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Web 2.0: SEO Social Media Bag of Tricks

Written by: Brandon Leibowitz

Article Overview: Web 2.0 created new opportunities for website operators to gain traffic and search engine placement. Social networking, bookmarking, blogs, and RSS feeds can promote your internet business. Learn how to use these techniques to your advantage. Build links, increase brand awareness, group your social network, all while growing your search engine rankings and website traffic.

Web 2.0: SEO Social Media Bag of Tricks



In 2004 the term "Web 2.0" was originated by the O'Reilly Media. The "2.0" means that this is the second generation of web usage. Web 2.0 has created a variety of new and innovative ways to promote websites using: social bookmarking, social networking, blogging, Wiki, RSS Feeds, and video feeds. These all allow and encourage user interaction, thus the term "Social" is often involved. Search engine optimization now relies on using Web 2.0 methods to increase web traffic and exposure on the web. Many different methods are now available for new websites to easily build a web presence without spending a fortune. This allows you to market your website to thousands of web users.

Social Bookmarking:

Social bookmarking sites are communities where people can share and view their bookmarks from any computer. The more bookmarks a site has, the more traffic it will receive. The most popular bookmarks are shown on the website's homepage, giving tins of exposure to the URL. This is a form of guerrilla and viral marketing. Each bookmark can be tagged with keywords making it easily accessible for yourself and others searching for the same keywords. People searching for the same tags that are in your bookmarks will see your bookmarks. As more people bookmark your site on these social bookmarking websites, your traffic and exposure will increase accordingly. You can even share your entire collection of bookmarks to your friends and family. This is great for temporarily increasing traffic to your site.

Social Networking:

Social networking sites typically require you to sign up and create a profile about yourself or business. Websites should have a profile on the major social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace. Once you have created your site you will want to join groups that are related to your business and industry. You can even start new groups about any topic. The next step is to make friends on these sites. A good approach is to view other related sites and leave them comments, with your link in there. This will draw attention to your profile and ultimately your site. Do not SPAM every profile with your link! Make sure your comments are relevant and deserve a link to your page. There is the chance of secondary links, as people often blog about things they have seen or read in the social networking sites. This can be a tedious process, but well worth the end results as more people will learn about your site and your offerings.

Blogs, Wiki, and RSS Feeds:

In recent years it seems that Google has placed more emphasis on blogs and wiki, rather than forums. Blogs and Wikis are more interactive and have fresh, new, easily accessible content. Blogs and Wiki are a great way to promote, get back links, and add fresh content to websites. It is recommended to blog as often as possible, but one to two entries a month are more than enough. Each post can be linked back to your website, thus adding another link to your site. Also, blogging adds fresh, new content to your site. Remember that content and links are the prominent forces on the search engines algorithm, so the more you have, the better off you are (as long as they are relevant). There are many free blog hosting sites that are SEO friendly, the big two being Google's Blogger and Yahoo's Word Press. Blogs are interactive as comments can be posted, sometimes with links to other sites. It is a good idea to post comments in other people's blogs. Comments should contain relevant information, and if suitable add a link back to your blog or website. RSS Feeds allow for internet users to subscribe to your blog. Subscribers to your blog will receive an email notification whenever you add a new post to your blog.

Video Feeds:

Videos sites such as You Tube and MetaCafe are making video sharing huge. Now anyone can easily post a video online and have tags with specific keywords attached to it. This means that the search engines can pick up the keywords and add the video to the search engine results. Tests have shown that adding a video to the web with proper tags will get it into the top rankings for those keywords. This is only temporary, but a great way to promote yourself on highly competitive keywords. The number of views affects how often the video shows up on the video sharing sites. The more views a video has the more exposure it will receive. Videos also allow for comments to be posted on them, both rating and critiquing the video.

The NoFollow Tag:

As of lately the major search engines have become keen to link building manipulation. Websites have been aware of this for years, using the NoFollow attribute to prevent spiders reading the link and counting it as a back link. Each search engine reads the NoFollow link differently. Both Google and Yahoo follow the NoFollow link, but do not view it as a link for search engine rankings. Ask does not adhere to NoFollow attribute.

I have compiled a list of social networking sites that do not use the NoFollow, making them great for social networking while building up links.

Yahoo 360

Yedda

CREAMaid

Xanga

BUMPzee! (requires RSS feed)

RateItAll.com

Tweako

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Article Tags: awareness group, blogs, brand awareness, internet business, new opportunities, search engine placement, search engine rankings, social networking, traffic web, website operators



Related Forum Posts
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":gvtxsu7g]Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff[/quote:gvtxsu7g] Hi Jeff, Thanks for the suggestion. Why don't you start a new post (with a poll) to see if there's enough interest in your idea for a social media section?
Re: UPDATES: New Campaign! New Layout! New Ideas! - GT - thanks for the FYI - I'm not sure if we'll put a link back. Something to consider though! Trent - the new category is "Social Network and Media" which was put in to compliment the Online Businesses category that currently exists. Overall the new categories are: - Looking For, Networking and Events - Review My... - Social Network and Media - Brags and Rants These came as a result of Ringo doing research on other forums and thinking about what could be improved on ours to give a better experience for everyone. I hope you enjoy them! David, I'm looking forward to reading your Brag / Rant!
Re: Marketing 2.0 - What Are Your Thoughts - Hi Shri, Thanks for posting this. I also read it and I believe Social Media is here to stay, until the next best thing comes up. Social media proved to be useful for me many times and I think everyone should use it for their business.
Re: Social Media Marketing Ignorance - [quote="vbn411":7qciluxl]Social Media is space that you have to be in to succeed in our current climate. People are going to be discussing your brand / product whether you like it or not, so you might as well join the conversation and add value. [/quote:7qciluxl] I think that's probably one of the most realistic way to think about it. There's no real textbook way of understanding Social Media, it's the networks of people and their interactions that will exist with or without your input. As for Jennifer, You can always have 2 Facebook pages. Many people do. There is also LinkedIn, which is like a professional networking version of Facebook. The only way to know is to try it.


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