According to comScore, Microsoft sites saw their share of searches increase 0.4 percentage points to 9.3 percent in August. Meanwhile, Google saw its share of the market dip slightly with a 0.1 point drop to 64.6 percent.

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It would appear that if Bing wants to maintain a face in the search world that’s not covered in egg, this option should be removed from their model.

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Why You Need Video

Not only is embedded video a must for Web sites from a promotional perspective, but hosting clips related to your business can boost your search engine optimization. Whether you sell used cars or toys, sporting goods or books, it helps to make video available to enhance your inventory and bring a personal touch to your brand. Video is viral – post a humorous commentary or pratfall and people around the world will e-mail, blog, “tweet” and post to their social pages. In some cases, the national media picks up on popular videos to spotlight on news briefs. The immediacy of online video – the sight and sound – draws viewers to a webpage and holds their attention. To create a video clip with your site URL or sales information could increase awareness of your company and associate your name with something hundreds, even thousands, of people will share.

Why Host Your Video

Given the popularity of YouTube and Google Video, you might ask yourself why you need to enhance your own Web site when you can just create an account and upload videos there. Truthfully, maintaining a YouTube account is a great idea, but it shouldn’t be your only option in site promotion. Having your videos hosted on your business site establishes the material as your property, and emphasizes your brand. If you distribute instructional videos, for example, the archive you create on your site can become a valuable resource that remains as third-party sites come and go. In the event somebody is unable to access your YouTube account, the main site remains open to visitors.

Apply Video to Your Site

If you are not yet schooled in the proper coding and implementation of video, consult with an experienced Web designer to handle redesign and embedding of video clips for your site. Depending on the scope of your project, you may find that video design is quite affordable, and a small price to pay for increasing traffic, sales, and leads to your business.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on streaming video web design and Virginia web design.

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In short, if you blog, does it make sense to feed the blog’s RSS into Twitter and Facebook, and anywhere else it may fit? Is there the risk that somebody who follows all three of your profiles will become bored or irritated by the repetition and drop you altogether?

The answer is hard to determine, as one can’t truly determine how social media optimization will work for everybody. What works for Company A could backfire for Company B. However, there are pros and cons to repetitive content that can be explored and considered by those interested in getting the most out of their social media profiles.

Duplicating Content: Advantages

Tools exist that allow you to feed your blog posts into your Facebook profile and your Twitter account. Though there is no discernable way to feed a blog into MySpace’s blog, widgets can be set up to present an RSS version on your material on your profile. The main advantage to having everything connected is that you can create content at one source and distribute it easily to several places with the click of a mouse. There’s no need to log into several profiles. With the addition of bookmarking tools on your browser menu bars – for social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Digg – you can reach diverse audiences with your content.

Also, optimizing specific keywords to link back to your main site can be helpful in boosting your search rank.

Duplicating Content: Disadvantages

If you spend enough time in the Twitter and Facebook worlds, you may tend to read from other users of their dissatisfaction of some profiles. While it’s a given that anybody who sets up a social profile is advertising to some degree, to simply set something up as a droning feed may be a turnoff to some users. “Social” is optimal word in social media, so if you do have these profile it is encourage to use them beyond their RSS functionality and converse with the people who choose to follow your exploits.

It may take some experimentation to find the perfect balance between your content and the way it is presented. Study how you use social media, and learn what works and what doesn’t.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on Virginia web design.

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If your primary function for the Internet is promote your business, it is imperative to have a web blog connected to your site. Whether you host the blog software on your domain or use a third-party host like Wordpress or Blogger, regular use of the blog to optimize keywords for your main site can be of some help in boosting your search rankings.

What should you write? Regardless of the purpose of your website or business, the blog should have a down-to-earth, friendly appeal. Though it is to be utilized for promotion, perhaps alerts on sales and new services, it shouldn’t be constantly used as a means to hard sell visitors every time they come to read, lest they be turned off altogether. Keep a good mix of blog posts active; talk about what you do and what you offer, but take the time to hold an online conversation with visitors. Post about local happenings, use pictures or embedded links to related videos, and try to stimulate feedback from visitors.

Combining these efforts with social media networking can improve traffic to your blog as well. Open accounts with Facebook and Twitter, for two, and use them to refer people to new articles on your blog. Sign up for social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Digg, and save the URLs of specific articles and posts you feel have a wider appeal. The more “word of mouth” enthusiasm you can generate, the better for your stats, and business. You just may find that blogging can bring you a decent income as it leads people to your main site.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on Virginia web design.

