.Ninja domain names - REALLY?? Wish i was still 15

You can't tell me Michael wasn't your
hero at some point in your life.

For those of you readers who are South African... Hope you had an awesome #elections2014 and that you all at least voted for someone...I see already 20% of the votes have been counted and for those of you interested; 53% ANC, 26% DA & 4.1% EFF... The rest are really no shows.

Anyways, moving on, I just couldn't resist sharing this with you guys.
After opening up my mails this morning with another mailbox full of SH#$ and SPAM, one caught my eye.

Psssst! Are you a .NINJA? (eNom.com central).
Why it caught my attention was most likely my insane infatuation with Ninja's from 1980 - 1994.

"...

Get Your Own Slice of Cool

Swords, nun chucks, and throwing stars optional

Make a killer impression with a .NINJA website and email address. It’s the high-octane, ninjtastic place to be if you’re into showing off your skills. From martial artists to cupcake makers, parkours to photographers, if you do it better than anyone else, let people know with a .NINJA domain.

Kick off your new online presence.

..."

WHO THE HELL WOULD BUY ONE OF THESE .ninja domains unless you were part of the Yazuka mafia or owned a Ninja star shop?

Google's Amazing Adwords TIPS (WTF)

Having run my digital agency for around 6 years now I've always wondered why I've never relied a little more on relationships with Google and participating a little more with the Google team to help grow my business.

So a while back we decided to join the Google partnership program.

NOW, I KNOW WHY!

• We get spammed daily with pathetic partner emails and newsletter. Look at these AMAZING TOP 4 TIPS TO IMPROVING YOUR ADWORDS ACCOUNT.

• We get Christmas vouchers to hand out as part of our rewards program to try and sign up new clients. I get the vouchers on the 25th November which expire on the 10th December. What is the point of that.
• They send amazing vouchers to clients of R500 for Adwords, but you can't use them is you've already signed up for Adwords, so why are they sending them in the first place.

I don't know if this is just Google South Africa - but guys, for a multi billion dollar company, the service so far has been pretty dismal.

6 Solid Ways to Market Your Infographic

Ok, so while my research may not be as pretty as an infographic, I've nonetheless got some sound advice on the best ways to market them and get your information out there for everyone to see.

Following these 6 steps, your infographic will be going viral in no time. It may take some time and effort, but what good things don't.

An example of an infographic.

       

• Firstly, you can’t market   something that doesn't look good. The data has to be solid, plentiful and informative. It has to be relevant to your target audience, pretty and useful.
• Your infographic must have embedded code that lets others repost it. You have to let people know it’s ok to share your infographic if you want it to  spread.
• Obviously you would like the infographic to go viral, and it seems like these are the recommended steps to do it: create an SEO optimized press release, a social media release (which is the press release optimized for social media), a social media sharing plan for your infographic, submit your infographic to directories and start reaching out to blogs and direct message popular twitter users (who have a connection to the subject of your infographic) to get them to share what you’ve made.
• You can also use your site network (if you have one) and get them to share your infographic, in exchange for doing it in return in the future.
• Add “Pin It” buttons to any imagery you use in your infographic post.
• At the end of the post, have entertaining and tweetable facts to encourage user interaction (these might be more difficult to come up with but are an excellent way to get users to share your post). One of the better one's I've seen recently looks like this:

People are more likely to survive a plane crash than click a banner ad

[ tweet this ]
Who could possibly resist this?

Follow what you've just read, and watch your infographic spread like wildfire!

Video advertising momentum according to Double Click

Digital video has brought new energy to brands and publishers.

Here are some of the trends DoubleClick's advertising platforms. Double Click found which advertiser and publisher categories are growing video ad investments, why programmatic is an efficient channel to buy and sell video, and how viewer choice benefits everyone.

Below you can find some vital stats on how digital video ads have brought new energy to brands and media companies in the infographic below.


