Posted by Admin on October 17th, 2006 — Posted in SEO
By Mike Valentine
Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the new buzzword when it comes to getting links from sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati, and Flickr. There is a lot of talk on SEO blogs and in forums about this concept. What it means, essentially, is that web publishers want visitors to bookmark their content, subscribe to their blogs, news, product and podcast feeds.
A current search at Google for “Social Media Optimization (as of this writing) has Lee Odden’s TopRankBlog post on the SMO topic showing up number one for that search.
http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/08/new-rules-for-social-media-optimization/
Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations said in Rule #2 of his “Five Rules of Social Media Optimization” blog post in August, 2006
http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/5_rules_of_soci.html
“Make tagging and bookmarking easy – Adding content features like quick buttons to “add to del.icio.us” are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier…”
Until recently, making “the process of tagging pages easier” has been rather cumbersome and tedious for publishers. Collecting code and “chiclets” (logos) from each service first to facilitate using social bookmark service links and feeds, then posting a mish-mash of those links near web content to encourage visitors to subscribe to feeds or bookmark that content through any of dozens of popular services.
But a new service at http://www.AddThis.com has been launched which appears to solve the complexity for publishers and reduces the “chiclet” clutter by providing a single button for bookmarks or a single button for RSS feeds, to allow bookmarks and feeds through any of the most popular services.
What follows is a Q&A with AddThis.com co-founder Dom Vonarburg
Q) Most interviews end by asking if there is anything else you’d like to add, what specifically would you like people to know about AddThis up front?
A) AddThis.com is a brand new service that helps web surfers collect information online with a single click, and send it to their favorite bookmarking service, feed reader, wish list service, podcast service, etc. AddThis also helps web publishers promote their content (web pages, feeds, products, podcasts, etc) online by making it easier for their visitors to collect it, save it, and distribute it to social services. AddThis was launched in September at the DEMO conference, the launchpad for emerging technology.
Q) Do you see AddThis as a potentially big player in the Social Media Optimization (SMO) phenomenon since you make it easier for web publishers to get their sites bookmarked, and their podcasts and blog feeds subscribed?
A) We started working on AddThis back in March 2006, even before the term SMO was first coined. The idea behind AddThis was, and still is, to completely eliminate all obstacles web publishers have in distributing their content to visitors and the social media services they might use. Our internal term for it was initially social SEO, but I like Social Media Optimization better.
We think AddThis will be a very important player in the SMO space, as it is the first service to provide a generic gateway for collecting and distributing many different types of content. AddThis acts as a bridge between the web publisher, the web user, and the social media services.
Q) You’ve added a new angle to the bookmarks game with the “Products” button. If it takes off, it seems like it would be great for ecommerce sites, especially with the reporting attached. I haven’t seen this anywhere else. What made you bring the product angle into an AddThis Product Button?
A) “Products” was the next logical step for us after bookmarks, feeds and podcasts. People want to collect and compare the products and services they find online, and ecommerce websites want to facilitate this process. By adding “Product” buttons to their pages, ecommerce websites are more likely to be included in their visitors’ final purchase decisions. The button also helps spread these products to other people through social bookmarking and social shopping websites (Kaboodle.com, Wists.com, ThisNext.com, etc).
Q) You are offering AddThis as a free service. Is there any plan to move to a higher level plan to monetize it? I noted your participation in the DEMO conference where companies seek venture capital and seed funding. Were you seeking funding and were you successful?
A) Yes, the service is free and will continue to be free. Starting early next year, we will also provide a premium version of the service. I don’t want to say too much at this point, but the premium service will provide many interesting features for web publishers, one of which will be more advanced statistics. Our primary goal with DEMO was to boost the launch of AddThis. We also received the attention of several investors.
Q) Providing stats was an extra step that probably increased costs and complexity for AddThis. What made you consider the reporting to publishers as an important part of a free service?
A) The statistics was a fairly simple feature to add and we thought it added a lot of value to web publishers, especially for products. For example, with the statistics, web publishers can find out which products their visitors are most interested in, which ones receive less attention, etc.
Q) Is there any connection with ClickAbility.com? (”Email This” “Save This” and “Print This”)
A) ClickAbility is different in that it provides its own system for saving information. AddThis does not impose any destination for the content collected.
Q) Was the AddThis.com domain already yours, or did you purchase from an existing owner? It shows in domain records as being registered since 1998, but the WayBack Machine at Archive.org only shows a single page with nothing on it from 2002. So little history available on the domain. Has AddThis been in the works since 1998?
A) The domain was not ours; we purchased it from its previous owner in March 2006.
Q) Most bloggers providing RSS feeds to their users did their best to get each of about a dozen of those “Chiclets” allowing subscriptions through the most popular services posted in the margins of their blogs. Many bloggers are now relying on the FeedBurner service and moving to a single feed logo. How does the AddThis.com feed service compare to FeedBurner? Do you see FeedBurner as a competitor?
