David Leonhardt’s SEO and Social Media Marketing

SUMMARY: The Free Traffic System is NOT what the name sounds like. It is an effective platform to build editorial links on keyword-relevant pages across multiple domains of mixed quality. And it’s free.

Readers who know me well might be forgiven for raising their eyebrows at something called “Free Traffic System“. After all, I am probably the person you know who most vociferously opposes any SEO approach that involves automation. So I should lay to rest that I am not reviewing a “system” in the sense of what it might sound like. In fact, I think the word “platform” would be more appropriate.

Some of you surely still have your eyebrows raised because you know I put little stock in all those traffic machines that send huge swathes of untargeted traffic, which for most niches is pretty useless . The fact is that this “system” does not send any “traffic” directly. Traffic does result from the promotion it helps you do, but this really is a system - er, I mean … a “platform” for promotion of your website, your company, your credibility, your blog posts, etc.

If you’ve let down your eyebrows, get ready to raise them again, because this world-renowned cheapskate who avoids paying for any SEO or promotional tools he can possibly get away with, has just upgraded to the “Pro” version of the Free Traffic System, which is not cheap by anyone’s measure. However, after using the free version these past two months, I have been impressed enough that I am convinced it is worth paying (against my cheapskate instincts) for the even more effective Pro version. So, yes, technically it’s free (but no longer for me). But more importantly, it’s effective. And it’s even more effective (I’ll explain how later) when you upgrade to Pro.

(Complete disclosure at the end of this post.)

Free Traffic System could use a name change

So this really should not be called the Free Traffic System (I know a name like that sells in the Internet Marketing community, but it cheapens what is in fact a much more sophisicated approach); it should be called the Effective Promotion Platform. Right. I shall petition the owner for a name change. In the meantime, let me tell you…

• what FTS does
• how it works
• who can benefit most
• any downsides?
• the differences between the free and pro versions

Please keep in mind as you read this that the process is NOT automated. I might call it semi-automated, but really the only automated part is distribution. The really big time-saving is in searching for link-building opportunities. What FTS gives you is instant access, saving hundreds of hours of searching for linking opportunities.

In simplest terms, the Free Traffic System is a platform for spreading your content across multiple blogs run by multiple owners. It is a cross between article distribution and guest blogging. The basic steps are as follows.

1. You create content, much as you would for article distribution.
2. You fill in the forms, much as you would for article distribution.
3. You select the blogs you want your content to appear on.
4. The bloggers decide whether to accept your content.

Step #4 is a crucial step to keep in mind. You do get instant access to the blogs, saving hours of searching; you do not get guaranteed or automatic access. It means two things.

First, the bloggers are folks like you and me - a myriad of blog owners around the world, with a myriad of domains across a myriad of IP addresses. Take note, that is important for SEO.

Second, if you submit crap, they won’t accept your “guest post”, so it really is worth investing the time and/or money in creating good quality articles.

Detailed review of the Free Traffic System process

Let’s look at the process in more detail, because there are some elements built in that might seem small, but are nevertheless very important.

The first information that goes into the submission for are the URLs and the anchor text.

As you can see by the screenshot, you are allowed two links per submission in the free version of the Free Traffic System. That might be your home page and a link to a specific blog post or product in your eCommerce site.

Notice how both the fields have height? You can add as many keyword variations for each link as you want, and each one will become the anchor text for the link. What this means is that if you add 5 different “keywords”, one fifth of the blogs you submit to will feature each keyword as an anchor text. From an SEO perspective, this is great because we all know that anchor text variation at least to some degree is important. The one caveat is that all the variations have to fit into the same spot in the text of your article.

Even more interesting is that you can have multiple URLs for your two links. What this means is that if you add 2 different URLs for one of the links, half the blogs you submit to will feature each URL. This works only when the anchor text can be used interchangeably between the two URLs. For instance, we have a page about book writers and another page about ghost writers. We could put both of the URLs into the %LINK2% field, and include keywords that easily apply to both URLs. From an SEO perspective, this is great because we add variety and spread the deep-link love better across the domain.

The title is crucial

Next we enter the title of the post. From an SEO perspective, the title is important because it is often used for …

• The post title
• The page title <title>
• File name
• Internal linking anchor text
• Anchor text from external links

From a duplicate content perspective, then, it is crucial that each instance of the article have a different title. There is special code (easy as pie, don’t worry) to “spin” the title so that you have a different title on each blog you submit to. The image below shows a part of the code and some of the variations that are spun out of it.