Thanks to http://www.google.com/think/infographics/video-advertising-momentum-infographic.html

When to submit Google reconsideration requests

Thank to a post from Barry Schwartz on http://searchengineland.com/google-advice-on-when-to-submit-reconsideration-request-how-to-clean-your-link-profile-164263 - Google came out clean with when and how you should submit a re-inclusion or reconsideration request for your site through Google webmaster tools.

• Fix your website first before you submit the request, asking for help before you submit, is going to get you into more poop, if you're unsure what's wrong, ask an SEO company to assist you
• Use Google’s “links to your site” report within Webmaster Tools to analyze bad links pointing to your site. It's quite difficult and a very tedious process, if you're unsure as to what you're doing, rather ask someone that know's what they're doing. Removing links that you think are bad, when they're not will drop your rankings even further once you recover
• Remove bad links by disavowing them, nofollowing them and having them completely removed. This is easier said than done, however a good lawyers letter should the company who has your link refuse always works nicely
• Make sure when you submit your re-inclusion request that you give a detailed explanation of what you changed and removed and why. If it was your SEO company that did some dodgy link building, tell Google you've changed SEO companies as well
• Responses for reconsideration request can take a few days but may take much longer depending on the site and current workload. From my experience up to 4 weeks
• Googlers review each reconsideration request manually, so don't think their UBER bots are that clever 

These are guidelines and a summary of the original posting by Google - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/06/backlinks-and-reconsideration-requests.html

Tumblr launches ADS to promote blogs and posts

Finally, Tumblr, the world's largest blogging service has decided to launch an advertising platform. This Tumblr advertising platform will be used to either promote individual posts or the blogs themselves.
For the most part, the new ads don’t intrude on Tumblr’s users blogs. Instead, the company is using its Radar and it's spotlight features to highlight content from its advertisers.

Although Tumblr hasn't had the push and drive in South Africa's market, in the USA Tumblr has more searches on it's BLOG search than Google has on it's Google Blog search. 

So what does that mean for South African companies and how can we benefit from this service? Well, if your target market is in the US, here's a marketing platform that's going to be cheaper and more cost effective than Google adwords, Facebook paid ads and Twitter.

So, what is it that people are using Tumblr for?
Well, according to Socialmediaexplorer.com the TOP 5 blog categories are;

1. Celebrities
2. Humour
3. Photography
4. Art
5. Gaming

2 weeks ago at the SES london conference, can't recall who it was that stated this but stats have shown that 75% of the users on Tumblr are teenagers. This is also reflected in the TOP 5 Tags on Tumblr for 2012;

1. One direction
2. Exo
3. Tom Hidelston
4. Love
5. Harry Styles

To summarise; If you are launching either a band. a new song, love art or a new computer game and your target market is teenagers in the USA, Tumblr ADS is without a doubt your platform.

SES London 2013 - Paul Madden - Social Media and SEO

Paul Madden formerly blackhat SEO @SEOIdiot now SEO and in building guru based in the UK http://www.paulmadden.co.uk/ gave some great tips on link building post penguin.

I didn't take many notes having been a little stuck in the moment of listening however I did take some notes and hopefully caught the gist of what he was trying to get across.

Things to remember when link building;
- Links don't expire you have to take these off.
- Link data is a must!!!!
- Understanding the sites you get links from don't just say yes

GET A MONTHLY LINK AUDIT PROCESS IN PLACE!

Signals that should tell you your site is at risk;
-Far higher % of on anchor text
- site wide links are a no no
- stay away from suspect Cctlds
- Remove links that have died check BACKLINKS and if the sites still exists or not

% of link anchor text is the answer
GOOGLE IS BASED ON LINKS, don't forget this!!!

What you need to ask yourself when you are measuring link metric value;
What is the cctld
What is the purpose of site, is it of value?
Check for Banned words
Does the site have Links to bad places (use Xenu Link sleuth)
Commercial anchors
No interaction on site, comments, tweets, reviews
No social activity on site

TOP 4 things to remember when building links;
- audit link profile
- make sure the guys know what they're doing
- don't stop building
- watch link profile

Basically, measure, measure , measure and then keep track!!!
Link building is NOT dead, it's just getting tougher.