A) FeedBurner’s primary business is feed hosting and management. Feeds are only one type of content supported by AddThis, we support and will support many more types. We think our generic approach to content collection and distribution is truly unique. So we don’t see FeedBurner as a direct competitor.
Q) Most big publishers and now thousands of smaller web site owners and bloggers are beginning to post Del.icio.us and Furl and Reddit logos and links on their pages in the hopes that site visitors will bookmark their pages in the social bookmarks services. Some are choosing to add a few links to some of the other bookmarking services, but few go beyond the top 5 social bookmarks site links. I see that AddThis Bookmark service offers 16 social bookmarks services. How did you decide ones which you would include? Certain popularity levels?
A) We picked the most popular bookmarking services based on popularity and visibility in the search engines. We only stopped at 16 because of time constraints, but we will add many more of them in the future. By letting AddThis maintain the list of bookmark and feed buttons, web publisher can better focus on their content.
Q) Do you have any plans for a tie-in with Digg? As a news popularity site, they have a different focus than the RSS feeds and Social Bookmarks services, but many site publishers are including “Digg This” links from their web pages as part of a “social media marketing” plan. Does your focus with AddThis stick to bloggers, product retailers, bookmarks, and podcasts or will you consider expanding into the news and other areas?
A) Social news is also a logical candidate for AddThis. We will also add other types of content based on user adoption.
Q) Is there anything else you’d like to Add(to)This? 
A) We think AddThis will play a big role because it makes a lot of sense for both web users and web publishers. You can think of AddThis.com as the more social sister of AddMe.com, or its Web2.0 extension. Each service helps you achieve a different kind of visibility.
As a publisher, I had been updating WebSite101 to a new template and had been considering including Furl, Reddit, Del.icio.us, and Digg, but came across the AddThis Demo launch story and dropped Furl and Reddit from the mix in favor of the AddThis “Bookmark” link, since AddThis supports all of the bookmarking services with one button.
I’m keeping the Del.icio.us and Digg links for now, but I think once publishers begin to realize they can simplify bookmarks and if users understand that they can use any social bookmark service through AddThis, that you’ll see strong adoption of the service.
Good luck on wide adoption of AddThis by both the public and publishers Dom, I wish you the best of luck with your contribution to Social Media Optimization!
Mike, I want to thank you for this opportunity to answer these questions and describe our vision for AddThis.com; your questions were right on target!
Interview with Dom Vonarburg of AddThis.com, Copyright © October 10, 2006 by Mike Banks Valentine
Mike Banks Valentine operates SEOptimism, Offering SEO training of in-house content managers http://seoptimism.com/SEO_Staff_Training.htm as well as contract SEO for advertising agencies, web development companies and marketing firms. Mike blogs about SEO at http://RealitySEO.com where this article appears with live links to “Social Media Optimization” (SMO) stories, buttons, blog posts and examples.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Valentine
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Posted by Admin on October 1st, 2006 — Posted in SEO
1. Use Descriptive Titles, and Mod-Rewritten Permalinks
Descriptive titles will bring relevant traffic to your site. This is one of the most important things you can do to your site to bring SE traffic to it. While I’m writing this article specifically for WordPress, I’m sure you probably could find similar mods or plugins for other blog engines to take their place. When I say a descriptive title, I don’t mean to spam your blog’s titles with keywords, I mean to write a short summary of the post contained within it that lets users know what they’re fixing to read. Think of it from the users side: If you’re on Google and you see a site titled “Hosting, Domains, Design, DNS – Joes Web Hosting”, and a site titled “Great Hosting from Joes Web Hosting”, which one would you click? Even though I dramatized the example, I made my point. Another thing to consider is phrases. When a user enters a phrase that’s on one of your blog’s titles, it will most likely be ranked higher than other pages. For example, if someone’s looking for “Great Hosting”, the post titled “Great Hosting from Joes Web Hosting” will rank higher (though, not much higher since that’s such a general term). Secondly, you should use mod_rewritten links on your blog. This requires a server with Apache installed, with the rewrite module. This is a great tip, since it will place keywords in your individual post URLs.
For example, instead of “domain.com/p?=1″, you’d get “domain.com/01/20/08/joes-web-hosting-services/”. This, along with descriptive titles will help your blog out greatly.Wordpress has this built-in, but you must first configure it. Login to your WP admin area. Once the page loads, select “Options” from the upper menu bar, then select “Permalinks” on the next page. I recommend using “Date and Name Based”, or enter this custom value in the box towards the bottom of your screen: “/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/”. After doing this, you must update your “.htaccess” file so it rewrites the URLs correctly.
2. Remove your blog’s name from Individual Post Page Titles
While this may seem counter-productive, it’s actually a good idea. When your blog is indexed by Google (or any other search engine), many times the pages are seen as being too-close together and they are omitted from the search results because of this. This also reduces the relevancy of search results from your site, since your blog’s name is taken into account by the search engine. By removing your site’s title, you can (in most cases) cure this problem. To do this, look in your Wordpress’ “header.php” file. This is found in your theme’s directory.
