Comments in the social media and their marketing value

Comments in the social media  have an awful lot more influence than most marketers realise, and so you should think about developing a social media strategy which includes a section on commenting within the social media, and how this should be handled by your marketing team as a whole.

The other day I came across a post by +Guy Kawasaki discussing  some of the the many different issues around comments and commenting titled "the art of Google + comments"

The art of commenting is a very important part of FUFISM or functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media that really needs attention from your marketing management structures and Search Engine Consultants. Search engines are increasingly using so called social signals in their algorithms to evaluate the aboutness of  social media   posts, web sites, blogs and other online content.

A single post with  a single link to a web page / blog post or other online content in any social media profile that receives a large volume of social signals can put  that specific online content right at the top of the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) in a very short time frame.  Marketing people thus need to understand the concept of social signals, and then work out how best they can generate large volumes of search engine friendly social signals for specific posts, and how to mange these issues in a sustainable manner, to keep their content as close to the top of the SERP's as they can.

The grip that the social media has on our SERP's (Search Engine Results pages) is not permanent, but wanes drastically over a relatively short time period, then settles down as the age factor becomes less influential, and so fresh comments and follow-up replies that induce conversation around the topic are essential in keeping fresh social signals to your post. How to achieve this is not discussed in many places, but Guy's post helps put the spotlight on this rather difficult topic in a very interesting way. Guy Kawasaki does not go into to much detail, from an SEO perspective but does give the basics as well as some essential etiquette tips.

This post by +Guy Kawasaki is a must read post for all social media optimisation and search engine optimisation practitioners.

Guy's post does not discuss the FUFISM aspect nor the SEO or SMO aspects of commenting, so we will fill you in here and supply a few extra pointers that you may consider when using any social media platform as a marketing tool. Please note that our preferred social media platform is G+

FUFISM = Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media

SEO = Search engine Optimisation

SMO = Social Media Optimization

You do need to remember that this is a business approach to using the social media as a marketing tool, so the many aspects of marketing need to be on the table and available for quick reference when commenting on a post that your co-worker made, or relying to a comment made on your post, or keeping tabs on a  post you have been assigned to monitor.

When dealing with all online marketing, once the product description is finalized the next step is to define the target market. This target market definition is a very important part of

• the Key word Selection process
• the copy writing process
• the IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation)  process
• the OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) process
• the SMO (Social Media Optimisation) process 
• the Content marketing process
• many other diverse online marketing aspects which have indirect influence on your SERP's

These process need to be tweaked and manipulated carefully as you create the original copy of your post, and captured into your system so that this is available to your social media team when they start promoting the post through other social media platforms as well as in you web site and your blog. Your web site may not hold the capability of keeping track on comments or have a commenting system in place, but your blog will and so will your social media pages, which include both personal profile pages and business or product pages.
The primary thing to keep in mind here is that all the social signals generated by a post are recorded and stored within the search engines database, and connected to many different areas where there will be some SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) that will be processed. These include but are not limited to

• the author of the post
• the content of the post (key words and topic as well as aboutness)
• links within the post to
• previous post
• other social media profiles
• Google maps
• Google local
• your blogs or others blogs
• your web sites or other web pages
• online forums or groups
• images with in the post  (remember to add XML info to your image)
• The total length of the post (very important that post exceeds 250 characters)
• comments
• who commented with their details
• replies with who replied and the content of the reply
• the time differences between posting and comments as well as replies
• the aboutness of each comment or reply as well as
• the aboutness of 
• linked pages 
• posts 
•  profiles
• Quality of comments and replies as related directly to the original post as well as to previous comments on the post and include links within the comments.

So there are an awful lot of things to consider when replying to a comment on your post when you evaluate the Search Engine Optimisation value and the Social Media Optimization
of your reply or comment.

• Bed sure to have target market description and related product / service info on hand.
• try to stay on topic
• try to stimulate further dialog and generate a conversation
• try to use relevant marketing approved key words as per target market instructions.
• have a plan in place before you make a post!!!!!   for future reference
•  always write at least one full sentence in you comment
• remember to tag the author or commenter who you are attempting to lure into a conversation by plussing them personally in your reply or comment.

