Browsing all articles tagged with Guide
Mar
20

Top Twitter Promotion tips for your Business – A Twitter guide by Position2 – Part II

How to make your tweets effective

· If you prefer Web tweeting, use this tool: http://twitzap.com/ for advanced features
· Download Tweetdeck for more power tweeting from your desktop
· You can add additional Twitter accounts in Tweetdeck and control them using a single application
· Schedule important tweets in advance using this tool: http://www.tweetlater.com/
· Use: http://cotweet.com/ for collaborative tweeting

What to tweet on – Starting and joining the right conversation(s) will give you more exposure.

· Post tweets based on the interests of your followers
· Search for topics relevant to your product(s) and talk to influencers
· Use hashtags to power the conversation
· Post tweets about useful links and articles
· Use: http://happn.in/ to talk about the trends in your locality.

Twit research – Twitter is a good source for market data as prospective customers are present there.

· Finalize the sample size of the search.
· List hashtags relevant to your research objective
· Get secondary data for your research based on hashtags by using this tool:http://twubs.com/
· Analyze hashtags relevant to your research using this tool: http://www.trendrr.com/

Get feedback –As Twitter is a real-time medium, organizations use Twitter to get direct feedback from customers.

· Get feedback from customers and other tweeple by replying and directly messaging them
· Use hashtags to organize the feedback
· Get feedback from local tweeple using this tool: http://nearbytweets.com/
· Use: http://twtpoll.com/ to conduct a simple survey in Twitter to get real-time feedback
· Post new product screenshots in http://twitpic.com/ and get instant feedback from your followers

Twit hiring – If you are looking to hire people for your organization, Twitter is another source to find the right talent.

· Search for job seekers near your location using advanced search features in Twitter public search
· Use hashtags in your tweets to reach active job seekers
· Post tweets to announce benefits such as perks, allowances, etc. for the job(s) you offer
· Use: http://twitpic.com/ to share corporate events to show job seekers your organization’s work culture
· You can also use Twitter to conduct background checks on employees by using the Twitter advanced public search.

Tweetup – “Is an organized or impromptu gathering of people that use Twitter.” Tweetup is an excellent platform to promote products among local Tweeple.

· Search for a Tweetup near your location using: http://nearbytweets.com/
· Organize a Tweetup in your locality using this tool: http://www.twtvite.com/
· Pitch for influencers in your location by attending Tweetups.
· Give away promo codes to attendees in the Tweetup to spread your product virally.

Follow your competition – This can give you insights on what your competitors are working on.

· Follow your competitors on Twitter.
· Use Twitter public search to get more insights on competitors’ activities
· Analyze their Twitter account and follower patterns using: http://tweetstats.com/
· Compare your network statistics with competitors using: http://twitter-friends.com/

Mar
18

Using Social Media for Business – Beginner’s Guide

On the topic of social media applications, there seem to be three types of people: the super users, the avoiders, and the people that say, “I know I need to, but which ones and why?” Most business people probably fall into the last group: the ocean of people who lie between the early-adopter ?-geeks and those mind-boggling creatures who only check their email once a week or so. Yes, there’s potential there for good things to happen…if you’re actively using the right applications.


The number of applications and communities is overwhelming. Many of the most popular ones, like MySpace and YouTube, aren’t going to be all that helpful for professional interaction. That’s not true for every industry, though, so it’s worth asking around and seeing what your communities are using. If your colleagues, contacts, and customers are all using some other method of connecting, by all means go participate there. The point of this is for you to be able to make useful, meaningful connections and interact.