Link Building in a post Penguin era by Kevin Gibbons (snippets from SES London)

So I think the great way Kevin started this chat off was by defining the difference between Penguin and Panda updates from Google. I don't think that everyone quite has this one bedded down and defined just yet. To be honest it's pretty simple though;

Penguin penalizes links.
Panda penalizes content.

That's it!!!

I think the reason a lot of these discussion we're based around post penguin updates really comes down to;

People needing clarity on how to clear penalized sites.
How to actively engage your sites backlinks and effectively monitor or prevent this from happening again.
How to build links without raising any flags

So, what is a rubbish site that Google finds spammy?
Websites that have no links, no comments, no activity or shares! I also think sites on dodgy tld's I.e. .info sites

How does Google identify crappy link building?
Your site has over optimized anchor text
Your sites link profile consists of social links, directories, article submission sites and blog comments
You have a totally one sided link profile I.e. great links from great sites with nothing else
You push links heavily and then stop and do nothing for months

With Author Rank becoming more and more prevalent and relevancy playing a huge part in everything were doing these days it is essential to start using Google plus.
You must have a plus page
You must link your plus page to your blog
Dont believe me, straight out of Eric schmidt's mouth, look it up.

Become a recommended author!!! That's the goal.

TIPS FOR SEO companies;
Use Rss subscribers
Watch your Bounce rates
Monitor Average number of links per post
Monitor Average number of social shares
Ask yourself, What would Matt cuts do?

What can I do to keep track of BACKLINKS

Download BACKLINKS from majestic SEO.
Track % of anchor text distribution.
Analyze links vs. referring traffic.
Find out what number 1 competitor is doing and what his link profile looks like.
DON'T CHANGE ANCHOR TEXT - rather remove link.
Focus on audience and topical relevancy to build a natural link profile.
If content is not generating links its not natural is it?
Don't publish rubbish.
Remove links with no value to users.
Replicate link models of top sites.

However, the most important Thing to remember with seo and link building moving forward for 2013 is:

Create scalable content marketing strategy and focus on audience, social thinking!!!!

SES London Day 1 keyword research training by Bill Hunt

After having spent an entire day at a fantastic SES London conference opening today I decided to look back at yesterday's training session will Bill Hunt, ex IBM search guru and head of SEO and relate what I thought were some very good and valid pointers with regards to understanding keywords for both paid and organic search and how these two relate.

Apologies for the brief pointers but it's pretty late and if i don't write this post now I'll never do it.

The moral or message that i really want to get across is that you need to identify keyword opportunities and what you are spending trying to rank or convert these opportunities.

So its a closely debatable topic and one that paid department and organic departments often debate internally. The problem is its not a debate it's a discussion that needs to be had.

If I rank 1st organically and I'm bidding on the same keyword is it really necessary?

- if you are ranking for both paid and organic you need to get people to recognise that both are same company. Otherwise you compete with your own rankings.
- 53% click on first organization listing
- 81% of paid listing don't have organic rankings
- 90% of users for travel are using mobile

What this has to do with the topic at hand, no fucking clue but the stats are cool.

IDEAS

- Segment by intent or interest
- Segment by content type
- Segment by device

KEYWORD SEARCH

Google keyword tool is not enough to do the research data you need to use multiple tools. Raventools have a great bit of software that pulls from everything.

WORK OUT

Cost of missed SEO.
Cost of paid search.
How much would it cost to get x number of clicks on paid vs seo and which is more profitable for you.

KEYWORD RESEARCH!!!

Use google suggest.
Über suggest.org great tool.
Identity seo and paid keyword terms.

Start by asking questions when doing your keyword research;

Make a list of products, services and categories
What do people search for when finding your products
When you search for your own site what do you search

With B2B searches - add the word strategy cause thats what management searches for.

identifying missed keyword opportunities;
Total, inspiration, discovery, design, purchase, relationship(5 phases of the buy cycle)

GOOGLE COMING OUT WITH NEW VERSION OF SERCH API! This is for all those seo agencies out there.