Commenting  with the intent on generating a conversation is not as easy as it sounds, and requires considerable skill and knowledge of the topic, product, service and related issues. This means that the person who is handling your Social Media Optimisation (SMO) needs to be well informed as well as well read on your product, service and company related issues.

This job is essential to get good SERP's and should not be left to a junior marketer, but rather to a qualified member of your sales team or public relations team or be a dedicated social media optimisation specialists. This person should also attend your regular marketing meetings and be aware of the FUFISM principles, as well as have the authority to get others within your marketing infrastructure involved in the ongoing conversation building strategies which are essential to your social signal development.

Comments have immense value as social signal generating tools, and the more comments with responses from the original poster and others linked to him / her through  shared profile pages, and pages that have them listed as contributors to the same web site, blog or  post that the search engines picks up, the higher your information will appear in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages ).

Comments in the social media thus have an awful lot more influence than most marketers realise, and so you should think about developing a social media strategy which includes a section on commenting within the social media, and how this should be handled by your marketing team as a whole.

Please visit our G+ page here

Where does CONTENT MARKETING fit into the FUFISM picture?

I am often asked where content marketing fits into the FUFISM picture and how is content marketing related to FUFISM. This question is asked so often that I felt the need to write a post covering this, but when I started  to put pen to paper I realized that there were some basic explanations that needed to be defined in the correct context, because the SEOI (Search Engine Optimisation Industry) has been attacked in many strange ways and the statement that SEO is DEAD has been bandied around so often  that many people believe this to be true.

Firstly we need to start with the newest term and explain what is FUFISM, then we need to ensure that you understand the meaning of a few other terms, and that there is no confusion around the meaning of terms that the online marketing world has redfined for their personal consumption to enhance the so called death of SEO,  which is a blatant lie and used to market their own personal interests.

FUFISM is an acronym brought to life by Info4u to help us in our efforts to explain the use of the social media in todays business environment.

FUFISM = Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media. 

The advent of the social media with sites like FACEBOOK, TWITTER, LINKEDIN, PINTEREST and GOOGLE PLUS have changed the way that people communicate in their social environment, and this change has flowed out of the social realm into the workplace, affecting business communications in many strange and mysterious ways.

It has thus become imperative that business understand this very serious change and take the necessary steps to ensure that their business communications methods are adapted, allowing business to find ways to make use of these changes in their  communications policies, and that the use of social media as a communication medium, with its wide variety of different tools is integrated into business communication structures in a more professional, user friendly manner so that both internal communications and communications with the public at large are easily established and well managed from a company public relations perspective.

Business must thus integrate the social media  into all their communication strategies, especially their marketing strategies with the primary focus on connecting with their target market groups for the purposes of marketing, advertising and public relations management issues.

FUFISM is also a philosophy where many things are shared, focusing on the  marketing arena and the Search Engine Optimisation strategies that are used to ensure that a company's online content is located by the intended target market, then tracking the impacts of the various social media marketing strategies, and ensuring that every person within the company's marketing structures understands their role that they fulfill, as well as the results that  their individual efforts have achieved.

One of the primary pillars of the FUFISM philosophy is that each person within the company marketing team understands the complexity of the SEOI (Search Engine Optimisation Industry) and has the tools to visualize each separate component's influence on their own field of expertise, and have some influence on the reporting structure to show others in the marketing team what their own efforts are, with a focus on how their personal efforts may influence the many other sectors in either a positive or negative manner, so that the necessary actions may be implemented to counter any negative impact or capitalize on any positive influence.

FUFISM dictates that each person who is in control of, or manages any online content should attend regular public relations meetings, as well as marketing meetings where the effectiveness of each online environment is discussed, along with the methods and tools used to ensure that the online information made available in that environment is compatible with all other online information and integrated into the company communications plan, as provided for in the directives which have been issued according to minutes of meetings. This is essential for accountability, which is one of the corner stones of  the FUFISM philosophy.

