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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/08/complete-review-of-seo-powersuite-tools/

Complete review of SEO PowerSuite tools

Combining 4 powerful SEO tools SEO Power Suite is one of the most effecient suite of tools that every SEO experts needs. You can cover some of the most important factor for your website optimization using SEO Power Suite. The issues that it covers include:

- diagnosing onsite problems of a website

- tracking your search positions for your keywords

- establishing new keywords ideas

- competitora backlink analysis

- finding new link opportunities and backlink resources

With this “all in one” SEO tool you can cover all the major factors during your SEO process on a daily basis. Here you can find a review of all the tools that you can find in SEO Power Suite: Website Auditor, Rank Tracker, SEO Spyglass and LinkAssistant

Website Auditor

Website Auditor is one of the most powerful tools in SEO PowerSuite, which allow you to make a complete and detailed analysis of your website. Basically it will check and crawl your whole website and focus on some of the most important SEO facors and you can check out what is exactly the quality of your website and your content. Some of the features that Website Auditor will show you include:

- Broken links

            -Link Statistic

          - HTML and CSS errors and warnings

            - Detailed information about meta data (titles and meta descriptions)

            - Crawl availability

          -Social activity information

        Once you are ready with your results it’s really easy to finish your report and understand all the information that is given. With this information regarding the status of your ranking and status data you will be able to understand what are the on site changes that you should make in order to improve you website. 

Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker Tool allows you easily to check your website’s serach engine ranks for a particular list of keywords, over various search engines. You can easily choose what components to include in your report as Google difference since your last check, which keywords are in top 100 of the search results, shifts that your keywords have. You can also see some graphs for your visibility and ranking. Rank tracker allows you easily to make a complete report for your website’s ranking including visual graph and data as how many keywords ou have ranked in the search results 1st, in top 3, top 10 etc.

          Another useful feature of using Rank Tracker is that you can make a keyword research with its help. One of the great features and my favorite with Rank tracker is that it allows integration and support for other keyword tools like Google AdWords Keyword Tool or SEMRush. With Rank Tracker you can also see not only the search volume for a particular keyword but you can also check the competition for it (or the Keywrod Efficiency Index).

Despite of the fact that Rank Tracker does not shines with great interface it is really easy to use and the only thing that you have to do is basically place your URL and wait for the ranking results for your website. Another great feature of course is that the tool can check many search engines for you and save you time and efforts.

SEO Spyglass

SEO Spyglass is one of the four features of the Link Assistant tool. Depending on what you need, you can either buy it individually or as a part of their whole Power Suite. Some of the key features of the SEO Spyglass are:

#1 – Link research

#2 – White Label Reporting

#3 – Link History Tracking

Once you start up SEO Spyglass you can either choose to research competition links or links based on a specific keyword. We at SEOPal usually use the competitor’s URL when doing link research. Choosing the search engine that is most important to you and where you get your most traffic from is a very important step. The Power Suite supports a bunch of different countries and search engines. Spyglass will take the top competitor from the particular SERP you chose and show their link sources.

Another thing we use SEO Spyglass for is to spy on the backlinks that may still be remaining to an expired domain. This is very handy if you are planning to buy such a domain and you might want to check if it had or still has some bad links pointing to it. That way you can have a good idea what you might be getting yourself into before you purchase it.

Something similar between such types of softwares is they might need you to enter capchas while they are running their reports. SEO Spyglass makes no difference if you are using the free version. After the software finishes its report, you can see some detailed stitistics about the links pointing to the domain such as countries where the links are coming from, the domain and the link webpages PageRank, used anchortexts, keywords, etc. Something the software won’t tell you is which ones are the juiciest links out of all.

Link Assistant 

The Link Assistant feature of the Power Suite is designed to help you find link partners. In order to do that you need to enter a website URL, a contact name, an email adress and then click next. After crawling your desired website, the program will suggest you an anchor text and a website description that you can change if you want. If not, you can just leave it as it is and click next again. From here you have different options to choose from to find link partner sites:

- find sites by keyword - find sites with link submission forms - find sites that link to your competitors

- find sites that already link to you - perform a deep scan on a page you specify - harvest all URLs located on the webpages you specify.

After that you enter your main keywords and let the software run the report. What is interesting here is you can import all data from SEO Spyglass into Link Assistant. If you are using the free version of the software, you’d better arm yourself with patience because it really does take a lot of time (depending on the project it takes appr. 10-15min to run the report). Another downside of the free version is that you cannot save that report. But still this is the free version only, and you can’t argue with free stuff. Other than that, Link Assistant is one of the many great features of SEO Power Suite.

You can easily download and try a free trial of SEO PowerSuite at their official website: http://www.link-assistant.com/.

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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/07/search-marketing-day-2013-where-seo-and-sem-experts-met/

Search Marketing Day 2013 – where SEO and SEM experts met

On the 27th of June this year, a major SEO event took place in the beautiful Polish city of Poznan. Namely Search Marketing Day conference gathered some of the best speakers (SEO Heroes and SEO Alternatives) and many SEO and SEM experts. In this post we will show you detailed information regarding some of the SEO Heroes presentations.

    The conference opening at the Heroes side was entrusted to Dan Petrovic and “Automating SEO While Staying WhiteHat”.

    A great start with great presentation. Strategy and decision making was what Dan emphasized on. The touched topics were: the keyword research phase (sorting keywords and new potential keywords), On-Site analysis for large-scale architecture challenges (the usage of 80legs and Gephi), how to find spam links (Link Spam Detection, the original post by DEJANSEO) and competitive link analysis (link value and the likelihood of scoring the link). Some of the useful tools Dan shared with the audience were: bubbl.us, gephi.org, 80legs.com, graphviz.org, cytoscape.org, writemaps.com, smartdraw.com, astuteo.com/slickmap, nullpointer.co.uk/-/webtracer2.htm and home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html6521. There were also a few topics that Petrovic alluded but gave detailed information on the following day at the PRO training. You can find out more about the PRO training topics and details in the second article we are going to publish.

  The following presentation was the one of Ralph Tegtmeier labelled “How Cloaking 3.0 Dominates the Search Engines Like Gangbusters”.

