SEO for Facebook Fan Page

Many have tried, and failed, to write a good post about how to SEO a Facebook fan page.
For example, optimizing the filename of your profile picture is one popular piece of advice that doesn’t really matter, considering Facebook just renames the file something like 198135_10150109366....jpg. Another popular tip: you should link to your main website from your Facebook page. Yes, you should for visitors. But this doesn’t optimize your fan page because Facebook just nofollows, redirects, and clusters your URL in a mess of code anyway.
So let's take a different approach to Facebook SEO today.
I want you to imagine that your Facebook fan page is your website – or another website for your brand at least. While it may not ever rank first for a keyword, you still want it to be optimized.
If you want to keyword optimize your Facebook fan page, these are the areas that actually pull SEO elements from your page's content for additional optimization.

Your Facebook Fan Page SEO

• SEO title: The name of your page plus | Facebook.
• Meta description: The name of your page plus the About description of your page, followed by | Facebook.
• H1: The name of your page.

This is like the search optimization of the homepage of your fan page / website. If you didn't consider keyword optimization when you created it, and you have less than 100 fans, you're in luck. You can still change your page's name.
Two things to keep in mind aside from search optimization includes:

• Branding: It may be more important to have your page as a recognizable brand than a specific keyword phrase.
• Appearance: Whenever you comment as your page, or people tag your page, your entire name will come up, so if you're page is Your Brand - Keyword, Keyword, and Keywords it might look a bit excessive (and lead to less tagging).

Your title can be as long as you choose, but keep in mind the standard length of SEO titles (70 characters) before getting too crazy. Also, since your page name is also a part of your meta description, you might not want it to make it too long and overshadow that.
To edit your About information to make a great meta description, go to your page and Edit Page > Basic Information, and fill in the About field with a 140 character description like you would with any website meta description.

Facebook Fan Page Updates

• SEO Title: The first 18 characters of your update.

If you’re posting a standard status update, the SEO title will be pulled from the first 18 characters (approximately 18 characters, sometimes a bit less). The following update by Search Engine Watch's fan page has a title of Yahoo Search, which is pretty good.

If you're posting a link to your fan page wall, you'll have an option to "Say something about this link..." – the first 18 characters of what you enter in this field are going to be the SEO title for the individual page of that status update.
If you don't post something there, the SEO title for your update will just be Facebook. Plus it won't take up as much real estate in someone's news feed, which means it will be less noticeable. So I would suggest that, regardless of whether you care about the SEO, you fill this part out when adding a link to your wall.

If you’re concerned about optimizing your updates while considering them as individual pages for your overall fan page / website (click on the timestamp for any update to see it on its own page), then you might want to consider sticking some keywords right at the beginning of your comment.
Using the above example, I could simply put the post category / main keyword as start the update such as Google Analytics and then write the rest of my comment. If I continued this trend with my updates, my fan page would have lots of "pages" underneath it optimized for my main keywords.
The best part is, unlike Twitter status updates that don’t go that far back, you can see your Facebook fan page updates at least two years – mine go all the way back to when I created my fan page, which was in February 2009.

Facebook Fan Page Notes

• SEO Title: The title of your note plus | Facebook.
• Meta Description: Your page name wrote a note titled the title of your note plus | Facebook.

Facebook notes – they don't get a lot of love anymore, but they do have a more controllable SEO title when you create them and, of course, they add to the additional "pages" underneath your fan page / website. Notes allow you to add lengthier updates to your fan page without having to take your fans offsite to get more of your content.
Some people use them to syndicate their blog posts on their fan page, but I find this feature is a little inconsistent. Unique notes, on the other hand, could add more value to your page.

Facebook Fan Page Discussion Topics

• SEO Title: The title of your discussion's topic | Facebook.

Ever wanted a little forum / discussion board, but don't want to invest in forum software? Facebook has an often-overlooked discussion board, with each topic giving you a little SEO title credit.

It might be a nice place for you to have discussions with your fans that they don't necessarily want on your wall. If you don't have one on your profile already, you can get it by going to the Discussion Board and using the Add to My Pagelink to add it to your pages.

