12 Tips To Be A Digg Rockstar
By Sujan Patel with 1 Comment
1. Create a Memorable Profile – Your name, and picture, are very important. Think of how many avatars you remember well and why…they stick out and are memorable.
2. Submit Valuable Content – Don’t just submit from your own site. Provide something others will consider valuable. Adding nice comments is helpful. Also look at those that have power accounts, those that do well on Digg and bookmark their sites and the sites they Digg. If you Digg from these sites you are automatically connecting and networking.
3. Do Not Make Friends with Everyone – This strategy does not look good and does not benefit you.
4. Do Not Review A Story and Digg It – If you discuss another news story and then Digg your own story it could be considered blog spam. However, you can discuss why you disagree with an article or news story and Digg it.
5. Digg Your Blogging Buddies, Work Associates and Writers You Respect – If you Digg their stories they will most likely Digg yours. You want to create a Digg network of non-spammers.
6. Create a Resource of Articles – Review Sphinn, StumbleUpon, Reddit, NetScape, RSS feeds, industry web sites and any other place you find valuable articles. Digg them and get your name out there.
7. Befriend Those That Digg You – You can see who Dugg your stories and you should befriend them. Remember, networking is important. If you befriend someone their network of friends my befriend you.
8. Review the Stories That Do Well on Digg – What are the topics? Who is submitting the stories? There are trends; pay attention and mimic the behaviors that work. Also, comment on the big stories, but make sure the comment is a good one. “Good Article†is not enough.
9. Create an Exciting Title and Description – If you want people to read and Digg, the title and description need to draw readers in.
10. Use Effective Keywords – When you choose keywords or tags you do not want to spam and you want to choose words that will bring in a lot of readers. “SEO Tips will not being in as many readers as “SEOâ€.
11. Be an Active Participant – If you are active in the community you have a better chance of building a trustworthy reputation.
12. Pay Attention to Your Diggs – Check and see how the stories you Dugg are doing. Which did well? Which did not do well? Where any buried? Keep a record of the topics that do well and those that don’t. Use this record as a guide.
SEO Friendly Design
By Sujan Patel with 4 Comments
What Consists of an SEO Friendly Web Design?
When you optimize a web design you are optimizing for the search engines, but you are also creating a web environment that is meets the needs of your visitors.
Pleasing Your Visitors
There is a basic list you need to implement in your web design:
- Easy Navigation – do not make navigating your site difficult at all. Some people do not know how to look, they do not want to look hard and some of your visitors will have physical and/or mental disabilities. For example, if your users have to see a particular color to find the navigation you could be eliminating any color blind visitors to your site. Make the navigation simple and make sure any visitor can use it without problems.
- Scannable Content – this means creating headlines that people can scan to see if your page has the information they are looking for. People always scan, so create headlines that describe the paragraphs. This way you allow readers to quickly find what they are looking for and once they start reading you have an opportunity to sell your products or services. Additionally, you should use keywords/keyword phrases in your headlines for optimization. Headlines are a crucial part of any web site.
- Content With No Spelling or Grammatical Errors – This may seem like a no-brainer, but there are so many business web sites with errors that make them appear less professional and trustworthy.
- Understandable & Informative Content - no one is an expert in everything. You may think that everyone knows the proper way to plant a palm tree, but in reality the majority of people coming to a site selling palm trees would have no clue where to start. You have to write content that is easy to read and in a non-condescending way explain everything point by point. If someone is an expert in your field they will skim past the things they already know, but someone that is looking for the services you provide is seeking to understand the process and gain confidence that you know what you are doing.
- Be Congruent – you want your pages to be similar in design/organization. If every page is different the visitor may get tired of looking or get confused and leave.
- It Should Load Fast - no one likes to wait for a page to load. We have all been to sites that take a long time to load and what do we do? Say, “forget it†and back out. Pictures can really mess up your loading time. Use a program like Photoshop and try to shrink the size of the picture, but try to maintain the quality of the picture.
- Follow W3C Suggestions For Accessibility – W3C.org has some testing recommendations all webmasters should follow to ensure your visitors have complete access to all areas of you site.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
There are some very important things SEO does for a web site and without them a site will not do well. An SEO Friendly Web Design will:
- Make the site easy to find on the search engines
- Adhere to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
- Appear in the SERPs for relevant keywords and keyword phrases
- Include the right amount of optimized content, as well as optimized headlines and meta tags
- Have clean code for the search engines
- Be crawlable- search engine spiders and bots should be able to smoothly move through all of the pages on your web site
- Avoid content in frames
- Be W3C compliant
- Use anchor text effectively
- Interlink relevant pages throughout the site
- Have a sitemap with text links to every page
In Conclusion
An SEO Friendly web site design should please all web site visitors; this means those that have complete knowledge about the subject of your site and those that know nothing about the subject. It should also meet guidelines set by the search engines and be properly designed for search engine spiders/bots. Most importantly, your web site should be easy to read and navigate
Using Social Media To Assist Your SEO
By Sujan Patel with No Comments
If you are new to the industry and business of marketing web sites, harnessing the power of social media optimization seems like a no brainer. For the experienced veterans in the search marketing industry, social media has created a new set of rules to follow.
Today, we will take a look into how you can adapt an aging site optimization plan to better utilize the opportunities that social media has given us.
Understanding What “Social Media” Is…
As the name implies, there’s a social or community aspect to social media web sites and services. Sites that use social media as their primary means of content share some common traits. They are sites that are rich in user generated content. In other words – if you were to own a social media web site, you would not be creating the content… Your users would.