LinkedIn is a simple, useful tool for any professional. This is the business networking equivalent of being listed in the phone book. It doesn’t require very much attention and can provide a great deal of benefit. Spending half an hour building your profile lets you put your CV out there, easily find your network of contacts, and be visible for the sort of notice you want to receive. If you want to do more, there are great community features. People can recommend you and your work. You can ask questions through LinkedIn Answers and get answers from people who actually know what they’re talking about. If you need to hire someone or are looking for a job, it’s an ideal place to put out feelers. You won’t get clobbered with email from LinkedIn




Using Social Media for Business – Beginner’s Guide




Posted: Apr 17, 2008 |
Comments: 0 |
Views: 43 |
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On the topic of social media applications, there seem to be three types of people: the super users, the avoiders, and the people that say, “I know I need to, but which ones and why?” Most business people probably fall into the last group: the ocean of people who lie between the early-adopter ?-geeks and those mind-boggling creatures who only check their email once a week or so. Yes, there’s potential there for good things to happen…if you’re actively using the right applications.


The number of applications and communities is overwhelming. Many of the most popular ones, like MySpace and YouTube, aren’t going to be all that helpful for professional interaction. That’s not true for every industry, though, so it’s worth asking around and seeing what your communities are using. If your colleagues, contacts, and customers are all using some other method of connecting, by all means go participate there. The point of this is for you to be able to make useful, meaningful connections and interact.


LinkedIn is a simple, useful tool for any professional. This is the business networking equivalent of being listed in the phone book. It doesn’t require very much attention and can provide a great deal of benefit. Spending half an hour building your profile lets you put your CV out there, easily find your network of contacts, and be visible for the sort of notice you want to receive. If you want to do more, there are great community features. People can recommend you and your work. You can ask questions through LinkedIn Answers and get answers from people who actually know what they’re talking about. If you need to hire someone or are looking for a job, it’s an ideal place to put out feelers. You won’t get clobbered with email from LinkedIn

Mar
17

A Guide to Google Adwords

Author admin    Category Google     Tags , ,

The pay per click advertising arena is a complex place. As a Google adwords advertiser you compete in an auction every time a keyword prompts your ad to be shown. Many advertisers, however, do not realise how complex that auction is. Find out more about how Google Adwords ranks your ads and how you can establish a profitable strategy for your online business.

Understanding the Way Google Adwords Ranks PPC Bidders

An understanding of the way Google Adwords ranks PPC bidders is essential in establishing a profitable PPC strategy. Here is an overview on how Google ranks your ads:

1. Every time your ad is triggered an auction takes place. Google ranks the ads by Ad Rank. The Ad Rank is determined by the following calculation:

Ad Rank = ‘Maximum Cost Per Click’ x ‘Quality Score’

As you can see, your ad rank is also determined by your Quality Score. This means a competitor who has a better quality score than yourself can actually rank above you for a lesser cost per click (CPC).

Taking this into account, it is your goal to achieve the highest possible position for the lowest possible cost. How should you go about doing this? Firstly you should understand what the quality score is and how you can achieve a good one.

Understanding the Quality Score

The way in which Google calculates your quality score is unknown. However, Google do tell us many of the factors that determine your quality score:

1. A keyword’s click through rate (CTR),

2. The historical performance of that keyword,

3. The relevance of text in your ad

4. The relevance of the keyword to its ad group

5. The quality of your landing page

6. Other relevancy factors.

Now that you know the fundamentals about how the Google Adwords auction operates; how can you leverage the competitive PPC arena in your favour?

Optimising Your Google Adwords Account

In recent times the competition for broad key terms, such as ’shoes’, for example, has skyrocketed, resulting in higher cost per clicks for such terms.

By targeting more specific key terms, such as ‘tennis shoes’ or ‘buy platform shoes’, where the competition is less aggressive, you are able to capture a large amount of traffic for a substantially lower cost-per-click.

This is known as targeting the long tail of search. While the key terms that fall into the ‘long tail’ are searched for less often than those broader key terms at the ‘head’, there are far more specific keywords than there are broad key terms, so it is possible to leverage the long tail to receive as much or even more traffic for substantially less money.

On top of the benefits above, mining the long tail enables you to target your market more specifically. As a result this is likely to increase your quality score, and in turn your return on investment (ROI).

Achieving a Better Quality Score

If you have multiple products or services, it is possible to group them separately into categorical groups and make each ad group’s ad text and landing page specific to each product/ service.

