What Is A Blog?
A blog is essentially a website that allows the users to post updates, photos and videos on an ongoing basis. Viewers can then read posts chronologically or search posts by different categories or tags.

Types Of Blogs
There are a number of different types of blogs from company and corporate blogs to personal blogs. A personal blog can chronicle a life event, like a child being born or ones travel escapades. Other people may use their site as a way to make money. Blogs allow individuals to make money either directly selling products and services on the site, or through advertisements that are placed on the site.  When people click on the ads, the blog owner gets paid a set amount. The more traffic to your site and the more ad clicks, the more money you can earn. One of the most popular blog platforms out there is WordPress because it is easy to use and free to install.

To Start
Before you can start a blog, you need to get a domain name, which is the URL address that people type into their browser to get to your page. To do this, you can go to a domain site like Godaddy.com to see if the URL you want is available. Typically, reserving your domain name will cost around $10 per year.

Choosing A Domain Name
When choosing a domain name keep in mind the topic and focus of your website. If you are starting a fashion blog, try to use something in the URL that makes it clear that it is a fashion blog. Using your target keywords in your URL address is a great way to get your SEO rolling from the start. Also, try to choose .com over any of the other options like .net, as .com is the most common.

Hosting
Once you’ve reserved your domain name you need to choose a hosting service. You can use Godaddy.com for hosting or choose another site. If you’re planning to use WordPress for your blog, one of the easiest things to do is choose a hosting site that offers one-click install of WordPress. A few of the hosting sites that offer one-click installation include: Webfusion, HostMonster, WPWebHost, and GreenGeeks. Once you’ve chosen your hosting service, log in and install WordPress through the hosting service.

Setting Up WordPress
Once you have WordPress installed you can go to your dashboard and start creating the theme of your blog site. You can choose a free theme or pay to upgrade to a more customized look.

Once your theme is set, there are a few things you’ll want to do within your WordPress dashboard to make it more likely that your blog posts will show up in search results. The first is to set up permalinks. Permalinks are the permanent URLs to the individual blog posts, as well as categories and other lists of blog postings. Set these up by clicking on settings and following the cues for permalinks.

Install Plugins
Plugins are free so take advantage of them and add the following plugins to your blog:
•    All in One SEO Pack – Allows you to add title tags and meta descriptions, within which you can add keywords to help increase search rankings.
•    Google Analytics – Allows you to track and analyze your website traffic.
•    Subscribe to Comments – Allows viewers to comment on posts.

Check out the image above for a few other tips on managing a successful blog. The most important and perhaps one of the hardest things to do is to post engaging and quality content on a regular basis so readers want to visit your site. Happy blogging!

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Organic traffic is any traffic that comes to your site naturally, through search criteria rather than someone clicking on a paid advertisement for your site. Most large companies spend a lot of time and money optimizing their website content with the goal of gaining high organic search rankings. While there is no tried and true strategy to ensure that your website can get on the first page of the search engine results, there are a number of agreed upon tactics in the industry that can help you get off to the right start.

Keywords
Everything goes back to keywords. One of the primary ways a search engine finds your site is by taking into account the keywords in your title tags, meta descriptions, and URL. When you pick the domain name for your site, try to use a name that includes your main keywords. If you are an independent plumber in Los Angeles, you might get a lot of competition from big companies with keywords like “plumber Los Angeles,” but having a domain name like laplumber.com or losangelesplumber.com will give you a huge advantage from the start. Of course, the hardest part will be getting a domain name that is not already taken. If necessary, you could also try adding hyphens between the keywords in your URL to see if it is available.

Nearly as important as using the keywords in your URL are the keywords in your title tag. The title tag is the clickable headline that comes up in blue in the SERPs (search engine results page). It’s the first thing that visitors see about your page before deciding whether or not to click on it. Use your main keywords towards the beginning of the title and try to create an enticing title that will draw visitors to your site.

Under the title is the description of the page, which is pulled from the pages meta description. This is also a great place to use keywords and descriptions that will help convince users to click on your listing once it comes up in an organic search. In this section, you should also include a call-to-action, such as “Buy today!” or “Learn more!”

