Social networking and SEO

It can't have escaped your notice that social networking sites are popping up all over the internet. Commercial websites are listing links to sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Delicious on their homepages and using these to entice people to follow them and thereby receive information and updates on whatever they are selling.

Which means search engine optimization SEO companies are interested and the term “social media optimisation” has emerged? Social media has the power to increase inbound links rapidly without falling foul of search engines so there is obvious benefit in getting to grips with optimizing your pages on these sites. Google has started listing Twitter pages in its search results but don't expect your rankings to rise simply because of the number of followers you have.

It's about attracting the right kind of followers - those that are relevant to your business. It's also about having quality content to share and ensuring that optimized search terms are used in your tweets. Getting the right search terms into page titles and headings and having the right URL will help to get your tweets indexed. Find creative ways to incorporate interesting content, using video links and photographs.

There is always the chance these might spark an exponential increase of shared links and lead to increased awareness of your brand. SEO companies have developed a raft of strategies for exploiting social media networking sites and for optimizing content for them. If you don't want to be left behind, now is the time to join the revolution. social bookmarking

Pay per click

Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to its website.

The importance of backlinks

A backlink is one of the most important factors in determining the popularity of your website, and as such, its ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).

 Search engine optimization services realise this, and will do all they can to increase the number of backlinks to your site. Google’s method of measuring the relative importance of a web page is called Pagerank. In their overview of this system, they define a backlink as ‘a link from page

A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B’. Increasing the number of backlinks There are different ways to maximise the number of backlinks to your site. You may stumble upon a breaking news story, or it may involve lots of planning and marketing. One excellent way to do this is to provide insider industry information, then if you’re lucky, lots of other sites will provide a link to your page as they know their readers will be interested. If you’re very lucky, an authoritative site will provide a link to you, and this can drive your traffic through the roof and prove useful in the long term for your site.

 Anchor text – the labelling of a hyperlink as it appears on a webpage - is another crucial factor for building good quality backlinks. Web crawlers examine the anchor and compare it to the contents of your page. The more relevant it is, the higher your rankings on SERPs. SEO services understand this, and they can ensure that your page will not be stuffed with irrelevant anchor text which can affect your search engine results.

What Can Social Bookmarking Do

social bookmarking is tagging a website and saving it for later. Instead of saving them to your web browser, you are saving them to the web. And, because your bookmarks are online, you can easily share them with friends.

Not only can you save your favorite websites and send them to your friends, but you can also look at what other people have found interesting enough to tag. Most social bookmarking sites allow you to browse through the items based on most popular,

Navigating your blog

It's important to remember that visitors to your blog will probably have been led there via a search engine or external links, especially if your SEO agency has been doing its job, so visitors could land on any page. You need to make it easy for them to explore further.

Rule one of course, is make sure visitors can find your home page. There should be a link to your home page on every single page of your blog. Just for good measure, it's worth making sure that your page header and any company logo also link to your home page wherever they appear. If a visitor gets lost, you may well have lost a customer.

Use your internal links sensibly. Links to related entries should be prominent and would also be more effective if the links were designed to open in a new browser window or tab. That way your visitor can easily have more entries lined up to read without having to leave one half-way through.

Invite them back. It should be easy for visitors to pay a return visit to your blog, after all, it will be updated regularly. There should be options to subscribe to a feed or newsletter and, of course, to bookmark your site.

And finally, categorise. Your entries should be logically organised. Using a navigation bar listing categories or a tag cloud makes it easier for visitors to find information of interest to them.

It's important to your business that potential customers browse your site, rather than leave after reading one blog entry. Make sure that your search engine optimisation agency pay attention to ease of navigation in your blog.