By creating advert text that better matches the users search query it is possible to increase the CTR. Moreover, by creating tailored landing pages specific to the product/ products the user is searching for, it is possible to increase the number of conversions.

The benefits described above all contribute to a better quality score. Because of this ranking algorithm it is possible for advertisers with a good click through rate to achieve a higher position for a lower CPC than their competition – and hence long tail adverts often appear higher in the Google results than general keywords, even though they are paying less per click.

Summary

Optimising a PPC account to achieve optimal results can be a very complex process. Firstly you will need to build the long tail. This will involve a lot of keyword research, taking into account category and product keywords, localization, common spelling mistakes, call to action keywords etc.

Secondly, to make the most of those long tail keywords, an advertiser will need to have very specific ad text. When dealing with hundreds of products it is tricky to generate a unique text ad and landing page for each one, but this is essential in maintaining a good CTR. PPC management companies will often have their own in-house tools to achieve this.

Testing ad text variations and testing landing pages are also important steps in achieving the most from your advertising spend. However, the most important step is measuring and managing the ROI on each keyword. Since the PPC arena is a constantly changing environment, constant monitoring is essential. The value of every keyword is constantly changing therefore it is essential that you work on a keyword management strategy to deal with this. Bid management tools can be especially helpful here, or a third party PPC Management Company.

Mar
16

Internet Marketing Beginner’s Guide – Vol.2 Get Training Part 4

So far we have covered two free ways of going about obtaining internet marketing information that you can use to train yourself, or preferably supplement a more structured training method.  Here we will continue in this vein and explore another free source of information. 

Unless today is the first day you have ever seen a computer you probably use this tool every day.  It is the gateway to the internet and if it isn’t already it will quickly become the most used icon on your desktop.

Google
Google is like your all access pass to the never ending chaos that is the internet.  You cannot even use the internet or access any of its information without Google’s help.  Of course there are other web browsers, the most prominent being Yahoo, but Google has quickly become the undisputed champ of search engines and they won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

There is tons to be said about using Google as a marketing tool.  From SEO, to Adwords, to Adsense, to Google Slap, to Feedburner, to Blogger, Google has their fingers in a lot of stuff.  But for the purpose of this article we are just going to be exploring how to utilize Google as a method of seeking out relevant information for training purposes.

Pros
As you start to become more familiar with internet marketing jargon Google will quickly become your best friend.  At times the internet can actually seem like a small place if you do not really know what you are looking for.  Typing in several generic terms that are relatively the same such as internet marketing, online business, work at home, will yield relatively the same results and may leave you discouraged about ever finding information you can use.

But once you know what to search for and you have some specific questions with specific key words Google begins to open up and share its secrets with you.  There is just so much quality information out there on the web.  As you learn about certain concepts, take what you’ve learned and start doing some targeted searches to find more information and fill in the holes.  Of course if you are involved in a quality training program you will want to get as much as you can from that source first and only search elsewhere when necessary, which if it’s good training, shouldn’t be too often.

Cons
Quality websites can sometimes be hard to come by.  It is not unusual to do a search and come back with hardly any results, non relevant results, or sketchy websites that you are hesitant to even click on. 

Always check the URL under the title and description of each search result.  You do not want to click on a site only to have viruses downloaded on your computer.  Sometimes there is nothing you can do about it.  The title and description sound like exactly what you are looking for but when you click the link you get redirected to somewhere you did not want to go, or worse are infected with malware. 

For this reason, if you are going to be doing a lot of searching on unfamiliar sites looking for new information, you should at least have a descent antivirus program installed like Webroot Antivirus or else only click on sites you recognize and trust.  In fact, that may be the best way to go even if you do have an antivirus program just to be safe.  You can usually tell when a site might be problematic by checking out the URL and description text, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Mar
14

Real guide to save yourself from google click fraud punishment

 

Many web site owners are getting their Google Adsense account terminated when they have done nothing wrong to deserve the punishment. Considering the money that they are getting from Adsense, they would certainly want to get back into it.

 

Considering the money to be made with Adsense, it is no wonder that they would want to get back into it.