Please note that you still have to use your brain to input the information, which is then automatically spun into multiple variations the information you input, not your brain).

The example above is what I would consider the lazy way to do it. The title is worth more effort than that, and in a future blog post I will share some advanced spinning tips. In the meantime, this works.

Content is truly king

The next step is to submit the content, the body of your article. What should you write about? If you are a blogger, take any of your recent blog posts and rewrite them. You need at least 450 words to qualify for both your links.

If you suck at writing, we can write a very high-quality post for you; please let me know. If you are even more of a cheapskate than I am, you can go to Freelancer.com for articles but be warned - quality counts if you want your article to be accepted, and when it comes to writing, you get what you pay for.

Now you are ready to submit…No, wait! Not yet. There are two things you need to do to your content before pasting it into the form.

First, you need to inset your two links. One of the really exciting things about the Free Traffic System is that your links are not consigned to a “resource box” after the end of your article. You can place your links wherever they fit. I strongly advise placing them at different parts of the text, at least one of them in the first half of your post. This sort of placement tends to be more valuable from an SEO perspective (these are often called “editorial links” - look it up).

Second, you would do well to spin your article or at least parts of it, so that you are not submitting identical content to 30 different blogs. There are automated spinners (Yuck!) that spew out, well, what you would expect a machine to spew out. FTS offers a convenient link to one of them. It does take time to manually spin an article (at least an hour the way I do it), but I believe this is highly valuable for long-term SEO value.

However, automatic spinning is better than no spinning at all - just double-check the quality. In a future blog post, as I mentioned above, I will share some advanced spinning tips.

Now you are ready to submit it and preview various versions of it. Each time you hit preview…

You will see different anchor text for your two links, and you will see different versions of your article if it has been spun.

Choose your tag(s)

Next, you get to enter one tag in the free version, so make it the most relevant keyword. If you know anything about blogs and tags, you will immediately understand the value of this from an SEO perspective. I won’t go into the explanation here.

Now comes the fun part (What, haven’t you been having fun yet?) OK, OK, you got me there. I love to write, so for me the fun part was actually up front. But we are now at the action part. You’ve written your content. You’ve filled in the form. Now it’s time for you to…

Select your blogs

This is done by entering keywords into the field…

The Free Traffic System will then spit out a list of blogs and categories within blogs that contain the words you listed. For instance, in the example they offer, you will get a list that includes every blog with “finance”, “money” or “loan” in its title OR with a category name that includes “finance”, “money” or “loan”. The image below gives an example for you.

A few things you can see right away. You get to see the titles of the blog and the titles of the categories, but that’s all. No eyeball test for quality (there is an obvious reason for that). No PageRank data (that would be a nice easy feature to integrate, but I suppose it would lead to too much clustering and it might actually be better this way).

Based on the titles, you can pretty much tell if a blog/category is appropriate for your article. You get to select one category in each blog, up to a maximum of 30 blogs in the free version. If you choose wide, sweeping terms (like “money” and “finance”, for example), you might end up with too many to choose from. If you choose terms that are too narrow (like “payday loans” and “cashflow”) you likely won’t have enough choice. Once you’ve played around with the system a bit, you’ll find the right balance.

Since you can’t tell what quality a blog is before you choose it, is it really worthwhile? Yes. If you have written good quality content and targeted the right blogs and the right categories effectively, your article will be accepted. I just took a look at my stats for an article I submitted12 days ago (while I was still using the free version). So far, 26 blogs accepted, there was one error in communication and three blogs are yet to be accounted for. Not bad. Plus, these are keyword relevant links on keyword relevant pages on keyword relevant (or at least topical) websites.

Once the article is live, you can search Google, Yahoo and Bing for it, and you can see the value of the various blogs. My experience is that there is a wide range of quality and PageRank, some cluttered with Google ads and some crisp and clean. Some that nobody reads, some that have an active community. Some that just sit there, and some that are promoted on Twitter and FaceBook.

And they are all worthwhile, because you want links from a variety of quality websites, not just from top-ranking ones. Read my counterintuitive post on why you want sucky links, too.

Who benefits most from the Free Traffic System?

The obvious answer is anyone who is building links. This is a nice addition into the mix, to keep getting a variety of different links from different websites on keyword-relevant pages. However, if you are a blogger or someone currently submiting to article directories, you can benefit even more, because you’ve already done the work of researching and writing, all you have to do is tweak the article and submit.

