Social Media Marketing is one of the most effective tools for boosting your online business and making a presence for it in the web world. Before we move forward, let’s look at what Social Media actually is, and then we get to how it can work wonders for you. Social Media Marketing is a platform of web content created by people through real communications on various social networking websites and by gathering information from people all over the world.

But is making a profile on LinkedIn enough? Or Will making a business page on Facebook or MySpace solve the purpose?

The answer is a big NO! Because making a profile alone will not help, you have to jump into all the action and make some serious communication efforts. You have to be as active on your business profile as you would be on your own profile.

The perks of Social Media Marketing:

Social Media Marketing offers numerous benefits which provide the much deserved limelight to your online business. Let’s look at some of these perks:

1. Social Media Marketing can get huge amounts of free traffic to your website, which in turn results in increased visibility.

2. Through various social networking profiles, you can build a considerable fan base for your online products and services.

3. Most of the social networking websites like FaceBook, LinkedIn and MySpace offer the option of creating free accounts. Thus, using these websites generally proves to be very beneficial in terms of COST and BUDGET.

4. As you are communicating directly with people who share interests similar to your services/products, you can directly target a specific group of people who might be interested in what you have to offer.

5. Social Media Marketing helps in increasing the popularity of your website through various backlinks which leads to better search engine visibility.
6. As a result of User Generated Sites and Book Marking Sites, people can find your business online more easily than ever.

The most important factor in Social Media Marketing is to keep in touch with your user base and try to be as transparent as you can. Aside from Blogs, Video-Promotions and Photo-Sharing, start delving into micro-blogging services like Twitter & Plurk so that you are able to reach mobile users as well.

And last, but definitely not the least, BE PATIENT!

Have any queries, comments, suggestion or want your site to grow with Social Media Marketing? Contact us today!

(Canoni-cali-zation) – Matt Cutts refers to it as the process of picking the best URL when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages.

We come across websites with both www and non www versions of its URLS.

• www.yourwebsite.com
• yourwebsite.com/
• www.yourwebsite.com/index.html
• yourwebsite.com/home.asp

Most people would consider these the same URL but technically, all of these are different.  Matt, in his post on SEO advice: URL canonicalization, explains that a web server could return completely different content for all the URLs listed above.

If you have duplicate content on multiple webpages of your site, this can cause problems for search engines – specifically in determining which URL should be shown in the  search results. Canonical URL comes to rescue in such a scenario:

•    Canonicalization becomes helpful as it takes the duplicate pages and uses a 301 re-direct to point all versions to a single, “canonical” version of the content or web page.

•    Google recommends that you pick a “canonical URL”as the preferred version of the page. You can indicate your preference to Google in a number of ways. Google recommends them all (if you don’t indicate a canonical URL, Google will identify what it thinks is the best version).

What to do to make sure Google picks up the URL that you want it to pick:

•    You can choose a preferred URL and use it consistently across your entire site. For example, don’t make half of your links go to http://example.com/ and the other half go to http://www.example.com/. Instead, pick the URL you prefer and always use that format for your internal links. If your site has duplicate content on multiple pages, there is a high possibility this could affect your search engine ranking results. For example – the link information could get diluted in a case where few incoming links may point to one version of the URL and few links to another.

•    Matt further adds that if you want your default URL to be http://www.example.com/. You can make your webserver in a way so that if someone requests http://example.com/, it does a 301 (permanent) redirect to http://www.example.com/. Doing this will help Google know which URL you prefer to be canonical. If you have a site that changes often, for example you have dynamic content on site, a blog, etc. then adding a 301 redirect can be very useful.

Using the URL removal tool to remove domain.com –

If you remove one of the www vs. non-www hostnames, you can end up removing your whole domain for six months. You need to do a reinclusion request if URL removal tool removes your entire domain when you actually only wanted to remove the www or non-www version of your domain. A reinclusion request refers to mentioning that you removed your entire domain by accident using the URL removal tool and that you’d like it reincluded.

For more information on 301 re-directs see http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-URL-canonicalization/

If spellings had us baffled last time, then this one would be a killer.

American and British English differ greatly, even in terms of sentence structures and use of tense. What may be standard in British English might not be correct in American English.

Following are a few more differences which you should take note of.

Use of Present Perfect:

British English

I’ve lost my key. Can you look for it?

American:

I lost my key. Can you help me look for it?

(Americans generally avoid using present perfect tense)

Use of Already, Just and Yet

British:

I’ve just had lunch
I’ve already seen that film
Have you finished your homework yet?