 

It is that same consideration why the Google Adsense click fraud is thought of and why many people are getting into it.

 

Click fraud is the act of clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is simply the same as paying out cash for false leads. Many people website owners are aware of this fraud and are sharing the same sentiment that this is the one big problem that Adsense is facing.

 

How do you prevent being involved in this fraud?

 

Majority of web hosts are offering access logs. Once this is offered to you, it is necessary that you hand it over to Google as well. This allows them to look for any suspicious activity on your site. Problems like this are very serious and giving it to them is saying that you would want to help them in any way you can in solving the problem.

 

It can also help if you have a click monitoring software. If you do not have one yet, you should try and get one. There is absolutely no major factor preventing you from having one because most of this software is free.

 

As usual, all the information you have received should be turned over to Google. This is showing Google that you too are fighting against click frauds and is in no way a part of it.

 

Study your server logs and watch for any activity that seems suspicious. Report anything that you may find odd, may it big or small thing.

 

You may want to consider disabling ads for your own IP address and local geographic area. This will certainly prevent accidents and will not make Google mistake another user as you. You can do through a htaccess file. This will avoid Google mistaking as clicking on your own ads and be kicked out because of it.

 

Keep your Adsense off on pop ups and pop unders. Your ads should not be displayed on content sites that promote illegal activity or tampering of the legal rights of other people or business. Included in this are the content that is considered adult and gambling ones. If you think that you may be breaking this rule, immediately remove your content or Adsense from the web page.

 

Be truthful and confess up to Google about times when you might have clicked on your own as, whether accidentally or intentionally. Or the times when you have done something that is against the Terms of Service that they are implementing. Be honest about anything that you may have done that is wrong. Confessing is way better than Google learning about it eventually. It would mean eventual termination and no getting back what you have worked so hard for.

 

Do not tell your family or friends about Adsense on your website. Chances are they may start clicking on them to help you make money without you knowing it. They may be doing more harm to you than help by trying it in the first place.

 

If ever someone you know chanced upon your Adsense, make sure they understand that they cannot click on your ads under any circumstances. It would be wise to brief them on important things about Adsense and what not to do with them.

 

Most pay per click networks have different measures in hand to protect website owners against click frauds. Other search engines can track more than 50 data points, IP address, browser’s information, user’s session info and pattern recognition. They also have “systems” available that detects fraud. Not to mention the specialized teams monitoring how things are going and helping advertisers stop click frauds.

 

Google offers suggestion on how to avoid click fraud. Using “negative keywords” can be used to keep your Adsense showing on products and services that are in no way related to yours. Adding tracking URLs to your links so you can track the traffic coming from Google.

 

If you want to know more about how to get success in Google Adsense Program or Adsense ready websites then you must choose adsenselover package and guide to make money on internet automatically by work at home easily day and night.or get success in affiliate marketing and learn the secrets of money making online with picmoney’s money empire guide. These are the best tested real legitimate  online money making opportunities.

 Do not be caught in the Google click fraud. Be aware and be wary.

 

Mar
14

A simple guide to search engine marketing (part one)

Search engine marketing is by far the most efficient and effective way to advertise your business. With over 86% of internet users using Google as their search engine, the need for your business to show on the first page of Google has never been greater.

Many people are unaware of search engine marketing and just take for granted the results that appear when they search for something on a search engine such as Google.

However, search engine marketing seems to defy to current doom and gloom of the recession. Think about this:

“The average Britain spends 164 minutes online everyday, compared with 148 minutes watching TV”

Over half the world’s population now has access to the web and nearly 90% of them find what they’re looking for using search engines. 36% of people think that the result at the top of the first page is the market leader and 80% of people make their choice from first page listings alone. With over 21 billion web pages wanting a first page position how can you get your website on the first page.

This is called search engine marketing and I have listed a few techniques and tips to get you started with optimising your website to rank well on a search engine. Remember that this is a basic guide to help to you on your way.

