Read up on the top 5 Social Networking sites and Microblogging in this article by SitePro News. http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2009/sep/2.html .

Offline social networking is not only smart but can affect you web ranking as well.

Join you local Chamber of Commerce. Find different Local or business related organizations to join that post your name and business on the Internet. You’ll also find business opportunities within social clubs such as the Rotary Club or the Lions Club.

Search engines rank  your site higher when you link to other site that have better rankings as long as you share some kind of relationship to your business. 

Participate with these organizations, the more your business name appears, the more exposure you get.

Make sure the different phone directory’s has your business listing.  They too have their phone directory on the Internet.

Don’t be afraid to explore the different offline social networking opportunities that are available in you community. They help you both online and offline.

The new catch term you’ll be hearing alot about over the next few years will be Web 2.0. 

Web 2.0 is not some new way to design web sites but a new way of thinking. In the past we paid thousands of dollars to get your site on the first page of Google.

Web 2.0 now enable you participate in optimizing your site. The keyword here is Social Networking.  I’m sure you’ve heard of blogs, Twitter or Facebook.  These are all part of Web 2.0. Over the next several blogs I’ll talk about the different forms of networking and how best to use them.

Keep in touch over the next few days as I cover different forms of Social Networking.

Web 2.0 is not a new language of web coding such as .html or a new verson of the WWW, but it’s the way software developers and end-users use the web.  It’s take web usage from static style web sites to dynamic style sites using social networking, video,  sharing sites, wikis, blogs etc.

The term Web 2.0 was first coined at a conference in 2004 between Tim O’Reilly and MediaLive Int. Web 2.o as a concept of a user controlling his own data and interacting with other users.

Web 2.0 is more about participation and interaction.  Instead of  having a personal web site(Web 1.0) you might have a Blog (Web 2.0).  or post pictures in Flickr. or you might have a spot on facebook or mySpace.com . 

Visit O’Reilly’s site and read for yourself from the man himself about Web 2.0 and what it means to your business strategies http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html

As we have said, Content is King.  Make sure your content includes your Key Words and Meta Tags – but make sure it reads well and catches your target audience.  In other words, don’t use only Key Words and Meta Tags as your content!  You need to write to be read! 
 
Don’t let some service or SEO Firm choose your keywords.  If you have someone research Keywords for your Business Web Site, ask them for the COMPLETE list of keywords/phrases that that search came up with.  You want to make sure when picking Key Words/Phrases that these words/phrases can translate into great copy.  Great copy isn’t written in the gibberish that sometimes Key words/phrases are.  Let’s say that you own a pet store and one of the Key Word phrases that came back is: ‘pet supermarket stores’.  Well, if you are not located inside a supermarket or next door to a supermarket, this would be a very difficult phrase to translate into good – readable – SEO copy.  So, skip this one and move on to the others. 

Write to be read.  Don’t use a Keywords or phrases just because it’s a Keyword or phrase.  Once you have completed a paragraph that you think is worthy to be published, read your paragraph out loud.  Does it make sense?  Good!  Now ask someone else to read it out loud.  Does it still make sense?  Great!  Go on to the next paragraph.  Reading out loud tends to highlight both the grammatical errors and the punctuation errors. 
 
Make sure your Keywords or phrases match your business AND each Web Page.  Now, this may seem like a “duh” statement, but hear me out.  Let’s say you are a Vacation Planner.  You plan it all for your customer, from Air Fare and Hotel/B&B’s to Charters and Flying Excursions.  Say you know that ‘Bear Viewing’ kicks LOTS of hits, but you put it on your B&B page as a Key Word, you will get lots of people looking for Bear Viewing, but finding a B&B page.  This isn’t good.  It means that your Key words don’t match your page and it creates a poor user experience – which will not lead to sales. 
 
In writing your own copy, you want to make sure that both the search engines and the humans that visit your Web Site see that you have original, relevant content that covers your Business Niche.

Content is King  – we’ve all heard that, but how do you write content that will get those awesome web rankings AND inform your customers about your business?
  
Use your Key Words and Meta Tags.  When setting up your Web Site, select Key Words and Meta Tags that will describe your Business.  Then use these same Key Words and Meta Tags when writing copy for your Web Site.  The Spiders will look at the Key Words and Meta Tags and compare them to the words in the copy.  The more they match up, the higher your rankings.
  