Why Social Media Assists SEO Efforts
Most social media sites are really social bookmarking sites, or sites where links and summaries or opinions are shared. Let’s say you write an article on a topic that relates to your business. You can submit that article to various social media sites like Digg, Reddit and even former big time players in the aging search industry like Netscape.
Once submitted, other users can comment on the story and help to raise it’s value on the bookmarking system. That alone generates more attention and increased visitor flow – but there’s another major factor in play – free inbound links.
Wait, Aren’t the Links Using NOFOLLOWs?
In some cases they are, and in others – they are not. Regardless of that, there has been evidence that engines are still seeing and considering the hyperlink using a NOFOLLOW in context to the rest of the page.
Even if all of the spiders and bots out there ignored the backlinks, you’re sure to raise some eyebrows and instigate others to comment, trackback to your article from their own sources, etc.
In the end, you’re generating backlinks to your unique content… and that’s the name of the game when it comes to SEO.
Connecting With Readers Through Social Networking
By Sujan Patel with 3 Comments
Think about this, a salesman and a friend both hand you the same piece of literature, which one are you most likely to read? Most would answer, the one that came from their friend. That is why social networking plays such an important role when marketing your site.
Lets face it. Ninety percent of people that start a blog or web site, have done so to make money. Regardless of how they may choose to monetize their site, the end result is the same. So why wouldn’t you want to take the high road and give yourself the best chance of success, right out of the gate. Remember the question above? Friends are more likely to buy from friends than strangers. They are also more likely to stick around and read everything you have written, raising your monthly page views and essentially making your site more appealing to advertisers. It works better all the way around.
Now that you know what you need to be successful, how do you add that to your marketing plans? Social Networking. Social networking is the fastest and easiest way to turn complete strangers into friends and of course loyal readers, in a very short amount of time. With so many sites like MyBlogLog and Facebook it can be difficult to choose a good starting point. Many people turn their efforts directly to MySpace.com, I am not one of them. MySpace is a great place for marketing if your a rockstar or an actor, but not for the average blog or web site.
MyBlogLog, as mentioned above, is an excellent community to get started with. I see more and more sites popping up with their MyBlogLog friends list in the sidebar, some of these sites are in the Technorati Top 100 list. MyBlogLog has a large following of community members and making friends typically comes very easily. You can add your blog, build your own neighborhood and let others join.
Facebook is one of the largest and fastest growing social networking sites on the internet. Sign-up, create a profile and add people to your friends list, your network and get involved. Share your thoughts, interests and most importantly your blog with all of your friends. Take the time to look at other peoples blogs and add comments, this will often return a reciprocal visit to your site.
Digg, well known for the Digg effect, crashing servers worldwide. Many reports have been made of traffic spikes in 20,000 to 40,000 people range within hours of hitting the Digg homepage. My suggestion for getting dugg. Sign-up for the site and start digging others articles. This adds you to the list allowing people to see what you have recently dugg. And of course the most recent thing you dugg is your own post, wink wink. This is a great way build additional interest to your articles. Another tip, digg other bloggers posts that have links to you. If they were to hit the homepage on that particular article, you would receive some overflow traffic from the link in the post.
Never overlook an opportunity to market your site. Always keep an open mind when you are developing your marketing strategies. There is a million plus opportunities on the web today and social networking is one of the best. Business has thrived around communities since the very beginning. Business on the web is no different, a strong community builds a strong presence and that is your ticket to success.
Making A Power Account On StumbleUpon
By Sujan Patel with 25 Comments
The Basics
Make a Great Profile Page- You profile page is going to be looked at a lot. Make it exciting, enticing and friendly.
Make Friends – 200 is your limit, but you need friends to do well. Work hard to network and make friends.
Stumble – You need to Stumble to do well. To Stumble you need the StumbleUpon Toolbar. Stumble the articles, blogs and web sites you like. It is great to “discover†a new site, which means you are the first to Stumble that page. You want to Stumble quality material; humor, lists and “How to†articles are great. You can also use the Stumble button on your toolbar and it will take you to sites you are interested in; Stumble these.
Review Other Stumblers - When you give a Stumbler a review they often return the favor and review you. You need these reviews for traffic and a good Stumbler reputation.
Join Groups – There are groups discussing every subject. Find some groups in your niche and join. Try to make “friendsâ€. You can also create your own group and attract a lot of traffic.
Don’t Spam – You don’t want to build a bad reputation.
Import Your Contacts From Email Accounts - When you import your contacts Stumble looks to see if they are using StumbleUpon. You instantly gain friends and can begin networking more effectively.
To Attract and Maintain Traffic
If you want traffic to keep coming to your site you need to offer a quality site or blog:
- Stumble your own site, but be selective
- Brand your site or blog- make it memorable
- Provide quality content
- Offer email and feed subscriptions in a highly visible place
- Always respond to comments
- Thank those that Stumbled you
- Don’t use tags that only a few people will search for; use tags that will attract large numbers
- Offer a different perspective
- Have a contest
- Offer your subscribers something
- Ask questions people will want to answer
- Create exciting an enticing titles to your posts/articles
- Create a blogging network where you and your network can support one another
- Discuss money- make money, save money, win money…everyone likes wants to know how to obtain money
- Link to your StumbleUpon profile page from blogs, MySpace, Facebook etc.
- Promote StumbleUpon
- Visit Buzz Section of Stumble Upon and notice the tags that are getting the most traffic. Use those and check back often.
- Be friendly and have a sense of humor
To have a power account on StumbleUpon you need to Stumble correctly and provide high-quality content that appeals to readers.
Have any tips, tricks or techniques to add, feel free comment or email us (sj at singlegrain dot com) and let us know.