  Also known as Fantomaster, Ralph began with thorough explanation of what exactly stands behind Cloaking 3.0 (as most of you probably know cloaking = IP delivery). Tegtmeier clarified – “Cloaking is about as „dead“ as search engine optimization (SEO), as „dead“ as search marketing (SEM) or, for that matter, as „dead“ as Internet commerce”. He pinpointed the powerful sides of cloaking: Versatility (can be adjusted to any niche, market and location), Brute Force Optimisation (keyword-rich content, PR sculpting, integration of RSS feeds and others), Automation, Scalability, Invulnerability (using website clones to prevent the money site from penalties and deindexing), SERP Saturation (“Shadow Domains”). After that followed the explanation that cloaking was not for the ones who are looking to push their money sites’ ranking, enhance branding, improve business reputation, work in non-competitive space and think that reputation is more important than the ROI. According to Ralph there are 4 main things you should consider when going for cloaking:

· Spider database (detect search engine spiders by their IPs)

· Traffic switch (software checking the incoming traffic, sending spiders to cloaked pages and humans to proper landing pages)

· Site/page generator (off-site software to create the cloaked content)

· Off-site SEO (link building, dripfeed, social media buzz – like ordinary SEO but more aggressive and effective)

  “A Case Study, how to get rank fast with a new Domain and Index 1 Million Pages!” was an interesting case study presented by Dominik Wojcik.

  Dominik revealed how for 19 weeks he managed to index a million pages on a new domain. As a start to this million page quest Wojcik said he decided to skip the usage of open CMS (such as WordPress) and instead of that to write his own scripts.

  Some of the tactics and tricks he shared with the audience were: of course, choosing a theme with a great design that shows the visitors it is not just some cheap website; the usage of subdomains and sub-subdomains with scrapped content; script that shows AdWords to only visitors coming from Google; free badges that people can use on their websites. Disabling the “BACK” button was also one of the tricks he pulled out of the bag – the point is that when fewer people return to Google from your website, it looks like they`ve found what they were searching for on your website. It is not hard to come to the conclusion that this makes you look more authoritative in the all-seeing eyes of Google. When it comes to backlinks he said, “getting backlinks wasn’t that hard” – 301 redirects from 120 expired powerful domains.

    After the lunch break, the next to present was Josh Bachynski with “Defeat Panda: 3 Most Important Things to Check in GA for SEO & Panda”.

  This was a detailed and thorough presentation that concerned Google penalties. One of the main ideas was “not properly diagnosing a Google penalty or Demotion is a CRITICAL mistake” as this leads to wrong treatment and you can hurt your rankings very easily. Josh wanted to be clear about the difference when it comes to Penalty (manual action is taken by Google’s Manual Web Spam team) and Demotion (action taken automatically by some of Google’s ranking algorithms). It could be interesting for you that the algorithmic demotion could not be removed by reconsideration requests as it is an algorithmic change. The best solution in that moment is to find the problem and fix it.

  When it comes to diagnosing a ranking decrease, there are two things needed – Google Analytics and Moz Timeline. Moreover, Josh said that examining the traffic sources could tell us everything. The coordination between data such as traffic drops, the publishing of algo releases, website issues (server outage) or unnatural link notices can help us define the problem. Bachynski accentuated on the fact that many webmasters and business owners are acting hastily and disavowing all their links which leads to major ranking drops. April 24/2012, May 25/2012, October 5/2012 or May 23/2013 – those dates can indicate link-based problems (or around the dates when unnatural link notice is received – if any). As the quality algorithm update Panda looks for several things – website load speed, mobile usage, and high landing page bounce-to-SERP + low time on page.

  When the last coffee break was over, first to present was Maik Metzen with “SEO strategies for Affiliates”.

  Maik started his part of the conference with the common problems that affiliate websites face: Panda-related penalties (low-quality websites and that they lost rankings and visibility due to: duplicate content, spammy content, low on-site and on-page time, tons of ads) and Penguin-related penalties (causing decrease in rankings and visibility because of a bad backlink profile, cloaking and etc. Furthermore, affiliates should be extremely careful with the usage of cheap links and BlogSpot sites.

  Metzen continued with advice for all affiliates – add more content and in particular more information keywords. The extra information helps for the ranking of more keywords (a good way to achieve that could be the usage of reviews and comparison). Another strategy is the one where affiliates should be presented as brands and focus on niches.

  A fascinating topic from the first day was G+ vs. Facebook. As you probably know, a well-managed social campaign in those social networks can help you to boost your website rankings but the effect is temporary. It is certain that G+ shares are more valuable than Facebook shares when it comes to Google rankings. The prediction is that G+ is going to surpass Facebook’s authority in 2-3 years.

  This post presents just a small part of the Search Marketing Day by MaxRoy. The event was a wonderful opportunity for the SEO and SEM specialists to meet the expert speakers and learn helpful methods and tricks. Of course we should not forget to mention the sponsors and to say a BIG thanks for the conference and for the party after the long day.

For more information about the speakers and agendas you can visit the official Search Marketing Day website.

[seopal]

New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/07/must-have-apps-for-facebook-pages-in-2013/

Must Have Apps for Facebook Pages in 2013

If you are looking to drive more engagement to your Facebook page, you should definitely select the right app for you. With millions of apps, Facebook offers the most advanced feature set when compared to other social networks.

  To make things slightly easier, we have selected the must have apps for Facebook pages for 2013:

Pagemodo

  With the Facebook Timeline rolled out in March 2012, the social network removed the option allowing users to create landing pages, tabs, photo albums and much more. You can try Pagemodo for free and create a custom tab for your Facebook page to get the right design. After that you can choose custom plan for price between 6.25$ and 33.25$ per month.

Networked Blogs

  If you maintain a blog on your website, it is a great idea to syndicate it on your Facebook page. With Networked Blogs you will be able to syndicate all of your latest posts not only on your Facebook page, but to all your social media profiles.  Additionally, you will be able to grow your blog following, due to the wide popularity of the app.

PostPlanner

  To get most of your Facebook marketing efforts you should consider making a schedule with all content that you plan to publish on your Facebook page. The best app for Facebook page that can help you to do that is called PostPlanner. Beside the common text posts on your Facebook page, PostPlanner will allow you to also publish videos and images. The app pricing starts from 19$/mo, which covers unlimited pages and “white labeling” for all your posts.

  Booshaka

  Keeping all of your Facebook followers engaged is pretty hard and many experts will tell you that you should identify the most powerful among your followers and keep them engaged with your stories. Booshaka is just for this – the app allows you to host fun contests and reward your most active users, while improving overall engagement. You can get started with Booshaka for free, but if you need more features or would like to offer more prizes, you should consider upgrading to Pro.

Contact Me

  Although it might seem obvious, many brands forget to add customer contact forms on their Facebook pages. Contact Me allows you to choose among wide variety of design options for your contact form and install it directly on your Facebook page.

  Ecwid

  If you are running an ecommerce store, you should consider adding your top products and shopping cart on your Facebook page. This is made easy with Ecwid – the app doesn’t require any hosting fees, contains 42 different modules and is pretty easy to configure. Best of all – the app doesn’t require you to pay any subscription fees. You can see a demo store created from Ecwid here.