It is imperative that you separate landing pages based on the phase of the search cycle that they are in:

Learn, shop, buy, get, use...
Research, buy or returning...

Live person is a brilliant way to find what people are searching for by asking them what their jobs are. This would work really well for insurance.

NB : SALES PITCH
identity how many keywords you should be ranking for.
Give top 10 competitors.
Identify opportunities
Show them % of traffic being missed
Revenue that they are missing out on

BACKLINK TIP Match up "organic keywords" to social media tracking. Find website back link opportunity. Using social media to help identify what people are searching for in your industry and then use that in Adwords.

Facebook knowledge graph tool is available to find people's interests.

As I said this post was pointers from the conference so not the best English but hopefully useful.

From SES I'm out!D

SEO "Alessio" SEO Classes Part 2

So I have to share this with the world. I've put Alessio (OUR SEO tecchi) in charge of educating our company and keeping us in touch with the latest SEO updates in the industry.

I didn't manage to keep the First SEO lesson but the second one is brilliant.


To give you some context - Alessio is the bodybuilder in the video.

SEO Lesson Part 2

Class is now adjourn (word to Chris 4 the spelling of that).

Hope everyone is wide awake because SEO is about to get real B).

àSEO Fun Factsß

• Meta titles consist of 70 characters
• Meta description consists of over double that !! 160 characters “wow, I know right” 
• Google has the largest network of translators in the world 
• Putting [] around a word in google search means exact 
• Putting “” means phrase !! like OMG 
• Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site

Some really kick ass sites;

1. http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/
2. http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/
3. http://www.mono-1.com/monoface/main.html

Everyone knows about google updates (panda) but do u actually ? so here educate yourself :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ikbTn77LU

Dean (This is our head of copywriting) this ones for you http://scholar.google.co.za/intl/en/scholar/citations.html might be handy.

Razina (Is getting married in 10 days) for you http://www.indianwedding.com/

I didn’t forget u Thuli (Thuli is looking for a boyfriend) http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_could_you_get_a_white_boyfriend_if_your_black

Hope everyone has an awesome weekend!!!

Choosing the right domain name for your company

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Five reasons why South African businesses must use SEO

South Africans need to catch on and quickly. The corporates are moving up the online marketing chain and are realising that without online marketing, they're nowhere. Apart from that, more and more international companies are riding the wave of a lack of understanding and funding being put into online marketing by South African businesses.

So why is it essential that South African companies invest in SEO:

SEO is an investment that no business can ignore. If you use search engine optimization correctly, you can make sure that your business gets high rankings on search engines. This attracts new clients, new business and possibly new potential revenue streams for your company.

1: SEO offers access to millions of rands
People use the internet to find business and services.

2: SEO helps you to get new customers70% of people who buy products in a shop do their research online before they do. Search engine optimization helps you to get these customers.

3: SEO has a high conversion rate

4: SEO helps you to understand your website visitorsUnderstanding your clients is essential. Google Analytics allows for this. Understand trends, movements and patterns of what your website visitors are searching for.

5: SEO is well pricedSEO The good thing about an SEO campaign is that it doesn't stop as soon as you stop paying (AdWords). An SEO campaign that uses best practices will offer lasting results that lead to a steady flow of new customers to your website.

For more information please visit: http://www.trafficfundi.com/

Are you spending too much time focusing on links?

This is an article that I read on Bing Webmaster forums and I had to share this with everyone:

"Links, links, links.  It’s pretty much at the top of any SEOs “must discuss” list of topics.  For a long time, the prevailing thinking was links were the golden egg.  They were what you needed to turn the tide and boost your rankings.  And that was true.

Today, though, it might pay to broaden your thinking.

I am not saying links are dead or links have no value – let’s get that straight up front.

What I am saying, however, is that it can pay to keep the big picture in view and not get mired too deeply in the weeds.  I mean, just watching comments on popular search industry sites from those who work in the industry is enough to convince anyone that link building and managing link campaigns is very much the current “tactic du jour”.  But what if that time were better spent?

