5 Simple Ways to use SEO for Customer Acquisition

SEO means a lot of things to many people, but most of its meaning is embedded in customer acquisition, which every business owner needs to keep growing as a brand. While SEO might hint at areas like Serpbook, keyword analysis, link building and user experience, SEO keenly focuses on attracting relevant organic traffic and equally to identify the channels that bring in qualified leads.

Typically, SEO is gaining massive popularity for its ability to reveal newer techniques on how to increase likeability and visibility online. Fortunately, this article covers 5 simple ways that anyone can use SEO for customer acquisition:

Keyword Research

This is a well-known SEO concept that has widely been used to improve ranking in search engines.

What you did not know is that keyword research plays a major role in attracting new customers to your site. Finding new keywords for a website’s pages and using them in the content will draw more traffic to your website, some of which is by audiences that are not aware of your brand.

Ideally, keywords will help you feature relevantly in search engines positioning yourself as a solution to people’s searches, which also captures a new customer base.

Tip: Instead of relying on your main keywords, use long-tail keywords, which carry more weight, simply to boost conversions by targeting search queries that will actually end in sales.

 ALSO READ -  SEO as a Tool to Your Website Success

 

Boost the user experience to your site

Studies conducted have shown that a good user experience plays a huge role in affecting a customer’s willingness to be a loyal advocate. Your main goal should be to build credibility and strong relationships with your current audience-base so that they can convert to your advocates.

With an impeccable user experience, click-through rates will increase as well as cut down on exit rates that might be causing your traffic instability.

Improve the content Experience

Your content is the whole reason you have an audience, and therefore you should be able to provide them adequate value for their time, which is the number one reason you should engage in a lot of content research to remain up-to-date with the trending topics in your industry. 

Ensure you create highly shareable content that is relevant to your industry of operation and is properly structured to address the needs of your audience, but more importantly, generates content that can evoke emotions and provoke conversations and other types of feedback from people. 

Every once in a while, consider repurposing content to increase the content experience, and even try the skyscraping technique. Develop different types of content that will boost the rate at which people share your content as well as increase the number of click-throughs which stand to positively affect the flow of organic traffic on your site. 

Use social media

Today, almost everyone is using social media, which means a huge part of the people you are trying to reach out to are on social media.

Determine the most favorable social media platforms for your type of business and work on sharing your content on those platforms. Remember to integrate the different social media icons on your website linked to all the social media platforms you are on.

While at it, develop and build relationships with important persons in your industry that will get you the right kind of attention. An unknown fact is that the social media users with few followers can champion your brand and turn to be loyal advocates that can attract an even higher audience-base.

Typically, social media platforms work differently, so be sure to create messages relevant and unique for the different platforms, and focus more on impressions rather than followers that do not necessarily determine your audience reach.

Actively participate in forum marketing

Forums are a great way for business owners and customers share their ideas and views with each other, by sharing useful information where potential customers can discuss your services or products, or those that are similar to yours.

Read what your competitors post and see what connections they have so that you are better placed at analyzing what you can do to improve your site or product to attract such a liking. Consider posting on these forums to answer people’s questions and build relationships with them, rather than push your products and services.

Either way, the chosen tactics should be justified by the findings or results you uncover at the end of it all, measured by the behavior of the director organic traffic on your site.

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Finally, Google's Visible PageRanks Totally Gets Eliminated

Around the first day in month of May 2016, Google decided to do a final termination of PageRanks, one of its most used tool used to determine the strength of websites across its Search Engine, and since then, all toolbars that display ranks have been showing a PageRank of Zero for all websites.

Going down memory lane, we know how important this tool had been but it never got anymore update since December 2013, then in November 2014, it was confirmed that there will be no more PageRank update for the Google Toolbar, meaning no externally visible update.

What does this Mean For Website Administrators and SEOs?

From what we've known so far, Pageranks were rarely updated and had not been updated over the past 3 years, Google no longer finds it relevant, hence this action was simply to correct and avoid confusion about the meaning of this key figure for the very complex evaluation of a website. Pageranks are not the only metrics you can use to measure how valuable or good a website is.

And as a follow up from experiments and observation after termination of ranks back to Zero, the ranks of websites were not totally eliminated, at least, NOT INTERNALLY, only the visible page ranks or numbers are now gone hence most sites seem to maintain their value and position on the Search Engine after the page rank termination was carried out.

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SEO as a Tool to Your Website Success

Websites’ success or failure depends upon the attention they receive, and the attention they receive also depends on how people, in this case their owners, promote their websites.

Before the launch of a website or after months of unsuccessful toil, there will be a question posed in one of the major search engines, Google, Yahoo or Bing. The question may differ but you or the website owner will essentially ask,
“How to improve success/traffic flow/use of my website”.

There will be millions of results returned and every one of them will describe the use of SEO tools and techniques.
Some of them will have ‘SEO’ in the title and others will preface the article title with “how to” or “… ways to” but they all cover the same ground and will mention SEO at some point, probably more than once.