The other type of website that really benefits from this type of platform are hard-core commercial websites, such as eCommerce or brick-and-mortar companies with boring websites (you know, industrial services like machine tooling or sanitation or backhoes). These types of sites are hard to attract natural links (unless you are extemely clever about link-bait), so this makes a welcome addition to the link-building opportunities.

Are there any downsides to the Free Traffic System?

There are always downsides, and even a wonderful tool used improperly can be ineffective, possibly even dangerous. If you rely only on one link-building method, it is much less effective than a multi-facetted approach.

FTS should be part of your link-building strategy, not the whole thing or even the major part of it. You still need to create great content on your own site. You still need to attract links to that content. You should still submit to directories and comment on blogs. You should still exchange links with related, non-competing websites. You should still do social bookmarking and spread your content on Twitter and FaceBook. You should still post to forums and answer questions online.

If you don’t spin your content or spin it poorly, you might end up with a lot of duplicate content - probably not enough to get your website banned, but enough that it will probably drag down your rankings.

Why did I pay to upgrade to the Pro version?

There are many reasons to upgrade to the Pro version of Free Traffic System from the Free version, and as you might guess they are all on the website in a slick sales pitch. Don’t be fooled; there is only one reason, and that is mucho more links. Sure, they promise a bunch of future benefits. Nobody upgrades for that. They promise faster review and support, but my experience is that they give fantastic turn-around time even to free members.

No, there is one reason why someone would upgrade, and that’s for the extra links. Let’s do a little math. Here is a quick comparison of the three elements where Pro members get a better deal than Free members:

FREE: two links in each article
PRO: three links in each article

FREE: one tag for each article
PRO: five tags for each article

FREE: each article submitted to 30 blogs
PRO: each article submitted to 50 blogs

How does this all add up?

FREE:

Each article has two links. The article appears typically on its own page, a page in the main blogstream, a page for the tag you define, a page for the category you choose, and a monthly archive page. So that’s two links on five pages, for a total of 10 links. Let’s suppose your article gets picked up by all 30 blogs, each with 10 links …that equals 300 links across 30 domains. In real life, there will be errors. For instance, in my example above, I got 260 links across 26 domains. Not bad considering I paid nothing, it took me only a couple hours, and these are valuable one-way editorial links (including laser targeted deep links).

But check this out…

PRO:

Each article has three links. The article appears typically on its own page, a page in the main blogstream, one page for each of the five tags you define, a page for the category you choose, and a monthly archive page. So that’s three links on nine pages, for a total of 27 links. Let’s suppose your article gets picked up by all 50 blogs, each with 27 links …that equals 1350 links across 50 domains. From a single article. Wow! Of course, in real life, there will be errors. But for my money (and I did pay!), this is worth upgrading for. The funny thing is that on the Free Traffic System website, they claim that a Pro member can gain up to 900 links per article. Huh? Why are they underselling themselves?

I asked, and was granted, permission to embed their upgrade promo video on my blog, so here it is:

So in summation, I highly recommend this to webmasters, bloggers and link-builders. It is a quick and easy way to add a ton of one-way editorial backlinks with a very small amount of work.

My one BIG caveat is to not get seduced by how easy it is. Do it right, so that it really works for you. And keep doing other forms of link-building, even if this seems easier and more effective, because you want a great variety of different types of links.

Disclosure statement: The links to Free Traffic System in this post are affiliate links. That means that if you click through and sign up, I benefit. This in no way influenced my recommendation; I first decided to pay for the upgrade, then decided to add the affiliate links (I would be crazy not to!) You don’t have to use those links to sign up, but obviously I would be extremely grateful if you do. Thank you.

Once again, we’ve improved The Bookmarketer by adding four very unique social bookmarking gems: BizSugar, MMO, Tipbo and Kirtsy.

TheBookmarketer is a blogger’s best friend, making it easy for readers to spread the word about blog posts they like.  Two lines of code posted into the template for single posts, and they have instant access to post a link and recommendation to your blog on 75 websites.  In addition to popular social bookmarking websites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Mixx and Delicious, your blog posts can now be easily added to these four new social bookmarking gems.

BizSugar is a vibrant community of bloggers and others who share blog posts and news stories related to small business and sales.  They typically share stories related to managing a small business or freelance operation, marketing both online and off, human resources, motivation and more.  One thing that makes this a vibrant community is that submitters don’t just sub and run;  many take the time to look at others’ submissions, vote and comment.  Only small business related articles.

