break points. Not everything from your website can properly fit on a narrow viewport size of a mobile device.

By using Media Queries, you can add specific style rules for specific viewport width. We can also apply styles based on the screen orientation and the screen pixel density.

You can embed Media Queries either directly in the stylesheet link:

1	media=”screen and (orientation: portrait) and (min-width: 960px), projection” href=”style.css” />

Or code it inside the stylesheet, which is the most common way used by developers.

@media screen and (max-width: 960px) { /** Style Rules here **/

}

Modernizr

Modenizr is a JavaScript for browser/device feature detection. Browsers vary and they may or may not support certain features. When building a website for mobile you probably will use new and cutting edge features of CSS3 and HTML5, which unfortunately are not supported in earlier browsers (not everyone uses the latest of browsers).

Modernizr allows you to give fallback of functions and presentation for less capable browsers by adding extra HTML classes in the body tag and a set of method.

CHECK OUT:Getting Started with Modernizr

TouchSwipe

TouchSwipe is a jQuery plugin to enable touch interaction for websites (phone or tablet). It supports a set of common gestures like Swipe, Pinch, Zoom and Scroll.

With more devices dropping physical keyboards and enabling the screen for touch, you should consider applying this plugin on your website for a better and richer user experience.

iOS Icons

The first thing you see after unlocking your iPhone (or iPad) is the app icon. Apart from app icons iOS will also display icons for websites that have been added on the Home Screen.

To do this for your website, simply add the following link element within the tag.

rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”touch-icon-iphone.png” /> rel=”apple-touch-icon” sizes=”72×72″ href=”touch-icon-ipad.png” />

rel=”apple-touch-icon” sizes=”114×114″ href=”touch-icon-iphone-retina.png” />

Alernatively, you may remove those link elements, but ensure that the icons are saved in the root directory, and prefixed with apple-touch-icon-* on its name.

Splash Screen

Splash Screen is the first image that is displayed when users start an application. The screen tells the users that the app is loading. It is common to use the Splash Screen as an opportunity to show off brand identity.

To add it to your website, simply insert the following lines at the .

1	rel=”apple-touch-startup-image” href=”splash-screen.png” />

When users open your website through the Home Screen, the image assigned in this link element will be displayed briefly before users see the whole website.

Although using Splash Screen to display brand is actually against the guideline, but as long as the the Splash Image is very well designed and loads briefly, it can gives better user experience and adds a cool factor to your website.

Final Thought

The mobile device revolution has changed the way we, web developers, build websites. And, at least, these elements that we have discussed above should be included in your Web document to make your website turn out well for viewing on mobile platforms, like iOS and Windows 8.

Advanced SEO Services by Indian SEO Expert

rank1st — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 10:09:35 +0000

Advanced SEO Services by Indian SEO Expert

Competitive Intelligence for SEO:
Why do CI for SEO?
More Reasons for CI
How to Do Competitive Intelligence Analysis for SEO
Off page Factors
How to Analyze What You Collect
Social Media and SEO:
Social Media Platforms
Social Media Guidelines
Social Media and SEO
Measure Social Media Reach
Schema.org and SEO:
Schema.org and Google
Schema.or Resources
5 Schema.org Applications
Site Technical Issues:
Diagnosing Problems
URL Canonicalization
301 redirects
Crawler and Indexing issues
Source code Validation
Persuasive Copywriting for the Web:
Anatomy of A Sales Letter
Components for Building Sales Copy by Component
Examples by Category
Student Worksheets and Examples
The Power of Article Writing:
Life After Google Panda Update
Guidance on Writing Quality Articles
Easy Ways To Find Markets For Your Articles
Creative Commons
Press Releases and SEO:
Tips for Press Releases
9 Reasons to Optimize Your Press Releases
Tips for Professional SEOs:
New Customers the smartest Way
Build A Genuine Reputation Right Now
How To Convert Prospects to Clients by Establishing Credibility
Steps for Building Powerful Proposals
Building and Defining Your Business in the SEO Industry
Questions and Answers
Certification Exam

contact at iseweb@gmail.com

Twitter Optimization Tips

rank1st — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:24:07 +0000

Getting followers

1. Use an avatar image, a picture of a person, you is best
2. Only use a logo as avatar in case your brand is already established
3. Link your homepage in your profile, not LinkedIn or FriendFeed etc.
4. Let employees tweet as real people
5. Do not collect many more people you follow than you got followers
6. Describe yourself in a factual not anecdotal way
7. Tweet mostly in English if you’re from non-English speaking countries and target the global market
8. At the beginning promote your Twitter presence so that you gather at least 5o followers
9. Tweet at least a few times a week, do not lurk
10. Do not pose as someone else, especially not a young attractive females, unless you don’t care