Find the following code:
<i><title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?>
<?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> » Blog Archive <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?></title></i>
Replace it with the following code:
<i><title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> » <?php } ?>
<?php wp_title(); ?></title></i>
(http://wordpress.org/support/topic/66362)
3. Install the Mega tag description and Keyword plugins
META tags aren’t as important as they used to be, but they are still a factor in the ranking of your site, especially on smaller search engines. For META decription/keyword tags to be effective, you must choose relevant and unique tags. However, both of these mods do this for you to some extent. You can choose your own, or use the default ones (either one is fine, since the plugins generally choose good keywords and a good description by themselves). If I had to choose between the two of these plugins, I’d say to just go with the description tag (though both are better). To find these plugins, just do a Google search for “keyword meta tag plugin Wordpress” and “description meta tag Wordpress plugin”, or something similar (as these plugins/Wordpress may be updated rendering the old links useless).
4. Install the Google Sitemaps Plugin and Submit to Google
Installing the Google Sitemap Plugin can decrease the amount of time it takes Google to index your site dramatically. It generally takes weeks or months (depending on the size of your site, sometimes sooner) for Google to index new pages on your site. With the Sitemap Plugin, this amount of time can be reduced to just hours. To install this plugin, simply do a Google search for “Wordpress Google Sitemap Plugin”, find it, and download it. Installation is just like a normal plugin. Once installed, submit your Sitemap to Google at “http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview”. As of writing, you’ll also have to verify that the site is your own by either inserting a META tag into your site, or by uploading a specifically named HTML file.
5. Submit your RSS Feed to Other Sites
Submitting your RSS to other sites can increase your traffic substantially. Each time your blog’s RSS feed is updated, you can have the other sites download the new feed and index your site (see the Pinging area below). This is essentially the same thing as letting a site index your site, but it’s more targeted towards news and blogs. If you can find a site targeted towards you own site’s niche (ex: Gardening, Computers, Autos, etc.), you’re sure to boost your traffic levels, as long as your blog has unique content that’s updated frequently. An excellent list of sites to submit your RSS feed to is available here: “http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm”.
6. Ping Other Sites Automatically when you Update your Blog
As mentioned in the RSS feed section, pinging other sites allows other sites to get updates from your blog much sooner and automatically when you make a new post. This is very much like the Google Sitemap plugin (the concept is, anyway). To have your blog update other sites when you update it, login to your Wordpress’ admin area. Select “Options” from the main menu, then select “Writing” on the next page (sub-menu). You may want to choose others, but I have the following sites in my blog to ping:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
Please keep in mind, unless you install the “No Ping Wait” plugin, there will be a delay after you make each post (while your blog contacts the other servers to ping them).
7. Use “alt” and “title” tags, respectively, on your posts images and links
Using “Alt” tags on your images and “Title” tags not only helps your search engine rankings, but it also helps disabled people with screen readers view the content on your site. It also can help your page be valid HTML (another thing that can help your SE ranking). I recommend simply describing the link/image and not trying to cram tons of keywords to boost your ranking. For more information on doing this, visit W3C’s site and look up the tag for the version of HTML/XHTML used on your site (if you want it to be valid).
8. Exchange links with other relevant sites, but don’t use exchange networks Exchanging links with other sites can help your rankings tremendously, but trading with the wrong sites can do the opposite. That’s why I reccommend only trading with sites that are relevant to your own and are listed in Google. One-Way links are placed much higher in Google than reciprocal links, so free or paid directory links would be even better. An excellent list of SEO friendly directories can be found here: “http://info.vilesilencer.com/”. Using an exchange network can have adverse effects on your site due to the general quality of sites in them. Basically, a one-way text link on a high PageRank directory is the best route. Be sure to use good keywords in your link/title, as Google takes this into account for keyword/phrase rankings.
9. Post short, interesting posts on your blog daily to keep readers coming back for more
You don’t have to write a book to keep readers coming. In fact, most people like reading short and simple articles that are straight to the point. By giving readers what they want, you are increasing the probability that they will come back. Choose interesting topics to post on your blog that are relevant to your site’s niche. For example, if Ferrari just released a new car and you have an Auto blog, you could post a short paragraph summarizing the information about the car and your opinion, include a picture or two of the car, and include a link to a more in-depth article. Alternatively, you could re-write the article (it allowed) and post a link back to the site in a “Source” list under or above your own article. Doing this will keep readers on your site.
10. Share your site with people you know, and ask them to tell others they know
While it may not seem like much, telling people you know can help you build a site. People you know can offer advice on design, topics, etc. and let people they know about your site. People who know you are also far more likely to comment on your postings, making your site look more active, thereby encouraging others to do the same. If you choose to do this step, ask the person to tell 3 other people they know about your site. This will in effect create a small network of people reading and commenting on your site. Plus, if they really like your site they’ll continue to tell others about it.
Article written by Hiram Davis, owner and publisher of http://www.blognation.be/
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hiram_Davis
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