Each person appointed to perform any duties which entail publication of online materials of any nature should be held responsible to ensure that feed back on when (Date and Time) the online publication became effective, so that this can be used to determine the impacts of this information on the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) of any related work which may be referenced or linked to from within the work published. This is an essential part of FUFISM and should not be taken lightly, as there could be unforeseen negative impacts on the SERP's if a search engine decides that this is SPAM and takes action in the form of a censure of some type.

This logging of publication or feed back on publication should help identify the specific post or publication that causes the SERP's to either improve or drop. Without FUFISM management strategies in place these issues would be very difficult to isolate and then  rectify.

WHAT IS ONLINE CONTENT ?

Online content is all the stuff that your entire company puts online for what ever reason. This includes but is not limited to

• your web publications
• your blog publications
• your social media publications
• you online marketing
• your online advertising
• your online news publications and press releases
• your online public relations efforts

The above content and any other online content you may have made available to either the public or your own staff does not happen without a plan of some sort, unless you are playing games and have no clue as to the power of the internet.

Each publication that your company places online should be part of a plan and have 

•  a purpose
• a set of aims
• some objectives 
• a time frame

Deciding on what content to place online is a complex task that should involve your public relations and marketing teams working together as a unit to make a company policy frame work, which would dictate who is responsible to   research the purpose, aims and objectives of having any online content in place from the beginning, then allocate specific persons to formulate content to satisfy the identified purposes, aims and objectives in a co-operative manner, so as to solicit the best input from your public relations team along with the persons that have been appointed to control and manage the environment in which that online content will be made available to the specific target market group that it was intended to reach.

WHAT IS SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a complex affair and covers every strategy that you have in place to ensure that your intended target markets find and follow your proposed online call to action statements for the sub set of information which you would like  that specific target market to experience.

The primary support structure which ensures that Search Engine Optimisation succeeds is target market selection and the subsequent key word research around the information that you would like that specific target market to evaluate and take action on, then ensuring that the specific online page where this information is housed has the necessary IPSEO (In-Page search Engine Optimisation) done by your staff and / or consultants, and that this is then followed up with the necessary OPSEO (Off-Page Search Engine Optimsation) in the social media and through other company approved channels by your staff and / or consultants.

for more on what SEO is see previous posts in our blog at http://4ubrand.blogspot.com

is SEO DEAD 
general description of SEO
Google author and SEO
Off page SEO issues
The value of Social signals and SEO
SEO for start ups in under ten minutes
Understanding search experience from an SEO viewpoint
how much do you spend on SEO and Social media
who is in charge of your SEO and why?
The SEO value of out bound links

WHAT IS MARKETING?

Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling the product or service. Marketing is a critical business function for attracting customers.

Online marketing is thus the online process of communicating with your customers for the purpose of selling your service or product online or through another online avenue.

Now that we have an understanding of the core components listed above we can continue on to discuss CONTENT MARKETING and its place in the FUFISM philosophy.  Using the above information content marketing may be loosely described as follows:

Content marketing is the process of communicating the value of your online information (content) to search engines, content aggregators and other online repositories for the purpose of ensuring that your online information is listed or indexed and placed in their databases then found by your intended target market when they search online for your information and displayed in SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

Online content marketing is using relevant and valuable information to attract potential customers to your online content.Good online content will not only attract, but if done correctly, will engage your target audience and drive profitable action to your business. Learn how to implement a content strategy in your business. see this article for more

Read here to get a few different views on what content marketing is but keep in mind that online content marketing is a subset of Search Engine Optimisation strategies and needs to be treated accordingly. Many other explanations for content marketing ignore the SEO component and treat content marketing as a stand alone issue, which is very bad for your online business efforts.

NOW HOW DOES THIS FIT IN WITH FUFISM?