Keeping followers

1. If you’re on Twitter for business, limit the private tweets to a reasonable percentage
2. Use direct message only for person to person conversation, not for broadcasting
3. Link to yourself only occasionally
4. Reply to other people, especially when addressed directly
5. Do not tweet dozens of times per hour, that’s flooding
6. Tweet manually not via automated scripts
7. Post tweets directly to Twitter not via crossposting from elsewhere
8. Vote on social sites for people you follow if you like their links but do not vote down if you dislike
9. Be polite and use informal but not too casual langauge
10. Keep conversations concise or otherwise move to another channel (private message, IM, email)

Getting people to react

1. Ask simple and direct questions
2. Break news stories or be among the first to spread them
3. Cover Twitter both on site and on your blog
4. Mention and socialize with already popular and active Twitter users
5. Tweet link to outstanding resources helpful to others
6. Blog about other tweets you read and elaborate on them or collect a few
7. Be outspoken about negative things that annoy you
8. Create a tool geared towards the Twitter audience
9. Be a human being, that is not only a business robot, mention private things others can relate to, like a cat
10. Give away freebies, or at least report when others do

Using the right tools

1. A Twitter client for the device you mostly use to access Twitter
2. A tool that helps you track the mentions of your name, brand or most important keywords
3. A way to gain quick overview on what’s going on, on Twitter
4. Some WordPress blog integration to connect your online presence to the Twitter community
5. A favorite short URL service with analytics, proper redirects etc.

Google Search Operators – Search Syntax for Google

rank1st — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 08:50:02 +0000

allinanchor:
If you start your query with allinanchor:, Google restricts results to pages containing all query terms you specify in the anchor text on links to the page. For example, [allinanchor: best museums sydney] will return only pages in which the anchor text on links to the pages contain the words “best,” “museums,” and “sydney.”

allintext:
If you start your query with allintext:, Google restricts results to those containing all the query terms you specify in the text of the page. For example, [allintext: travel packing list] will return only pages in which the words “travel,” “packing,” and “list” appear in the text of the page. This functionality can also be obtained through the Advanced Web Search page, under Occurrences.

allintitle:
If you start your query with allintitle:, Google restricts results to those containing all the query terms you specify in the title. For example, [allintitle: detect plagiarism] will return only documents that contain the words “detect” and “plagiarism” in the title. This functionality can also be obtained through the Advanced Web Search page, under Occurrences.

allinurl:
If you start your query with allinurl:, Google restricts results to those containing all the query terms you specify in the URL. For example, [allinurl: google faq] will return only documents that contain the words “google” and “faq” in the URL, such as “www.google.com/help/faq.html”. This functionality can also be obtained through the Advanced Web Search page, under Occurrences.

author:
If you include author: in your query, Google will restrict your Google Groups results to include newsgroup articles by the author you specify. The author can be a full or partial name or email address. For example, [children author:john author:doe] or [children author:doe@someaddress.com] return articles that contain the word “children” written by John Doe or doe@someaddress.com.

cache:
The query cache:url will display Google’s cached version of a web page, instead of the current version of the page. For example, [cache:www.fomaxtech.com] will show Google’s cached version of the Electronic Frontier Foundation home page.
Note: Do not put a space between cache: and the URL (web address).

define:
If you start your query with define:, Google shows definitions from pages on the web for the term that follows. This advanced search operator is useful for finding definitions of words, phrases, and acronyms. For example, [define:blog] will show definitions for “Blog” (weB LOG).

ext:
This is an undocumented alias for filetype:.

filetype:
If you include filetype:suffix in your query, Google will restrict the results to pages whose names end in suffix. For example, [web page evaluation checklist filetype:pdf] will return Adobe Acrobat pdf files that match the terms “web,” “page,” “evaluation,” and “checklist.” You can restrict the results to pages whose names end with pdf and doc by using the OR operator, e.g. [email security filetype:pdf OR filetype:doc].

