URL shortening services are experiencing a renaissance in the age of Twitter. When every character counts, these services reduce long URLs to tiny forms. But which is the best to use, when so many are offered and new ones seem to appear each day? Below, issues to consider and a breakdown of popular services, including recommendations and services to avoid (the new DiggBar being one of these). The URL Shortener Mega Chart NOTE (March 2011): I'm hoping to update this article in the near future. Much of the basics are still valid. But you should also see Google URL Shortener Opened To T [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | How To: SEO | How To: Twitter | SEO: Domain Names & URLs | SEO: Redirects & Moving Sites | Social Media Marketing | Top News | Twitter

I recently came across a post explaining why Twitter isn't great for SEO. This quote in particular really got to me: "In addition to being a nofollow vacuum, Twitter has the danger of becoming a linking vacuum. In the ideal scenario, people will find a link on Twitter and then link the post in their own blog – page rank gold.  But Twitter is becoming a kind of fishbowl where people merely link to a site from their Twitter account, not from their personal site.  It’s just easier and users can still feel as if they’re part of a viral meme." That whole bit about it being "easier" to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week | Social Media Marketing

You can get more than just links from social media. You can also get really great content. And one of the best places to find free content is on Flickr. There are tons of ways to use Flickr. If you can take a great photo, you can use Flickr to build inbound links and get your photos showing up in places like Consumerist and Epicenter. You can use Flickr's comment area to build links that drive traffic and exposure. However, one of my favorite ways to use the site is to follow a link AND content development strategy. And that's what this article is about helping you learn to do. I'll sta [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Social Media Marketing | Top News | Yahoo: Flickr

Did you Twitter something embarrassing? Don't think deleting your tweet or locking your Twitter feed means what you said goes away. Twitter Search still makes it available, which one job applicant may have found to their loss. Hutch Carpenter covers how one Twitter user named TheConnor said on Twitter that Cisco offered them a job. But the full message is what may have gotten this person in trouble: Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work. Soon after, Tim Levad, Business Development Manager [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Social Media Marketing | Twitter

The thumbprint of social media on search engine optimization is evolving. It used to be that the big rage was figuring out how to develop link bait that had a strong chance of making the front page of Digg, Reddit, or other similar social news sites. The results were good, mostly in terms of getting a volume of links to a page on your site. This is still a great tactic, but social media can do so much more today. For example, with Twitter or Facebook it is possible to use networking and information sharing techniques to build high quality links. I have seen sites from a number of differ [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Industrial Strength | Social Media Marketing

Like search? Who doesn't -- great traffic, huge brand value and an audience ready to convert. Like social media? What's not to like -- huge growth, tons of buzz and an entire new marketing frontier that is opening up. For the search marketer looking at social media, how does it measure up? Which social media sites are most "search like?" This article looks at the issue and tries to chart it all out for easy comparison. To answer, let's start with some definitions. The terms "social media" and "social media site" are often used to describe web sites and online services that can be radically [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Features: Analysis | How To: SEM | Social Media Marketing | StumbleUpon | Top News

The past few weeks have been busy for the people over at StumbleUpon and its users alike. Just a few weeks ago, StumbleUpon lifted the 200 friend max from its user base and added a subscribe feature. On Wednesday my favorite social community announced that there were yet more changes to their discovery/recommendation engine. This new user experience is being called "beyond the toolbar". Not only do you not need to download a toolbar, but you actually don't even need to be registered with StumbleUpon to stumble anymore. This is really a "new user" experience. Let's check it out. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Features: General | Social Media Marketing | StumbleUpon

When I attended South by Southwest 2008, I had the pleasure of attending a panel where four somewhat lost panelists were (with difficulty) trying to come up with metrics to measure success from a social media marketing campaign. I was a little annoyed when they concluded that there were no metrics available right now, and that someone would have to come up with a new way of measuring social media success. While many people argue that the current metrics are no longer applicable, here's a look at how we can adapt the currently available methodologies and apply them to social media marketing [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Social | SEM Tools: Web Analytics | Social Media Marketing

A search engine marketing campaign isn't complete without including some elements of social media. While engaging in social media alone can provide impressive results, this week's infographic illustrates how properly planned tactics can have a positive impact on your search results: Graphic by Elliance, an eMarketing firm specializing in results-driven search engine marketing, web site design, and outbound eMarketing campaigns. The firm is the creator of the ennect online marketing toolkit. The Search Illustrated column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Infographics | Search Illustrated | Social Media Marketing

Anyone reading newspapers or watching the TV news in the UK over the last couple of months could be forgiven for thinking that, along with computer games, social networks posed a bigger threat to personal security than anything this side of a full on recession. Headlines have concentrated on the supposed dangers involved in having a profile on Facebook, Bebo, or any of the other major networks popular here. Yet according to new research from market research company Mintel Oxygen into online social networking in the UK, the general public does not share the same worries. The research found t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Social Media Marketing