MUST READ: How Google Told Me To Be Responsive or Die On April 21st - Mobilegeddon

Top Ways To Make Your Blog Hugely Popular

Search engines are the filing system of the internet and the reference information affects how easy it is to find your work, in the vast data pool that is the World Wide Web. Badly referenced work will stay stuck on page 275 of the search or the equivalent of ‘fallen behind the filing cabinet’ and no one will be able to see it. Website success depends on the people who see it and the ease of its access and use. Very few people have the patience or perseverance to look at every return on a search, especially if the information they require was on the first page.

 

Why are SEO techniques such important tools for Website success?

SEO is the basis in which users find a website. The growth of the internet means there is little or no chance of finding a specific website without the use of a search engine. These days few people go to the library to look for books on basket weaving or plastering, they would prefer to look on the internet instead.

Keyword Kings

Keywords are the primary basis of SEO; the success of the website depends on having those keywords appropriately included in the content.
If a website tries to be too superior in their language use, they will lose valuable viewers. Using ‘basket weaving’ as a generic search term if a website chooses to use elitist language, such as ‘hamper lacing’ or ‘carrier knitting’, they are excluding the potential audience that isn’t familiar with the terminology. They also run the risk of alienating visitors that do arrive at their website.
Doing the research and choosing the right keywords for maximum valuable return is crucial to website success.

Long and short of it

The web is huge and very few websites can claim to be 100% original in their focus unless they have a specifically narrow audience. SEO tools, such as a keyword planner, help to identify long and short-tail keywords using autocomplete algorithms.
Using relevant long-tail keywords for the content on the website is a way to reduce the competition above you on the search list.

Race to the top

The sites with the best and most relevant references win the race to the top of the search results. Discounting the sponsored ads that appear at the very top of a search return, the website at the top of the list has used SEO tools to ensure that they have the best references for the search. If a website owner/creator has better information or a better product they need to use SEO to ‘prove it’ to the search engines

Clean House, inside and out

The information sent out by the website, such as a site map, keywords, and URL are not the only elements of search engine optimisation that are vital to the website success. The website needs to be as engaging to its visitors as it is to the web-crawler robots that put it at the top of the search results page.
On-page SEO is as critical to the success of a website as the off-page SEO sourced by search engines. Creating a welcoming and user-friendly website is the way to keep users using it. The so-called sticky part of the ‘web’ site.

The content of the website needs to be kept fresh, relevant and original.  While the inclusion of enough keywords is important to the web-crawler-bots, over usage of keywords and repetition makes for poor content and reader engagement.
Accessibility is the next important thing for ensuring the website keeps its users close. Ease of movement between articles and information ensure longer visits. Internal linking between articles allows for expanding on a topic in several directions without losing focus. External links should be appropriate and add value to the specific topic.

Sharing is caring, 

Website that allows its visitors and users to share pertinent topics, articles and pages with a variety of apps, social media sites and media links, cares a lot about its user base and how to make it grow. If each new visitor shares a good experience of the website with just one other person, that site has exponential user growth

Website success is very dependent on SEO tools to gain recognition. Launching a website, service or blog, with a huge advertising budget is all very well, but unless optimisation techniques are already in place, the advertising will cost a lot of money with fewer returns than the solid use of SEO.

Optimising the search engine return for a website is ever-changing and, as algorithms and standards change, will need updating for older content. However, it creates a steadily increasing stream of traffic to the website.
Ad campaigns are short-lived and create an immediate up-surge in traffic to a website, but without SEO employment toward the content, there is no guarantee of keeping any of these new visitors once they have arrived. Without optimising web flow to the site, once the ad campaign finishes, there’s nothing left to direct visitors in the right direction.

Search Engine Optimisation isn’t the only tool out there to improve the success of a website but it’s a big one. Experienced website builders and bloggers use some techniques without thinking about them while others need to consider carefully how they implement them.
It doesn’t matter how well other methods of online traffic flow manipulation are used, success for a website relies on SEO tools to acquire and then KEEP its visitors.
Why is SEO so important? 
Because it’s the only method that works before, during and after all other methods have been utilized and exhausted.

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Mobilegeddon 2015 - How Google Told Me To Be Responsive or Die On April 21st

Couple of days ago, you'd notice a change in the design of this website, picking a quality template wasn't easy but thank heavens, I made it after lots of tweaking here and there.
Most fulfilling part was Feedback I got from friends like you reading this, my new design came out successful... right?.
I had intentions of changing my blog's design this Year, honestly it's "Pretty Hard Work to make Your Blog or website Design Stand out", so I was Lazy about it Until I got A very Shocking Mail From Google Webmaster Tools on the 18th of March.

Google Webmaster Sent me the Below...

1.The straight Big Reason Why I got this mail was Because my Template wasn't Responsive as at that time 18th March, 2015.

2. Earlier in February 26, 2015, Google had Already Announced a warning in their Official Webmaster Central Blog, they said and I quote

"Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results."