group:
If you include group: in your query, Google will restrict your Google Groups results to newsgroup articles from certain groups or subareas. For example, [sleep group:misc.kids.moderated] will return articles in the group misc.kids.moderated that contain the word “sleep” and [sleep group:misc.kids] will return articles in the subarea misc.kids that contain the word “sleep.”

id:
This is an undocumented alias for info:.

inanchor:
If you include inanchor: in your query, Google will restrict the results to pages containing the query terms you specify in the anchor text or links to the page. For example, [restaurants inanchor:gourmet] will return pages in which the anchor text on links to the pages contain the word “gourmet” and the page contains the word “restaurants.”

info:
The query info:URL will present some information about the corresponding web page. For instance, [info:gothotel.com] will show information about the national hotel directory GotHotel.com home page.
Note: There must be no space between the info: and the web page URL.
This functionality can also be obtained by typing the web page URL directly into a Google search box.

insubject:
If you include insubject: in your query, Google will restrict articles in Google Groups to those that contain the terms you specify in the subject. For example, [insubject:”falling asleep”] will return Google Group articles that contain the phrase “falling asleep” in the subject.
Equivalent to intitle:.

intext:
The query intext:term restricts results to documents containing term in the text. For instance, [Hamish Reid intext:pandemonia] will return documents that mention the word “pandemonia” in the text, and mention the names “Hamish” and “Reid” anywhere in the document (text or not).
Note: There must be no space between the intext: and the following word.

Putting intext: in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting allintext: at the front of your query, e.g., [intext:handsome intext:poets] is the same as [allintext: handsome poets].

intitle:
The query intitle:term restricts results to documents containing term in the title. For instance, [flu shot intitle:help] will return documents that mention the word “help” in their titles, and mention the words “flu” and “shot” anywhere in the document (title or not).
Note: There must be no space between the intitle: and the following word.
Putting intitle: in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting allintitle: at the front of your query, e.g., [intitle:google intitle:search] is the same as [allintitle: google search].

inurl:
If you include inurl: in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the URL. For instance, [inurl:print site:www.googleguide.com ] searches for pages on Google Guide in which the URL contains the word “print.” It finds pdf files that are in the directory or folder named “print” on the Google Guide website. The query [ inurl:healthy eating ] will return documents that mention the words “healthy” in their URL, and mention the word “eating” anywhere in the document.
Note: There must be no space between the inurl: and the following word.

Google Sitelinks

rank1st — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:07:00 +0000

Sitelinks are additional links Google sometimes generates from site contents in order to help users navigate the site. Google generates these sitelinks periodically from the site’s contents.

Over the years, search engines (especially Google) have become more particular about the types of links that you get to your Web site; rightfully so. This week, we’ll focus on several ways to search for quality links.

First, make sure you have some links from the more “trusted” Web directories: Yahoo Directory; Business.com, and Best of the Web. Ideally, you want a link from all three, but a link from at least one is OK. I also recommend submitting your site to DMOZ because it’s free and worth the two minutes it takes to find your category and make a one-time submission. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for the listing to appear.

Depending on your industry, certain “trade journals” or directories may be popular sites. These sites usually rank well in the search results for many of the generic keywords that describe your industry. Links from the “industry” sites will also help your site because the link value will be passed on, and for overall brand and Web site visibility. Just make sure the site is trusted.

How do you determine if a site is trusted? Check Google’s search results to see if the site has sitelinks. Sitelinks are the links (usually between four and eight) which Google shows below the first search result for a query, usually when you search for a company name or a Web site name. These link to internal pages.

siteink

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siteink

Take, for example, DMOZ. A Google search for “dmoz” shows this is a “trusted site” because sitelinks are shown below the domz search result. If a site has sitelinks and is on-topic to your Web site, then this is a place you want a link from.

Social Bookmarking Website List

rank1st — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:40:46 +0000

Site

Alexa Rank

	60094	6
BlogMarks.net
Social Bookmarking with thumbnails. Atom enabled.