Link building

First we have to look at how search engines rank a website and decide which order to list them. The simple (very very very simple) version is, Google changed everything the way many search engine rank. The initial creators of Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) wanted to create a search engine that could rank a website for quality and list them in order of quality to the user. The way they decided to rank a website was to count how many other websites link to it. If other websites link to it then it must be good. So, essentially links mean votes. Like I said, this is the very simple version and there is so much more to it than this but it is a great place to start as it holds the most importance.

See who links to you and then see who links to your competitors and try to muscle in on some of their action. Simply go to yahoo.co.uk, then in the search box type “link:yourcompetitor.com”. This will bring up a list of websites linking to your competitors website. Then contact them and ask them to link to you too. Don’t be stingy. Make sure you have links going out from your website. Important though that you link to high quality websites, i.e. If your website is a property website, have links to the relevant governing bodies, Wikipedia or the largest property portals. Search engines will see your site as being a good place to get good content. Submit your website to online directories. This can be very boring and takes hours. But once you have had your site accepted in to a directory. You’ll have a link back to your website. Remember. The more the better. Subscribe to forums in your niche. You can include a link in your signature straight to your website. Remember though. Do not spam on a forum. Forum users will not like it and the moderator will probably kick you off. If you use a forum properly though you will find it quite engaging. Read blogs relating to you niche market. This is very educational as well as beneficial for link building. Read the blog then leave a comment about that blog. Don’t forget to include a link to your website though. Just don’t make it too obvious.

Social Media (web2.0)

“Facebook”, “YouTube”, “Flickr”, “Myspace” – These are all social media websites. They provide a means for people from all over the world to join online and share information. The way in which people communicate vary though. “Flickr” allow people to upload photos and share them with other users or even comment on pictures uploaded. “Youtube” allow people to upload videos etc. The number of people visiting these websites to share information is in the millions. So maybe you could use these social communities to spread the word about your website. Social media is a great way to connect with hard to reach people that share the same interests. There are a number of ways to do this.

Make your content interesting enough for people to want to view it. Then,unlike search engine optimisation, change the content often, This will make people want to keep visiting you. Make it easy for people to tag or bookmark your new content. Bookmarking is very fashionable at the moment. The most popular way of doing this is by getting an “addthis” button due to its ease of use, however, there are many buttons available. Use more than just text in your site. Create a video and submit it to a video sharing website like “youtube”, Create a PDF version of your content and create an audio version too. Submit it to appropriate websites. Don’t forget the link back to your site. Blog.Blog.Blog then blog some more. The simple truth is that the majority of internet users love blogs. So do search engines. Create a blog and use it. A lot. Submit it to sites like “technorati.com”. If it is good enough people will link to you and then share and tell others about your writings. Make friends. The social media community, are very social and friendly. They will want to talk to you and ask you questions. Make sure you are polite and take time to answer any messages. Negative feedback spreads faster than positive feedback.

Pay Per Click

This is a method in which you pay to get people to your website. Have you ever done a search on Google and found there are two columns. The Colum on the right is called sponsored links. They are adverts from businesses. They do not pay anything for appearing there but they do pay when you click on the advert (pay per click). This is a very fast way to get people to your website but you do have to pay. I would recommend getting a pay per click company to help here. It will save you a lot of money. However, if you must have ago your self here are some very basic tips.

Budget. Make sure you create a sensible budget and stick to it. Don’t get in to a bidding war. Don’t just rely on pay per click as the be all and end all for your business marketing. PPC is great for promoting specific products and services very quickly but you always have to pay for the result. Analyze your cost per click and cost per acquisition closely. Then compare it to your other marketing activities. See which one works best. Remember that sites such as Google take into account the quality of your website content being marketed more than how much you are bidding. PPC is my favorite part of search engine marketing due mainly to the sheer speed of return on investment BUT make sure it is done properly other wise it can be devastating. Always have two ads running at the same time for each product but with different ad text. Google will use the most successful advert for you and show that advert more often, helping you gain more traffic. Change to poorest performing advert and see if it improves. Keep repeating. This will eventually lead to you having the best possible advert showing.