Internet Experts came up with a name for 21st April, they now call this day - "MOBILEGEDDON", the day so many Websites will be washed-off from SERP (Google's search Engine Result Page).

So that email means if I do not Comply by April 21st, I'll be De-ranked from their Search Engine, my major Source of Traffic.

I can't imagine such Tragedy happening to me, I haven't had issues with Google before, Not with their PENGUIN or PANDA Algorithm Updates and changes, I wasn't going to let this "MOBILEGEDDON" be my first big problem with Google.
It took few weeks but I fixed it by Making this Blog Mobile and PC Responsive.
After doing the design Improvements, I quickly Ran to do the MOBILE FRIENDLY TEST
and Shazam! I passed! Issue Resolved!

What Can You Learn & Do from the Above Experience?

If you own a Website, or blog, please check your Mail if you have a Similar one as mine from Google Webmaster Tools, and Better Still, go to MOBILE FRIENDLY TEST and run a Test on your Blog or Website.
I had checked and helped a few friends & clients fixed theirs, We are still fixing....
Google is going to Take this very Serious, by April 21st, many Websites that are not Responsive will GO DOWN, and the Responsive One who Passed the Test will MOVE UP to First Positions on SERP.
For Example: MR. A Website and MR. B's Website talks about the same thing, it won't be a matter of whether MR. A's Content is better than MR. B, if MR. B's website is Mobile responsive, Google will place Him higher than MR. A.
Since I made design changes on my Blog's User Interface to be responsive, truth is Traffic some how Improved, so it's a Good thing, and I'll conclude by asking
Did You Use the Mobile Friendly Test? Did You Pass it? Are You already Doing something About Avoiding Mobilegeddon.

Hit the SHARE BUTTONS below, this might Save Someone's Life :)

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[Updated!] The Best Site Map with Table Of Contents For Bloggers

This may probably not be the first time you are hearing of SITE-MAPS, and their importance to your various blogs and websites, it gives you some SEO benefits, when you have site map published on your site and it gets crawled by Google spiders, they can easily read your links and index your entire content since Site maps contain the major Posts/contents from your whole website.



Today, we'll learn how we can apply a very nice Site-map on our blogs, this one is kind of different, unique and more powerful than any other you already know because it contains Table of Contents which breaks it down to categories, this will greatly help your Visitors or Google spiders to understand your entire contents, very quickly.

Here's How to Apply the Site Map tool:

1. Go to your Blogger Dashboard

2.  Click on Pages >> New Page...

3. Click on the New Page Editor, Click on HTML, Now Copy and Paste the codes below
UPDATE:
Simply use the script below, replace editweaks.com with your own

<script src="http://fiftriani.googlecode.com/files/blogtoc-min.js"></script>
<script src="http://www.editweaks.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=9999&amp;alt=json-in-script&amp;callback=loadtoc">
</script>


The one below is cancelled as they don't work right now.