Quality Content
Google has been doing a lot of work over the past year to clean up the SERPs and ban sites that have low quality content. A few things that can get your site penalized is using duplicate content, having a high bounce rate or not having links or mentions of other social media sites on your page. Because of this, it is more important than ever to provide unique, quality content that keeps visitors on your page and wanting to read. Three opportunity areas to add original content to your site are a blog, a press information section, and an FAQ section.

Backlinks vs. Engagement
While it is important to have links from other sites to your’s, to establish legitimacy for your website, the nature of higher search rankings are shifting to a more social focus. Some companies will spend hundreds or thousands of dollars buying backlinks for their site. A more cost effective idea is to focus on building up your site’s social engagement. Add Google’s +1 button and Facebook’s Like button to your site and encourage visitors to click it. This is a signal to Google and Bing that people like your page and it contains useful content, which will increase your organic rankings.

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The bad news is, unless they say something so harmful and blatantly false, that a court would consider it libel, there isn’t much you can do to get it removed. Rather than spending time and money trying to battle negative online chatter through legal means, a far better strategy to combat such situations is to use SEO to make the negative listing become less prominent in search results and make the positive listings rank higher.

Here are a few things you can do to start combating negative listings:

Write Press Releases
Many companies don’t spend enough time tooting their own horns, especially when it comes to all the good work they may be doing in their communities. A good way to get the word out is by writing press releases. Maybe your employees have volunteered hundreds of hours at a local charity, you’ve donated money to a scholarship program, or you just started composting all the waste your restaurant uses; these are great items to share in a press release.

Once your release is written, post it on your website and think about signing up with a press release distribution site. This allows your name and positive messaging to reach an infinite number of people through the web and can increase your positive search results.

Blogging
If your business doesn’t already have a blog, start one. It’s a great place to start talking about your business and it’s a way to begin a dialogue with your customers through the comments they post. If there is a particular keyword that you would like to rank higher for, be sure to include it in your blog posts. Keeping your content fresh, updated and engaging will help increase your search rankings.

Utilize Social Media
Getting people to talk about your company online through social media is a good way to combat negative reviews. Your business should be on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and LinkedIn. Use promotions, giveaways and incentives on these sites to help get people talking about your brand in a positive way. And remember people love free stuff.

Focusing on creating a solid SEO plan can help minimize what might seem like a fatal blow to your online reputation.

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Getting a large fan following on Facebook doesn’t just get your company’s name and brand out to the masses; it gives your business priceless creditability.  When you go to a Facebook fan page for a business you’ve never heard of before and see that it has 40,000 fans, don’t you take it more seriously than a business with 82 fans?

Here are five tips to help you boost page viewers into a legion of adoring fans.

Ask
Once you set up your Facebook fan page, it’s easy to send out invites to all of your friends and family members asking them to like your page, and if you’ve linked your business page to your personal page, it’s even easier. Use the Invite Friends link to accomplish this. If they don’t sign up after a few weeks, send a reminder. Also send out an email to your current database of clients and contacts and ask them to like you on Facebook. Be sure to include the link so they can do it in one click. Another way to indirectly ask people to become your fan is by including a link below the signature block of your business emails. You can even set up the link to go to a specially created Facebook Welcome tab that visitors can like.

Offer Incentives
If someone isn’t necessarily familiar with you or your business, there isn’t a lot of incentive for them to become a fan. However, if you offer them something, it’s much more likely that they will click that thumbs up button. Set up a giveaway or contest on your Facebook fan page. Offer to giveaway something as simple as one of your products or as extravagant as an iPad to one lucky fan who likes your page during a set time period.

Utilize Your Storefront
If you have a storefront or retail establishment, put a sign up at your cash register and ask people to become a fan of your business on Facebook. You can even offer an incentive such as a discount on their purchase if they do a fan right then on their smartphone.

Advertise
Facebook Advertising allows you to purchase highly targeted ads to the demographic of people you would like to market your business to. You can start out by just spending a couple of dollars a day and see which ads work best for you. As more users see your ad, your fan numbers will increase.

Make it Easy
Add a like button directly onto your website so people can become a fan without having to find your business on Facebook. You can also include the link to your Facebook fan page on your Twitter, YouTube channel, and LinkedIn profile, and visa versa.

And don’t forget to ‘Like’ Wpromote on Facebook!

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Zuckerberg wrote, “This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.”