Slideshare

  Slideshare is one of the most popular document sharing websites. If you are looking to share documents or presentation with your Facebook following, you should definitely implement Slideshare to your Facebook page. Beside documents, you can also add videos to your presentations and create webinars for your following.

[seopal]

New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/07/how-to-become-digital-with-your-job-application/

How To Become Digital With Your Job Application

Applying for a job is one of the most important things one can do. The submission of an application is the process that can either make or break your success in gaining that dream role. Traditionally, a job seeker would simply fill in an application form for the position they were interested in. After a time this was replaced by the CV which gave the applicant the opportunity to provide details of what they have achieved so far in terms of previous jobs as well as a list of qualifications and skill sets. This is all very well but these days you have to push the bar even further as competition in the market and internationally have become extremely intense. With the growing reliance that we have on the internet, more and more people are inventing ingenious ways in order to stand out over the rest of the crowd. Almost everything we do can be conducted more efficiently online and jobseekers are taking full advantage of this.

Here we take a look at some different approaches to utilising digital methods for applying for a job.

The Billboard Approach

One of the more original application methods came in the form of a large central billboard which was the strategy used by a marketing graduate from Galway. Frustrated with the lack of opportunities in his native Ireland, he set about advertising himself in a last ditch attempt to avoid having to emigrate to another country. The subject matter was actually entitled ‘save me from emigration’. It may have cost him 2000 Euros but as a result he received a plethora of job offers, one which he accepted with ‘Paddy Power’

Google Search

Other methods which have garnered equal success included that used by Eric Gandhi who set up his entire CV to look like a Google search results page. He placed this resume on his LinkedIn profile page which was seen by a Google employee and resulted in a job interview. This clearly was an approach which impressed the right people.

Power of YouTube

We have all heard that you have to sell yourself in order to be successful in an interview but Graeme Anthony took this one step further by using the power of You Tube. This interactive video is brilliant in that is puts the candidate right in front of the prospective employer without having to be in the same room. Here he has taken the initiative to introduce himself visually and offers the opportunity of finding out more about him should the interviewer choose to do so. This method also demonstrates the effort that the candidate is willing to put in for the purpose of securing a job which should reflect positively on their work ethic. This is one sure fire way of appealing to many more people than your standard CV.

  Reverse psychology through digital means

There is a lot to be said about utilising psychology and even more perhaps about reverse psychology which is exactly what Andrew Horner did after he gave up with the standard application process. Andrew rejected the CV and created his own application website whereby he would actually invite employers to apply for his services. Not only would an approach like this seem bold or even cheeky but it served to demonstrate a confidence which is highly valued by many companies. His alternative methodology subsequently resulted in him being offered a job which shows that the means certainly justified the ends.

So these examples do in many ways prove that there is no right or wrong way to apply for a job and the digital age has well and truly revolutionised the way we apply for a job. As the technology gets more and more sophisticated, it will be interesting to see where the recruitment path leads us next.

Featured images:

 License: Creative Commons image source

 License: Creative Commons image source

Author: Thank you to Jenny Ann for this article. Jen has produced various resumes for different International vacancies. If you want to keep up with the latest jobs check out the Telegraph Jobs Twitter page for more information.

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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/how-small-businesses-can-use-chat-platforms-for-increased-productivity/

How Small Businesses Can Use Chat Platforms For Increased Productivity

It’s said the web has revolutionized the way we do business. Today, even small business owners are finding it advantageous to constantly use chat rooms because they are valuable tools of business. We are no longer confined by the boundaries of a small office anymore, neither are we restricted to work with people in the same locality. The digital age ushers us to the world of endless opportunities that was unimaginable decades ago.

You see, people are only willing to do business with you, when they know you. A two or three minute online interaction with a prospective client is just enough to create you a legacy. A chat room is sort of a small cocktail party, where you mingle with all types of people. So, how do you use these chat platforms to the advantage of your small business? How do you make the most out of them? Here’s how.

1 Networking with other business owners

Ideally, it’s impossible to do business alone, without a proper network of people whom you are like- minded with. Successful business owners know the importance of constantly working towards building networks and developing useful contacts too. You are likely to end up with the following; customers, mentors or even business associates.

There’s a high likelihood of finding a new business partner in these chat rooms, and you are constantly honing your business communication skills on the go. So every time you log into your chat room, keep that in mind.

2 Coming out as an expert in a certain niche

Chat rooms generally call for participation. When you participate in these conversations, you get the chance of showing off your knowledge and skills about a particular subject. If you are good at what you are telling people, participants will turn to you each time they have questions about that niche. When this happens, they are more likely to buy from you because you are credible. So always demonstrate what you are good at to get noticed.

3 Virtually Hosting seminaries and other important events

Majority of small business chat rooms will allow booking for special events or seminars. It might be a product launch, or just any other announcement you may have. If you have people in your mailing list (which I believe you do), invite them to be part of this event. You may also want to invite other internet users that may be interested, which is okay. Again, this gives you the exposure, so that people know about what you are offering.

Alternatively, if there’s a way you could invite people in your mailing list without sending them emails (which they may never read), that would be a plus. The good thing is that your message reaches them instantly and they also get to meet other internet users as well. Always take advantage of this opportunity too.

4 Consider joining groups that are relevant to what you are doing

Chat rooms are avenues where people hang out a lot. But some sites like Zinzzchat.com offer opportunities where people who tend to think toward the same direction can meet to chat and share ideas. Chat sites like Business chat are exclusively for topics touching on insurance, stocks, investments, project management, as well as human resource topics. Don’t just settle for any chat room that doesn’t suit your specialist well. You also get to learn new things that perhaps you didn’t know.

Every business owner dreams of success when they weren’t there already. But even the most successful business ventures have been known to go down the drains because they never stayed up to date with the latest tactics of staying competitive in the market. One way of ensuring that your business remains competitive at all time is through chat sites.

Featured images:

 License: Image author owned

Erick is a Small Business entrepreneur and full time computer nerd. He like read all day social news, fastcompany.com and forbes.com. Follow @Erickny.

[seopal]

New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/engaging-on-facebook-is-about-relationships/

Engaging On Facebook Is About Relationships

You’ve probably heard that success using Facebook is about engaging with your audience, but what does that really mean? Engagement doesn’t just mean getting likes and shares. You have to build a relationship with your fans to really engage them.

How can you build a relationship with your fans?

A relationship in real life is all about give and take, so how can we translate that to online relationships between your Facebook page and your fans? It all starts with building a dialogue. There aren’t any good relationships that don’t have meaningful conversations. You have to ask questions, and want to hear the answers, and then respond to those answers.