Your Facebook Fan Page SEO Tips

Those are the parts of the Facebook fan page that I’ve found specifically have controllable SEO titles, descriptions, and so forth. What other parts of the Facebook fan page have you tried optimizing for SEO, and what results have you seen?

Cheers
Greatsol-SEO Team

5 Must-Know Tips for Blog SEO

  5 Must-Know Tips for Blog SEO

If a blog post is published and no one reads it, does it exist? 
Working on a blog (business or personal) is always a big investment of time and creativity. You spend an hour or four writing, press the publish button, and then… you wait.
You ultimately get 37 hits and you begin to wonder if it was worth spending all this time to reach so few people?
With the assumption that you’re putting out some good, interesting content, one way to maximize your visibility is to apply some basic SEO rules to your blog.

You wish Blog SEO was this Easy.

To put it simply, these rules will help you optimize your blog post so that search engines have no problem finding it, categorizing it, and displaying it in their results. In turn, this will increase the discoverability of your masterpiece and potentially lead more unique visitors on your blog.

Here are five basic practices for blog SEO that will increase the visibility of your blog post:
1. KEYWORDS: Pick a popular keyword or a phrase and write about it in your post. Ask yourself "What would my audience type into Google to find my blog post?"  The keyword doesn’t have to be just one word, it can be two or three keywords strung together, like “basketball statistics”.

Determining your SEO keywords

* Tip: As a general rule, try to keep the keyword or phrase three words or under.

2. BLOG CONTENT: When you've determined your keyword(s), pepper them into your blog post. If you're writing a piece on “basketball statistics”, and you don't mention "basketball statistics" in your blog post, then Google is going to have a hard time displaying your blog post for "basketball statistics"-related searches. Right? Right. Stick with a keyword density of 5-7% (e.g. If you have 100 words, mention your keyword 5-7x).

* Tip: If your keyword is 2 or more words, they don’t have to always appear in order (but it helps).

3. TITLE/URL: OK, this is technically two different types of blog optimization, but it's cool; the title and URL are closely-related. When you include your keyword in the title, it will also appear in the URL (e.g. "Why CRM is like basketball statistics"  www.yoursite.com/why-crm-is-like-basketball-statistics) What you place as your post title will appear as the “Title Tag” – it’s the webpage title at the top of your browser and is THE most important SEO signal that you have direct control of.

Blog Post Title is also your SEO Title

* Tip: Google will cut off your title if it’s too long, keep the post title less than 79 characters (including spaces).

4. SHARE: Social signals are becoming a much larger piece of the Google puzzle and it's crucial to getting your blog post in front of as many people as possible. The wider the net, the likelier you'll catch someone interested in what you have to say. Share it out on your Facebook wall, your Twitter, your Google+, and LinkedIn.

Promote your blog post on Social Media

* Tip: If you’re hardcore into pageviews and have no shame, you’re not limited to “sharing” the blog post on just your Facebook wall.  Ask your friends to share. Find related Facebook groups or pages (“join” or” like”) and share it on their wall, too. Now, you’re a social media animal.

5. LINKS FROM EXTERNAL WEBSITES: Have a friend with a personal website? Does your grandma own a tumblr? Ask them to include a link to your blog post. And when gammy links to your blog post, make sure she uses the keywords you selected in step #1. E.g. “check out my granddaughter’s basketball statistics blog post. LOL” External links are the holy grails of overall SEO, not just blog SEO, and is the reason why Google’s algorithm is years ahead of any other search engine. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t find websites to link to you – it’s not easy.

Beg, Borrow and Steal to Get a Link

* Tip: External links are important, but so are internal links. The next time you write up a blog post, link out to your old blog post using the targeted keyword(s) from step #1.

When it comes down to it, there are dozens of ways to optimize for blog SEO.  If you follow these best practices, we can't promise you a ton of traffic, but you've covered the major steps in maximizing your blog's search engine visibility.