Search engine optimisation

Remember the two columns we just mentioned. Search engine optimization is the are of optimizing your website enough for Google to rank it on the left hand column. This list is ordered on how relevant your website is. And you don’t have to pay for these listings. Ever noticed how all the big companies appear at the top of the first page. Now we should as “which came first – The chicken or the egg?”. Search engine optimisation is generally split into two categories onsite optimisation and off site optimisation. The first, when done property is very important but it will only get you to the starting line. Offsite optimization is the race itself. A good search engine optimisation campaign should include all the search engine marketing techniques mentioned and when you really get into it you can learn the more advanced techniques. Below are a few basics.

Include your keywords in your domain, title, meta tags. The first thing a search engine spider will read is your domain name. i.e www.yourdomain.com. This doesn’t mean anything to a search engine so ideally use www.yourdomain.com/your-key-words, or even better www.your-key-words.com . Then the next part is your title. Don’t just have “home Page” or “Front Page”. I would have “your domain – your key words”. This also matches the domain name. Then repeat the same in your meta data. And sprinkle it throughout your web page. Keep it readable though. Make each page different. This helps search engines differentiate them and should lead to them indexing each of your pages separately. Get a site map and submit it to major search engines. Don’t pay for this service though. It amazes me that people actually charge for this. Just type into Google “sitemap” and you should be presented with website that will generate you a sitemap for free. Keep going. Older sites generally rank better than new sites. It is believed that older websites must be more reliable. As there is nothing we can do about this just focus your time on other offsite optimisation such as link building, social media optimization and if you just can’t wait, Pay per click. Search engine optimisation is a long term solution but boy is it worth waiting for. Validate your HTML code. Visit “validator.w3.org/ “.This will ensure that web browsers show your website correctly and helps search engine to index your site. There is no point in optimising your website if it doesn’t work properly.

Other useful tips

Get Google analytics. It is one thing having a website but you need to know what people are doing when they are on it. Google analytics is very comprehensive and FREE but it does not report in real time. Woopra however does report in real time. The choice is yours. Before doing anything else you should get one of these other wise how will you know your efforts are paying off. If you decide to use a company to undertake your search engine marketing campaign (recommended) make sure you choose your search engine marketing company wisely. Don’t just go on recommendation. It is going to be a long working relationship so the important thing is that you get on with them. Do your own research on the industry. Think twice about search engine marketing firms that say they can guarantee a first page listing in a short time, the methods they use WILL end up in your website being banned. BMW found this out the hard way.

Search engine marketing is not an easy option but when done properly will bring untold rewards.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but it will give people new to the concept a few things to get on with and research. Look out for more articles that will start to break the subjects down into more detail.

Mar
10

A guide to google hacks

Author admin    Category Google     Tags , ,

I have put together a list of some basic, more advanced and fun google hacks to help improve and refine your search

An asterisk (*) is used represents any wordGoogle advanced operators help refine searches.

The plus sign (+) is used to force a search of a very common word for example “the” . Use the minus sign (-) to exclude any term from your search. Dont put a space after these signs.

Searching  for a particular phrase, put double quotes(” “) each side of the phrase.

A full stop (.) is used to represent any single character.

More advanced operations need to use a syntax :

operator:search_term

Again don’t put a space between the operator, the colon, and the search term.

The site: operator is instructing Google to restrict a search to a specific web site or domain. Type the website URL after the colon.

The intitle: Google  searches for a term within the title of a document.

The filetype: operator instructs Google to search only within the text of a particular type of file. The file type to search must be supplied after the colon. Don’t put a full stop (.) before the file extension.

The inurl: operator instructs Google to search only within the URL (web address) of a document. Place your search term directly after the colon

The link:  Google  searches within hyperlinks for your particular search term.

The cache: operator displays the version of a web page as it appeared when Google crawled the site. Type the website URL after the colon.

And now for some fun ones

Type xx-klingon in google and click I’m feeling lucky (http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/) believe it or not this is google in klingon!