Make it short, sweet and to the point.  Experts agree that most people will spend from 15 to 17 seconds to decide whether or not this is a Web Site that they want to look through.  Make those first 15 seconds count!  Tell them why they need to stay and look at your Web Site.
 
Three to four paragraphs, three to five sentences per paragraph, and bold your topic (first) sentence in the paragraph.  I know, it goes against what we’ve been taught in school – but this is writing for the ultra rushed person to read.  Face it, how many of us have hours a day to search through a multitude of words just to find one or two golden nuggets of wisdom?  Not me!  So don’t waste words, bold what is important and people will pause to read the rest.

The basic difference between Google and Yahoo is the algorithms they use.  Yahoo leans on commercial results, Google leans more toward information websites. With that said, how do I get my ranking up on both engines when they use such different techniques.

If you have a business, you submit your site to Yahoo, have your site optimized well by your webmaster, submit to Yahoo Local and fill out your profile completely and you should rank well with Yahoo.  This also depends on your competition.  If your aiming in a small local community  you’ll rank much higher than if your in a large metro area with much competition.

Google on the other hand will look more at the information you provide on your website and if your updating that information regularly.  Simply submitting your site to Google does not mean you will rank high.  Getting involved in social networking helps immensely,  have your webmaster attach a blog to your site. Facebook, Twitter, join Linkedin or write ezines, all of these tools help your business rank better with Google because they look closely at your content when ranking your site.  Have good content that relates to your business and update it frequently.

Even though Google does a much better job with their query’s and alogrithims, I find if your looking for brick an morter kinda place, Yahoo does a better job with better results and fewer false negatives. If your looking for information, Google is King.

So, if you just use Google as a search engine or Yahoo as your only search engine,  you are most likely missing the target.  First determine what your searching for then pick the right search engine for the right job.

“Content is King”  If you’ve been around Web Sites and SEO at all, you’ve heard those fateful words!  Ok, so we know Content is King – but what does that mean to me?  I’ve got a web site, how do I get those high rankings on the Search Engines and Directories?  Do I have to pay my Web Master to go in there every week and change my Content (making sure that new content is full of Keywords that your Web Master has plastered all through your HTML Tags)? 
 
Unless you have Dreamweaver (or whatever program your site was built in) and know how to go into Dreamweaver and manipulate your code correctly, then yes, you’ll need to pay someone else to go in there and do that.  Of course, if you know how to use Dreamweaver, then you probably are your own Web Master anyway – whither you take the title or pay someone else to take the title! 
 
Finally there is another way to update your Web Site with Keyword rich, relevant content WITHOUT paying anyone else to update your Web Site for you.  How?  Through Dynamic Interactive Alternative Web Page (DIAWP).  You, the author/owner of your Web Site can now go into your Web Site and create content as often as you wish – whenever you wish!  You sign into your Admin Site and type away!  You can even add pictures in there if you’d like!  Email us for all the latest options at Maggie.

From Twitter to FaceBook to LinkedIn and everything in between, Social Networking is HUGE! You can spend your whole day lost in a maze of Social Networking and get absolutely nothing else done. Trust me, I’ve been there, done that! So, what’s the answer? Moderation.

We all know that Social Marketing is important for targeting new customers and also for keeping up with our current customers. Make sure and read Social Marketing if you haven’t. It’s got lots of great information for you. Just make sure that Social Networking / Social Marketing doesn’t take up your whole day. Pick just one of the general Social Networking companies (FaceBook, Twitter …) and then one Social Marketing site that is geared for your specific business niche. If you need a list of some of the Social Networking Websites, you can look up Social Networking on Wikipedia and go to the List of Social Networking Websites.

Have fun, set a timer, meet some new friends, gain exposure and make sure and include your URL in your home page at the Social Networking Website! Hey – it’s a free linkback!

Have you ever held your curser over a picture and some words show up in a box? That picture has a Picture Tag. Picture Tags are a great extra that so many people miss out on. We were looking at a Charter Fishing Web Site that had lots of great photos. One was of Jim Carey – THE Jim Carey. Unfortunately, it didn’t have any Picture Tag on it, so the opportunity for capitalizing on a very famous Movie Star was lost as there wasn’t any copy on the page – only pictures.

Just as Search Engines crawl for Meta Tags, they also look at the Picture Tags when crawling your site. Again, you want to make sure and use your Key Words (along with other important words/names) so that your Meta Tags and frequently added Content, along with your Picture Tags all coordinate. This will achieve higher Search Rankings which bring more people to your site!