Regards
The Greatsol Team
www.greatsol-seo.com

New Year SEO Resolutions 2013

 New Year SEO Resolutions 2013

It’s nearly New Year’s Eve and with the 31^st of December comes the annual tradition of making those resolutions that, let’s face it, we won’t be keeping.
Promises of giving up smoking, being healthier, reading more and giving more to charity are all made with the best intentions but come the 27th January all will have been long forgotten.
However as we are all in the resolution mood; if you are an online business or you rely on your site to bring in valuable business then maybe there are some resolutions you seriously should think about making and keeping during 2013.
Unlike making fad lifestyle resolutions that you’re just not going to keep, changing the way you work with your site could help make 2013 a very good year indeed.
So here are my top four resolutions that all site owners should make (and keep to):

 

 This year I will write great content

Don’t just write content – write great content.
Gone are the days of simply writing for the sake of creating a link. If you just write a generic article, submit it to an article submission site that realistically isn’t going to be seen by anyone then you will be wasting your time. You won’t even be getting the benefit of the link you were looking to create. Why? Well links from these free article sites don’t hold any value.
Google want content but they want great, unique content. Content that will engage an audience, content that will provide valuable information. Content that will give searchers the information they were searching for.
They also want you to create content that people will share.
With Google’s continued authorship push this is also going to be an element you will need to keep an eye on.
There are so many ways you can create great content but before you even think about writing externally – you need to check your own site.

• Does your site content do the job?
• Does it provide the information your potential customers need? Does it answer their questions?
• Does it sell?
• Read it back to yourself, get others to read it – is your message coming across?

If you answer no to any of these questions, then it could be time for a refresh.
Once your site is up to speed then it’s time to look at all the other avenues content can provide. But before you start it is highly important you know exactly who you are writing for. If you aren’t engaging with your audience then you won’t truly be writing for anyone.

Do you actually know who your audience are?
Think about the type of content you can create. What purpose will it serve; does it answer any questions or provide a resource that would be helpful?
What types of content can you create? Well here are just a few ideas to get you going:

• Add a Blog to your site
• Hubs
• Guest Blogging
• Whitepapers
• Press Releases
• Guides
• Whitepapers

Of course, the type of business you are will determine what you can write about and what platforms you can create content for. Don’t just write for the sake of it – have a purpose.

This year I will become more social

No; this doesn’t mean you should spend even more time down the pub. If this is one of your New Year’s resolutions then fair play but this isn’t what I mean.
Something I have spoken about quite a bit in the last year is my frustration at online businesses that refuse to embrace social. They “don’t think it is for them” or they “don’t have the time”.
2013 isn’t going to slow down the importance of social and the more you hold off having a presence the more you are going to be left behind.
Social signals are now unavoidably important.



No matter what sector you are in there is always a social spin you can create. Look up your competitors, see how they are doing it, and learn from them.
People aren’t just using Google to look you up. Your presence is being looked for on all the main social platforms and if they can’t find you then you can be sure they will be finding your competitors.
Social is also a vital part of brand protection. If you don’t own your brand socially then who is to say someone else won’t sign up and take it. In this day and age, not owning your brand in all the right places could be highly detrimental.
Start becoming social.
Sign up and create your profiles. Keep them consistent to your website branding. Make sure all the information marries up. Without even tweeting or making your first update you have already grown your brand online.

This year I will vary my link building

Targeting only exact keyword links is massively a thing of the past. Don’t get me wrong you still need to link build using keyword links but the estimated percentage of links that you should create with this tactics has drastically changed.
Your link profile needs to change.
You need to be building links for your brand not just the terms that you want to link for. In fact you need to be building a higher percentage of links for your brand than you do any other type of link.
Not only that, you need to be creating a healthy diverse link profile.
There is no exact percentage score but maybe aim for a split of around 65% brand related links, 25% keyword targeted links and 10% all other type of links.
If you carry out the first two resolutions then you are already well on your way to creating a good diverse link profile because if your content is link worthy then you will naturally be winning.
If you are being social then again, you will be creating social signals and links back to your site.
You see link building for 2013 isn’t about getting your site included in as many free directory sites as you can. It’s not about spamming blogs with comments just to create a link.