With more than 27 million iOS users alone and last weeks launch of Instagram for Android which led to more than 1 million downloads within the first 24 hours, Instagram had become it’s own social network. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom wants users to know “that Instagram is not going away,” which he posted on the company’s blog today.

Not everybody is as excited about this acquisition as Mark Zuckerberg. Quite a few Instagram users have Tweeted that they will be deleting their accounts in fear that it will never be the same now that Facebook is taking over. Due to the backlash, some tech blogs have posted how to save your Instagram photos before deleting your account. If you are one of these frustrated users, you should know that once you delete your account your photos will be gone and you will not be able to re-register with the same username.

What do you think about this deal? Will you be deleting your Instagram account?

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Challenges:
The biggest challenge in bringing an overall cohesiveness to Bas Rutten’s social media profiles was that there were six different Facebook accounts in reference to Bas Rutten, only one of which was actually managed by him. Because of the large variety of Bas Rutten profiles, his many fans were spread thin across all of the accounts versus one profile being connected with all of his fans.

Strategy:
To begin optimizing Bas Rutten’s social media campaign, Wpromote reached out to our contact at Facebook to merge all Bas Rutten accounts. Once this was achieved, his vanity URL, www.facebook.com/BasRutten, was established, which maintains consistent branding and enhances search results across the web, increasing exposure. Then a new badge was created utilizing maximum real estate and effectively branding the page. The badge also included more information about Bas Rutten. A Welcome tab, also known as a fan gate, was then created, which does not allow non-fans to interact with the page, incentivizing the fan to click “Like.” The Info tab was modified to include current information and links to his official website and other social media profiles. New tabs, such as the Gear Shop & Share, O2 Trainer, Body Action System, and YouTube were added. The Shop & Share tab made it possible for fans to directly shop for Bas Rutten’s official gear without leaving Facebook, creating revenue for the brand. Daily engagements were posted promoting products, videos, and public appearances, which increased impressions and fan interactions. All comments and posts by fans were responded to in a timely manner and encouraged further interaction.

In order to supplement organic growth on the Facebook Fan Page, Facebook advertisements began running in the second month of the campaign. These ads targeted the core demographic of potential fans that had not connected with Bas Rutten yet. The ads had an estimated reach of more than 6 million users.

While Bas Rutten was already very active on Twitter, Wpromote’s audit revealed opportunities to further optimize his profile. They began by implementing a new avatar and skin to maintain cohesive brand identity. Daily engagements were posted and all Tweets about Bas Rutten were monitored and addressed as necessary with friendly and informative responses.

Bas Rutten previously established a YouTube channel, however, Wpromote upgraded it to a branded channel, enabling it for better marketing capabilities. Branding the channel included the addition of a linkable banner which could take fans to his official website and store, his Facebook Fan Page, and his Twitter profile. By the end of December, more than twenty new videos had been added to the channel, several of which were included in Facebook and Twitter engagements that linked back to the YouTube channel.

Results:
Within the first three months of Wpromote managing Bas Rutten’s social media campaign, remarkable improvements were seen across the board. Merging all of the Bas Rutten Facebook profiles led to an astonishing 4,587% increase in fans. Over 1,900 fans were added in just one month of cost-efficient Facebook advertising. Due to the success of the Bas Rutten Facebook fan page, it is now recognized as the official source of Bas Rutten content and information.

Bas Rutten had a strong Twitter presence with a solid foundation before teaming up with Wpromote. However, through friendly interactions and timely responses to Twitter users, Bas Rutten had a 28% increase in followers.

Branding and optimizing Bas Rutten’s YouTube channel facilitated additional traffic to their website, Facebook, and Twitter. New videos were added to the channel and shared on their other social media profiles, which led to a significant 147% increase in views in December versus November.

About:
Bas Rutten is a retired mixed martial artist and kickboxer, who also has a black belt in Karate and Taekwondo. He was the UFC Heavyweight Champion in 1999, a three-time King of Pancrase world champion, and finished his fighting career undefeated in his last 22 fights. After retiring from fighting in 1999, Bas is now a well-recognized color commentator, accredited actor, television host, coach and entrepreneur. He is a children’s fitness advocate on the Cartoon Network and a participant in the networks highly publicized “anti-bullying” campaign. He also cohosts HDNet’s “Inside MMA” with Kenny Rice, and is the host of “Punk Payback” on Fuel TV.

