Tuesday, July 1, 2014

About SEM | SMO | SMM

WHAT IS SEM?
Sometimes you hear people using the terms SEO and SEM interchangeably and although these two terms may have once had a very close origin and meaning, today they are distinct from one another. Let us see how Google defines SEM (search engine marketing).
The use of online advertising on search engine results pages to help visitors find your website. SEM often uses pay-per-click (PPC), a bidding model that charges advertisers only when someone clicks on their ad (also referred to as cost-per-click, or CPC). — online marketing vocabulary, Learn with Google

As we can see, SEM involves paid advertisements such as Adwords, Bing ads, Yahoo and any other methods of online advertising. This process involves the creation of campaigns and measuring results. You set a budget and expect an immediate return on that investment. It is also the fastest way to get your website to show up on the first page of search engine results. These results show up as sponsored ads at the top or side of the organic search results.
WHAT IS SMO?
So now we know what SEO and SEM are, but what is SMO? SMO stands for Social Media Optimization. Perhaps the best definition I found for this was via a forum on the discussion of SMO:
Social media optimization increases the visibility of your social media profiles, your social networking activity and your published content so that it is found by people searching for information and resources that relate to your content. Social media optimization helps drive traffic to your website or blog, makes it easier for others to share with their circle of influence, builds community around your brand and helps search engines index your social media profiles, social activity and blog posts more easily. — anonymous
The bottom line is, you have to build online profiles via social media networks so that you can share the content you create on your website or blog. Additionally, you add social media share buttons to allow other people to easily share your content.
WHAT IS SMM?
Similar to SEM, SMM stands for Social Media Marketing. And as you can guess it involves paid advertising through social media networks. If you are familiar with Facebook ads, then you are seeing SMM in action. It is the process of using paid advertising to broaden your customer reach and increase your brand exposure.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Popular Off-Page SEO Techniques


Search Engine Optimisation

SEO can be split up into two separate categories; On-Page SEO & Off-Page SEO.

On-Page SEO refers to all the things that you can do ON your website to help you rank higher, such as page titles, internal linking, meta tags & descriptions, etc.
Off-Page SEO refers to all the things that you can do directly OFF your website to help you rank higher, such as social networking, article submission, forum & blog marketing, etc.

In today’s post we will be looking specifically at Off-Page SEO and some of the most effective ways to increase your page rankings on search engines.

Off-Page Search Engine Optimisation

1. Social Networking Sites

Social Networking is bigger than ever these days! Sometimes known as “Online Reputation Management”, getting involved with social media sites is the fundamental step with which you begin to advertise, market and build your online reputation within your niche.
You need to sign up to the most popular social networking sites, such as; Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, etc., and create yourself a profile of your own. This allows you to extend your online network of contacts, to connect and interact with your friends, to share things with each other, and most importantly promote your website/blog and help build your online reputation.

2. Blogging

Blogging is one of the best ways to promote your website online! By writing a blog for your website, you give a reason for visitors to keep returning to your site and keep up to date with your latest posts. It also helps search engines to crawl your site more frequently, as they have to update your latest blog post entries, which ultimately helps you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
You need to produce and include lots of unique content for your blog, such as; Infographics, Top Lists, How To…Tutorials, Viral Videos, etc. Try to remember to be clear and concise in what you are trying to convey to your readers within your blog posts, don’t waffle.
To help you promote your blog, submit it to niche blog directories and blog search engines. (See below)
If you’re not very good at writing content for your blog, then you could always hire a guest blogger for your blog and ask him/her to write precise and unique content so that your blog can gain more credit from a search engine point of view.

3. Blog Marketing

Post comments on other blogs within the same niche as yours, which allow you to add a link in the comments section. These links can then be crawled by search engines, helping to point them towards your site.  These blogs are commonly referred to as “Do-Follow” Blogs (Just like ours, where you can comment below!).

4. Forum Marketing

Find forums online that are related to your sites niche and get involved within that community. Reply to threads, answer peoples questions, offer advice, etc. This all helps to build up your reputation as someone who is an expert within that niche. Try to use “Do-Follow” Forums so that you can include a link to your site within your signature, which helps search engines crawl your site.

5. Search Engine Submission

Search engines will eventually find your site online, but that can take a while. To speed everything up, you should submit your website to the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

6. Directory Submission

Many people may say that directory submission is dead! I believe that it isn’t as you are increasing the likely hood of people seeing your website. It is purely based on how effectively we are selecting those directories and how efficiently we are choosing the category for submission. You could submit to general directories, but for maximum effect, you are better off submitting to niche directories. Of course, I agree that it gives quite delayed results, but it is worth doing it.

7. Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is another great way of promoting your website. Submit your latest blog posts and pages to the most popular bookmarking sites, like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc. Search engines really like these types of sites because the content on these sites is updated very frequently.
You should be very careful while doing this and you must properly handle the tags which are very essential to broadcast your news on a wide area network. This may increase your website traffic based on how effectively you have participated.

8. Link Baiting

Link baiting is another popular way of promoting your site. If you produce a really popular unique post for your site, then other people may want to link to it. Perhaps you have copied/published another website’s content on your site, don’t forget to place their website link as a reference. Do it for others and, if your content is trustworthy, let others do it for you. This is another way to increase your link popularity.

9. Photo Sharing

If you have used any of your own photos or images on your site, then you can share then on many of the major photo sharing websites like Flickr, Picasa, Photo Bucket, etc. Other people will be able to see them and comment on them, hopefully following a link to your site.

10. Video Marketing

Just like photo sharing, if you have any videos that you have used on your site, then you can submit them to sites like; YouTube, Vimeo, etc. allowing people to find your content in other ways.

11. Business Reviews

Write reviews about others businesses or ask your friends/clients to write a review of your business in major business review sites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Kaboodle, Stylefeeder, etc.

12. Local Listings

Depending on your site’s niche, you might find that listing in local directories may be useful. You may have a website promoting your local business, therefore instead of going global and facing huge competition, listing your website locally, so that search engines can easily view your website and fetch the content, will be much better. This will help you to reach a targeted audience. Submit your website to sites like; Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, etc.

13. Article Submission

If you write your articles yourself, then you can submit them to popular article directory sites like; Ezine, Go Articles, Now Public, etc. This can help drive traffic to your site, whilst you can also gain some links to your site from other people (though it’s usually a slower process).

14. Social Shopping Network

If you run an e-commerce website, then a good strategy for advertising and branding your products for free is to submit then to online shopping networks. By submitting your products to sites like; Google Product Search, Yahoo Online Shopping, MSN Online Shopping, and other major social shopping network sites like Kaboodle, Style Feeder, etc. then you increase the likelihood of people finding the products that you are selling.

15. Answer Questions


You can actively participate in answering questions on sites like Yahoo Answers. By answering and asking relevant questions on your site niche, you help to build up your reputation as someone that is an expert in your chosen field. You can place a link to your website in the source section if necessary so that people can easily find your site. If you don’t spam, this is another great way to increase your link popularity.