Type Google Easter egg in the search box and click I’m feeling lucky (http://www.google.com/Easter/feature_easter.html) Help the google easter bunny catch the easter eggs.

Type Gothengine in the search box and click I’m feeling lucky ( http://www.gothengine.com/ ) Google gothic search for goths and emos.

Others include elgoog, google santa and google loco.

Mar
10

A guide to google hacks

Author admin    Category Google     Tags , ,

I have put together a list of some basic, more advanced and fun google hacks to help improve and refine your search

An asterisk (*) is used represents any wordGoogle advanced operators help refine searches.

The plus sign (+) is used to force a search of a very common word for example “the” . Use the minus sign (-) to exclude any term from your search. Dont put a space after these signs.

Searching  for a particular phrase, put double quotes(” “) each side of the phrase.

A full stop (.) is used to represent any single character.

More advanced operations need to use a syntax :

operator:search_term

Again don’t put a space between the operator, the colon, and the search term.

The site: operator is instructing Google to restrict a search to a specific web site or domain. Type the website URL after the colon.

The intitle: Google  searches for a term within the title of a document.

The filetype: operator instructs Google to search only within the text of a particular type of file. The file type to search must be supplied after the colon. Don’t put a full stop (.) before the file extension.

The inurl: operator instructs Google to search only within the URL (web address) of a document. Place your search term directly after the colon

The link:  Google  searches within hyperlinks for your particular search term.

The cache: operator displays the version of a web page as it appeared when Google crawled the site. Type the website URL after the colon.

And now for some fun ones

Type xx-klingon in google and click I’m feeling lucky (http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/) believe it or not this is google in klingon!

Type Google Easter egg in the search box and click I’m feeling lucky (http://www.google.com/Easter/feature_easter.html) Help the google easter bunny catch the easter eggs.

Type Gothengine in the search box and click I’m feeling lucky ( http://www.gothengine.com/ ) Google gothic search for goths and emos.

Others include elgoog, google santa and google loco.

Mar
3

A simple guide for increasing your page rank

Page rank, page rank and more page rank. Everybody is speaking about this, but few know how to increase it or what does it means. So I’ll start with the basis.

Definition (quote google): “PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.
PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance.”

And you’ll say: “yeah right, and what are the most important variables?”.

Looking throughout forums, blogs and lots of internet website I found how chaotic these info are. So I’ve begin testing it myself and trusting only official facts. This is a top that I have made about what really counts (you can find a more subjective look here; look for the vote pool in the left menu):
1) Search Engine Submission. First step should be the submission of your url to the most relevant search engines. Why? Because if the search engine don’t know you exist than no one can find you.
2) Link building. Even from the definition given from google you can see that this is the major factor. The higher the rank of the page that points to you the higher your rank will become, however, every link to your site counts. This link building includes: social bookmarks, blogs, comments, forum posting, directory submission and others that points to your site.
3) Optimize your page, make it search engine friendly. This is also very important. When someone searches for a product/service the search engine will give results based on your keywords relevancy. Don’t over look this! Even if you have a high page rank, a small rank competitive site can show up higher in search results, because it has more relevancies from the point of view of the search engine algorithm. The sitemap, meta description and meta keywords are very important for your website and for any post you make: forum, articles, directories, etc.
4) Receive Traffic. The problem with traffic is a delicate one. Some says that google ads ban people that drive traffic to their website. From an objective point a view, i don’t know how they can do this as long as they are real visitors, they can’t, it doesn’t make any sense! Even more, Alexa it’s using this data to increase the alexa ranking and it’s doing this from years. Also, looking on the internet i found a patent issued by Yahoo that also uses the traffic logs for their search engine rankings.

You can also find good faq’s here: RankBoosting.com. These guys actually do all the work manually, saving you lots of wasted time. Also good support from them, ask and you’ll receive an answer fast.
Cheers!

