SEO Isn’t As Important As It Used To Be

SEO Isn’t As Important As It Used To Be

Social media plays a big role in this situation. People are now used to getting recommendations through Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. Many people have now also become experienced in using the web and can cut through search results to get the best content, regardless of all the best keywords you have put in.

Search engines are also becoming clever, so they send traffic to the sites with best content.

keep reading to know why search engine optimization is less important now, what is the alternative/solution, and even when it still is important.

1. Facebook

Now many people don’t even use google to find good content, what they do instead is ask their friends and groups on Facebook for recommendations.These recommendations are also trusted by people, as their friends are the source of it, rather than some pattern of a search engine. And according to the new research, Facebook boasts more than 500 Million active users, so you can get the idea how important Facebook has become for people.

What You Should Do

Facebook can bring in a lot of traffic to your site and you should definitely use it as a medium of this kind. The first thing you should do is placing a “Like” button on your site, so visitors can share it with their friends if they wish. Secondly, make a page or group of your company or website and get people to join it. Thirdly, you can also advertise on Facebook if you want.

Tip : facebook wordpress Plugins

But please stay away from spamming using Facebook!

2. Social Bookmarking or Social Networking

Many people also use social bookmarking and news sites. These sites are now becoming an important source of getting information of your choice and interest.

People with very defined interests and an account on social bookmarking and news sites usually head over to these sites when they want to find some information. Tagging and inbuilt search function has enabled users to find almost anything. The fact that other people have already liked the content and saved it for later, makes the content even more trustworthy and good.

What You Should Do

Simply add social bookmarking links to your website. This would let people save (and promote) your pages. You should also set up accounts on the major social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and any other sites that are specific to your niche. But remember to share and promote good and relevant content from your website as well as elsewhere; otherwise you will look like a spam account.

3. Better Search Engine Tactics

Search engines are getting smarter day by day. So this means that the SEO strategies that worked awesomely some months ago, aren’t going to work as awesomely now.

The more smart the search engines, the less effective the on-site SEO tactics. But search engines would obviously recognize good content so you should not expect much traffic without good content. When it comes to off-site strategies, they do work but search engines are aware of some of the strategies that are used to make sites look more popular.

What You Should Do

Well this one is quite obvious: have good, relevant and quality content on your website. Stop focusing on keywords, just focus on the quality. Provide the content that will be useful for your visitors. Search engines would pick the best content that is out there — so make sure it your your content.

4. Blog Roundups

Blogs for every niche are present. These blogs usually post roundups of content from different sources online. These roundups are a great way of finding content related to a specific topic without wasting your time in going through search results.

Again, people like these kinds of posts is because of the feeling that someone has already liked this content and thought it worthy of being shared.

What You Should Do

You can do two thing. First, if you have a blog, you can do a roundup with resources from your own site and other sites. Roundups mostly get bookmarked and shared even months after they have been made.

Second, make content that can be included in these types of posts. Then contact bloggers that write about your topic and make sure they know your site. Being featured in roundups can bring in a lot of traffic to your site for months.

5. Twitter

People usually find it easier to ask their followers for recommendations for content regarding some topic than searching for it. The reason is that you get much better and already-liked-by-a-human results. People usually have more Twitter followers than they have friends on other social networking sites, so they get information quite quickly and easily.

Twitter is used for everything — from breaking news to research. Trending topics tell us the latest trends around the world and hashtags let us focus on specific topics.

What You Should Do

Businesses with Twitter accounts can interact with their customers and get to know about the latest happenings in their industry. You should also follow relevant hashtags and answer questions of users. Your followers will get the information you tweet to them and if they find that information useful, they will surely promote it by retweeting it.

6. People Already Have Particular Favorite Sites

Because internet has become an important part of people’s life, they usually know which sites to head to for certain things. For instance, if people want to get a book, they will directly go to Amazon instead of using the search engine.

What You Should Do

Find all the big sites in your niche and try to get your content featured on them. You can always put ads on them to bring people in to your website. You can also try being an associate of these big sites. For example, if you sell something you can try becoming an Amazon Associate to sell via their website.