	438516	3
Blauer Bote Bookmarks
Bookmarak Manager in German and English

	9781	7
LQ Bookmarks
Social Bookmarking, tagging and annotating all things Linux and Open Source.

	295993	6
de.lirio.us
Social Bookmarking, Tagging, Blogging & Notes. Mmmmmm, Notes.

	2180	8
del.icio.us
Currently the most used software application.

	0	7
digg
Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

	2378882	5
feedmarker
A free, Web based RSS/ATOM aggregator and bookmarks manager.

	672284	1
FriendSite
Get free storage and share your photos & videos, get your own url and customize your page, create free evites and invitations, add friends, message people, create discussion forums and groups, blog, share and store your bookmarks & much more…

	445264	5
frassle
Frassle helps you read and publish weblogs, track bookmarks, and find relevant content organized your way.

	1928721	0
FuzzFizz
FuzzFizz is a brand new social bookmarking site, where users vote for the most interesting and important news stories.

	125861	5
Jumptags
Jumptags.com is a revolutionary Web 2.0 social bookmarking web service for collecting, storing, sharing and distributing web bookmarks, notes, RSS feeds, contacts, and much more. Based on AJAX and other next generation web development techniques, Jumptags.com offers the easiest, fastest, most intuitive and productive way of maintaining and collaborating bookmarks and other internet resources online.

	833758	5
linkroll
Linkroll is a free link blogging service. At a personal level you can bookmark, categorize and comment on all the great web pages/links you find. All your bookmarks are then sortable and searchable by category and date. All bookmarks are also accessible, by category and/or user, in the form of RSS feed (for your news aggregator), or JavaScript (for syndication on your own web site)

	60011	4
loom
Collaborative bookmarking application written in PHP.

	181086	6
MyProgs
Social bookmarking for programs you use.

	1	7
Yahoo Search myweb2 beta
A social search engine integrating social bookmarking with search.

	0	0
NEWNOOZE
Social Bookmarking on just about every subject. A Digg.com clone site. Beta Stage.

	1328526	4
openBM
It’s just linking cool sites together. openBM is a little tool for everybody. openBM just keep’s your bookmarks and provides them for other people on the web.

	122873	6
Reader²
Share the list of books you read or recommend, find new books by tags/authors. Multilanguage.

	0	7
reddit
Social bookmarking where your votes affect your karma points.

	0	6
scuttle.org
amongst others are based on the scuttle software.

	0	5
Scuttle
Another open source clone of del.icio.us.

	0	5
unalog
Open source bookmarking software written in the Python programming.

	2308711	3
aworldofhelp
Users submit and rate links in numerous categories. The highest rated make the front page.

	1150083	5
beanrocket
Beanrocket.com is a community and a news reader.

	63378	6
BlinkList
Social bookmarking with slick interface and new ways for organizing tags.

	98113	7
CiteULike
Social bookmarking for academic papers.

	162993	6
commontimes
Provides community-based media distribution services and solutions along with BitTorrent hosting and consulting for individuals and organizations of all sizes.

	699250	5
Connectedy
This service allows the establishment of pseudonymous online link libraries. Users may impose arbitrary categorical hierarchies on their links and choose which categories and links to make public and which ones to keep private. The Connectedy site has par SEO properties.

	0	7
Connotea
Social bookmarking for scientists.

	0	0
dinnerbuzz
Dinnerbuzz is a social guide to restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. It’s designed to make it easier for you to find a place for dinner or drinks anywhere in the world.

	0	4
Wiklink
Tools to synchronize bookmarks with your browser.

	0	5
FeedMeLinks
Social Bookmarking since 2002.

	0	3
FlipSkipper
social bookmarking manager that allows users to pull concurrent searches from Yahoo!, Google News, and del.icio.us when surfing.

	0	8
Furl
Similar to del.icio.us: stores copies of the pages saved, automates finding users with similar interests, archives can be exported in MPLA or APA citation format.

	0	4
GiveALink
Donate your bookmarks for academic research.

	0	4
IndiaGram
Allows social bookmarking. Aim is to develop a community that shares information about websites on diverse topics.

	0	6
jots
Jots is a collaborative bookmarking system that allows you to Store, Share and Discover relevant links. Store your own links and choose whether to share them with the world, with a select group of people or just for yourself to use. Discover new links based on specific users or topics of interest.