This year I will vary my link building

Targeting only exact keyword links is massively a thing of the past. Don’t get me wrong you still need to link build using keyword links but the estimated percentage of links that you should create with this tactics has drastically changed.
Your link profile needs to change.
You need to be building links for your brand not just the terms that you want to link for. In fact you need to be building a higher percentage of links for your brand than you do any other type of link.
Not only that, you need to be creating a healthy diverse link profile.
There is no exact percentage score but maybe aim for a split of around 65% brand related links, 25% keyword targeted links and 10% all other type of links.
If you carry out the first two resolutions then you are already well on your way to creating a good diverse link profile because if your content is link worthy then you will naturally be winning.
If you are being social then again, you will be creating social signals and links back to your site.
You see link building for 2013 isn’t about getting your site included in as many free directory sites as you can. It’s not about spamming blogs with comments just to create a link.


Regards
Team Greatsol-Seo
www.greatsol-seo.com 

Social Signals Can Help With SEO

Social media is a growing part of any online marketing strategy, probably expanding at a rate greater than any other single factor when it comes to your website promotion.  Having a strong social presence is not an option for a small business internet marketing specialist, it is an absolute necessity.
Social media is not difficult to set up, and, if you do it yourself, then it costs virtually nothing but your time.  Keeping up with it can be time consuming, and some small business internet marketing specialist choose to work with SEO companies that can help them keep better track of how the social campaign is not only implemented, but how the effects are helping their SEO.  Social media can help to increase traffic to your website, which can help dramatically as you are seeking a great search engine placement.

What to Look For

When you work with an SEO company to determine how the social sites are affecting your SEO campaign, there are a few specific signals that they will use to determine just how successful your plan actually is.  When it comes to Facebook, for example, one of the social signals that seem to be important are how many “likes” your page gets.  This helps determine how many people may have visited your Facebook Page and determined that it is something worth talking about in the social media.  A large number of likes can help with your SEO.  When you have these numbers, the friends of those who “liked” your page are more likely to take a look, and may even “like” the page themselves.  This can help to grow your following, and it can happen very quickly.
Another Facebook tool that develops social signals that can be measured is the “share” option.  This tells you how many people decided that they would repost something that you posted as a status, or a blog post or an article.  This helps to give you great exposure, and tells you that your contacts and readers are finding that your information is something that they are looking for, and that they think others would be interested as well.  Having your content “shared” is better exposure than having it “liked,” since the share would appear on more news feeds.
On Twitter, the number of followers that you can accumulate can help determine how many people are accessing your information.  The more followers, the better.  Gaining followers on Twitter is often as simple as following others.  Many Twitter users will re-follow those who follow them.  Use hashtags with your keywords, and try to enter into conversations about trending topics that are related to your niche, this will help you become more a part of the Twitter community and build up a large number of followers and get more exposure.  People who follow you have the option to “retweet” your information, and the more retweets that you get can help when measuring the social signals that are going to help determine how much social media is helping with your SEO.

Does Google Use Social Signals?

The jury is still out when it comes to the importance of social signals for actual indexing of sites.  But, what is known is that you can get a large number of links, and that is measured by Google.  Google may not know how that you have thousands of followers on Twitter, or how many “likes” you have on Facebook, but they do know how many links you have.  And the ones that come from the big shot social media sites are considered to be quality links, ones you definitely want to seek out.
It has also been shown that those sites with strong social media signals, like the ones mentioned above, end up with lower bounce rates from visitors, because they often know what to expect when they arrive at the site, which can keep them there longer.  Lower bounce rates are definitely good for your SEO, and make a difference when it comes to search engine placement.
While we directly discussed Facebook and Twitter, and a separate discussion may be required for Google+, don’t forget about this growing social media network, either.  Google definitely uses the information obtained from this network, and considers the social signals that are related to it—including the number of people in your circles, the number of circles you have, etc., when considering your site’s search engine placement.
There are indirect and direct benefits to your SEO tactics when you are actively involved in the social media, and there are multiple signals that can be measured by you, or by the SEO company that you are working with to prove the effectiveness of using social media to increase your traffic, using social media for website promotion and using social media for a better search engine placement.