It’s easy to get fixated one a single tactic, hoping if you double down on that one area it’ll pay dividends.  Easier for you, easier on the budget (in some cases) and easier to track results.  But it’s a single signal to the engines.  Links.  Just a single signal.  So what are you doing to work with the other signals?

Are you putting equal time into the social side of the equation?  Is your social program ramping up to engage people in a meaningful way?  Or is it on autopilot still pumping out self-serving links to only your own products and services?

Is the editorial side of your house producing the killer content you need them to?  Do they seek new ways to engage readers through not just well written content, but with content that answers questions before they’re asked?

Are your content management system and your page templates sorted out from a technical SEO standpoint?  Still got multiple <H1> tags on the page?  Still leaving <ALT> tags empty? Missing a <meta description>?

The point here is to not get caught up in one single aspect of the complex world of SEO.  Links, while still holding value, have evolved as signals over time.  If we see a sudden appearance of obviously spammy links pointed at your site, and your site is otherwise showing a history of trustworthiness, we’re most likely going to just ignore those links.  Still, while this can cover the obvious instances, tools like the Disavow Links feature in Bing Webmaster Tools enables you to flag inbound links you don’t like.

To be clear, again, this isn’t a post stating links are dying, or you should ignore them, but it is a post saying watch how much time you invest in them.  By and large, building links the right way is beyond your control.  While it’s smart to allocate some time to watching this signal via the tools and data available today, don’t place all of your eggs in one basket.

This isn’t foreshadowing anything either, but what if links ceased to be a useful signal to the engines.  What would you focus on then?

So many times across the industry you hear conversations about shortcuts.  How can I build links quickly?  I need more followers on Twitter, quickly.  Where can I get free content?

If all the time that was spent seeking shortcuts was invested into producing quality, engaging content, more websites would find success.  The main point behind today’s post is to remind you to look around; watch what you invest in and make sure you’re not wasting time seeking shortcuts when the answer to success is right in front of you.

User Experience + Compelling Content FTW!"

Why Are Landing Pages Important?

Creating landing pages allows you to more effectively achieve your goal of converting a higher percentage of your visitors into leads. This is because landing pages make the process of receiving an offer much simpler for your visitors, since they don’t have to navigate your website to find the page they’re looking for.

Sending your visitors to landing pages also eliminates any confusion about what they must do to receive your offer, which keeps them from getting frustrated about not finding the form, or deciding that it’s not worth their time to figure out how to go about the process.

Thus, directing your visitors to a landing page -- the exact page with the offer and the form they must complete to get it -- makes it more likely that they will complete your form and convert into leads. 20 landing page designs get analysed by the GURU's - Unbounce - http://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/20-landing-page-designs-get-picked-apart-analyzed-for-conversion/

Use of images for social media

When you see a great picture – you look at it – eye candy for all of us.

So some simple ways to get the best out of using photos for your social media and how it can help your business are quite simply done by a few easy steps.

Firstly decide what you want out of using photos in your strategy – showing to folks talking in front of a screen depicts work.

Then make sure who the target market is for your photos, who your audience is because you want them to Engage on social media, take more photos and share with you and the But Your PRODUCTS.

Make sure you create a very alluring theme or hook with your photos ie. My photos show someone littering with a McDonalds packet and my hook is our products are so fresh they do not need wasteful packaging!..get the idea.

Now you need to create a story around your picture – there is power in words ask any copywriter.

Even if you are a small business, develop and promote your brand always – remember you want Traffic so why not use a Trafficfundi!!!!

Try protect your photo otherwise everyone will sue it freely.  Try a watermark

Associate relevant text with your images – remember to optimize your work always..  Get to the top!!!  Go ahead, use keyword based file names and alt tags!

Spread the word with your picture in catalogues, directories etc so spread the word often.

Share your photo with Pintinterest, Twiiter, facebook etc

Prospect, prospect and  prospect and invite all your colleagues, friends, enemies to share there photos and stoiries with yours – spread the word be like butter! Use blog, websites and social sharing all te time and promote.

Lastly measure your results there are many tools that will tell you what you are working towards is working or not

Lastly, if your photo is not that great – photoshop it!