Mar
2

Top Twitter Promotion tips for your Business – A Twitter guide by Position2 – Part III

Twit coupons

· Increase sales for your business by giving exclusive coupons to your followers
· Use http://twtqpon.com/ to distribute coupons via Twitter
· Get your tweets indexed in http://cheaptweet.com/ by using cheaptweet hashtag and increase exposure for your deals

Twitter promotion

· Now you can run sweepstakes offers via Twitter to create brand awareness, increase sales, etc.
· Set the objective for Twitter promotion
· Make sure that there is no bias in your promotion and be transparent in what you offer
· To participate in the offer, ask users to include hashtags in their tweets
· Track the performance of your campaign using this trend-tracking tool:http://www.trendrr.com/
· Make sure that you do not spam your followers and avoid sending too many tweets about your sweepstakes offers
· Calculate the ROI of the campaign by breaking it down into: Number of new followers gained, products sold, new visitors to the websites, etc.

Blog sync

· Increase traffic to your blog by using this auto-feed tool, http://twitterfeed.com/
· Tweet the comments in your blog using this wordpress plug-in: http://www.jonbishop.com/commentwitter-plugin-page/
· Include your Twitter conversations in your blog using this wordpress plug-in: http://www.paulmc.org/whatithink/wordpress/plugins/twitter-friends-widget/
· Include a retweet button in your blog to spread it virally using Twitter. You can install the retweet button from here: http://tweetmeme.com/about/retweet_button

Facebook sync

· A Facebook page is a marketing channel for most brands. A marriage between Facebook and Twitter will initiate greater engagement and conversations
· Integrate your Facebook page with Twitter using this Facebook application: http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/
· Avoid spamming your fans in your Facebook page with too many Twitter updates
· Use this application: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=115463795461 to post selective Twitter updates

Press Release Optimization

· Get more exposure for your Press Releases (PR) by sharing them on Twitter
· Use keywords in the first 30 characters of your PR tweet for SEO
· Ask your followers to retweet your PRs to spread them virally
· Use hashtags to track the PRs
· Deliver your PRs to top journalists on Twitter using this paid service: http://muckrack.com/press_releases
· Analyze the number of tweets your PR receives using: http://www.trendrr.com/

Direct messages (DM) for direct marketing – DM’s are new way to market your product via Twitter

· Avoid sending DMs to all of your followers
· Analyze the interests of your followers before sending them DMs
· Customize your offering in DM based on followers’ demographics
· Avoid using automated tools for sending DM’s
· Always maintain a human touch while sending DMs

Brand monitoring

· Monitor real-time conversations about your brand in Twitter to understand customers’ linguistics
· To start with, use a simple tool like Twitter public search
· Monitor various keywords associated with your brand using this tool: http://monitter.com/
· Manage multiple Twitter accounts and brand monitoring using one single tool: http://splitweet.com/
· Paid tools like Radian6 provide many insights along with real-time brand monitoring

Customer support

· Sometimes your brand will get punk’d in Twitter and customer support plays a vital role to protect your brand from crisis
· Monitor your brand in real-time and respond to various customer tweets before a brand crisis occurs
· Assign different queries to employees in concerned departments usinghttp://cotweet.com/
· Set up a 24/7 automated response for customers’ tweets by using this tool: http://www.localbunny.com/
· Analyze the number of issues solved via Twitter to measure ROI

Twitter Insights

· Measure your Twitter performance using parameters like retweet rank, Click Through Rate (CTR) of your tweets, follower count etc.
· Find your retweet rank using: http://www.retweetrank.com/
· Track the CTR of your tweets by using short URL services like: http://bit.ly/
· Analyze your web traffic from Twitter by adding UTM parameters in each tweet link using this tool: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578
· Analyze your follower count at: http://twittercounter.com/
· Find which tweets help you gain or lose followers, using: http://www.tweeteffect.com/
· Measure your share of voice by using tools like Radian6

Security tips

· Never use third party Twitter applications that do not support Oath authentication
· Use strong passwords to protect your account from hackers. Use this tool: http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/ to generate strong passwords
· If any security lapses occur on Twitter, change your password immediately
· Do not click any links in DMs from strangers.