<style> p.labels a{color: #242424; text-transform: uppercase;font-size: 15px;} a.post-titles {color: #0000FF;} ol li{list-style-type:decimal;line-height:25px;} </style> <script> //<![CDATA[ var postTitle=new Array();var postUrl=new Array();var postPublished=new Array();var postDate=new Array();var postLabels=new Array();var postRecent=new Array();var sortBy="titleasc";var tocLoaded=false;var numChars=250;var postFilter="";var numberfeed=0;function bloggersitemap(a){function b(){if("entry" in a.feed){var d=a.feed.entry.length;numberfeed=d;ii=0;for(var h=0;h<d;h++){var n=a.feed.entry[h];var e=n.title.$t;var m=n.published.$t.substring(0,10);var j;for(var g=0;g<n.link.length;g++){if(n.link[g].rel=="alternate"){j=n.link[g].href;break}}var o="";for(var g=0;g<n.link.length;g++){if(n.link[g].rel=="enclosure"){o=n.link[g].href;break}}var c="";if("category" in n){for(var g=0;g<n.category.length;g++){c=n.category[g].term;var f=c.lastIndexOf(";");if(f!=-1){c=c.substring(0,f)}postLabels[ii]=c;postTitle[ii]=e;postDate[ii]=m;postUrl[ii]=j;postPublished[ii]=o;if(h<10){postRecent[ii]=true}else{postRecent[ii]=false}ii=ii+1}}}}}b();sortBy="titleasc";sortPosts(sortBy);sortlabel();tocLoaded=true;displayToc2();document.write('</br><div class="sitemap-link"><a href="http://www.editweaks.com/2014/11/updated-best-site-map-with-table-of.html" style="font-size: 10px; text-decoration:none; color: #5146CD;">Get This Widget</a></div>')}function filterPosts(a){scroll(0,0);postFilter=a;displayToc(postFilter)}function allPosts(){sortlabel();postFilter="";displayToc(postFilter)}function sortPosts(d){function c(e,g){var f=postTitle[e];postTitle[e]=postTitle[g];postTitle[g]=f;var f=postDate[e];postDate[e]=postDate[g];postDate[g]=f;var f=postUrl[e];postUrl[e]=postUrl[g];postUrl[g]=f;var f=postLabels[e];postLabels[e]=postLabels[g];postLabels[g]=f;var f=postPublished[e];postPublished[e]=postPublished[g];postPublished[g]=f;var f=postRecent[e];postRecent[e]=postRecent[g];postRecent[g]=f}for(var b=0;b<postTitle.length-1;b++){for(var a=b+1;a<postTitle.length;a++){if(d=="titleasc"){if(postTitle[b]>postTitle[a]){c(b,a)}}if(d=="titledesc"){if(postTitle[b]<postTitle[a]){c(b,a)}}if(d=="dateoldest"){if(postDate[b]>postDate[a]){c(b,a)}}if(d=="datenewest"){if(postDate[b]<postDate[a]){c(b,a)}}if(d=="orderlabel"){if(postLabels[b]>postLabels[a]){c(b,a)}}}}}function sortlabel(){sortBy="orderlabel";sortPosts(sortBy);var a=0;var b=0;while(b<postTitle.length){temp1=postLabels[b];firsti=a;do{a=a+1}while(postLabels[a]==temp1);b=a;sortPosts2(firsti,a);if(b>postTitle.length){break}}}function sortPosts2(d,c){function e(f,h){var g=postTitle[f];postTitle[f]=postTitle[h];postTitle[h]=g;var g=postDate[f];postDate[f]=postDate[h];postDate[h]=g;var g=postUrl[f];postUrl[f]=postUrl[h];postUrl[h]=g;var g=postLabels[f];postLabels[f]=postLabels[h];postLabels[h]=g;var g=postPublished[f];postPublished[f]=postPublished[h];postPublished[h]=g;var g=postRecent[f];postRecent[f]=postRecent[h];postRecent[h]=g}for(var b=d;b<c-1;b++){for(var a=b+1;a<c;a++){if(postTitle[b]>postTitle[a]){e(b,a)}}}}function displayToc(a){var l=0;var h="";var e="Post Title";var m="Click to sort by title";var d="Date";var k="Click to sort by date";var c="Category";var j="";if(sortBy=="titleasc"){m+=" (descending)";k+=" (newest first)"}if(sortBy=="titledesc"){m+=" (ascending)";k+=" (newest first)"}if(sortBy=="dateoldest"){m+=" (ascending)";k+=" (newest first)"}if(sortBy=="datenewest"){m+=" (ascending)";k+=" (oldest first)"}if(postFilter!=""){j="Click to view all"}h+="<table>";h+="<tr>";h+='<td class="header1">';h+='<a href="javascript:toggleTitleSort();" title="'+m+'">'+e+"</a>";h+="</td>";h+='<td class="header2">';h+='<a href="javascript:toggleDateSort();" title="'+k+'">'+d+"</a>";h+="</td>";h+='<td class="header3">';h+='<a href="javascript:allPosts();" title="'+j+'">'+c+"</a>";h+="</td>";h+='<td class="header4">';h+="Read all";h+="</td>";h+="</tr>";for(var g=0;g<postTitle.length;g++){if(a==""){h+='<tr><td class="entry1"><a href="'+postUrl[g]+'">'+postTitle[g]+'</a></td><td class="entry2">'+postDate[g]+'</td><td class="entry3">'+postLabels[g]+'</td><td class="entry4"><a href="'+postPublished[g]+'">Read</a></td></tr>';l++}else{z=postLabels[g].lastIndexOf(a);if(z!=-1){h+='<tr><td class="entry1"><a href="'+postUrl[g]+'">'+postTitle[g]+'</a></td><td class="entry2">'+postDate[g]+'</td><td class="entry3">'+postLabels[g]+'</td><td class="entry4"><a href="'+postPublished[g]+'">Read</a></td></tr>';l++}}}h+="</table>";if(l==postTitle.length){var f='<span class="toc-note">Show All '+postTitle.length+" Posts<br/></span>"}else{var f='<span class="toc-note">Show '+l+" posts by category '";f+=postFilter+"' the "+postTitle.length+" Total Posts<br/></span>"}var b=document.getElementById("toc");b.innerHTML=f+h}function displayToc2(){var a=0;var b=0;while(b<postTitle.length){temp1=postLabels[b];document.write("<p/>");document.write('<p class="labels"><a href="/search/label/'+temp1+'">'+temp1+"</a></p><ol>");firsti=a;do{document.write("<li>");document.write('<a class="post-titles" href="'+postUrl[a]+'">'+postTitle[a]+"</a>");if(postRecent[a]==true){document.write(' - <strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">New!</span></strong>')}document.write("</li>");a=a+1}while(postLabels[a]==temp1);b=a;document.write("</ol>");sortPosts2(firsti,a);if(b>postTitle.length){break}}}function toggleTitleSort(){if(sortBy=="titleasc"){sortBy="titledesc"}else{sortBy="titleasc"}sortPosts(sortBy);displayToc(postFilter)}function toggleDateSort(){if(sortBy=="datenewest"){sortBy="dateoldest"}else{sortBy="datenewest"}sortPosts(sortBy);displayToc(postFilter)}function showToc(){if(tocLoaded){displayToc(postFilter);var a=document.getElementById("toclink")}else{alert("Just wait... TOC is loading")}}function hideToc(){var a=document.getElementById("toc");a.innerHTML="";var b=document.getElementById("toclink");b.innerHTML='<a href="#" onclick="scroll(0,0); showToc(); Effect.toggle('toc-result','blind');">?? Display Table of Contents</a> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJHfhgGQJ76tUvo5xDWZD5uyAsBk7hrujkjV-TD-PdT5fJsvvH_Y8uXgijfZZ8wp5mUI3Piwqz7FrfzrnpBjDn8z1P_YTj8_R88CRyKfSbX28YTqhXsGeWPkQTZkMpNErQZqwoitSnzyNN/s1600/new_icon.gif"/>'}function looptemp2(){for(var a=0;a<numberfeed;a++){document.write("<br>");document.write('Post Link : <a href="'+postUrl[a]+'">'+postTitle[a]+"</a><br>");document.write('Read all : <a href="'+postPublished[a]+'">'+postTitle[a]+"</a><br>");document.write("<br>")}}; //]]> </script> <script src="http://www.editweaks.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=9999&amp;alt=json-in-script&amp;callback=bloggersitemap"></script>