Once you have an understanding that online content marketing is a subset of Search Engine Optimisation then you can get to grips with the idea that online content marketing must be integrated into your marketing philosophy at an early stage. Content marketing should be integrated into your marketing strategy at the point where you create the content plan and list the purpose, aims and objectives of a specific subject, product or service that you need to bring to the attention of a selected target market through your online content.

Target market selection is a critical component of your content marketing, as the content should be constructed and formulated with a call to action statement in a manner that is recognizable and appreciated as important to your selected target market.

Having great content with an effective call to action statement is the first part of content marketing, the second part, which is putting the In Page SEO component of your content in place, requires careful target market definition with an understanding of the characteristics of this target market , as the third part, off page SEO is defendant of the second part for its strategy.

It is good Good content marketing practice to follow  up with some cross media marketing in the traditional media such as RADIO, NEWS PAPER and / or MAGAZINES to put the key words into your target markets minds so they will search online for more info on the the product or service in question.

This is where FUFISM comes into the picture as these things all need to be coordinated and managed to co-inside with the social media marketing of your online content to ensure  maximum impact and enforcement of the selected key words across many different platforms that each has a small accumulative impact on your SEO and the accompanying SERP's

Google Plus Author Rank Do you make use of this?

What do you think of this new SEO avenue that Google has put on the table?

Some say it is great some say it sucks and some say what ? I don't believe this exists.

In my humble opinion this is a wonderful avenue to add some SEO value to yourself as an author, and it works very well. My image shows up next my search results for a number of terms in a few different websites that I own, as well as for my blogs and some posts that I make in other blogs.

Search for "Frank Gainsford" in Google and see for yourself...



after watching the video please leave a comment for me to evaluate

This adds value to your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and improves your SERP's (Search Engine Results Page) big time. G+ or Google Plus is also a  great social media platform that is steadily growing in size and stature, which also adds many different SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) to your other online pages in strange ways that elevate them considerably in the SERP's when your reference them in your posts. My preliminary research on my own work shows that once you have established your Authorship credentials this is even more effective.

If you are following my previous posts and have an understanding of FUFISM then you will realise where this fits in with your Functional User Friendly Integrated social Media policies and how this can influence the rest of your marketing, and the impacts are quite impressive.

Please leave a comment discussing your views on Google authorship. I need this for some research. If you want to see the results of this research please say so in your comments.

Thanx again for visiting my blog.

Using Images in your Content Marketing

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a very complicated issue with many diverse fields working collectively to ensure that your intended target market locates your online information using a search engine.   Each of the  many disciplines adds its own set of values to your SEO in subtle ways that most SEO practitioners deem irrelevant and ignore.

The most noticeable culprit here is the KEY WORDS meta tag in the head section, which Google says is not used in determining your PR (Page Rank), and so most SEO practitioners ignore the key words meta tag and its great value to each of  your pages and your web site as a whole, especially when determining the aboutness of your work.


This article by Jenny Maclean covering the use of images in your content marketing is very interesting, and gives you some good pointers.








Content marketing is a big component of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and should not be viewed as competition to SEO but rather as a supplement to SEO. Images are an essential part of content marketing and the value  that images add to the SEO efforts of your work should never be under-estimated. This sounds confusing, but SEO is used in content marketing, and content marketing is a very large component of Search Engine optimization, which is why you need to be careful of separating the two but yet understanding that they are interconnected and part of the same bundle of confusion called marketing.

One of the most important things from an SEO perspective to remember when using images are the XML markup within the image, which your viewers will never even know exists, just as most of those who visit your web pages have no idea that all web pages have a <HEAD> section.  Image title, image description, image related key-words and other image describing elements can, and should be added to the image XML data, and saved in an embedded format as part of your image. You need to make sure that these embedded XML elements are directly related to your site content matching your in-page SEO content, especially any META DATA that you may have placed within the <HEAD> section of your page if you have access to it.

