Posts by CIDsolutions:
Social Media and your website
In today’s world people often wonder how social media impacts their findability on Google searches. Here are some important things to know:
- Google is the number one search engine (80% of all searches in the world) so I recommend doing whatever Google suggests.
- Get a Google Plus profile set up for your business. No one in any real measurable sense is using google plus, but just having an account and pointing your website to it makes Google happy and they bump up your rankings just for doing it. Also having people follow you bumps the numbers up as well.
- LinkedIn is a B2B (business to business) form of social media. It is here for business and people have gotten jobs and referrals from it. Also Google rankings like to see inbound links to your website and this is just another way to get those important inbound links. An inbound link is a website out in cyberspace that links back to your website. The higher they rank, the more important that inbound link is to your website. The best inbound links are websites that are considered an authority. LinkedIn would be considered an authority. How can you be sure about the authority? A website called Page Rank Checker helps (prchecker.info). It gives a rank from N/A or 0 of no rank all the way to 10. A 10 being google so no one gets that rank. Rank your site and rank the site of those inbound links.
- Facebook is more people to people but businesses have been in there now for a while and getting people to like and follow your page is great exposure for your business. I had a client who had 1,500 followers for their local store. They post once a day or every other day. The things they posted were new things in the store or special events. It worked because people would show up to see the new stuff or check out the new deals. As my daughter once said “Pictures! Or it didn’t happen!”. Post pictures and even videos if you can. A good image or video always gets good response over plain text. Facebook also offers analytics to see when and who is looking at your posts. You can even post 5 things at once and set a timer to post one at a time for 5 days.
- Twitter is a a good one for by the minute responses. I there was a tire store that had a twitter account but they also had a program called TweetDeck which allow them to have key words monitoring. So if someone mentioned their name for example, an alert would pop up. A lady was in the waiting room waiting for her car to be worked on. She tweeted the name of the tire shop and complained about the long wait. Within moments a response came back from the tire store apologizing for the delay and offering a discount for the trouble. THAT IS POWERFUL STUFF! That instantly turned a complaint into a praise live on the internet.
The key to social media is to pick two or three to be involved and then post appropriately. Google plus? Check it once a week or every other week. LinkedIn? Once a week. Twitter? have a program like TweetDeck monitoring it. Facebook? check daily but limit it to 15 minutes a day. Post and check your analytics.
Social media can certainly enhance your website, but yo have to be disciplined about it. Or get yourself an expert who can do it for you!
SEO versus CMS
I have heard a lot of controversy over CMS systems trying to do SEO. But before we get started, let’s talk terms! CMS stands for Content Management System and SEO is Search Engine Optimization. A CMS website is basically a website with a built-in editor. WordPress is a great example of that. You do not […]
Crown Jewels of Search Engine Findability
I had a a gentleman that contacted me about his website. He was building one for China but it was not being found. He had followed guidelines that said to name yur graphics what you want to be found for…the problem is that might work for english (ascii) characters but it will not work for […]
Key words are key, but they have to be right
Often people think more is better especially on key words. The real trick to key words is this: 1. They have to be relavant to your website and business. The words have to be realistic to finding your site from the people you want. 2. The words have to be found on your website not […]
Elements of Credibility
A great way to make your website work for you and your business is to add elements of credibility to it. These are the things that will help visitors to your website gain and build trust in you and your services. What could they be you ask? Well here they are: First, give free and […]
The Secret to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
You see it in emails. You see it in ads. It is promised over the phone. If you just spend with us, you will get great results! If you buy this program, you will be at the top! If you exchange links with us, you will be well on your way! You hear it often […]
Top 5 Things to Improve Findability
Experts will tell you there are a variety of things you can do to improve your website findabailty with Search Engines. I want to focus on just five things you can do that will help quickly. 1. Title Tag of your pages. Often people put things like “Home” or “About Us” in the title tag…there […]