Keep in mind, not everyone is going to agree with everything you say. That’s another thing about relationships. There are always going to be some points of disagreement. It’s how you go about responding to and resolving those problems that will determine whether your relationship with those fans will continue to grow.

Give to your fans

Make sure you’re giving your fans something in return for their liking you. Share information with them, and give them your time and attention. Far too many Facebook pages are run by folks who rarely do more than just make posts and then leave. That’s just like asking your friend how their day was and then completely ignoring their answer. Most likely, you won’t have that friend for very long. You need to engage your fans.

If you can offer a special deal or inside information to your Facebook fans, that’s a great way to give something back to them. They will respond with gratitude, and they’ll also look forward to seeing your next post or update.

Don’t be too promotional

No one likes hanging around with someone who is constantly trying to sell them something. The same is true on social media. Being too promotional can drive people away. Everyone wants to feel they’re valuable for more than what they can spend from their wallets. Show appreciation when folks engage with you, when they share your posts, and even when they offer constructive criticism.

Every good relationship is built on a foundation of trust, caring and communication. Be open and clear, and you’ll gain trust. Show fans you care about them, and they’ll care more about you in return. And always keep the lines of communication open, even when you aren’t hearing quite what you want to hear, because that is what a good relationship is all about. There are some people who will hack Facebook likes but they aren’t getting true engagement when they do this.

What tips do you have for increased engagement on your Facebook?

Featured images:

 Image credit Cheap photos

Karen Barkan is a social media manager and guest blogger on social media topics. Read more and learn how you can improve your Facebook pages.

[seopal]

New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/how-custom-photos-posted-on-instagram-can-benefit-businesses/

How Custom Photos Posted On Instagram Can Benefit Businesses

One of the hottest new apps for smart phones like Androids and iPhones is Instagram which allows users to take photos and add special effects to them.  The photos can be customized in a wide variety of ways that makes them standout from the regular photos that most people post.  It is also possible to simply take a photo, leave it as is and then post it on Instagram.  Instagram can also be set up to auto post any photo to both Facebook and Twitter saving users a great deal of time.  Instead of having to post the photo to all three forums, with one upload, the one photo is posted on all three sites simultaneously.

Many customers are absolutely addicted to Instagram because of all the great features that are offered.  Any company would be remiss not to take advantage of the popularity of the application and if they do not have an Instagram account, it should be in the works as soon as possible.  The following are some ways that Instagram can benefit businesses.

Instantaneous Uploading

Most photo shoots can be time consuming and require a great deal of effort on the part of the photographer and company.  With Instagram, you can take photos at a trade show and they are uploaded to your account instantly.  All you need to do is edit them, add the effects you want create a keyword heavy title and then post them.  Just remember that hashtags are vital on Instagram so don’t forget to create a hashtag for your brand and use it on each and every photo. When you use the tools available from Instagram, you will get more attention to your account which also helps your business build your brand.

Create Interest in a Brand

Creative photos are very hot and popular right now so using Instagram photos creates an interest in your brand.  With most other types of social media accounts, you have to have a user profile before you can begin using the site.  With Instagram, this is not so, you simply create your account and start taking photographs to upload to your Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts.  This allows interest to be generated not only on Instagram but also on other social media sites.

Adds a Digital Location for a Business

Google has illustrated how important it is to have a digital location associated with any business’ online profile.  Foursquare is one of the top location databases online and because Instagram is integrated with this database, it allows photos to have a location tag or geotag associated with the area where the photo was taken.  Users can also search for photos taken from a certain location and if your photos are not geotagged they are passed up and never seen by potential customers.

Using social media is vital for any company and with the popularity, convenience and ease that it is to use Instagram; it is a no brainer that this tool needs to be used by all companies.  It allows a business to add a location to the business and to the photo where it was taken creates an interest in the brand and offers instantaneous uploading not only to Instagram but also to Facebook and Twitter.

Susan Darling loves Instagram and writing tips and hints to help others learn how to get the most from Instagram.

[seopal]

New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/internet-privacy-is-there-such-a-thing-anymore/

Internet Privacy: Is There Such A Thing Anymore?

Recently, some news broke that the Obama Administration had gotten “metadata” from major phone companies like Verizon and AT&T, detailing phone records for many millions of Americans. While the records did not show names, they did show what calls were made for a particular number, as well as the time of call. And as a simple Google search of your phone number can show you, it is easier than you think to connect even your unlisted cell phone with your name.

But that governmental search for information was just the beginning. It was also recently revealed that the feds asked for information on email, web searches, videos, online chats, photos and the like. Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, AOL, and Apple reportedly shared at least some information with the government, according to the New York Times, although it is not yet known what the extent of the information revealed is. However, there are some denials from the companies named about wholesale sharing.

What does all of this mean for internet privacy and intellectual property?

At any rate, the controversy is still raging at press time, and it is enough to make you wonder about how much internet privacy you have, and how much of your intellectual property is being snooped at by the federal government. Is Big Brother really watching your every move? We do not really know the full extent of it at press time, and it is unclear just what is being looked at, and how big all of this is.

However, there are some things to keep in mind when it comes to protecting yourself on the internet:

You never know who is watching: We say this over and over again when it comes to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and the like. No matter how good your privacy settings are, and whether only a select few can read your posts, there is always the chance that your posts and comments can be used against you, or you can get in trouble in some way. When in doubt, don’t. Even if you delete your post after writing it, it could potentially still live on in cyberspace forever, if somebody has already copied it.

Aside from the potential of the federal government looking at what you write, the more immediate issue is this – all it takes is one person who has an issue with what you have written to potentially put you in a world of hurt. So keep this in mind – think before you write. Always. Even your emails to an individual person could end up in the wrong hands if you have a fight.

You could see your ideas go uncredited: This also means that great ideas you come up with can end up getting popularized without you getting the credit. This is why it is a good idea to put your name and copyright information on any information you want credit for, such as blog posts or photos. For photos or memes, this is especially important. You can do this with a watermark or a URL or email address on the photo or meme.

An intellectual property attorney in New York can help

There are a variety of other issues here, and this article can only scratch the service, to learn more about what an intellectual property attorney in New York can do, click here.

Featured images:

 License: Image author owned

Lisa Swan writes for a variety of technology sites. She lives in New York City.

[seopal]

New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/4-simple-design-tweaks-every-blogger-must-do-to-look-professional/

4 Simple Design Tweaks Every Blogger Must Do To Look Professional

It’s easy to get your website up and running within a few hours these days because of the resources you have available to you. Most blogs on the Internet are powered by WordPress and setting up a site on your hosting account can be as easy as clicking one button. That doesn’t mean to say your website will look beautiful because most usually don’t. I suppose it doesn’t really matter in the beginning, but eventually you will want people to appreciate the look of your site.