4. Make sure you Change the blog's FeedBurner address Colors in RED to your own blog's feedburner address.

If you don't have a FeedBurner address for your blog, go to Feedburner.com and create one.
When satisfied with your changes, there's no need to take Comments on your SITE MAP Page, so hover your mouse to the right where you find POST SETTINGS
Click Options >> READER COMMENTS > Choose "Don't Allow, Show existing"  Done.

Click PUBLISH.

Here's a Sample of my SITE MAP Page

MORE CUSTOMISATIONS

If you want a different design from my own. You can change the values colored in Red to your own taste.
i.e >> From the codes above,

• Changing this Values #242424 and 15px will change the color and Font Size of the Category title.
• Changing this value in blue #0000FF will change the color of the links.

That's all. Very easy isn't it? Now you may Press Like or Share to tell Friends about it.

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Add & Display Author (Your) Name On Facebook Shared-Post Snippets

There had been a few popular stuffs I had written here about the Social Media Giant, Facebook, posts like

• How To Use/Display only ONE Name on your Facebook Profile 

and

•  How to Take Total Control of What Appears on Your Facebook Wall

There're More on Social Media which you can read here, but I recently started noticing something on Facebook, when people share posts from websites and blogs, this New Feature displays the author (Website Owner's) Name below the snippet of the shared post on Facebook.

For Those who may not Know what Snippets are:

SNIPPETS are a small piece or small bit, scrap, or fragment having summary or description of a website or post that was shared on Facebook or Results after you search for keywords on Search Engines like Google.

The Advantage with this snippet feature, it will help Readers know who owns and Authors your various blogs, so they can easily find and keep in touch with you more closely.
To assure you of how valuable this feature could be, I checked around and found few popular bloggers that have already taken advantage of the tool.

This is what it actually looks like.

That's a snippet from +Jide Ogunsanya , a smart blogger who's using the tool. Once he shares or his visitors shares his stuff on facebook, it displays his name underneath the post, as the owner of the blog from which the post/link was shared.
As you can see, the snippet is showing his name and web address,
So we can easily know who owns which website/blog.


Here're More!

The next below is a snippet shared on Facebook from my 2nd blog, 

.... and this one from A friend's blog

Now, Let's Learn How to Add & Display Author Name On Facebook Share Snippets

There's No sweat in adding this feature to your own blog, it's just a line of META-TAGS, that's all
1. Login to your Blogger/Wordpress dashboard.
2. Go to Template >> Edit HTML
Click inside where you have all your template codes, then search or Press CTRL  + F
search for this code
 <data:blog.title/></title>
Right under the code above , you'll find this  </b:if>

Now,  under that little code, copy and Paste this
<meta content='YOUR NAME' name='Author'/>

3. Replace YOUR NAME with your own name.

4. Click Save, then give it time for it to take effect.
Effect will not be instant because this tool is not like other codes which you used for designing your blogs, this is actually a META-TAG, it would take about 15 - 30 minutes for Google to crawl your template and Save that change.
This meta tag doesn't only apply on helping you display Author name on Facebook shared posts snippets, it also helps your site look more detailed and descriptive on Search engines and especially Social Media. There're more meta-tags out there but this particular one is found relevant.

Hope you found it useful, Please take a second to Hit our SHARE or LIKE buttons to let your friend's know about it.

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How Social Media Can Impact Businesses For More Profit

Over the past ten years, the growth of social media websites has been phenomenal. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter were originally established to enable individuals from around the world to chat to one another, exchange photos and videos, and share experiences. More recently, however, the world of commerce has begun to see the huge advantages to be gained by having an online presence. Today, no self-respecting entrepreneur would think of trying to establish a new venture without having a page on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn. In Nigeria there is a whole host of other social media sites aimed at serving both domestic and trans-African consumers.