Social media maximize web presence

Using Social Media to Maximize Web Presence

Putting your message across has never before been easier with the availability of versatile social media networking. Social media platforms permit businesses to enhance their web presence and stay active in social networking sites. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google+ and LinkedIn are some prominent social networking sites with many followers all over the world. When using social networks to maximize web presence, you need great awareness about the technical advancements and the latest trends in social media marketing. A multidimensional approach is often required to integrate social media into your business websites. Informative content, perfect keywords and inbound links also bring your website to a top position on various search engines. This in turn brings a large number of potential customers to your website and boosts your internet presence.

How to Use Social Media to Maximize Web Presence

You need a well-developed website with reliable contents highlighting your services, products and contact information. The online footprint of a business firm can be enhanced through social media accounts, blogs and advertisements on other websites. Social media optimization is a procedure that provides adequate opportunities to get connected with a large number of customers around the world. Some ways to use social networking effectively are:

• Add social share buttons/icons to your business websites or blogs. On clicking these icons, visitors are directly diverted to potential social media pages. Facebook marketing enables clients to follow or share contents and thereby increase your web presence.

• Incorporate unique marketing ideas. Blogs and newsletters must highlight the products and services to attract customers. Include promotional events and incentives to boost your overall sales.

• Video marketing is another technique to share your content easily among your targeted audience. Video blogging sites such as YouTube help to embed videos in your website. This also enhances the visual impact of the website content.

• Plan a dependable website marketing strategy and observe your success patiently.

• Spread out beyond your website to show your presence in more than one destination. This will give more opportunities to reach out to new customers. You can also place your website links in social networking sites, email blogs, online publications and other advertisement campaigns.

• Always remain active by posting blogs and articles with up-to-date information. This increases credibility and awareness about your products or services. Social media listening permits marketers to understand the latest trends in markets and customer expectations. Also, make sure to respond to negative as well as positive comments attentively without delay.

A firm providing SMM services can help you create excellent website content for effective web marketing. Experienced establishments also provide the best exposure for your products and services through unique web marketing strategies. All qualified staffs work hand in hand to design perfect websites by integrating social media. To conclude, using social media to maximize web presence is a great marketing strategy to enhance your business cost-effectively.

Regards

Greatsol Team

www.greatsol-seo.com

Content Optimization

Content Optimization for Your Website

Running a website is about more than simply selecting some cool graphics and getting a hosting account.  You need to learn quite a bit about search engine optimization, if you have any hope of succeeding in the online marketing world.  There are several things that you need to understand and take care of in order for things to go smoothly and for you to improve search engine ranking.  Without a good search engine placement, your site will possibly go completely unnoticed.  What good will that do you?
Although it seems that, these days, everyone is a search engine optimization expert, there are some details that are not well understood by the average webmaster and that are best left to professionals if you want to see the desired results.  Small mistakes can have big effects, and you want to avoid these problems.  Many webmasters rely on the trial and error style of SEO tactics, but, this will only get you so far, and you will more than likely experience a huge waste of time before you find the success you are hoping for.
Getting your site organized and optimized is important.  As we mentioned, you have to do more than simply launch a site, you have to tend to the details of organizing and optimizing.  This will help your site appear as professional as possible, and make it clear to the search engines that you are presenting quality, useful information to the visitors.

What is the Page About?

Not every webmaster is able to tell you what every page is about on their site.  How can a page be important, if you don’t even know what it is about?  Understanding the purpose, and what you are trying to communicate with the visitors, is important.  When you know what the page is about, you can apply the proper keywords, in the proper spots, and get the best search engine optimization possible and, as a result, the best search engine placement possible.  Pages with no obvious purpose will do nothing but clutter your site.

Why Do You Have Each Particular Page?