Unfortunately the <HEAD> section is not available when using many blogging platforms, and many web design programs also use wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) platforms which exclude access to the <HEAD> section of your pages. What you as an SEO practitioner need to do,  is take some time to evaluate the image that you will be using in the context of

• where this image  will reside within your page, 
• what you are trying to portray with the image
• what the image represents, 
• what is the purpose of including this image
• how this image will impact on your SEO
• who your target market is, and how they will react to your image
• how this image relates to other in-page SEO issues

You then need to ensure that the relevant SEO specific set of  image related key words, image title, image description and other relevant image related XML data such as image geo location, image date and all other issues relevant to your  image are best suited to your IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation) and included in the embedded  image XML by your graphic design team or image optimisation specialist..
 If you use the same base set of variables within the <HEAD> section of your page and include the same or similar  set of key words in your page as well as the embedded  image XML data elements, then your image will get an awful lot more attention from Google and other search engines. Most web design people forget about the power of this embedded XML data that is used by image designers to manage image classification and image description.

Graphic art designers use these embedded XML data sets that are stored within the image XML data, very differently to web design, or SEO staff and place XML data that is not relevant to search engine optimisation within the embedded image XML for graphic design people to use.

As    Jenny Maclean   says in her article , some sites gain a considerable amount of their Google traffic through Google Images rather than the main web search. If you want to rank well in Images, make sure your image files are aptly named,  but you also need to ensure that your image has the right XML data embedded within the image, so that search engines can index and manage the embedded XML Search Engine compatible elements  in ways that benefit your total SEO effort.

GET YOUR IMAGE DESIGN TEAM ONTO THIS and remember to apply FUFISM (Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media) see http://fufism.info4u.co.za for more info on integrating your SEO efforts to ensure better SERP's.

As always the selection of your target market  is important to your SEO tactics. Understanding how your selected target market will react to your image is also essential, and the XML embedded into your image file should take this target market reaction into consideration when choosing the image name as well as the embedded XML data for your  image key words, image title and image description.

The embedded XML data that is associated with all images that you will be publishing within your pages should be discussed with

• your copy writer,
• your  Social media team
• Your web site design team
• your marketing  and advertising teams
• Your public relations team
• your SEO team
• others who are identified through the application of your FUFISM policies.

It thus follows that your web design team, your Social media team, your blog team and all others working on any aspect of your online marketing all understand that you need to be working together as a solid, unified team when it  to comes to SEO issues.  Each member of the team needs to ensure that their knowledge in their specific field is integrated into your marketing strategies through the application of FUFISM (Functional User Friendly integrated Social Media)  This integration can only be achieved through closer working relationships between all the role players, with an understanding of what each role player actualy contributes to your marketing, and the methods used to ensure that each role players input is  appreciated by the other members of the team.

If you were un-aware of the embedded  XML data that can be used in your images, then you need to take some time out and discuss what embedded XML data can actualy be included in your images embedded XML data with your graphic design team or image management staff.

Be pro active and inform the rest of your SEO team of issues that you believe should be included by talking about them at marketing meetings...

World SEO Education: What Is Off-Page SEO? Off-Page SEO Techniques

 This post below is a good entry level post on off page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which I would like to expand on.

World SEO Education: What Is Off-Page SEO? Off-Page SEO Techniques : Today my topic of discussion is: Off Page Optimization. I would like to entertain my readers with every minute aspects of SEO and their techniques so that they become self-independent in managing their website traffic and quality.

SEO or Search Engine optimisation is a tricky business with many mis-informed  people proclaiming that SEO is dead, because they do not have a clear understanding of the term SEO and what it means.

SEO or search engine optimisation is the collective work of your entire staff in their attempts to ensure that your pages are found by your intended target market when they use any search engine to find your information.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is divided into 2 (two) major sectors. The first is in- page  SEO and the second is off page SEO  

IN-PAGE SEO

In-page SEO has two components which are each aimed at different target markets, and have very different purposes, but both are used collectively when doing any off page SEO. It is essential that any SEO practitioner explain this to you in terms that you understand, other wise you will not be very successful in your off page SEO.