MUST READ : Great Tips to Improve Your SEO Rankings through Social Media

One of the key advantages if you are involved in a startup company is that setting up a social media page is significantly easier and cheaper than establishing a website. Yet doing so offers your fledgling enterprise exposure to a global audience that just a few short years ago would have been unimaginable.

The growth of social media has been so rapid that a recent survey found that 70 percent of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies did not have a personal presence on any social media site. Some of these executives claimed that they simply did not have time to set up a page, while others lacked the know-how. No less than 77 percent of consumers said they would purchase goods and services from a company that used social media to define its values. It has been found that consumers feel a closer affinity with companies whose CEOs have a personal presence on social media sites, and are therefore more inclined to remain loyal to that brand or company.
One point to be aware of is that if you design a page and/or write your own blogs or other online content, you need to be careful about what the page looks like and how interesting, relevant and attractive the content is. Remember, whatever you write could be seen and read by thousands of potential customers, so be prepared to employ a professional to edit and proofread any content you propose posting. A quick search of the internet will reveal numerous companies that specialize in writing and editing articles and others that will set up a page on a selection of social media websites for just a small fee.

Having the ability to promote your company’s products and services to so many people in a remarkably short period of time makes social media the most effective and economical form of advertising there is. Think about it; for a minimal outlay, even if you are setting up a one person business, you can get yourself noticed by your target customer base within a matter of hours. Having the ability to promote your company so quickly brings nearer the day you make your first profit and ensures your business is more likely to expand and increase profitability over the longer term.

MUST READ : Bridging the Gap with Social Media Marketing

Young Nigerian entrepreneurs such as Bankole Cardoso, who founded the Nigerian branch of EasyTaxi, and 30 year old Uche Pedro, the founder of Bainstone, a media company aimed primarily at a domestic audience, both shows just how successful online companies can become, almost overnight. At the other end of the spectrum are established entrepreneurs who head up multi-million dollar industries such as Tunde Folawiyo – leading Nigerian business leader – who has maintained both a personal and commercial presence on social networking sites for some time.

As with consumers around the globe, Nigerian men and women are starting to recognize how social media can benefit their lives. As a result, businesses that fail to embrace this development will be left behind as their more switched on competitors see their profits surge.

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Great Tips to Improve Your SEO Rankings through Social Media

SEO or Search Engine Optimization has undergone a sea of change from its initial years. A whole new range of algorithm has changed the ground for even playing field. They are trying to rule out malpractices in SEO as well as find unique and user loved sites to rank in the searches more. Along with this the huge surge in popularity of Social Media has changed the dynamics completely. Modern success in page ranking is much more dependent on a successful integration of SEO and Social media. Enhancing SEO with effective and impressive Social Media presence holds the key to success.

Must Read Read: Ways On How Web Hosting Affects SEO

Here are some tips to do it.

TIP 1: Brand Building.

Establishing a strong brand presence is one of the first things to do on the top social networking sites. This makes your site or brand visible on any social search. As the current trend is to stay logged in to their social networking pages almost 24/7, they also try to look for information in those sites.


Using your business name, while signing up in any social media sites, will be a better way to start. This also helps better brand recalling. While signing up try to use the most popular social networking sites as well as the professional networking sites too. Audio visual networking site like YouTube will also do a lot of good.

TIP 2: Share and let them Share.

Insert Share buttons for these networking sites in your page will allow readers or visitors to share contents that they like. This will increase your visibility in your social network and increase your social presence also. The more people share your content or ‘Like’ them, more of their friends will get to learn about you, your content and what you have to offer.

TIP 3: Social Bookmarking.

Social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Pinterest can do wonders to your social presence and SEO. They also provide a great opportunity to go viral. The attribute to “dofollow” has a huge impact.

TIP 4: Beat your own Drum.

Use your brand name at every opportunity. This creates brand visibility as well as brand consciousness among users. Most importantly they will improve search ranking and SEO. Use the brand’s name in all updates, comments and every way possible but always try to make the brand name a part of the content. But do not speak badly about any other brand, as this creates mistrust among the loyal fans also.

TIP 5: Communicate

Good ranking in social media means an active presence in the media. The secret of successful social media presence and thereby successful SEO is not only building a page.


Use the social media page to interact with your consumers. Post relevant contents, interact with other brands and followers. Use the page to launch, advertise, and float discount and contests. Using the page for direct interaction can also be a good idea.

More likes, shares, follows, tweets are likely to rank your page higher in search results.

Conclusion.

With the population in social media increasing at a phenomenal rate every second, it is one of the best places for SEO. Keeping the basics right and ethically correct SEO can be done to increase your business and brand promotion hugely in these sites. People are getting more and more dependent on social media to find information on about everything possible, particularly consumer goods. So using them properly and effectively will definitely help promote business and SEO.