American:

I just had lunch
I already saw that film
Have you finished your homework yet? OR Did you finish your homework yet?

Generally have and has are preferred in British English and do and does in American English. However, both are accepted in American and British English. For instance:

British – She has a beautiful home

American – She’s got a beautiful home

The verb get is also used as gotten in American English, for instance,

She has gotten used to the brutality inflicted upon her

Difference in Use of Prepositions

American

on the weekend
on a team
please write me soon
Monday through Friday
out the door
Figure Out
Children are at the School
Lay off

British

at the weekend
in a team
please write to me soon
Monday to Friday
out of the door
Work Out
Children are in the School
make redundant

There are different versions of idioms in American and British English

American

not touch something with a ten-foot pole
sweep under the rug
knock on wood
see the forest for the trees
a home away from home
blow (or toot ) one’s horn
a drop in the bucket
Tempest in a teapot
beating a dead horse
a new lease on life

British

not touch something with a bargepole
sweep under the carpet
touch wood
see the woods for the trees
a home from home
blow one’s trumpet
drop in the ocean
storm in a teacup
flogging a dead horse
a new lease of life

Knowing Americanisms is very useful, when creating a copy for American readers.

So remember that and will easily suffice, where additionally should have been and one will respectfully make for you.

Want to Know more or tell us something. Feel Free to contact us or leave a comment.

Google is coming down strongly on websites using paid link programs. Although this refers to the participation in link ads without “nofollow” links, we should consider what good link building is today.

For search engines to treat you worthy of top ten placements, good inbound links are a requirement because these “votes” make you popular. But it is not JUST the volume, but the authority of these inbound links, that make the difference. Search engines evaluate a website based on how useful it is to the end user – the SE surfer. Thus, it is important for SEs to know if you are directing web visitors to industry related websites as well or not. They are also looking for common threads that binds the site to link to and your own.

Here are 9 Link Building Principles that are really simple steps you should take to get more inbound links and get into SE good books.

1. Include the TITLE of your link text (read ‘anchor text’) in the title of the page that you are linking to.
2. Try and impress high PAGE RANK websites or webpages (usually, high PR means an authoritative page) so that              they want to link to you.
3. Submit your website to industry related DIRECTORIES.
4. Participate in your industry related forums – leave COMMENTS on industries related BLOGS. Please DO NOT                Spam. Do this only if you have something intelligent to say.
5. Join and participate in SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES and build your network (read “traffic source”!).
6. Take out PRESS RELEASES.
7. Write good ARTICLES.
8. Participate in your industry related FORUMS & DISCUSSION BOARDS.
9. SOCIAL BOOK MARKING. This serves two purposes – it gets you incoming links and it popularizes your website in your community.

Get in touch with us for more information on how we can help you get more traffic to your website.

Microsoft Bing – The decision Engine

Bing is a greatly packaged replacement for the Live Search! It has a fancy and (indeed) a searcher friendly interface. The Bing team says that it lets you overcome information overload and helps you make decision faster and easier. Bing’s new features help the searcher save time and make an informed decision.

Microsoft recently published a PDF about Search Engine Optimization called Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. The PDF primarily describes the user interface changes launched with Bing, and how those might impact site owners, but also touches on search engine optimization. Numerous researches carried out on how searchers read and use the search engine result pages have demonstrated a constant pattern.

The pattern has been defined as the “Golden Triangle pattern”. The Golden triangle pattern suggest that in a SERP containing a single threaded results for a query, the searchers generally scan the length of the first result and then they scan lesser amount of information for the second result and follow this ever decreasing pattern for seeking information until they mostly stop at the result # 5.

Studies also suggest that over 50% the searchers refine their search query by going back to the SERP, from a non-helpful SE result. In most cases they opt abandoning the result altogether!
The Bing interface design comes to the rescue! With categorized result pages and organized explore pane – quick tabs, related searches, search history contents of the explore pane, make it highly dynamic.

Result Type Improvements - Bing brings to you the standard “blue ink” exposing deep links within a website. When possible Bing also represents related information about the result such as, with books or movies, user ratings and links to reviews directly in the caption.

Best Match – top ranking result for any query is listed under the best match result.  A searcher can easily find related information in forms of deep links without having to go to the website and look for the information that he requires.

Instant Answers – These now offer more comprehensive information and richer results than the traditional result.

Caption improvements in Bing:

Document Preview – Document preview allows searchers to instantly preview the content from the deep link without having to go to the website.  All the searchers need to do is move the mouse pointer over the caption and they can preview a sample of the actual content on the page of the website instantly and make an informed decision about visiting the website or otherwise.