The Dreaded “P” Word, the Writing Police are Watching

All writers are afraid of the dreaded “P” word – so what am I referring to here? We are referring to nothing less than the dreaded word plagiarism.

Plagiarism is something that we, as copy writers,  are often tempted to do – after all copying someone else’s copy is dead easy and no-one will find out! Or will they?  Don’t kid yourself. The writing police will soon be onto your game, and you will be caught out super-quick.

But why bother copying someone else’s ideas when your very own could be as good if not better? Have you ever read an article either online or somewhere else where you think to yourself “gee that is so great”? Well, let’s face facts -  we are all individuals and who says that what one has to say, depart or share is not as good if not as interesting as the next person?

Flowery language is one entity, but getting down and dirty and saying what you think, what you feel and what you know could be far better than the person who can write beautifully and descriptively, yet there is little depth to what they have to say?

A pretty girl is fantastic, and if she dresses wonderfully it is even nicer, but if she is a completely vacuous individual and has absolutely nothing at all to say that is deep, interesting or a little funny – well, let’s face it, the admiration stops right there.

Writing copy is identical to the pretty girl. Perhaps the pretty stuff looks good from a distance, but when the reader digs a little deeper, the pretty site and flowery language lacks both interest and depth!

Be sincere and above all else be honest and original. You don’t need to copy anyone else’s stuff to get YOUR own individual point across.  Yes there will always be techno stuff that we need to adhere to when writing technical copy. I mean – could you imagine getting the bits wrong when marketing TV’s, cameras or a line of industrial parts? It is then really important to ensure you stick to the product descriptions to a “T”.

Plagiarism is tempting, but hardly worth the effort. After all there is nothing quite as rewarding as writing copy that is original and interesting. 

3 New SEO Ideas for Businesses

Is your Business Ready for the Latest Search Trends?


In layman’s terms, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which websites rank in the search engines when users type in a certain keyword. It takes different SEO strategies for “crawlers” to catalog and index your site; and usually, these strategies include quality content and link building. But, this is about to change with the introduction of the latest strategy that has been going on around in the SEO world.


These new innovative SEO strategies combine creative marketing and advertising with SEO and online branding. This approach is a combination of the traditional SEO strategies (i.e. On-site SEO and link building) and modern tactics to grow a company’s online presence. Link building and on-site techniques are not enough anymore to have your site on top of the ranks anymore. By adding these latest trends on the latest search landscape; local SEO, press releases and online reputation management, your brand is in good position as far as Rankings are concerned.

Google + Local SEO 

With the merging of these two services, Google is putting an emphasis of Search importance in to local and social. Meaning, if you are a local business, people should be familiar about your venture and must have experience something about your offline efforts. This will slam businesses who are trying to manipulate search by having  different websites that are not real businesses and built for sear crawlers only.

Google Plus combined with local listings allow businesses get prime exposure on SERPs. These tools also allow users to review and rate services of local businesses around their area to reward companies who are providing best services and slam businesses who are doing poor in servicing their customers.

Online Public Relations

Online public relations means more options for the company which may include online charitable competitions to finding the right material for a press article. This is very vital because it adds creative elements to link building techniques as well as generating good press positioning for the company or website. A good example is creating an online invitation for a fun run whilst promoting a sports-related website or other charitable efforts that a company have.

If you give back to your community or support good causes, good search Karma is on your way. People will talk about your business and will generate more clients for you. 

Article by Marvin Ortiz - Trafficfundi Phillipines

Choosing the right keywords for your online campaign

When it comes to advertising on Google, choosing the right keywords is one of the most important parts of your online strategy. Whether you are investing in SEO to rank naturally, or using Google Adwords, it is crucial that you target keywords that are going to generate the most business. There is no point getting to the top of Google for keywords that only deliver clicks, and no sales. Should you be No.1 for ‘budget accommodation’ or ‘cheap hotels’?