That is when they will view you as an authority in your niche. Nobody will think you know what you’re talking about if you can’t afford to make your website look pretty. They will also trust you more, so if you’re looking to make some money from your site you are in luck. We’re going to look at a few design tweaks you can make without spending money on a full re-design. You might have to spend more money in the future, but your site will definitely look more presentable now.

You need a proper logo

You don’t need to open up Photoshop if you don’t feel like you can design your own logo. If you look around online I’m sure you could find someone who could make you one for a decent price. You just need to tell them what you’d like and it will be yours a few days later. If you have a decent theme installed it should be easy to upload the logo into your header. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look perfect because the only important thing is that you have one.

Increase the size of your text

You want everyone who visits your site to have an enjoyable time and an easy way to do that is by making sure everything is easy for them to read. The standard font size is usually 12 which is pretty small, so don’t think you can’t bump it up to 14, or even 16 if it looks good. You should also be able to do this inside the backend of your dashboard if you use a decent theme. If you have to mess with the code you might want to pay someone to do it for you.

Clean up your sidebar

Your design needs to look clean and you can start by getting rid of most things inside the sidebar. You don’t want anything in there unless it is essential. Too many people still have the widgets inside their sidebar that died out years ago. It’s a tell-tale sign that you don’t know what you’re doing. The most important thing to include is the opt-in form and we’re going to talk about that in more detail because it’s so important.

A great opt-in form

I hope you’re collecting email addresses because it’s vital if you ever plan on making money. I’m going to assume you are, but I’m also going to assume you are using a standard form that looks horrible. You need to find someone who will design you a new one that looks great. If twice as many people sign up to your list you will make double the money. Unless you really want to know someone’s name you should also just ask for their email address.

This is the minimum

If you want to make your site even better looking there is nothing to stop you from changing more of the design. The things we’ve talked about today are just the basics that need to be carried out because you will see better results. You can wait until your site starts making money until you invest anymore into it.

Featured images:

 License: Creative Commons image source

 License: Creative Commons image source

 License: Creative Commons image source

 License: Creative Commons image source

 License: Creative Commons image source

 License: Creative Commons image source

Today’s guest post is written by Neena Jones. She works as a web developer for a well known website design company in Toronto. She is a passionate blogger and her blogs usually contain tips and tricks for better website designs.

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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/building-links-and-improving-seo-through-content-creation/

Building Links And Improving SEO Through Content Creation

SEO has changed significantly during the last couple of years. Thanks to Google’s continued efforts at making search more effective and information research friendly than ever before, new algorithm changes to search ranking such as Penguin and Panda, amongst numerous others have created a search environment in which mechanical black hat tactics that revolve around algorithm manipulation no longer work nearly as effectively as they used to.

Instead, the focus now is becoming more on organic development of popularity and visible distribution amongst a base of readers and fans. One of the hallmarks of this is the process of link building.

  Link Building Then vs. Now

In previous times, link building used to be something that, as an indicator of site popularity, could be simulated on the internet through spam tactics that gave the appearance of numerous other sites linking back to your own by posting backlinks on blogs, link farms and low quality content mill pages. The end result was largely artificial and showed nothing about the inherent content value of a backlinked page, but gave the impression of real popularity.

Today, this no longer applies. Thanks to its major algorithm changes, Google now scrutinizes the nature of backlinks far more carefully and will derank anything that stinks of artificial tactics or spam. Thus, site owners have been brought back to the process of building links that genuinely were organically, voluntarily shared.

For some, this can be daunting and overwhelming. Agencies like Chicago’s Digital Third Coast and Philadelphia’s Seer Interactive provide a way of outsourcing key SEO tasks

  What Kind of Content Gains Popularity?

What does this mean for you as a webmaster and content creator? Simply this: you now really have to create valuable content on your site.  In creating this content, you are given an opportunity to demonstrate your trustworthiness, expertize and entertaining qualities. In doing those things, you can steadily build a fan base that not only avidly visits your site and raises your visitor count in doing so, but also starts sharing your content with their friends, on their social networking accounts and on their websites.

  Guest Posting your Way to Backlinks

Having built enough of a reputation, or possibly even before that, you can also search for guest posting opportunities. Assuming you site has gained a certain amount of popularity and reader base within your niche, some of these visitors will more than likely be other players in the digital content landscape of your topic. You need to build relationships with them with frequent communication and rapport development. Doing this and enjoying the resulting debate gives you even more opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge to other site owners, especially influential ones.

Eventually, you can leverage this into guest posting requests; offer to write on their sites or blogs in exchange for links back to your own site. This kind of link building applied over and over again as much as possible is not only organic but also favorably viewed by Google’s algorithms and their little bots.

In short time, having built a solid content base, you can work your way up to posting on major sites under your niche’s categories or on sites specifically devoted to the general area of your niche. You can use your sites content base and visitor quantities as persuasion tools to get you posted on a major site, which will obviously be more picky about who it lets write and links to than many smaller pages.

The importance of relevance also can’t be understated. Avoid highly general sites and especially avoid content mills as a source of guest posting backlinks. They are often looked down upon as being too general, easy to backlink from and not good indicators of real quality in a site that’s been linked to.

Instead, focus your energies on pages that are related to your own content and more picky about their quality of content. These kinds of links have the most SEO value and will create a wonderful link profile that gives you long term ranking growth and visitor flow.

  Content Freshness and Frequent Updates

Another highly important hallmark of building up search engine optimization through quality content and building links as well revolves around frequently creating fresh new content that is not only informative and relevant, but also ties into the latest in your niche. People are always on the lookout for new newest possible information and analysis for their searches, in almost any subject. By giving them this, you will gain an advantage over your competitors who don’t.

Although it’s true that Google still (in an example of misguided bias) still favors older, more established links for its page 1 rankings, this is slowly changing and by moving as soon as possible to have the latest content in your niche posted, sharable and indexable, you’ll increase your chances of being the first to rank highly for a given search term whenever Google decides to refresh its listings in a user query.

As a bottom line that’s more important than anything else in the link building and content SEO process, remember to make the material you post to your website rich, as unique as possible and maximally informative. Make it as relevant to your readers’ interests and urgent information needs as possible.

Stephan Jukic is a freelance writer who generally covers a variety of subjects relating to the latest changes in white hat SEO, marketing, marketing tech and brand promotion. He also loves to read and write about subjects as varied as the idea of a location-free business, portable business management, and strategic marketing and advertising tactics. When he’s not busy writing or consulting, he spends his days enjoying life’s adventures either in Canada or Mexico. Connect with Stephan on LinkedIn.