MMO is a young community of mostly bloggers interested in sharing tips and stories related to making money online.  Although fairly new, it is quite vibrant and for that reason has been added to The Bookmarketer.  As with BizSugar, what makes this already a vibrant community is how submitters don’t do hit-and-run submissions;  they take the time to review, vote and comment on other people’s submissions, too.  Only articles or posts related to working online, please.

Tipbo is a unique social bookmarking service.  Although it does not cover a single niche - you can submit articles about knitting, hockey, dental fillings, closing a sale, or the best way to pickle and iguana brain - it accepts only one type of article: tips and advice.  So news articles, stories, biographies, funny videos and images are all out. 

Kirtsy is also a somewhat unique social bookmarking service.  Although it accepts the full range of topics and in pretty much any form, you don’t have to be a member to vote (although only members can submit items and leave comments).  And there is no voting button.  A simple click on the title is all that is needed to vote.  In many ways, this makes it a must-use service for bloggers who can share the submission via Twitter or FaceBook.

And I should not miss an opportunity to remind you that if your blog is Canadian, you really should be submitting posts also to http://www.Zoomit.ca (and voting for other good submissions while you are there).

Believe it or not there are still some businesses - no, make that many small businesses - that have not yet grasped the importance of SEO to their profitability online.

For that reason, we have put together a white paper on why small business needs SEO.  In fact, we have taken it one step further and explained how small business can benefit from “holistic SEO”.

But don’t worry, it’s an easy read, just 10 pages with lots of graphs and charts.

To download your own copy: Why SEO?  Holistic SEO: Indispensible for your website

You’ll never guess what I found when I recently searched for “ethical SEO” at one of the major search engines. 

The organic listings, of course, are open to tampering to match the algorithms, so even an unethical spammy SEO company could rank well for “ethical SEO” with enough effort.  What caught me by surprise was what I saw in the sponsored listings – the paid ads.

Just for the record, any unethical SEO could easily post an ad for ethical SEO; how would the search engines know, without investing a major effort in checking out the methodologies of each company – which they are not about to do.  But, you would think they would at least check the ad copy.  You would think that a paid ad on a search engine that announces “ethical SEO” would at least not have an unethical message, such as “guaranteed ranking”.  You would think there might be a filter to red flag such ads.

Nope.

(For those new to SEO, guaranteed ranking is one of the cheapest lies an SEO company can make…and far too common.  Rankings are relative.  You get to be top 10 only by ranking higher than all the other websites.  Nobody can guarantee a ranking without having control of all those other websites, as well as having control of the search engine’s algorithm.)

I present to you below the results of a search for “ethical SEO across the five major search engines: Google, Yahoo, Bing , AOL and Ask. 

“Ethical SEO” at Google

“Ethical SEO” at Yahoo

“Ethical SEO” at Bing

“Ethical SEO” at AOL

“Ethical SEO” at Ask

So which search engine supports the most ethical SEO when showing ads to the public?  I’ll let you decide, and I welcome your comments on this.

We have just made a major update to El Marcadorado for those of you  who have Spanish-language blogs and websites you want publicized.  El Marcadorado is the Spanish-language version of TheBookmarketer …a simple script that you add to your pages to encourage your visitors to social bookmark them.  In fact, we are pretty sure this is the only service of its kind for the Hispanic world.

Acabamos de hacer una actualización mayor a El Marcadorado para los que tienen blogs y sitios web en español. El Marcadorado es una herramienta sencilla que usted añade a sus páginas para favorecer a sus visitantes a marcar sus páginas en sitios “marcadores sociales”. De verdad, estamos bastante seguros que esto es el único servicio de su clase para el mundo latino.

This time we have added / Acabamos de añadir :

• Apezz
• Autobombo
• Bitacoras
• Chiflame
• Hazmereir
• Webeame

We have also removed a number of old social bookmarking websites which have gone the way of Furl and Magnolia in English.

Have you ever been hard at work, doing what you do, and suddenly got struck by the immortal question – “What would Bugs Bunny do?” Me too. All the time. Well, if you are doing link-building, you are in luck, because here is what Bugs Bunny would do:

“What’s up, Doc?”