The key to a successful Google strategy is to find all the possible keywords that people may use to search for your products or services. Many online marketers just choose the golden keywords, such as ‘cheap hotels’, and stop there. While these may be the keywords that get the most traffic, they are also the most competitive and therefore the most expensive too. 

Instead of spending all money on the obvious keywords, spend some time researching all the different variations of words. This can identify some much cheaper and much more valuable opportunities. Often they will cost less and deliver a much better return on your investment. There are lots of tools available to help find these different search terms and although it can take a lot of time to find them, it’s well worth it in the long run.

If you need help with your keyword research, just drop us a line!

Article written by Aaron Kempen @ Trafficfundi.com

Social Media, Digital Marketing: Just what you need

Social Media, Digital Marketing: Just what you need So, you not sure what all these boggling terms mean but everyone around you is constantly talking about how Digital Marketing and Social Media helped take their businesses to better places. In our world things are constantly changing and it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on, so let’s catch up!

Twitter is the most recent buzz; it’s used by everyone, including celebs, companies and regular people. Twitter allows you to follow people and get followed, thus allowing you to “Tweet” about your company news, sales and basic information. Tweets are 160 characters long, so you don’t have to type out anything long.


One of the greatest things about Twitter is that it allows you to reach a larger audience and this helps with brand popularity amongst other things. Brand popularity means a greater Return of Investment for your company as more people know that you are out there. The best thing about Twitter and other Social Media sites is that it’s FREE.

A great idea, is to have competitions and give away goodies, people love anything that’s free. Digital competitions are very successful and play a great part in promoting who you are and what our products are about. I absolutely love Social Media sites becomes you can connect to anyone, anywhere at any time. It’s advertising at a click of a mouse. People can also get in touch with you if they have any queries about what you do; this right here creates moral and customer relations.

A key of any business is having a good relationship with your customers. Once your customers are happy your business is a step closer to being successful. To conclude this, Social Media and Digital Marketing are the newest form of marketing. It is very successful and really could help almost any company improve.

A special guest post from Razina Patel @ Trafficfundi.

Ineffective Practices in Creating Title and Description Tags

Utilizing proper title and description tags is one of SEO’s best practices. This will help websites obtain enough traffic and online presence at the same time.

If your page title failed to attract online users, you will not be able to disseminate what you have in your site, may it be services or products. This will, primarily, leads to a lower web traffic.

As we all know web traffic is very important. It is the amount of data sent and received by visitors that helps sites rank in search engines. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. So therefore we should not lose even a single online user because this will add up to the search volume that we are targeting.

One of the main problems that cause sites’ ranking to fail is the ineffectiveness of site pages’ titles and descriptions. Here is a list of problems that we commonly encounter when we create title and description tags.

Title and description do not hit the right keywords

·         Remember, title tags and the meta descriptions should include keywords relevant to the content of the web page.

Title and description are not unique and do not compliment the site itself

·         Each page should have a unique title and description that will attract clicks.

·         The description should have a high quality set of sentences that will best describe the page. As I mentioned, these should include the assigned keywords to make it more relevant with the site.

The titles and descriptions are too long, exceeding the maximum ideal number of characters

·         Ideally, search engines allow you to use 60 characters for the title tags while 160 characters for the descriptions.

The words do not catch the searcher’s attention

·         Make title tags appealing to the searcher!

·         Good keywords alone may not be sufficient, you want to get the reader’s attention so they will click on your site using a call-to-action.

The title tag and description tag are so general that they do not specify anymore what the page is all about

·         Make sure that your title and description sentences are related to the page’s content.

·         Make sure what you’re trying to tell to the searchers are the information that they are looking for.

Using these guidelines will surely help boost your site’s ranking. Remember, unique and high quality title tags and description tags can be very effective. It helps a page to get more traffic and higher visibility opportunity to search engines. Keep in mind that traffic and search engine visibility could lead to more sales and profit which is very complimentary with your business goals.

So let’s not take for granted these small parts of our websites. These two might be less of a problem but if these are done correctly, you can be assured of your site’s success. Good luck folks!

 A special thanks to Marc Garcia from Trafficfundi Philippines for this article.