	0	4
leze.de and
German Internet Bookmarking Service

	0	0
LibraryThing
Deli.cio.us for books. Cataloging based on some 30+ libraries using the Z39.50 protocol.

	0	4
linkblog
Portuguese

	0	6
linkfilter
linkfilter.net is just what the name implies, a link filter. All links are posted and moderated by users. Links can be ranked on several levels: clicks, votes, age, or a combination of all three called points.

	0	5
Lookmarks (beta)
Search and share your bookmarks

	0	5
memestreams
“Don’t hate the media, become the media!” – Biafra

	0	6
Netvouz
Social bookmarking using either categories or tags. Share your bookmarks online or keep them private. RSS feeds for all bookmarks. Add2Netvouz button for easily bookmarking new sites, import/export, automatic link validation and lots of other features.

	0	0
Network Menus
Social Bookmarking (or /wiki/Collaborative_Bookmarking title=Collaborative Bookmarking Collaborative Bookmarking) within a web browser toolbar.

	0	4
O Y A X
A fast and quick social categorized bookmarking service with groups.

	0	0
RawSugar
Socially enhanced web search based on hierarchal tagging of bookmarks and favorites. Include s multi-word categories, mechanism to define and rename categories, and hierarchy.

	0	5
Shadows
Social bookmarking with tags, comments and ratings. Shadows’ toolbar puts users one click away from a discussion forum for any page on the web.

	0	6
Simpy
Social bookmarking with tagging and full-text searching.

	0	0
sitetagger
SiteTagger.com is a bookmark/favorite organizer. You can bookmark websites you find on the internet via a simple button/favlet/bookmarklet that you can add to your browser link bar. This button makes it as simple as a click to bookmark a website page that you are visiting. The true power comes from the tags.

	0	6
Spurl
Similar to del.icio.us: stores copies of the pages saved.

	0	7
StumbleUpon
Bookmarking, social networking, friends-network, random browsing within interest-groups.

	0	5
Sync2It’s BookmarkSync
Effortless social bookmarking, millions of hand-picked sites, real-time RSS feeds, public & private collections. Features automatic clustering technology.

	0	4
taghop
Taghop is a collaborative thoughtblog. A thoughtblog is a combination of some of the existing ideas behind blogs, with some ideas of its own. It is a web site, search engine, wiki, blogging system, social network and community site all rolled into one – or at least the best parts of those! They have been inspired by the great work from sites such as Google, Flickr, del.icio.us, 43things, etc

	979342	0
Tagza.com
A very young Social Book marking web site mostly being used by Indian and Pakistani web masters.

	0	3
Textnotes.de
Social notes manager. Easy integration of references to books, news and articles.

	0	5
TheThingsIWant
Universal wishlist service with Social Bookmarking and RSS feeds.

	0	3
URLex
Personal/Friends/Community bookmarking and rss feeds.

	0	5
Wazima
Coupons clipped by robots. Wazima scours the web and shows you the deals you are most interested in.

	0	5
Web Feeds
Web Feeds is a social bookmark site with a difference, users moderate and decide which items make it to the home page.

	0	6
Wists
Visual bookmarks, wishlists, photoblogs.

	0	6
wURLdBook
Share webreferences and rss feeds with others and more.

	0	0
Yoono
Social Bookmarking based on browser bookmarks (no tags needed), includes a search engine, an RSS Reader, web monitoring and sharing functions. Windows application and firefox extension.

RSS Feed – Really simple syndication

rank1st — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:00:57 +0000

RSS – Really simple syndication

RSS is a data format used for providing content updation to users in net. It is used in blogs, news portals, and websites to provide summaries or full descriptions of the new content. In this way the user will not be disconnected from the latest changes and happenings. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays. Its different from book marking in which the user has only a link about a particular webpage or site and to check whether that website has updated its content or not the user has to go that site and check it all by himself. It will be a tiresome job if your list contains a number of websites or if it’s a big site with lots of content. Subscribing to the RSS feeds is a viable option in this regard as the updated contents from all the sites specified will be sent to user. It can be in the form of summary or a full text depending on the site user has the subscription.

Subscribing to RSS doesn’t need submission of E-mail ID, in this way security concerns won’t be an issue to subscribing to RSS feeds.