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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/effective-off-page-seo-strategies-you-can-implement-to-improve-your-site-rankings/

Effective Off-Page SEO Strategies You Can Implement To Improve Your Site Rankings

Incorporating search engine optimisation (SEO) into site development is crucial if you want to ensure your site’s visibility on top search engines like Google. Apart from using relevant keywords in your pages, you also have to engage in SEO activities such as content creation, video and image publication, and link building. However, working on your on-page SEO strategies alone will not guarantee a first-page listing on Google’s search results. You also have to put some effort into off-page SEO strategies, some of which are listed below.

Get Your Site Listed in Top Directories

Web surfers have varying preferences with regards to the directory they use to look for product or service providers. Therefore, it is useful to have your site listed in the top directories such as Yahoo Directories and DMOZ. Apart from increasing the number of backlinks to your site, you are also improving your chances of connecting with prospective clients and your intended audience. Remember that your website description is important, so take the time to write and revise this before submitting your site. You also have to list your site under the correct category for a more targeted site listing.

Participate in Relevant Forums

The best way to reach your target market or audience is by utilising existing media such as forums. The great thing about participating in forums is that you get to share your knowledge about industry-related topics, help prospective clients with their questions, and ultimately prove that you are knowledgeable on a specific topic and are therefore capable of providing excellent products and services. You may also want to include links to your site in your forum signature, which interested parties can then follow to visit your site.

Be a Friendly Guest Blogger

Aside from forging good relationships with your existing and prospective clients, it is also important to have good rapport with people in your industry. Contributing to other sites as a guest blogger is advantageous because: 1) it will help you reach a larger audience; 2) regular visitors of the site where you posted your guest blog might decide to check out your site after reading your post; 3) it drives traffic to your site; 4) it helps you to illustrate just how much you know about your industry, and; 5) you get to build links to your site which are important when it comes to improving your site rankings in the search engines.

Comment on Relevant Blogs

You don’t always have to write lengthy blogs to aid your SEO campaign; sometimes, all it takes is a respectful and intelligent comment on another blogger’s site within the same niche as yours. Saying that the post is “great and entertaining” will not pique the interest of your fellow commenters. If you want them to become interested in your site, share something interesting which hasn’t been mentioned in the blog or comment thread yet. Don’t forget to include links in your comment; aside from increasing the backlinks to your site, you are also improving your chances of increasing traffic.

Be Active on Social Bookmarking Sites and Social Media

Social Bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicious, provide an excellent opportunity to increase traffic to your site by means of backlinks incorporated in your contributed content. However, if you are planning on sharing content on these sites, do make sure your articles are keyword-rich, submitted under the correct categories and labelled with the right tags.

It is also important to be active on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ if you want to reach your target audience. Remember that the more people are talking about your posts and site, the more likely you will be to find new clients and followers. Frequently share updates on as many social media outlets as possible and you will definitely see an increase in traffic and may even see your site rise through the SERPs.

To conclude, the most effective means of getting high rankings on Google is by continuing to increase your backlinks which should be strategically placed on other sites. There are other strategies you can try that will also help improve your site’s rankings. You just need patience and perseverance as the desired results may take some time to show, but the fruits of your labour will surely be worth the effort.

Featured images:

 License: Creative Commons image source

Lukasz Zelezny is an SEO expert.  He highly recommends mixing up your link building in order to create a diverse link profile and improve your site’s rankings.

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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/how-to-create-a-squeeze-page-that-will-drive-you-tons-of-subscribers/

How To Create A Squeeze Page That Will Drive You Tons Of Subscribers

Attracting leads are the most important aspect of email marketing. Email marketing can’t be done effectively if you don’t have lots of subscribers in your mailing list. The number of your subscribers will be determined by the way you attract your leads. In other words, your squeeze page is responsible for your email marketing success. Here are 5 tips to create a squeeze page that will drive you tons of subscribers:

1. Be Different From The Crowd

There are thousands of squeeze pages on the internet, even in the same niche as yours. Most marketers are using the same template for their squeeze page. The result is that there are hundreds of squeeze pages that are similar to each other. If you are doing the same thing, then you are diminishing your chance of being recognized by the audience in your niche. That’s why you should tweak your squeeze age so that it will be different from the crowd. You can use the same template, but make sure to tweak it so that it will become completely unique.

2. Give Real Value To Your Audience

Many online marketers are not giving real value to their audience. Yes, they are offering free stuff to their audience, but they don’t make it valuable at all. As a result, their audience can’t extract any value from the free stuff that they are giving. The free stuff then goes straight to the recycle bin. If you want to successfully attract subscribers to your squeeze page, make sure to give the best for your audience. Yes, it’s true that you are giving them free stuff, but make it so valuable that your audience won’t dare to remove it from their PC.

3. Use Simple And Clean Design

Do not put too many clutters in your squeeze page. Your visitors don’t like that. Instead, use simple and clean design. It will help your audience to go straight into filling their email address in your opt-in form. If there is too much clutters available, your audience can’t see your opt-in. It will also be a sign of the quality of your mailing list. Of course, people will have a bad impression toward your mailing list if you are putting too much clutter on your squeeze page.

4. Don’t Have Too Much Talk

Your squeeze page copy should be short and to the point. Do not have too much talk in your squeeze page. Why? Your visitors will only see three aspects of your squeeze page. First, the headline . If the headline is good, then they will take a look at the second aspect. The second aspect is bullet points. What are the benefits of joining your mailing list? If they see that the bullet points are impressive, they will take a look at the third aspect before they decide to join your list. The third aspect is the free stuff that you’re giving to them. So, you don’t need to create a lengthy squeeze page. You just need to put three main aspects into it: good headline, interesting bullet points (benefits of joining), and enticing free stuff.

5. Put A Clear Call To Action

Ask people to join your list. Yes, give them clear call to action so that they can take action immediately. This is probably the best way to close your squeeze page. After giving them some good reasons to join, the closing phase should be to include a clear call to action. Let them know where to put their email address. Put a nice graphic in your squeeze page that tells your audience to enter their email address and hit the ‘Join’ button.

Those are 5 tips that you can follow to create a squeeze page that will drive you tons of subscribers. Remember that the quality of your squeeze page will determine whether people will join your list or not. So, you should follow the tips above to ensure that you have a squeeze page that really make your audience wants to join your list immediately.

Author Bio Mike is a Blogger with special interest in blogging on SEO / Internet Marketing niche. Recently he has seen a surgen in number of website/blog owners who tends to buy pinterest followers to get backlinks for ranking purposes, and he wonders whether this is a ethical and good practise or not.