You should consider many factors when getting involved in Social Media Marketing, such as the quality of your content, your domain name, and who is submitting your content. But there is almost always one thing I find myself looking at before any of the above conversations even begin: the design. You need to make sure your site is designed and performs in a way that is suitable for social media. Most social communities are not filled with web novices or beginners. They are filled with internet savvy individuals, who know what a site should look like, and more importantly, which sites are le [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Social Media Marketing

Hey, I like Twitter, but this entire thing Robert Scoble started about how Twitter had news of the Chinese earthquake before the US Geological Survey seemed absurd. Did it really? As it turns out, probably so -- by about three minutes. Reading some of the accounts, you'd get the impression Twitter seemed to alert the USGS to the news. Let's go to Robert's blog post about it: I reported the major quake to my followers on Twitter before the USGS Website had a report up and about an hour before CNN or major press started talking about it. Now there’s lots of info over on Google News. How di [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Other Search Engines | Social Media Marketing

We all know Social Media Marketing can be pretty time consuming. There are numerous social media communities, each requiring you to sign up, make a profile, and participate, in order to have any success with them. So it is only natural that you would like to have some helpful tools to short cut the process wherever possible. Below we will go through each of the major social communities that I use and outline some of the best tools to help you manage and maintain your accounts. Digg A community driven social news site where users submit articles and the community votes them up or down. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Social Media Marketing

If you've been involved with social media at all lately, you've realized that getting your linkbait on Digg has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, especially if you're trying from a commercial domain. This has left many social media marketers scrambling for ways to please their clients or find new ways to attract links virally for their own sites. While Digg is the big daddy of the social news sites and getting a frontpage Digg is certainly worth its weight in gold, by no means is it the end-all. You can still attract just as many links leveraging other popular sites like Red [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Social Media Marketing

Mixx, a social media submission site, is a newcomer on the scene, so it understandably will take a while for it to catch up with older sites like Digg, Propeller, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. That said, this article looks at the current state of Mixx and the potential future of its small but devoted community. This might come as a surprise, but Mixx serves approximately 500,000 unique visitors per month and is breaking their engagement record every month, even though the site is barely 6 months out of its private beta. One of the reasons for this is that so much of the activity takes place in [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Social Media Marketing

When putting together a social media campaign, you should consider many different things before you actually submit your content. You need to think about creating good social media accounts, quality content, and which social media site to submit to. Finally you get to the point where you can submit your content and take a breather… but not for long. The days of "submit and forget" are over. After you submit your content is when the social media campaign really begins and you have, on average, only about 24 hours to help get your content to the popular page of the site you have submitted t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Social Media Marketing

On Monday I had the distinct pleasure of speaking to a crowd of about 250 local search marketers at SEMpdx Searchfest in Portland. The audience reaction to my session, entitled "The Dark Side of Reputation Management," highlighting a stark reality out there in the corporate trenches. While nearly every hand in the room enthusiastically shot straight up when asked if they "believed their company should be leveraging social channels," fewer than 10 were actually engaged in social media marketing—let alone proactive reputation management. Many were concerned with potentially negative re [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Marketing: Public Relations | Social Media Marketing

One of the most overlooked but important keys to success on social news sites is commenting (expressing a personal opinion or belief). One of the biggest draws for many social news sites is that you can interact with fellow members and the submitters through comments. Many users go to the major social news sites (such as Digg or Reddit) mainly so that they can voice their opinions on stories and carry on the conversation that the story starts. As such, the comments on any particular story are vital to its success. Many people believe that a major key to Digg's algorithm is the number of [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Social Media Marketing

The title of this article doesn't mean I'm changing my position on social media as link driver. Yes, it's possible, but for the overwhelming majority of web sites, a widespread and costly social linking strategy is a waste of time and money. Go ahead, call me a heretic, but inside you know I'm right. If the site is this one for adult diapers then really, what's the social media end game? Sure, you could write a blog post or article like "Ten Uses For Adult Diapers you Never Thought Of" or "Five Sexiest Senior Citizens Naked," and sure, it might just make it to the Digg homepage, where not [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Link Building | Link Building: Linkbait | Link Week | SEO: Spamming | Social Media Marketing | StumbleUpon

There was a time in social media, just as in search engine optimization (SEO), when everything was only about getting to the front page. Little attention was paid to what happened after you got there, and for a while it seemed as if you could do it in your sleep. Over the last year, social media has evolved and become a more common form of online marketing and link building. With that evolution, it has become more difficult to push your content to the front page of top social communities, and the different communities’ algorithms have taken into account the various tricks and methods prev [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Social Media Marketing