19 Mar 2010 01:23 am
Everyone is trying to take advantage of the industry and as a result it is carrying more weight then it can handle.
There are a load of sites or companies out there who say they can do SEO. The fact is that they usually outsource to other SEO companies and use their site as a front door. There is still really only a hand full of professional SEO experts that SEO companies are outsourcing to.
When a website say they offer SEO it really doesn't mean they do it. It's a bit like graphic designers saying that they do printing but really they don't.
SEO takes a certain skill and what gets me is designers or people who are new in the inductry all of a sudden wanting to get a piece of it. By profession I am a Graphic Designer and Web Designer aswell but over the course of 5 years I applied and did better then ever with SEO. But there is a reason why I stick to what I do. I find if your really good at something stick to it. Don't get me wrong I encourage entusiasts to learn, this is why I have SEO Workshops.
But the bottom line is after the workshop if you are still technically or creatively not handling it, then perhaps it is not for you and you can stick to what you are best at or you can give the job to a professional. But overall the great thing about doing a half day course is to know if this is what you want to do for the rest of your life or it's something you want to do just as a one-off for some small web project.
Getting into the market now particularly when the market is oversaturated is not easy, so I encourage people who want to learn to apply their knowledge to their own one or two websites they own. I don't encourage you to go out and start your own SEO company as it is really difficult to break into the market for new SEO's who are trying to get a name for themself.
Be aware when your looking out for a SEO company to take care of your sites needs. Be sure to check out testimonials and other examples of their work before going ahead, and make sure they have been around for a while or the CEO of the company is well known in the industry.
30 Mar 2010 02:52 pm
The first and the foremost thing in Social Media is to interact and build up a reputation. Sales will start to generate as you build stronger relationships. The most important thing is to be yourself and be orginal. There is no point in doing something because your competitors are doing the same. Now the biggest question comes up "Does social media have the ability to convert ?". The answer to the question is that social media converts as long as you are doing it in the right way and targetting the right audience. You should have heard about Roger Smith Hotel "The social media hotel". Their twitter account is RSHotel. They have really build up a strong online presence through twitter and now they are so famous that social media users are recommending them to their friends, family and relativies. This means that social media can play an effective role in viral marketing campaigns. If you need to make the maximum benefit out of Social Media then you should give importance to the following things :
1) Participate where your customers want you to participate. Be active, interactive and build a strong community and maintain the same.. Remember that your customers are your strength.
2) Plan your social networking and social media efforts so that customers are motivated and encouraged to bring others into the fold and make them engage with the existsing customers.
3) When planning new promotional campaigns, recognize other users who are more likely to listen to your point of view and act on your behalf.
4) Design your programs so that they are extremely easy for your existsing customers as well as the new prospective customers to share with their network of friends on the social platforms of their choice. Be with them throughout the journey.
5) Carry your long tail of cutsomers from one campaign to another. Provide them with additional customer value in return.
If you need further discussion about the above topic you may contact Cijo Abraham Mani,SMO Expert and Search Evangelist.
27 Mar 2010 09:03 pm
I have recently been searching around like I normally do and seemed to find some faults and what appears to me to be some glitch with the local business listings.
Here is an example of what I recently did, I simply typed in "Melbourne Forum" and up came a whole heap of local map listings but all showed google url's as their business website. Strange? Now I know Googles local business listings are not very well maintained and it's something that they are working on, but cmon this is a bit over the top. It just goes to show you that you could almost list any website url you want when your local listing is approved. There are still many loop holes, and glitches in their system.
Another interesting find was that when I was searching in Google for "Melbourne Events" , "Bangkok Events" etc. Up came indents from internal link pages from the one website eventful.com which displayed the link and then the date and venue etc. This is something I have never seen before? Does this mean extra promotion for sites that hold events now? If so, I think we will see an increase of sites with events as part of their content.
Then the most bizarre result of them all was when I typed in "Facebook advertising" as this is obviously hot property at the moment. And guess who showed up in the search results? Google!