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Organic Traffic

Organic searches take place when someone goes to Google’s search browser and types in keywords and phrases relating to a product, service or other types of information. Google returns the most relevant listings based on keyword relevance. Organic results show up in the center of the page, typically showing10 listings per page.

Since more than half of web searchers have a tendency to click on one of the first 10 listings that come up, never looking at page 2, it is important to focus on getting your site listed on Google’s first page of search results. There are a couple of benefits of organic search rankings. The first is, organic traffic is free. You don’t have to worry about paying every-time someone clicks on your listing like you do when people click on your ad. Another reason is that most people trust organic search results more and are more willing to click on organic results than ads. That means more conversions.

The best way to boost organic web traffic from Google is to do keyword research to find out which keywords and phrases you should be trying to rank for. Then, use these keywords throughout your website content, meta descriptions, and page titles.

Organic search rankings are also affected by the way people are engaging with your site. Google tracks things like how long people stay on your site or how quickly they leave, which is called a bounce rate. The more user-friendly your site is and the more relevant content you include can help you gain organic traffic.

Paid Traffic

The second way to get traffic to your site from Google is to set up a paid search campaign through Google Adwords. If your site is new or you have a lot of competition in organic searches for your site, it’s probably a good idea to start out by testing keywords with paid search.

Web searchers find your paid ad basically the same way they would find you through organic rankings, except with paid search, you can ensure that your ad will come up on the first page, because you are paying for positioning when you bid on keywords. Google ads are shown above the organic search results and on the right hand side of them. And crafting a good ad with relevant keywords is the best way to ensure that your ad gets clicked on. Google’s keyword tool can help you get an idea of which relevant keywords to include in your ad. The more competition there is for a keyword, the more expensive it is. Be sure to constantly track and test keywords to see that you are getting the most bang for your buck.

When writing your ad, be sure to make it short, to the point and compelling. Include a call to action like “Save Today” or “Free Trial.” You should also select a landing page other than your website’s home page for people to be directed to once they click on your ad. That landing page should be consistent with the ad that led the user there, whether it is the specific product or service page of what they were searching for or includes the special offer that was mentioned. Google pays attention to the amount of clicks your ads get. The more clicks you get, the less you pay for your ads.

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This seemed out of place to me, so I did some research.

As it turns out, it’s pretty simple to get a star rating in the SERPs for any old run-of-the-mill page. I used the following format to add a “review” to the homepage of johnvantine.com.


<div class="hreview">
<span class="reviewer">Name of reviewer</span>
<span class="dtreviewed" title="YYYY-MM-DD">Date of review</span>
<span class="summary">Review summary</span>
<span class="description">Review body</span>
<span class="rating">Numerical rating (from 1-5)</span>
</div>


The review is not fake, mind you! It was written by Ryan Farrell. Anyway, I added the review to the homepage on Wednesday. I checked the SERPs on Thursday morning, and the star rating was showing up along with my listing.

At the time of this writing, it still is. You’ll also notice that my meta description is being truncated – normally the full description (157 characters) is displayed, but since the star rating showed up, it’s being cut off at 139 characters. The addition of “3 days ago” is probably causing this.

How is this done? In the above example, the hReview microformat was used. hReview is just one part of the Microformats standard. Microformats are used to help search engines understand what they’re looking at. When they’re added to a site, it will still appear normally to human users, but “behind the scenes” a sort of framework is established that tells the search engine explicitly what different types of data are: “this is the street address of my business. This is the city name, and this is the telephone number.” The search engines can then use this information in various ways which can be beneficial to the publisher.

The hReview microformat is made up of properties found commonly on product review sites – things like reviewer name, date of review, rating (from 1.0-5.10), description, etc.

Anyway, I think it goes without saying that the potential for abuse exists. To take this one step further, some sites are using (abusing?) this structured markup to show “double star ratings” in the SERPs:

In the example above, Google displays the star rating from the Google Places listing in addition to their hReview rating. In my opinion, this is taking it a little too far. I’d call this “pushing your luck”, and I can’t imagine that it will last for too long.