7. Searchers Are More Experienced Now

Internet users are more experienced searchers now. They know exactly what to write to get best results. Searchers mostly use very specific search terms and still get thousands of relevant results. This makes SEO even more tough to do as you never know what people are going to type in to find something.

What You Should Do

Again, this one boils down to good quality and relevant content. Stop trying to fool the search engines and simply try to provide the best content on your website. Search engine traffic is getting smaller and even a part of that small traffic goes to big sites. as they have more incoming links and referrals. But still you should pay attention to what people search for to get to your site. And if some tern gets you more traffic than the other, you should definitely make more content around it.

8. Newsletters, Newsgroups and Mailing Lists

Newsletters and mailing lists have always been a very famos methods to bring in more traffic to your site. But this might not make subscribers come to your site. Newsgroups such as Yahoo Groups, Google Groups and About forums can also bring in traffic — but only if you know how to use them to get the most out of them.

What You Should Do

Newsletters and mailing lists can be used to remind your subscribers that your site exists. If they like your content, they can also forward your mail and in return you will get more exposure and obviously, visitors. You can get the most out of Yahoo Groups, Google Groups and About forums etc by getting involved in the discussions there. Don’t spam or post ads there, as it will annoy other users and destroy your reputation. Once you are involved your website will get more traffic — through the URL to your site in your signature.

Times When SEO Still Matters

All what has been said above is not to indicate that search engines have become totally useless. Many industries and niches can get a lot of new traffic from search engines.

SEO can prove to be very beneficial for informational websites. Well this again comes down to quality of content, the better the content the more traffic they get from search engines and the better placement too. Other optimizations like alt tags on images etc can help ameliorate your placement even more.

People, obviously, still use search engines for finding content.

One more type of sites that can benefit a lot from SEO are those which provide information on things people won’t be comfortable discussing with others. If people can’t discuss some topic with their friends on Facebook or Twitter, they will surely head to search engines!

Conclusion

You can bring in a large amount traffic to your website only if you know what techniques to use. Keep in mind that not every technique works for every wensite, so choose your stategies and tactics wisely and then watch the traffic increase.

But one thing is clear, your site is of no worth unless you get traffic. What is the use of a website when no one can find you?

Pros and Cons of Google Plus

Google Plus has been available for a month or so now. The social networking website has grown to have over 10 million users. A majority are engineers and others involved in technology, however the male-majority social network is expected to diversify in the near future. You will be surprised to find that Google Plus isn’t even available for public release yet. Yep, Google Plus is still under limited field-testing. There are still some issues that Google Plus must straighten out because it is still so new. Let’s take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of this rapidly emerging social networking site.

User Experience – Plus

The layout is amazing. Google Plus didn’t look to be revolutionary on this front (but it also didn’t look to copy anyone else either). The website took what was already good with social networking and fixing the faults of it as well. That’s the reason why Facebook was the first thought that came to mind when we laid our eyes on the layout. You have the main activity in the center; the sides mainly focus on the number of friends, notifications at the top and different timeline viewpoints on the left.

Circles – Plus

Circles are a really good idea that Google Plus created. It mixes the privacy of Facebook with the publicity of Twitter. With circles, you can put individuals in certain groups. You can have groups of friends, family, colleagues, and others. When you share something on Google Plus, you can select who sees the content and who doesn’t. This, in a way, covers the privacy part of it. On the other hand, if you have friends with different interests, then you can have certain friends to view content about one subject and vice versa. It’s genius.

Notifications – Minus

Notifications fell by the waste side in my opinion. It seemed as if when I checked notifications, the notifications tab cleared the alert. To elaborate, if I had 10 notifications and went to check one, it would make all the other notifications become marked as read, even if they weren’t. Also, when I checked notifications, not all of my alerts were shown in the tab. In addition, it also learned a Facebook mistake. If you commented on a popular status, you’ll still receive notifications about that status. In return, it fills up your inbox.