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The Personalized Domain versus the “Free Site”

One thing I notice, specifically with authors, is the usage of a free site to host information on books and other writings. Assuming an author only has so much to spend on promotion, it’s understandable to want to be thrifty, but one can also argue the purchase of a domain is a necessary and worthwhile expense for anybody wishing to market online.

When you look at a business card, for example, are you more apt to visit the site of a business with this URL:

http://www.freesite.com/mybusinessname

…or this one?

http://www.mybusinessname.com

The latter certainly may look more professional, and will also imply that the site is done with great care. Free sites, while helpful in a pinch and good for personal websites, often come with strings attached. Signing up for a free service may require you to run banner ads on your pages, and may force you to limit the type of content you can have on your site. With the recent news of Geocities closing, too, comes the realization that there is no guarantee a free service will always be there to store your pages. Having your own web space and URL is easier to maintain in this respect, as pages and URL positioning can be moved if needed.

The URL name: Yours or Your Topic’s?

Let’s say you have decided to spring for a simple web hosting package and a URL. The domain name you choose must best express what you plan to showcase on the Internet. Authors, actors, and musicians will tend to use their names if available, yet the business owner has options. If you operate a bakery in your town, you may wish to purchase a domain that is the name of your business, or else a keyword-strong URL that tells people exactly what you do. “YourTownBakers” or “YourTownBakery” where “Your Town” is where you are located, is a viable option. You stand the chance of increased search relevancy based on the keywords used, and one doesn’t have to guess what it is you do.

A good method of determining the right URL for your company is to consider how it will look to the public. The words that comprise the domain should be short, easy to remember, and to spell. Consulting a site like Domize can tell you if the URL you want is available for purchase- if not, you may be able to find an alternative to work for you.

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There is validity to that question, of course. Speaking as a writer and editor, I use all sorts of social devices to promote work. There are the profiles on MySpace and Facebook, the lens on Squidoo, the accounts at del.icio.us and Digg and…you get the idea. With the time spent pushing works on these sites, one might think I could write another book free and clear. Marketing is time-consuming, yet beneficial, and of course if sales are going to come from these efforts it is important to make sure you market wisely. To put so much energy into a campaign few will see may not yield the results you want, and you can’t get that time back.

These ideas are easily applicable to promoting websites. Is it wise to spend the entire day on Twitter talking about how people should visit your site, when in truth you may have only fifty followers on your profile, and few if any are “re-tweeting” your posts to their accounts so more eyeballs can see them? Who will see your efforts, and how can your business grow if you limit yourself this way, is the argument.

Does this mean sites like Twitter and Digg are useless in promotion? Not necessarily. Due to the growth of Twitter, for example, it now boasts its own search engine which allows anybody to find relevant topics among the thousands of Twitter users. The one advantage to social bookmarking sites and micro-blogging sites is that new information comes as quickly as it is posted on the wires. Somebody may not need to follow a thousand Twitter users for breaking news, when he can search for it. Whether you are selling goods or promoting services, if you use the right combination of keywords the likelihood somebody will find you via Twitter will increase.

Take, for example, a recent event on the Twitter site that captured the attention of bloggers in the publishing industry. A literary agent established a topic called #queryfail which covered the do’s and don’ts of submitting manuscript queries to literary agents. For one day, editors and agents submitted their input via Twitter and using this particular keyword to connect the posts. People using Twitter’s search function could plug in the keyword to see the expanded group conversation. Such an exercise allowed for better exposure for these accounts…one editor reported later on her Twitter account that she gained over  100 followers in one day thanks to this!

Of course, there is no guarantee participation in a group micro-blogging conversation will reap hundreds of followers to your account in a short time, but use of the tool increases your exposure. It’s only a matter of hitting the right keywords at the time your target audience is searching for those same words. Social media tools like Twitter may not wholly replace the blog, the pay per click model, and link building as the be-all and end-all of SEO, but it is a good complement to your efforts provided it is used smartly.

Kathryn Lively

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As a newer company or an established organization just coming to the Internet, you have a shorter window of opportunity to attract attention. Once your initial site is built, it is important to establish your immediately as an expert in your field in order to gain the trust of your visitors. In doing this, you also help your SEO through steady building of content and proper saturation of keywords under which you wish to be found.

Show What You Know

Being an expert doesn’t mean you have to give away any secret recipes or your entire plan of attack. However, if you want to show visitors exactly why they should choose your products or services over others you must provide some information to prove your validity and authority:

• Write Articles: Whether your sites promotes pest control or sells auto parts, a series of well-written, keyword rich articles can build a online library for visitors wanting to know more about what you do
• Podcast: If you work in consulting or another field which lends itself to promotion in other media, consider creating a weekly or monthly podcast about your services and the condition of your industry. Include tips and maybe success stories about current and previous clients to create a compelling broadcast.
• Video: If the products you sell would better be served with video demonstrations, consider not only embedding short video on your site but create accounts at social sites like YouTube for maximum exposure. Link back to your main site to improve link popularity and lend an interactive look to your site that can also help improve your results in blended search.