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Avoid Possible Penguin Hit with These 8 Blogging Tips

If you have been keeping an eye out on the latest search engine news, you would know that Google has rolled out the third update of the Penguin algorithm early this October. Matt Cutts, Google's head of web spam, tweeted that the change affected 0.3% of English language searches.

 
If you have a blog that you would want to rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs), then this piece of news doesn't sound too comforting at all. But instead of keeping your head down, there are some things that you can do to avoid being penalised by the search engine giant.

#1 Create quality content

This has been stressed over time and again. If you write articles that are original and created with quality in mind, then you do not run the risk of getting into problems with any of Google's updates.

If you consistently provide this type of content to your readers, then you are increasing the chances of having that information shared through various social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

In addition to that, content these days is not just limited to words. These can also include elements such as infographics, images, and video.

#2 Be careful of keyword usage

One of the key black hat search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques that the Penguin update addresses is keyword stuffing. So, if you are writing a post for your blog, you have to be careful with the way you integrate keywords into your content.

Although your goal is to rank high in SERPs, it is never a good idea to stuff your content with keywords just to get there. The only thing that you need to do is write as naturally as possible, and let the content you created work its magic.

#3 Diversify anchor texts

If you want to link to your own pages or those from different websites, then you should also pay attention to the words you use as your anchor text. It is imperative that you do not use the same words repeatedly.

In addition to that, it is also important that you refrain from using the same URL time and again.

#4 Try guest blog posting

Writing content for someone else's blog is an effective link building technique. If you are interested in increasing your online presence, then this is one avenue to make that happen.

However, it is always important to remember to submit good quality articles to these blogs. The content that you pass should be relevant and filled with useful information. 

#5 Avoid paid links

It is understandable that you would want your blog to be known on the internet. However, participating in this kind of scheme will do more harm than good. The reason for this is that Google frowns upon this kind of method.

This is also in clear violation of the webmaster guidelines set out by Google. So if you do not want your blog to suffer, it is best to veer away from this.

#6 Steer clear of link farms

This is another strategy that you need to avoid if you do not want to get hit by Penguin. Although link building is an essential technique to get your blog ranked higher in SERPs, participating in something that takes it to such extremes is unhealthy for your SEO efforts.

#7 Adhere to search engine ranking factors

These are a combination of signals that search engines look at when evaluating a website for ranking. If you want to succeed in your campaign to get listed in the first page of search results, then you need to know and apply these factors.



These include creating a site that web crawlers can easily index, using the right keywords in HTML tags, and of course, creating high-quality write-ups.



Apart from helping you avoid the wrath of the Penguin update, it also plays a major role in achieving good ranking results if implemented correctly.

#8 Adopt the right link building strategies

These refer to both inbound and outbound linking. It is important that these occur naturally within your content.

But you also have to be careful about implementing the proper strategy because these are factors that the Penguin update takes into consideration. So, it is necessary that you vary the text you are linking to internally and use only high-quality domains for your external links.

Conclusion

Google will continue to improve and roll out changes in their algorithms to give users more quality results. Although it might give you cause for concern, especially if you want to rank highly in SERPs, adhering to good practices will help you avoid getting penalised.

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Top Ways To Make Your Blog Hugely Popular

  Every serious blogger have dreams to make his or her blog hugely popular. With countless of blogs being added on a daily basis, the competition among the bloggers seems to have become fierce. Everyone whether they are part time bloggers or professional bloggers often dream big about their blogs. All of these bloggers aspire to increase their readers’ base. In such a cut throat competition, it’s really difficult to achieve this, however, with some competent ways you can certainly aim to reach at this stage. The below is the list of some top ways to make your blog huge popular.

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Have passion for blogging

This can only work when you talk about things which you like and have authority over the subject. For instance, if you like any particular sport and you write about movies, you cannot expect to make your blog posts popular. In fact, these posts would be too boring for any reader coming to your blog. Hence you should always abide this rule of writing a blog for things which you like and know. You need to select a blog niche which can be interesting to you, could be something which is your hobby or passion. Once you decide such subject then only you can start blogging with passion.

Write for two audiences

Whenever you write anything for your blog, you have always two audiences- one is your readers and second one is bloggers. Both these audiences are important for any blog. The other bloggers of your niche area could be attracted towards your blog post if they find something interesting and unique. This will build up your authority over your niche area in the blogosphere. This will give you the opportunity to link your blog by other bloggers.

For readers, you need to think of posts which are unique and subject specific which no one has covered in their blog as yet. In order to publish quality blog posts, you can carry out a comprehensive research before posting anything over your blog. Also, while writing blogs posts think of making it difficult to duplicate which can provoke other bloggers to link with you.

Linking to other bloggers

Links are the best way to get traffic from other blogs. By linking to other bloggers, you send across message which demands to check your blog post over other blogs. You can have an instant back link in the form of trackback. Lastly, linking to different popular and authority blogs helps you in establishing yourself in your niche area. These efforts are easily recognized by major search engines thus making your blog more visible and popular among the readers.

