Ideas for Business

SEO is a very important part of having a website and you should definitely do your best to ensure that you are using all areas of your site to boost your rankings. Search engines love optimized websites and though you may be using meta tags and proper keyword density in your content, there is still a lot to learn! Here are 5 tips to keep your SEO going strong.

1. Make your URLs SEO friendly. You can do this by using your keywords in your page URLs, rather than just numbers or a random jumble of letters and numbers.
2. Set up a site map. A site map basically tells the search engine spiders how to get to all the various pages on your website, which, in turn, helps you by boosting rankings.
3. Use original content. Writing your own content is the best way to ensure this. If you have duplicate articles on your website, you´ll be penalized by the search engines and that´s just not good.
4. Consider blogging. While a website is a great way to gain traffic for your business, blogs are just more SEO friendly because of the constantly updated content. It could be a good move to start one up for your business.
5. Update your content. Not only is it a bad SEO technique to let your content stagnate, but your clients won´t come back if there is never anything new!

These are just a few of the more overlooked areas of SEO that you can use on your business website. It´s a great way to increase your SEO and move ahead of the competition in the search engines.

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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There are literally hundreds of social media sites out there and while you could easily try to make an appearance on each one at some point in your day, it would never be enough to actually establish you as an expert. However, if you choose just one to really focus on and build up a reputation, you´ll find that it is far more useful to your business.

You see, social media is just that . . . social. If you want to actually make it work, you´ll need to get into a site, integrate yourself, participate in the community and make sure to share with others on the site. Most social media networks are very tight knit, with groups of active users doing most of the voting. These people tend to get pretty upset with spammers who just jump in and throw around their own links without adding anything to the community.

By focusing mainly on just one social media site, you can build up a network of friends and be active every day on the site. This adds a huge amount of value to any links you mark and your friends on the network will help you out by voting for your websites and blogs, as well. It just makes a lot of sense to focus on one social media site.

My PC has been on the fritz. At first anything using Flash locked up both Internet Explorer and Firefox, so I uninstalled it. Then I couldn't load more than one or two tabs in either Internet browser. After that my toolbars weren't loading in IE. (I need those StumbleUpon and Google toolbars, dammit.) And since I live my life online - from blogging to social bookmarking to Twittering - my work output started to slow down to a crawl.

Luckily I had my laptop as backup, but that meant taking the time to transfer files, and set up all the websites I need to do my my job as a community moderator at a popular women's social networking site. Of course, that ate up major amounts of time that I could have used for blogging.

The problem kept getting worse, and running my spyware and virus software didn't help. I finally decided it was time to take my PC into my local computer shop, which meant more time tracking my computer guy down (he's moving his shop right now) and unplugging my system.

Five days later I have my PC back, good as new. According to my computer guy, he had to run several types of security programs to get all the viruses off my computer, as well as reinstall IE, load some Windows updates, and do some general cleanup. (Tip: don't leave all those unused icons on your desktop - they eat up your computer's memory.)

I was dismayed to find out the highly recommended spyware and virus programs I use don't keep my PC completely protected. This is why I'm thrilled that the folks at Symantec sent me Norton 360 Version 2.0 to review.

Still, I was a little hesitant since I had heard that Norton 360 slowed down your computer. So I decided to load it just my laptop, and uninstall my highly rated virus program. That was fine because it drives me crazy. You see my (now former) virus program updates when I'm working and interrupts things with pop up boxes and warnings. (No, I really don't want to restart my computer right now, thank you very much. I don't care that I'm at risk.) But I put up with that because the program is FREE.

However, my spyware program, which I paid for, is constantly telling me that it's updated itself or it's time to run a scan. And that's what I really like about Norton 360. It updates and runs scans and backups when my computer is idle, like during a bathroom break or a trip to pick up the kids at school. One less interruption in my life - LOVE IT!