Bugs Bunny always introduces himself in way that leaves an opening for the other party to offer something useful. Such as a reciprocal link. Be friendly. Be informal. Be in the situation. Nobody pays attention to cut-and-paste link-exchange emails any more. Find a way to make yours both unique and personal.

“Carrots are divine… You get a dozen for a dime, It’s maaaa-gic!”
 

Link exchanges might be long, hard, boring work, but carrots are a totally different matter. For starters, they are orange. SEO carrots are often called “link bait” or “viral content”. If you have fun putting together useful, cool, different information, you have carrots - and carrots are maaaa-gic.

“I know this defies the law of gravity, but I never studied law!”

You will hear many people tell you how SEO is “supposed” to work and how link-building is supposed to work. But there is no diploma for SEO; like politics, SEO is “the art of the possible”. SEO doesn’t always make sense. But if defying the law of gravity works, run with it (or float with it).

“I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque!”

On the other hand, if your tactics are not working, go back and do things another way. With link-building, a shortcut is not always a shortcut. And any automation – or anything that bears a pattern that could appear to be like automation – means that you definitely turned the wrong way at Albuquerque.

“The rabbit is considered a kind and intelligent creature in Cambodian culture.”

Know your audience. If you are seeking links from real estate agents, you might need different tactics than if you are seeking links from home renovators. If you are seeking links from local websites, foreign websites, national websites…each website owner has a different motivation for possibly giving you a link. Your success rate will be highest if you understand your audience.

“Of course you realize, this means war!”

You may have noticed that Bugs doesn’t pussyfoot around. Link-building is an arms race of sorts. The good news is that you don’t have to be the one with the most weapons. You can win the war with the smartest weapons. Thank carrots (see carrots reference above).

“Oh well, maybe I can shine it up and use it for an ashtray.”

That’s right, everything has a use. So you got a low-quality link. Perhaps the page is PR0. Perhaps there are 150 links on the page. Perhaps your link is at the end, or has no anchor text, or goes to your “contact us” page. A low-quality link is better than none. Shine it up and use it for an ashtray.

“I don’t ask questions. I just have fun!”

If you are having fun, that alone is good. Job satisfaction is so important. Link-building can be frustrating and tiring and stressful. Find ways to make it fun and you’ll win part of the battle just there. Bugs advises that all emails asking for a link begin with “What’s up Doc?” Sounds good to me.

So get back into your rabbit hole and put to use all the fine advice that the world’s most famous rabbit can offer you to make link-building more fun and more successful.

If you include social media marketing as part of your online marketing strategy, give a little thought to your avatar. Actually, give a lot of thought. Overlooked as they are, they can be crucial to your branding strategy.

Avatars are those little images that go beside each post you author at websites like Digg, Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and even beside comments in this blog. In some places, they are called profile pictures or something like that. But look at all the variety of choices you have…

Why avatars are so crucial is because they are like your online logo on every social media website you participate in. If you Tweet or connect for fun and recreation, who cares? But if marketing and business is important to you, below are 10 guidelines on how to optimize your avatars for maximum affect.

Note that these are “guidelines”, not rules. It might not make sense for you, in your particular situation, to follow all of them, but if you follow none of them, you are probably blowing it big time. Not all the avatars above follow all the guidelines, but they all follow most of them. As you read the list below, let your cursor slide over the images; I have added some notes in the alt and title attributes.

1. Let’s start with the basics. Don’t leave your avatar blank or go with a default avatar. The image it will leave people with is that you don’t know what you are doing, that you might just be a spammer, that you have something to hide or, perhaps worst of all, no impression – you’ve wasted a chance to brand yourself.
2. 2. Your face is the ideal logo. In social media, people don’t want to interact with a company; they want to interact with a real person. Remember that social media is like a fusion of all the occasions when you might be speaking informally with people – around the water cooler, at trade show receptions, at the pub down the street, at networking meetings. In the real world, nobody wants to speak with a faceless company; they want to speak with a human being. Online people are still people; they want to speak with real people. See what people think of face avatars here.
3. The previous guideline is one that you might want to break in one very specific situation. If your social media strategy is strictly to broadcast information, you might want your avatar to be your company logo. Very few organizations can get away with this strategy, but some information-rich companies, such as newspapers or radio stations, do this very effectively. Here are avatars from two different media outlets, reflecting very different apporoaches to social media marketing:




4. 4. Make your face pleasant and easy to view. Some people try to get attention with avatars where their face is half showing, on some kind of angle, or contorted. Others pick a cute photo where some object is partially obscuring their faces. Nice pictures for friendship; not ideal for networking.