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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/3-reasons-why-you-should-consider-voice-over-dubbing-in-foreign-languages/

3 Reasons Why You Should Consider Voice-over Dubbing In Foreign Languages?

3 Reasons Why You Should Consider Voice-over Dubbing in Foreign Languages

One of the best ways of sending a message to people is by making a video. This is why it’s no surprise that video making has turned into a multi-billion dollar industry. Great movies that captured the hearts of countless people have greatly influenced today’s culture. Businesses also understand the power of video marketing, hence the countless commercials you see online and on television. Others make video to voice out their opinions, or simply get the attention of people as an attempt to get famous. With the abundance of video hosting sites on the Internet, video has also become the most popular form of sharing information online. It doesn’t matter if you’re making a film, a marketing ad, or just making a personal statement. If you want to reach out to people using videos, you should consider voice over dubbing. Voice over dubbing has been used by a lot of popular video creators for years, giving them an edge over their non-translated competition. You might think that dubbing is something reserved for major films from Hollywood, but it’s actually important for small-time video makers.

Expand your potential target audience

The first reason why voice over dubbing is important for your videos is that it helps them available to a wider audience. With voice over translation, viewers from areas that don’t share your native language will still be able to understand the message of your videos. With more than 75% of the world not being English speakers, it’s easy to see how many viewers you can get by offering your video in English only.

Make your video content more accessible

Voice over dubbing is also important if your target audience include younger viewers. Adding translated subtitles to a video which targets children won’t get you that much viewers. Using subtitles forces younger viewers to read the lines while trying to keep up with what’s happening in your video. They won’t be able to appreciate what’s on the screen and most likely get bored, if not frustrated. Voice over dubbing eliminates that problem, and it also allows children to connect to the video in their native tongue. While many people can enjoy video with translated subtitles, there are also those who still prefer dubbing simply because the content is much easier to consume.

Communicate emotions better

If you look at popular advertisements, many of them use catchy slogans to attract customers. The same goes for making video advertisements, especially those that target foreign audiences. Slogans won’t be as interesting and as memorable to someone if it’s not communicated in his or her native language. Messages can be passed through foreign audio but not emotions. If you want to create that strong connect, you need to address your audience in their native language, with properly localized content. There are other alternatives for translating videos such as using subtitles, but there’s no denying that voice over translation is still one of the most effective ways to reach out to more people. While other options can help your video get more views, none of those options let your video connect to the audience better than dubbing.

Featured images:

 License: Image author owned

This is a guest post by Hanna Golota of Globalme Language&Technology. Like them on Facebook if you enjoyed this entry!

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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/famous-social-media-writing-errors-by-famous-people/

Famous Social Media Writing Errors By Famous People

People make writing mistakes on social media all the time. Maybe they’re just writing too quickly to proofread their work, or maybe they simply don’t know how to write properly. Either way, you’ll certainly find a spelling or grammatical mistake on your news feed every day.

Celebrities are included in this group. With more and more celebrities using social media for personal or professional reasons, many of them are finding themselves the topic of conversations when their tweets and posts contain writing errors. The following are some famous social media writing mistakes by famous people.

Chad Ochocinco

Chad Ochocinco is a professional football player in the NFL. In 2010, he was fined $26,000 for tweeting during one of his preseason games. Apparently the NFL has rules against a player’s use of social media, stating they cannot use it 90 minutes before the start of their game up until their post game media obligations are over. Not only did the topic go viral, but Ochocinco’s poorly written Twitter response to the issue also went viral.

50 Cent

50 Cent is always making enemies, and he decided to take out his frustration with French Montana through Twitter. Unfortunately, his poor use of grammar, spelling and punctuation got more buzz than his threat.

Lamar Odom

Even celebrities have to get creative with the 140-character limit, but Lamar Odom took it a step too far when he posted a message of random phrases that contained a variety of misspellings and grammatical errors.

Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson is known to be a passionate man, and he allows his passions to run through on his Twitter feed. Apparently, he’s also known to make up his own words, as some of his vocabulary cannot be found in the dictionary. Here’s to hoping he was just trying to be creative.

Lil’ Wayne

Someone should tell Lil’ Wayne that the “k” sound can also be made with a “c”. He should also be taught how to spell things appropriately, or at least use a spell checker.

Jamie Oliver

Jamie Oliver is a celebrity chef who likes to use his Twitter feed to inform the world of news he hears as well as his own personal endeavors. When Oliver heard a story about UK farmers, he turned to Twitter. Unfortunately his poor spelling, grammar and punctuation got more buzz than the news he was trying to share.

Mary J. Blige

Mary J. Blige used Twitter to express her disdain for those who always question her intelligence. Unfortunately for Mary, her tweet was filled with spelling and grammatical errors, including misspelling the word “intelligence”.

Ashton Kutcher

Ashton Kutcher made headlines when his tweet was misinformed. After hearing only bits and pieces about the Joe Paterno scandal at Penn State, Kutcher took to Twitter to mention his displeasure. His news feed then blew up with people attacking him for endorsing Paterno’s behavior, and Kutcher then handed his Twitter account over to a third party. This just proves that it’s not always about spelling and grammar, but also about your content.

Featured images:

 License: Image author owned

 License: Image author owned

 License: Image author owned

 License: Image author owned

 License: Image author owned

 License: Image author owned

 License: Image author owned

 License: Image author owned

Caleb Grant is a social media manager and avid blogger.  He uses an online grammar check tool to proof his writing before posting it online.

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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/5-ways-to-easily-dominate-your-niche-in-affiliate-marketing/

5 Ways To Easily Dominate Your Niche In Affiliate Marketing

Niche domination is very important and essential for your affiliate marketing success. Without niche domination, you can’t recommend your affiliate products effectively. People will follow your recommendation only if they can trust you. And the way to build trust in this business is by dominating your niche, which means to be known as an expert in your niche. Here are 5 ways to easily dominate your niche in affiliate marketing:

1. Master The Narrow Niche

You can’t dominate your niche if you’re choosing the wrong niche. Can you dominate a general weight loss niche? Most probably you can’t, unless you have millions of dollars to invest on the marketing promotion. Your best chance to dominate a niche is to choose a narrow niche that has enough audience to monetize. This is the best way to do affiliate marketing. So, it is better for you to master the narrow niche because it will give you the way to dominate it easily.

2. Create Interesting And Valuable Content

You will dominate your niche by building strong trust between you and your audience. You need a website and strong branding to do that. But, more importantly, you need to create interesting and valuable content in your website so that people can appreciate your knowledge and trust your expertise. Your website content is everything that you need to have in order to build strong trust between you and your audience.