Location – Minus

Locations didn’t seem to tag where you were pretty well. Some users I have asked told me that their locations were tagged streets and even cities away from where they were. Also, on the iOS mobile application, I wasn’t always asked to check for my location. This meant that locations weren’t always refreshed and even instances where my location from days ago was still shown when I was 50-100 miles away from it. This is a problem that can easily be fixed with a native application.

Hangouts – Plus

This is the most sought after feature on Google Plus. Google Hangouts lets you video chat with a multitude of individuals on the website. It pops up in each user’s timeline that so and so user is “hanging out” with a certain amount of people. You can then click the green button to join them. The group creator can also invite others to the hangout. You can also add text chat as well. If you want to add some entertainment, Google Hangouts also have a YouTube component. The outlook is simple but nice!
Are you on Google+? What are your favorite features?

Social Media – Getting Started With Twitter

Twitter is just another example of the light speed at which communications are catapulting forward, and corporate America (as well as home business online marketers) should do our best to keep up. Social Radar, a research group reporting on activity and trends in social media, ranked Twitter number one in June 2009. Close on their heels were iPhone, Google and Facebook. Yes my friends, there were more “tweets” (140 character exchanges on Twitter) than there were searches on Google.

Let’s start with the basics. What is Twitter? Twitter is a text only platform that launches discussion and banter with a basic question, “What are you doing?” The answers must be 140 characters or less and are sent via the web, mobile texting, instant message and or a variety of applications.

But what is it really? Depends on who you ask. To some, Twitter is a fun escape from the doldrums of the job, home life or commute; to some it is a way to feel close to friends, family and associates (divided by schedules or geography); to some it’s an instant communication and information dissemination device; and most importantly to home business professionals like you, Twitter is the one of the most powerful, real time marketing system now in play.

But, before we go any further, get it out of your head that Twitter is mysterious and complicated. It’s just a communication vehicle that allows people and companies to deliver bite-sized messages…in 140 characters or less. And where all the people are – is where those who are running a business from home need to be too.

But, you ask – isn’t Twitter just a big waste of time? Well, yes and no. Is TV a waste of time? Is listening to radio a waste of time? What about surfing the web, flipping through a newspaper, reading email, talking on Skype, checking Facebook or cable news? The answer to all of the above is – yes… sometimes – and sometimes not. Like all media, people can choose what they want from Twitter. All media can be engaged for fun, relaxation, education, major announcements, public relations and access to breaking news. It doesn’t matter what peoples’ intentions are. All you need to remember is that millions of people live on Twitter, giving you millions of opportunities to reach them!!

Unlike traditional media however, Twitter can also be used for advice, personal branding, feedback, directions, self or business promotion and marketing.

Immediately you are taken to a page that already has you email address filled in – and asks for your password. If you type in your password, the system automatically sends a message to everyone in your contact list inviting them to follow you on Twitter. If you want every single person in your system to receive this email, then fill in your password and allow Twitter’s automatic email invitation to run. This can take a few minutes. If you DO NOT want Twitter to send an invitation to everyone in your contact list, do NOT fill in your password! Just go to the top right and click “skip”. People who have both business and personal contacts in their computer may not want one group or the other to be included. You can always have one Twitter account for personal use, and one for business.

A good way to expand your following is to check out Twitter account of others you know – or people whose tweets you find interesting. Check out their followers. When you mouse over their name, a brief bio or description comes up. If you like it, begin following them. Chances are, the people they are following will be like-minded. Next, check out some groups and search for individuals who may be good prospects.

Another way to find people you may want to follow is to visit search.twitter.com. This is actually a Twitter site, but it provides more options for finding people. When you get to this site’s homepage, click on “advanced search,” and quite a few options come up that are pretty self explanatory. Similar to how you can add information in a Google search by adding the plus sign (+), you can fill in more than one of the search fields for more specific results.

Before you can accelerate you business using the Twitter platform, you need to use it a little and get a feel for how it works, what kind of tweets you like, and some Twitter etiquette. This can happen pretty fast though, so dive in and get started.