5. Remember that your avatar will show very, very small. That means your face really needs to fill the avatar. If it looks like you are far away, people won’t be able to recognize you when the avatar appears in tiny format (like on a Digg submission or even on a tweet). I can think of one Twitter avatar that I always assumed included a baby’s head…until I saw the photo at larger size in another program and I realized it was just the way her hair falls. (Bet she doesn’t know she has a baby!)



6. 6. Also, because avatars show up small, it is ill advised to have too much cluttering up your avatar. Is that a photo of your arms behind your head, or are you picking your nose. Is that a pet, or an oxygen mask or a mutant mushroom in front of your face? Is that a person way back there in the middle of that 20-pixel-wide landscape?
7. All these guidelines makes for a possibly very dull photo. If everyone follows all these rules, then everyone will look the same and nobody gets branded, right? It does make it more challenging. You can create a distinct background, perhaps a bright color. You can change the color of your face…or post in black-and-white (rare on the Internet) as two of the examples above do. You can become a caricature of yourself or of your expertise (think Statue-of-Liberty for a freedom blogger, thinkBob-the-Builder for a home renovator) - I did say people like to deal with real people, not faceless corporations, but I also said these are guidelines, not rules. You can add a letter to the avatar to represent your username, but be careful that when shrunk it does not look like something strange. Here are examples of three strategies to make avatars stand out:




8. Smile. Yes, a smile is inviting. People are more likely to add you as a fan or follow you or befriend you if you appear pleasant and inviting. Yes, I know you are above that; basic psychology applies to the other 99.99999% of humanity.



9. 9. Now that you have chosen an avatar, use the same one across all social media platforms where you hold an account. Many people flit from one social media platform to another, and you want to be instantly recognized. I have recognized Twitter friends on Digg, and Digg friends on Sphinn, and Sphinn friends on…exactly. And thanks to Gravatar, I have seen many of my online friends and acquaintances in numerous blog comments. Each time I see a familiar face, that face – and by extension, that person – becomes more familiar. You can see my same avatar on Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Sphinn, Zoomit, etc. Interestingly, Lee Oden did a quick Twitter survey just when I was first contemplating this post, so I thought I would share it with you.



10. Once you pick your avatar, stick with it. I know several folks I really respect who break this rule, so hopefully they won’t hate me (and if they hate me, hopefully they don’t have any voodoo dolls of me kicking around). But every time you change your avatar, you break your branding momentum. From a psychological perspective, your avatar is your logo, and people relate it to you. Imagine if Amazon.com or Toyota or Apple Computers or Target Stores changed their logos several times a year. Exactly. Many people who follow you in social media don’t necessarily remember your name (Yes, I know, your friends do, but many of the people you are trying to reach for marketing purposes don’t) or even your username, but they will know your image, because that is your most powerful representation. They will relate your image to your style/topic of posts; your target market pays attention when it sees your avatar because it’s on their radar. From a more practical perspective, as people flit quickly through recent posts, they will tend to gloss over an unfamiliar avatar. Each time you change your avatar, you lose also their attention.

Let me stress once more that these are just guidelines. If you have good reason to do otherwise, be my guest. When it comes to social media, or any other social situation, there are no hard and fast rules…and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

You can easily tweet this post by clicking reTWEET this

The buzz so far in 2009 is that SEO is not enough; social media is a must.  While this is an exaggerated claim that is nevertheless gaining credence, the truth is that you would be foolish not to review the social media tools available to see if any of them are worth your while.

A recent thread at WebProWorld gives some good insight into the issue, and what follows is an expansion of my contribution to the thread.

From a marketing perspective, best to identify the social media where people interested in your topic hang out, then start connecting.  If that’s Twitter or Digg or Zoomit or FaceBook or StumbleUpon or MyBlogLog, whichever.  This is just like in the offline world finding out which meetings and associations you need to be at for various functions (meeting potential clients, meeting potential suppliers, professional development, etc.). For instance, you might decide that all you need social media is as a way of keeping your ear to the ground.