3. Always Have Different And Unique Insights

How can you make your website so interesting that people want to visit it again? You can make your website interesting with unique and different insights that you offer to your readers. This is a good way to build strong popularity for your website. The more people come to your website, the more solid your presence will be in your niche. Always deliver content with unique and different insights that will tickle your audience’s mind. This is the most effective way to build quick popularity within your niche.

4. Be The First To Deliver The Latest News

Make your website so that people will go to it the first time they think about your niche. How can you do that? You can do it by becoming the first one to deliver the latest news about your niche. So, this is what you need to do. Update your website regularly with the latest information within your niche. If you keep doing this, you’ll be able to become the leading authority in your niche in just a few months. You just need to consistently deliver the latest news to your audience and spread the word about it quickly.

5. Spread Your Promotion Efforts

Don’t just focus your promotion efforts in one area. For instance, many people are only focusing their promotion on guest posting. This might be a good way to attract traffic to your website, but this is not the only way. There are hundreds of promotion methods that you can explore and use to build your website popularity. You need to spread your promotion to many channels so that you can get the best result from it.

Those are 5 ways to easily dominate your niche in affiliate marketing. Whatever the product that you promote, dominating your niche is the first step for success.

Author Bio Bren is a tech blogger with great interest in SEO and IM Technologies. He occassionally contributes informative resource to Assisted Reputation, one of the leading seo companies in uk.

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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/06/customer-feedback-should-you-listen-to-all-of-it/

Customer Feedback: Should You Listen To All Of It?

You can learn a lot by listening to what your customers have to say about your business. When a company is just getting started, listening to their customers can help fuel their growth. But as you may have experienced with your own business, there comes a point when it becomes too difficult to listen to all of the feedback you receive. If you’ve recently been feeling guilty about this, find out why it’s actually not a bad thing.

Don’t Get Bogged Down

Although it can be very useful, not all customer feedback has the same value. At the end of the day, some of the feedback you receive is just going to be noise. For example, almost every business has to deal with at least a few customers who are never going to be 100% happy. Even when people in this group receive the best experience possible, they can still find some small detail to nitpick.

Look for Trends

Since it’s not practical or even beneficial to fully process every piece of feedback you receive, a better option is to look for trends. Whether it’s a feature request or a complaint about some aspect of your operations, if different customers keep bringing up the same topic, it’s definitely one that’s worth your full attention.

What About Social Media?

If your business recently got serious about using social media to listen to customer feedback, you’ve probably been quite happy with the experience so far. Not only is being able to instantly connect with potential and existing customers great, but it’s always exciting to see when someone makes a positive comment about your company.

Unfortunately, the reality of social media is not everyone will only have positive things to say forever. Instead, it’s almost guaranteed that the time will come when someone makes a negative comment in a Facebook update or Tweet.

When you see that type of comment, your first reaction may be to respond in defense or even anger. However, if you want to avoid the types of mistakes that many other companies have made, don’t fire off an emotional response. Instead, take a deep breath and think about what the person actually said.

Unless it’s an obvious troll, you will want to respond. But needing to respond doesn’t mean you have to immediately make a lengthy statement. Instead, something as simple but sincere as “so sorry, trying to get to the bottom of this right now” will go a long way. Then, depending on the specific situation, you can decide whether it makes sense to continue with the public conversation or take it private through a channel like email.

Handling customer feedback is always going to be a balancing act. The best way to avoid getting bogged down by the sheer amount and variety of feedback you receive is to focus on looking for trends. And whenever you receive negative feedback through social media, just remember to pause for a second before responding so that your emotions don’t get the best of you!

Featured images:

 License: Creative Commons image source

Craig Klein is CEO and Founder of SalesNexus.com, an online CRM software provider for small businesses and sales organizations. Craig is a sales process guy. His passion is helping small businesses hire, train, measure and manage sales people through their sales process. Follow Craig on Google+ to learn more.

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New Post has been published on SEO PAL

New Post has been published on http://seopalbg.com/2013/05/creative-seo-tip-jacking-the-news-like-a-content-marketing-pro/

Creative SEO Tip- Jacking The News Like A Content Marketing Pro

With content marketing quickly becoming the widest form of ongoing link building, traditional tactics are quickly going to become boring and overused. I want to fuel your content marketing toolset, and bring you a little creative tip that you can start using immediately.

Newsjacking is massively underused, and extremely rewarding. When used correctly, it can bring huge amounts of exposure, social signals and links for your site.

What is Newsjacking?

  Newsjacking is very new to the SEO world, but is an obvious extension to content marketing. Whilst the term itself sounds negative, and a little black hat, it really isn’t. Newsjacking is a strategy where marketers capitalise on an increasing demand for a certain news topic, and use it to their advantage.

Breaking news can quickly become extremely popular, and smart marketers use it to their advantage by joining in with the overall discussion, by contributing a post of their own on the topic.

In practice, newsjacking works like this:

Pay close attention to breaking news topics that can be angled in a post to be relevant to your business’s niche.

Deep understanding of the key phrases that are being searched for surrounding the breaking news topic.

Produce a well-researched piece of content directly fulfilling the need for knowledge surrounding the topic.

Efficiently promoting the piece of content in order to be found predominantly when related phrases are searched for within the search engines.

It’s important to understand that you can’t simply hijack any news as it grows in popularity. Rather, it needs to be related to your niche, or intelligently angled in a way that makes it relevant. However, most businesses are not going to have a problem with finding breaking news related to their industry.

Newsjacking In Action

  In order for you to fully understand newsjacking, I thought it would make sense to give you a couple of examples of it in action:

A high profile celebrity theft could be used by a home security business to highlight the importance of securing your property.

A house fire could be used by an insurance company to promote the idea of insuring your property.

Newsjacking is extremely similar to content marketing, and can even be considered a part of it. Similar to the fundamental aspects of content marketing, the content comes first and marketing second. Fulfill people’s desire for newsworthy content, and use that opportunity to promote your brand on the backend.

Timing is critical with newsjacking. A well-timed, expertly researched, excellently written piece of newsworthy content can acquire a massive amount of attention, and grow your brand hugely.

If this was a bit too advanced for you, and you are interested in learning the basic concepts surrounding SEO and blogging, I host a range of SEO training courses that you may wish to get involved in. We won’t delve too deeply into newsjacking, but we will cover basic concepts that will allow you and your business to get the advantage needed to rise above the competition.

Claire Jarrett, a qualified teacher turned internet marketing mentor, offers a range of SEO and adwords training courses via helpwithppc.com