The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds. The format used in web feed is XML.

Social Media Marketing/Optimization

rank1st — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:02:46 +0000

Social media marketing, while its concept and fundamentals have been around for a while, has changed remarkably in the past six months. There was a time when a social media link building campaign was very easy. The big search engines valued domains like Squidoo and MySpace to the extent that your profiles could easily rank for targeted keywords. It should come as no surprise that this is no longer the case.

Using social media as an effective link building tactic is still possible but it is no longer as easy as creating profiles, submitting content to social news sites and dominating search engine results pages. It is both fortunate and unfortunate that Google has severely toughened up its standards for sites like MySpace. For marketers, it means a lot more work. For users, it means far less noise and spam in their search results.

Social media optimization is now a relatively delicate process. Traditional link building campaigns often involve blatantly asking for links, or simply buying them. In contrast, social media optimization is only effective if a marketer can convince others to link to material, not by asking, but by creating fantastic content. Most people’s accounts and profiles on social media websites are intrinsically attached to their offline self. Unlike people who run a website that includes a designated “Links” page, social media users are not likely to add a company’s profile as a “friend” or vote for a company’s content just because they’re asked to. The majority of people want their user history on sites like Digg and Reddit, and their friend lists on MySpace and Facebook to reflect something about their personalities. The less socially appealing and more exploited your industry is offline, the harder it will be for you to take advantage of online communities.

The landscape of social media is constantly changing. There is no profile, site or community whose content does not change hourly or, at the most, daily. “Traditional” social media link building, in most respects, was solely spam. Marketers realized that they could get quick, easy non-nofollowed links out of domains whose authority had already been established. There was little need to build a community and, in actual fact, a company who created a spam profile for the sake of linking to their actual websites would not have wanted to attract a great deal of traffic to the profile itself. The primary goal was to have search engine spiders see the profile and the links, add the weight of the links to the authority of the company’s main website and improve the main website’s ranking.

Search engines no longer lend any value whatsoever to links from areas like MySpace profiles. This is not to say, however, that MySpace and its peers are completely useless now; it just means that optimizing with these sites is no longer the simple process it was a few years ago. Search engines and social media website owners alike are aware that the point of social media is not to simply give marketers an easy collection of links. Marketers must now be prepared to contribute to the communities that can send them traffic.

This article documents the procedures and practices that should be followed in order to enjoy the benefits of today’s largest social media entities. With the detailed instructions of how marketers can best optimize these sites, we have also included the quickest, easiest ways to create accounts and add links to other sites. We provide this not because we advocate creating profiles, adding links and not following up with the community in any way, but as a time-saving guide when one is faced with creating multiple profiles across different sites.

Some General Rules

When dealing with social media, you may have to leave your political or moral beliefs behind. For some reason, a high percentage of users at the most popular social media outlets are of a liberal or libertarian persuasion and they tend to join groups and vote on stories accordingly.
In general, people are a lot more wary about social spam now than they were three years ago. Even legitimate yet misguided marketing efforts can be taken as spam by users.
The widespread adoption of the nofollow tag, which tells search engines not to put any value in tagged links, means that marketers need to appeal to communities as a whole instead of simply taking advantage of sites’ domain strength.
Buying votes to gain popularity for submissions on social media websites is even more frowned upon than is buying links in order to rank well in search engines. However, search marketers and webmasters ask their friends, acquaintances and business associates for links all the time. They ask total strangers for links via link submission forms and unsolicited emails. Asking for votes in social media is fine – people have the right to decide your content is not to their liking and not to vote for it. However, when someone has bought a link or a vote, there is no social discretion. Money should never change hands in the social media world.
Every community is different, even if the same people use a number of different communities. People do not behave the same way at LinkedIn as they do at MySpace; neither do they look for the same content at Del.icio.us as they do whilst browsing on StumbleUpon. Every social media effort has to take the intended audience into account.
Even if you have the most compelling content on the Internet, an ugly website, boring Blogspot layout or even a questionable color-scheme can hinder your success with social media. Search engines mightn’t be able to see an ugly background or a slow-loading image, but people can, and they take into account factors like these when deciding whether or not you get their vote.
People can be very mean. Social media is a popularity contest of sorts and people love to bring down things that are popular. When your content receives a lot of attention on a prominent website, there will be those who add nasty comments. Consider those comments as part of your success, because rarely do users bother commenting on content that is receiving no attention.
Timing can be important. When submitting content to sites like Reddit and Digg, it is not a good idea to do so when it is the middle of the night in the United States. The U.S. is the main source of traffic for sites like this and you will generally notice the best results if your content is gaining votes during the United States’ work day and Europe’s evening.
Although good content can become popular at any time, a good rule to follow is that intellectual submissions that require a user to think are better off being posted on Monday through Wednesday night or Thursday-day. Less-thought provoking submissions can be posted on Thursday evening, Friday and during the weekend. We once recorded a phenomenal link bait success over a Friday-Saturday time period, but the post was just an interesting picture. Few users are in the mood for political or economic discussion at three in the afternoon on a Friday.