Norton 360 has many great features, which you can check out on the Symantec website. One thing I loved was that it includes 2GB of online storage. This is perfect for my laptop, since I already have an external backup drive for my PC. It also has PC tuneup which keeps your PC run faster and running the way it’s supposed to.

Heck, as a WAHM it's bad enough that your kids are constantly interrupting you when you're working. But your virus and spyware programs, too?

Norton 360 Version 2.0 helps you get working online and off without all the interruptions.

My PC has been on the fritz. At first anything using Flash locked up both Internet Explorer and Firefox, so I uninstalled it. Then I couldn't load more than one or two tabs in either Internet browser. After that my toolbars weren't loading in IE. (I need those StumbleUpon and Google toolbars, dammit.) And since I live my life online - from blogging to social bookmarking to Twittering - my work output started to slow down to a crawl.

Luckily I had my laptop as backup, but that meant taking the time to transfer files, and set up all the websites I need to do my my job as a community moderator at a popular women's social networking site. Of course, that ate up major amounts of time that I could have used for blogging.

The problem kept getting worse, and running my spyware and virus software didn't help. I finally decided it was time to take my PC into my local computer shop, which meant more time tracking my computer guy down (he's moving his shop right now) and unplugging my system.

Five days later I have my PC back, good as new. According to my computer guy, he had to run several types of security programs to get all the viruses off my computer, as well as reinstall IE, load some Windows updates, and do some general cleanup. (Tip: don't leave all those unused icons on your desktop - they eat up your computer's memory.)

I was dismayed to find out the highly recommended spyware and virus programs I use don't keep my PC completely protected. This is why I'm thrilled that the folks at Symantec sent me Norton 360 Version 2.0 to review.

Still, I was a little hesitant since I had heard that Norton 360 slowed down your computer. So I decided to load it just my laptop, and uninstall my highly rated virus program. That was fine because it drives me crazy. You see my (now former) virus program updates when I'm working and interrupts things with pop up boxes and warnings. (No, I really don't want to restart my computer right now, thank you very much. I don't care that I'm at risk.) But I put up with that because the program is FREE.

However, my spyware program, which I paid for, is constantly telling me that it's updated itself or it's time to run a scan. And that's what I really like about Norton 360. It updates and runs scans and backups when my computer is idle, like during a bathroom break or a trip to pick up the kids at school. One less interruption in my life - LOVE IT!

Norton 360 has many great features, which you can check out on the Symantec website. One thing I loved was that it includes 2GB of online storage. This is perfect for my laptop, since I already have an external backup drive for my PC. It also has PC tuneup which keeps your PC run faster and running the way it’s supposed to.

Heck, as a WAHM it's bad enough that your kids are constantly interrupting you when you're working. But your virus and spyware programs, too?

Norton 360 Version 2.0 helps you get working online and off without all the interruptions.

Online Marketing Blog manages a list of over 500 search marketing blogs called the BIGLIST, but it’s not ordered other than alphabetically. A year ago I took a sample of SEO and SEM blogs that were publishing Feedburner counts and posted a list ranked by the number of RSS subscribers. Below is a re-ordered list of search marketing blogs by RSS subscribers as of today:

John Battelle’s Search Blog

Matt Cutts

Search Engine Watch

Search Engine Land

SEOmoz

Search Engine Roundtable

Search Engine Journal

Online Marketing Blog

Search Engine Guide

Pronet Advertising

Marketing Pilgrim

Graywolf’s SEO Blog

SEO Scoop

Small Business SEM

Web Analytics World

SEO Pedia

I am thinking John Battelle’s blog shouldn’t be on the list since he really never writes about search marketing, just the search engines. I’d like your feedback on that. Also, are there other SEO or SEM blogs that have at least 1000 RSS subscribers AND that are using/publishing Feedburner subscribers we should add?

Sponsored By: Start a Career in Search Marketing Announcing the best online SEM courses from SEMPO Institute.

Update: Top SEO Blogs by RSS Subscribers was orgionally published at http://www.TopRankBlog.com