The mere presence of these star ratings next to your listing in the SERPs makes it stand out to a searcher, and I’d imagine it has a positive impact on your CTR. If you have a 4 or 5 star rating and hundreds of reviews, you’ve got a pretty serious advantage over the competition, who now look slightly boring in comparison.

If you’re running a site that utilizes reviews, especially any sort of ecommerce site, I’d urge you to get on the ball and add structured markup to your HTML with Microformats.org or Schema.org. Do some research! If you’re running WordPress, there are plugins available that’ll do it for you!

Also, there’s no need to wait for the spiders to crawl your site in order to see how the rich snippet appears – you can get an instant preview by using the Rich Snippets Testing Tool in Webmaster Tools.

Addendum: For the record, Schema.org seems to be the format that Google prefers (see here), but I went with microformats because it was being used in the first example of star ratings on regular sites in the SERPs that I encountered. If you’re new to rich snippets, check out this helpful visual guide written by Selena Narayanasamy.

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Using an analytics tool, like Google Analytics can provide a wealth of information about your website traffic. It can track and provide reports on everything from your advertising return on investment (ROI), to tracking visits from mobile websites and apps, to honing in on specific demographic markets. The best part is that setting up a Google Analytics account is free.

Setting up Google Analytics for your website is fairly straightforward. First, you need to make sure that you have a Google account. Once you have your account set up, go to Google Analytics and select “Sign Up Now” in blue in the top right-hand corner of the page.

Once you set up your Google Analytics account, you’re going to be asked to set up a profile for the website(s) you want to track. You’ll be prompted to put in the website URL, the account name and the country and time zone you are in. Once you’ve created a profile, Google will provide you with a tracking code. This tracking code needs to be copied and pasted into the code of each of the web pages within the domain name that you want to track. If your pages are in a template format, you can paste the code into the header or footer and it will track each page accordingly.

In Google Analytics you have the option to create a master profile for each domain name. You can then add filters to exclude tracking on specific webpages. You can also share analytics reports with others. If you have multiple domains to track, you’ll want to set up each as its own website profile.

Depending on which content management site you use, there may be a plugin to insert the tracking information. If you have a WordPress site for instance, there is a plugin that may ask you for the Web Property ID. Google Analytics will provide the ID when it supplies you with the tracking codes. When all of the tracking has been set up, you can begin viewing your stats.Within Google Analytics, you can customize your reports and see information about which keywords are bringing you the most traffic, the demographic and geographic details of your visitors and your most visited web pages. This information can give you key insights to your website’s performance and can be a powerful tool in creating new strategies for future business growth.

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Google is one of the largest display ad networks in the United States. According to recent statistics from ComScore, Google’s ad display network reaches 89% of customers through a variety of websites, games, and videos.

So, how do you go about advertising on Google? First we’ll talk about a free opportunity available to businesses that can help get your name out without taking any green out of your pocket. It’s called Google Places. Google Places allows businesses to claim their business listing, add their address, a map, business description, business hours and even photos and video about their business. The best part… it’s free.

There are a few different options when you decide you are ready to start paying for advertising on Google. Being one of the largest online ad networks, Google has made it pretty simple to figure out how to advertise on their site, as well as display, mobile and video advertising.

You will need a Google account to start with, and then go to the Google Ads webpage. There you will be presented with two different advertising options: AdWords Express and original AdWords.

Google launched AdWords Express last summer as a way to provide small businesses who might not be familiar with online advertising a way to set up managed advertising campaigns in as little as five minutes. It’s great for community-based businesses that want to connect with locals through the web or in person but don’t want to spend time managing an online campaign. When using AdWords Express, Google manages your ads for you. Everything from figuring out your keywords to where your ads will be placed. Users decide how much they want to spend based on a maximum daily budget, and they are only charged when someone clicks on their ad.

If you’re familiar with online advertising, your business is online or you serve a national customer base, Google’s original AdWords platform is probably more suited to your needs. Google provides all of the tools and reports you need to set up your advertising campaign and stay up to date on it’s progress. With AdWords, you also have the option to showcase your ads in additional formats, like video and mobile. Through AdWords, individuals manage their own accounts and determine their advertising budget by bidding on their keywords. To set up AdWords, click here and simple follow Google’s step-by-step instructions.

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