Google PageRank and it’s important

rank1st — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:35:51 +0000

Page Rank is a numeric value given by Google to web pages which represents the importance of web pages on the web. There is a green horizontal bar in Google Toolbar which is known as Page Rank checker. Page Rank value varies from 1 to 10 and the more Page Rank a page has the better trust of visitors on the site. Though some people claim that it’s ridiculous to believe in PR (Page Rank), now it has become a factor to judge the site’s quality and having faith in its brand. So there is no way but to acknowledge the importance of Google PR. Inbound links influence the PR in a big way. When a page gives link to other page, this is generally considered as casting of vote for that page. The more the votes cast for a page, the importance of that page increases. Only the quantity of inbound links does not determine the importance of page, it still depends on the fact that how important those pages are, which cast vote for that page. In other words I can say if a pages gets links from quality pages (obviously PR of those pages are high), then it would have great influence in increment of the PR of that page. So from here we can conclude that for better Page Rank of a page this requires quantitative as well as qualitative inbound links. Page Rank is Google’s way of judging page’s importance. Page’s ranking gets climbing in search results as Page Rank keeps improving.

How to calculate PR of a page?

There is an equation to calculate PR of a page i.e. PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn)). Though the equation was published long time back when concept of Page Rank introduced, this still works well. We are not aware what exactly Google is doing while assigning PR to different pages. So we can use this equation to have some sort of idea for calculating Page Rank of our required sites.

Let’s have a look on that equation. Page ‘A’ gets links from page t1…tn. C is the total nos. of outbound links of each page (t1, t2 … tn) that links to page A and d is the damping factor which is equal to 0.85. So the equation can be rewritten as PR(A) = 0.15 + 0.85(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn)).

This Google PR Checker Tool enables you to calculate the PR of buck of URLs

Press Release Tips

rank1st — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:29:58 +0000

Press Release Tips

1. Make sure the information is newsworthy.
2. Tell the audience that the information is intended for them and why they should continue to read it.
3. Start with a brief description of the news, then distinguish who announced it, and not the other way around.
4. Ask yourself, “How are people going to relate to this and will they be able to connect?”
5. Make sure the first 10 words of your release are effective, as they are the most important.
6. Avoid excessive use of adjectives and fancy language.
7. Deal with the facts.
8. Provide as much Contact information as possible: Individual to Contact, address, phone, fax, email, Web site address.
9. Make sure you wait until you have something with enough substance to issue a release.
10. Make it as easy as possible for media representatives to do their jobs.

Where do I submit press releases?

There are many services that will accept press releases, but most of them will charge a fee to distribute your news item to journalists and news editors. A few of the better known services are PRWeb Direct , PRNewsWire and MarketWire.
PRWeb Direct , which provides excellent coverage at a very low price. Features include:

• Distribution on the same day
• PR Web and eMediawire Distribution
• Attach graphics and multimedia
• RSS/XML/OPLM/NewsML inclusion
• Yahoo search marketing inclusion
• Google news inclusion
• Yahoo news inclusion
• MSN news inclusion
• Quick statistics
• Up to 10 industry targets
• Free editorial review

PRWeb Direct also offers valuable tips on their site to help you with press release development and submission. The company is one of the oldest online press release distribution agencies around, with 100,000 contacts, industry analysts and freelance journalists in their databases. It’s a great service well worth checking out.