They say this helps increase qualified traffic, but some webmasters might  not want to expose the content present on the page and would like to have the visitors visit their site and get all the information that they are looking for. For them, Microsoft provides a way to opt-out of the feature.

Just add the following to the <head> section of each page:
<meta name=“msnbot”, content=“nopreview”>

Or generically for all robots:

<meta name=“robots”, content=“nopreview”>

If you don’t want this feature used on any page of the site, it might be easier to return the directive in the server HTTP header as follows:
x-robots-tag: nopreview

Flash Extraction – Microsoft says that Flash-based sites are responsible for 21% of all empty descriptions in their index. They say that Bing has implemented new technologies that can perform “limited data extraction” and has now been able to generate descriptions for one-third of those formerly empty tagged, flash based websites. Skip Flash introduction link in result feature on applicable flash based websites help the searcher get right to the content of the website.

Local Listings – It is the new Bing feature for local business searches.

With all these features that Bing offers its searchers, they say that a well done SEO expands opportunities with Bing!!

Download Bing–New Features For Webmasters.pdf and read more if you wanna Bing!

Some of us are grammar snobs and cringe at every error we come across (I plead guilty!). As a copywriter, you might come across many such grammarians, and take it from me, nothing pleases these grammar snobs more than coming across an it’s and its error. Why, you ask? Because then they can mercilessly attack you and totally get away with it!

Let’s try and make things a little easier in the its and it’s department with explanations and some examples:

It’s – It’s is a contraction for ‘it is’ (sometimes for ‘it has’ as well, but we can put that one aside). This is an exception to the general rule that ’s denotes possession.

Examples:

It’s an interesting theme to build a play around.
It’s easy to remember stuff with mnemonics.

How to remember tip – Try replacing it’s with it is in a sentence. If it fits, you are good!

Its – Its denotes possession (an exception to the general norm), and can be interpreted as ‘that which belongs to him/her’.

Examples:

The dog lost its tag.
A Hill Myna is known for its ability to mimic the human voice.

How to remember tip – Try replacing its with his or her in a sentence. If it fits, you are good!

Very Important Note:

There is absolutely no such word as its’!!

Have any doubts or want to add something? Feel free to leave a comment or contact us! I did admit to being a grammar snob and another thing which makes us very happy is answering and arguing .

What Is Link Building?

Link building is the process of creating inbound links to our own website. This can be done by reciprocal links, being listed in directories, yellow pages, etc. Link building is one of the important methods to make your site popular.

Link building (also known as link popularity building) plays a vital role in the field of Internet Marketing. The link building method for promoting websites is not only beneficial for search engine rankings, but more importantly, it is required for getting good quality traffic to the website. As far as SEO is concerned, link building is an important off-page optimization factor that affects organic rankings in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

It gets good results if it’s done in a professional manner and by interacting with good quality websites.

Types of Link building:

There are 3 basic link building methods:

1. One-Way Link Building – It is the process of receiving links from a website of similar interest. This is a one way link because of absence of any link connecting you back to the website.

2. Reciprocal Link Building – This is a two-way linking process where the two sites of similar neighborhood connect to each other by exchanging links. usually, reciprocal links are a result of an agreement between parties to share traffic and improve link popularity.

3. Three Way Link Building – It’s a form of link exchange which involves three websites.

Building Links: Why submit website to directories?

There are many advantages for a web site if it is linked from Web Directories:

- Your site will get good quality traffic.
- Search engines index your website quickly.
- Your website will get higher rankings on search engines if the directories or yellow pages are quality sites and are themselves linked with authoritative sites.

Merits of Link Building

Links for your site is one of the things that Google looks for to decide how important your site is, and its ranking. Not all links have equal value. What determines the value of the link is its relevancy to the page it is linked to.

1) Link Popularity Increases Your Pagerank (PR). Link Exchange is really helpful in increasing the page rank of our page. Page rank is something that is mainly based on a site’s link popularity.

2) Link Popularity Leads To Traffic. With high quality incoming links, your site will be seen as a valuable resource and through links, you’ll attract more eyes to your website.

3) Link Popularity creates trust between your site & the visitor. When a visitor comes across text links of your site on many different webpages, he or she is bound to think that you are a trusted name in your industry.

4) Link Building provides lot of financial assistance to you. In most cases, Link exchange leads to conversions i.e., buying the products you are selling, downloading your stuff, reading your content or clicking on the ads that you have on your site.

Still have questions? Feel free to contact us!