Every page on your site should have a unique purpose.  Some pages are informative, others may be related to a shopping cart.  Whatever it is, each page needs a special purpose.  When the purpose is clear to the search engines, your site is going to be more likely to be indexed properly and found when users perform search queries.  Keywords count, especially when optimizing a site for the right purpose.  Social pages are different than articles, and different from a shopping cart page.

How Long Will the Content Remain Relevant?

Not all content will remain relevant forever, nor should it, necessarily.  Certain pages, such as the About Page, FAQs, or informative articles may stay relevant much longer than a landing page or a registration page related to a current event.  It is important that, when visitors arrive at your site, it is filled with relevant information.  If a visitor shows up to find registration for events long passed, then it will appear that your site is unattended, and it will look unprofessional.  Search engines also like to see that your content is timely.  Things like current events and press releases should be properly archived when the time has passed for their relevance.  If you are selling something, keywords may be more important, as you want to drive as much traffic as possible to these pages.  Just be sure that you are monitoring the pages, and archiving as necessary, to prevent outdated material from being prominently featured on your site.

Flexibility Matters

It is important to address these questions on a regular basis for each of your pages, so that you can do the search engine optimization in the best way possible.  Keywords may change, events may come and go, and you want your website to reflect the most current version of your company.  Choose keywords wisely, and make sure that any pages that you plan on having around for a long time are definitely well optimized with keywords, tags, titles and descriptions.
Properly optimizing your content is important.  Having the right keywords, in the right places, and ensuring that you have a clear purpose and need for each of the pages on your site will make it more obvious to your users that you mean business.  Take the guesswork out of your search engine optimization, and follow these simple guidelines to help you, as well as the visitors, make sense of the overall goals and purpose of each page.  When you understand, and your users understand, then the search engine spiders will also understand.  When this all falls into place, your site will be properly indexed and you will be well on your way to having a great search engine placement and getting more traffic.

Greatsol Team
www.greatsol-seo.com

Rank Organically High in Search Engines

Rank Organically High in Search Engines For online businesses, websites and bloggers alike, ranking high in the search engines is a must. Organic search results are relevant Web pages that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) in response to keyword search terms. Results are non-biased and not generated based on paid advertising. When your site ranks high in major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing, your site’s URL, title and description are visible on results pages. Obtaining a solid search engine position implies that your website is an authoritative and popular online source. When you rank high in the search engines, your potential increases for: Increased traffic More page views More customers, readers or followers Better conversion rates and new leads (e.g., newsletter signups) Increased business and ROI (e.g., new sales) Want to increase your rankings? Follow these 8 SEO best practices: 1. Compelling copy: Google rewards websites with content that is frequently updated, unique, fresh and original. Search engines need to know what your Web page is about. 2. Diverse link building: Promoting and identifying your website through link exchanges with other reputable websites improves your positioning. Submit your content to directories. 3. Inbound links: Acquiring links from other sites that link to your site increases your credibility as a reliable source, thus driving your website higher in search engine results. 4. Internal links: Linking to your own landing pages is good SEO practice. This helps maximize the relevancy and ranking of a good internal Web page. Make sure to incorporate proper anchor text for keywords you want to rank for. 5. Social Media: Actively joining social media is an effective way to market your website and promote links to your content. Social media is a great avenue for businesses to spread the word about their company. Stay on top of popular online marketing trends! 6. Keywords: Make sure your keywords match what potential customers are typing into their search queries. If you want to rank for specific keywords, then create special landing pages. These landing pages reduce high bounce rates because visitors will be directed to individual Web pages that meet their specific search criteria. 7. Website usability: Design your website so that it is user friendly and easy to navigate to prevent visitors from leaving. Your Web pages should be organized so that keywords with the highest conversion rates are showcased. 8. Audit: Review your website and decide if it needs to be re-indexed. A thorough review includes checking old Web pages, outdated or duplicate content, broken links or irrelevant meta descriptions and HTML page titles. Updating your website may include a redesign and additional content. Cheers, The Greatsol Team www.greatsol-seo.com