However, if you hope to maintain high search engine rankings in a competitive field, a more proactive social media strategy can be an invaluable tool. For SEO purposes, your goal is to get people talking about your content.  When people talk on the Internet, they create links that feed the search engines’ algorithms.  The basic recipe for social media SEO is…

1. Create and keep creating lots of great content on your website.
2. Find out where people interested in your content hang out.
3. Network (that means mostly chatting, sharing, asking questions - just as you would at a trade show reception)
4. As you get known, start sharing your own content.
5. As you get more known, people in the social media will start talking about your content (both on the social media site and in their blogs “back home”)
6. Don’t stop.

The Web is a reflection of real life.  If you understand real life, the Web is not that hard to understand, either. If you understand networking in real life, networking on the Web is quite similar.
 
My top social network of preference is Twitter (I am at http://www.twitter.com/amabaie) .  But I am also active in a number of other places for various specific reasons.
 
If you represent multiple clients (if you are an SEO consultant or a public relations agent, for example) there are pros and cons to establishing multiple profiles, one for each client.  Obviously, each one assumes its own identity and each one builds its own circle of friends, but then each one also has to do the work to network; some will, many won’t. 
 
If you try to do it all for them, you’ll end up very confused.  I know of a couple people who have gotten their two accounts confused with each other.  I have many websites, and I have created two accounts at Twitter.  The one that is “me” serves for my main professional website and my personal growth website, and for almost any other purpose I might want (including helping my clients); it is me.  But I did create one other profile specifically because a) the followership it needs to cultivate is a very specific demographic and b) the account is almost completely a broadcast account (very little networking) and needs to have a much more organizational face than I want for my main account.
 
Whether on your own or through your SEO or PR agent, you should consider social media as part of your SEO strategy.  It is not a necessity for every business, but it is not something to be ignored either.

By the way, here is the original thread at WebProWorld.

You can easily tweet this post by clicking reTWEET this

Three months ago, I wrote about how offline links count, too.  I recounted the story about how hard it was for me to enter a contest, because of the typo in the URL on a printed flyer.  Well, it seems the contest is on again.  Yesterday, I received a new flyer in the mail from the Lake Placid folks with a new entry code and…the correct URL.

How will this new flyer by viewed by people?  We can only speculate, but here are some possibilities.

• People who did not try to enter before will most likely see this as brand new, so the gaffe would not affect them.
• Some people who did not try to enter last time might remember the previous flyer, in which case it served as branding and might increase the person’s likelihood of entering this time.
• People who tried to enter last time might try again.
• People who entered last time might figure it’s a waste of time to try this time.
• Many people might not try to enter the contest, but they will get the message to visit upstate New York, which is the whole point of the contest.

There will probably be plenty of people who fall into each of these categories, and perhaps some others, too.  Hopefully for the resorts involved in the mailing, most of it will be positive.

And I’ll bet they spend more money on proofreading in the future!

Do you know the age of your audience?  Of course, if your website sells iPhone accessories, you have a pretty good idea.  Or if you sell lawn bowling supplies, you also have a pretty good idea.

But most website owners, when asked the age of their audience, respond with “all ages”.  This might be true, and it might not be all that true.  Either way, it is worthwhile fining out, because how you market to people at various stages of their lives differs greatly.  I was reminded of this by an article in Scientific American on how we change our attitudes as we age.

“Openness typically increases during a person’s 20s and goes into a gradual decline after that.  This pattern of personality development seems to hold true across cultures. Although some see that as evidence that genes determine our personality, many researchers theorize that personality traits change during young adulthood because this is a time of life when people assume new roles: finding a partner, starting a family and beginning a career. Personality can continue to change somewhat in middle and old age, but openness to new experiences tends to decline gradually until about age 60.”

So knowing the stage of life your audience is in can make a big difference to whether you want to pitch your product as a “new experience” or an improvement on a familiar experience for example.

You might also find that attitudes impact what search terms to target.  For instance, if you are pitching travel packages to a younger audience, the word “adventure” might be a key component of the search terms you focus on.  If you are pitching to an older audience, you might prefer to use words like “nature” in your keyword development.  Chances are your page will include both words, but where you place the emphasis is important.

It might be that the main difference in keyword focus is in your inbound links.  Some links might use “Nature vacations in Peru”, whereas others might read “Adventure vacations in Peru”.  If your link is on some lost “links” page buried deep in somebody’s website, it might not matter which anchor text you use.  But if the link is prominent on somebody’s website, with the potential to bring real visitors with real money in their pockets, it pays to ask the linking website owner what his demographics are.

All marketing starts with knowing your audience.  There is no marketing that is tougher than pitching to “everyone”.