The more you know and share, the better your chances of being found online. Don’t just be a salesman, be an expert at what you know.

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As your online business continues to suffer, however, you may find yourself asking how can you not afford it?

SEO is a Daily Job

In order to achieve top rankings in Google and Yahoo and other major search engines for your select keywords, you must work daily to make sure your website is optimized for the terms under which you want to be found. This involves more than just placing the keywords in your site’s title and description tags. You site’s content must be focused and relevant to the searches you want to conquer, and your site overall should be authoritative enough on the subject or product you offer that similar quality websites will want to reference you via a link. The more outside sources recognize your value, the more search engines will as well.

To achieve this, of course, means to work for it. It may seems like sites similar to yours are able to win high search rankings through little effort – perhaps their sites look clunky and are not attractive – but consider this: a search engine spider cannot see fancy graphics and complicated code that creates flashy interactive displays. When Google crawls your site, it looks for the relevant content. A decorative, elegant site may be attractive to customers and clients, but even the most primitive-looking site with continuous, relevant content stands a chance of claiming top results by virtue of daily activity.

If you do not have the time yourself to devote to daily SEO tactics, it stands to reason you would consider hiring an in-house SEO specialist or an optimization firm to ensure you are seen in search and elsewhere.

Can you afford SEO?

Do you need SEO? Yes. Can you afford SEO? That is for you to answer, but perhaps the better question would be can you afford to invest in a site without SEO and survive?

Shop around the Internet for SEO firms and you may find you can expect to pay anywhere from five hundred to a thousand dollars monthly for various services. How much work an SEO firm will do for your site depends, of course, on their skills and how much they value particular tactics to charge for them. Some search specialists may maintain social networks for your business, while others may concentrate more on link popularity and content building. You may be inclined to pay more to a firm if they do more work for you, that is understandable, so it is important to compare the services of each firm you interview before you decide to hire anybody.

Is it worth the money to pay somebody to perform regular SEO practices on your site? Consider your business first: what is it that you sell? What services do you offer, and how much do you charge? Would you pay to advertise your business elsewhere – TV, radio, or newspaper? When you invent any amount of money to promote your business, you do expect a return on investment. So it is natural to expect the ROI on SEO would come in the form of increased traffic to your site, and strong search rankings. If you are able to determine how many products you need to sell or how many clients need to hire you in order to have a month’s worth of SEO done to your site, you can proceed to hire within your budget.

Know this, however: employing SEO services may not yield immediate results for your business. Think of SEO as an investment in the long-term health of your website. Depending on the amount of work done to boost rankings, tactics performed now could take months to bear fruit on the Internet. Once your higher search results take hold, however, the money spent on SEO can be returned in sales. Consistency and patience are two keys to seeing your SEO plan to success.

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Used to be when you entered a keyword into a search engine a list of static URLs resulted. Gradually, as search engines – Google in particular – grew, Web users could access navigation bars to find results for the same keyword in weblogs, image search, news wires, and video. With blended search, all findings are mixed on the same. Do a search in Google on “Barack Obama” or “The Dark Night” film and you may find links to YouTube videos, media blogs, products for sales on auction sites, and images in addition to actual websites. This is blended search, where all aspects of the Internet and social media are brought together to give the Web user a well-rounded view of what is available on the Internet.

As search engines gravitate more toward this paradigm, it is apparent that website owners need to keep up with the times. It is more important now than ever before to take advantage of social media options for your Web business so you can maximize your exposure on the Internet. The more you blend in with the tools available to you, the better your chances of being found among the mixed results when somebody searches a relevant keyword.

Blending In with the Internet

At last count, Google announced that it has indexed approximately one trillion URLs, and more websites are created daily! If you can imagine how much information is out there on a variety of topics, you might wonder how you can stay on top in search results on any keyword. By adjusting your website and overall Internet presence to offer a variety of interactive information, you increase your chances of relevancy in search.

Do you have videos of your products and services? Set up a YouTube account and host them, then embed the videos into your website for further enhancement. Attach a blog and make regular posts about sales, products, and services. Import your blog into various social networks with that capability (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) for increased exposure. As we move forward with Internet technology, and as larger Internet entities like Google absorb smaller ones, as they have done with Blogger, the information on those sites will be blended into search. In order to rank high, your site must blend in as well.

The more you build your site using the tools at your disposal, the better your chances become in search. Socialize, interact, and rise above the trillion and be seen.

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