Consistency in your posts

When readers come at your blog they should find new posts there or else they will stop coming. You are supposed to make your blog lively and bubbling place by posting regular and consistent blog posts. If you cannot post several posts in a day, try for just one post in a day. The irregularity in your postings could lead to blog failure. Consistent posts would keep on bringing the repeat visitors. This will make your blog popular among your readers and bloggers of your niche area.

Become an integral part of blogging community

More you interact with experienced and professional bloggers in your community the more amount of exposure you will give to your blog. You are supposed to connect with existing popular blogs in your niche area. Find out the reasons behind the popularity of their blogs and try these things at your blog.

Final word

Making your blog hugely popular requires consistent efforts from your end. If you are serious enough to make it popular, the above ways could help you in achieving this goal. All you need is organized and consistent blogging efforts.

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Ways On How Web Hosting Affects SEO

       Businesses who knew better than to simply put up a website, have it planned by skilled web designers, and put as much interesting and valuable content as possible know that SEO is essential in reaching out to as many potential online customers as possible. While SEO are done in different forms, one factor that can affect a website’s searchability in search engines is their web host

   Finding a good and reliable web host can increase one’s exposure in Google and other search engines. Their influence on the website’s SEO can be direct or indirect and it is important for website owners to know these factors in order to be aware if their web host is still doing them good by improving their SEO or otherwise.

Here are the ways that a web host can improve the website’s SEO:
● Having a dedicated IP Address – For a website to be search engine optimized, it has to have at least one dedicated IP address. Having this will let the search engines know that the website is noteworthy and it is serious about handling huge traffic and answering to the public’s inquiries. Although getting dedicated IP addresses are more expensive than availing of shared web hosting services, the former can certainly provide better advantages when it comes to SEO.


● Having continuous hosting uptime – A website may be successful in driving traffic but if internet users are always clicking on the website that is always down, Google and other search engines will deem that website as unreliable and will be given the lower spots in their search results.

● Having better server speed – Search engines also recognizes a reliable website worthy of a good spot in their search results through the number of seconds that takes the web pages to load. Also, websites having pages that takes a lot of time to load will only drive away visitors which will decrease traffic and eventually, be deemed by search engines as unpopular. A reliable web host can increase the loading time of a website significantly.


● Being served by a reputable web provider - If a business wants to make the most out of their web host, they should choose one that has a good reputation since this will increase their searchability in search engines. Google and other search engines do not just look at the website alone in ranking them. They also check out who they are affiliated with and one of these is the website’s provider.


● Having a provider that has the same location as the target audience – One way of getting a website higher click-through rate and good SEO is by getting a provider that has the same physical location as the target audience.


Conclusion

Deciding to get a reliable and reputable web host for your website and email addresses is a good move not just to have an efficient website that will be able to accommodate huge traffic to the website but also, to have a good ranking in search engines’ results. Availing the services of the leading web hosts in the market can be more expensive but the return should be more profits on the part of the website’s owner, brought by having a good SEO.

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Tag Cloud - A Useful widget? or A Mess To your Blog

Tag clouds, also known as Labels is a very innovative way of unveiling the popular posts in your blog. According to Niche Website Strategy,  a tag cloud is a set of keyword terms  that are displayed as links to help your visitors find content more easily on a blog or website. More so,  I have seen many sites using a tag cloud and I noticed one thing in common with them, this widget  contained big, small, synonyms and other kind of words stuffed all over the area..

        

As at the time I made this post, I even used this widget, just for the benefits, though there are side-effects about it which is what I am pointing out in this post.

Tag Cloud, The Good thing About it 

* It helps your website/blog SEO, generally, this is because your selected keywords linking to various pages in your blog are found in the tag cloud.

* Encourages your readers navigate or follow through to other parts of your post/pages

* Helps Google and other search Engines like Yahoo, Bing among the others to understand what keywords are the most important and popular in your blog, so they can index your pages on SERP, thereby increasing your PageRank.

Tag Cloud, The Ugly thing about it

Sincerely speaking, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, tag clouds can make your blog look messy coz of its big and small letters scattered over the place.

* it has unattractive look, I think it should be the ugliest widget any blog can have

* A mere gaze at it can strain a reader's eyes, especially when there are too much keyword stuffing, what I call "Tag Over-clouding"

Here's a little Suggestion  if you consider using a Tag Cloud

1. Since you have tags posted at the bottom of each blog post then do not use a tag cloud.
2. you have categories already implemented on your blog or webpages, still I suggest, do not use a tag cloud.
3. But if you don't have tags at the bottom of each article or no category listing any where on your blog then use a tag cloud.

      In conclusion, there are alternatives to this, if you want your Readers to reach the best content on your blog, use the Popular Posts widget, renaming a popular post  widget to something more persuading  for is very much accepted, so far you want your visitors know what's on ground they shouldn't miss as they explore your pages.

The Question now is, do you use a Tag Cloud widget? Why? or if Don't use it, Why are you not? The Comment box is open for everyone to share their views on this.

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