The first component of in-page SEO is the stuff contained within the head section of your page, which is written specifically for the Search Engines. This section of your page is not visible to the end user, and contains all the META TAGS and related information including but not limited to

• Page description
• page title
• Keywords list
• author and contributors
• categories and    geographical info
• language and script info  

 The second component of in-page SEO is the body section of the page, which is written specifically for the viewer or end-user of your page. This section contains all the text, images, videos and other visual stuff which the end user will see onscreen when the page is loaded in a browser.  

The body section of the page is used by search engines to determine the aboutness of a page, and the text used here is what the search  Engines  will index in their databases to match to the queries that searchers use when looking for your information. 

Search engines try to match the aboutness of your page to the aboutness of a search query using a wide variety of variables, most of which are contained in the Off-page SEO of your pages.

In short the head section is written for search engines to allow them an opportunity to categorize and define your page, and the body section is written for your viewers , giving them a visual interpretation of your information. Search engines use the visual interpretation and the information in the head section to compile a profile of your page which they will match to a users search through a SEA (Search Engine Algorithm) and display what the search engine perceives to be the closest match of the the search request and all indexed pages in the SERP's (Search Engine Results pages)
 

OFF-PAGE SEO 

Off-page SEO is all the collective marketing of your page by your entire staff, and other sources that are beyond your control and includes but is not limited to the following

•  Internal links with in your web site
• All your social media efforts to get visitors to your web site
• Your blogs and user forums
• Your online marketing with paid adds
• Your link building strategies
• the registration of your web site with search engines and related platforms
• your public relations marketing and related online strategies
• What others have to say about your pages in their respective online platforms which include but is not limited to
• their web sites
• their blogs
• their social media platforms
• peer review sites
• product / services review sites
• news papers online pages
• radio stations online pages
•  your customers discussing your products in their social media post

 The first and most important aspect of SEO is the least understood, and least used component of in-page SEO which is the meta tags in the <head> section of your page. The META TAGS within the head section of your page are used by search engines to evaluate the content of your page and establish a context for the information within the body section of the page. Most end users do not even know that there is a <head> section of your page, and  many people ignore this with some SEO PRACTITIONERS even saying SEO is DEAD, because they have heard that the KEYWORD META TAG is not used in page rank scores.

When doing your off page SEO you need to use the information that your in-page SEO technical team used when  creating the <head> section of your page as well as the <body> section content in meaningful and constructive ways.  This is actualy a lot simpler than it sounds, and you can get the desired information from a number of sources, with the easiest being to use your browsers functionality to see the page source, and copying the contents of the head section to a text document for you to read and understand at your leisure.  

Another good source of this information is your SEO team who will be able to also give you a brief on the aims, objectives, purpose and intent of the page, which will help you in the copy writing of your off page SEO and all related social media posts. When doing any off page SEO be sure to  include the full URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or web address of the page you are marketing, to ensure that search engines give the correct page the SEOV (Search Engine Optimisation Value) that is accrued by your off page SEO efforts.

Remember FUFISM  - (Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media) and ensure that all the role players who are involved in your SEO work together as a unified team with a single goal in mind. That goal should be to increase the return on investment in your web site through the acquisition of targeted visitors to your web site who are qualified through your use of properly targeted SEO which will ensure that your pages are found by your intended target market group and not by the wrong target market groups.

To ensure that your team gets the best results from your off page SEO  you will need to employ the FUFISM philosophy  The FUFISM philosophy is really quite simple and easy to manage, as all your team will be on the same page, and share many marketing insights that would otherwise be kept as departmental secrets . Once you employ the FUFISM philosophy there will be no infighting between departments to see who gets the lions share of the marketing budget and many research areas will  be handled differently, as the information gathered will be shared across departments and not duplicated unnecessarily as they would be when departments are competing against each other for a share of the marketing budget.

Do you buy your back links?

The purchasing of back links is frowned upon by most SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) and when they detect it, your web site may be punished and removed from the organic SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

This is serious, and may impact on you, or if you do SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for a company your clients web sites.

the case of Interflora (those guys that sell flowers) www.interflora.com is quite a wake up call, and all those invloved in the SEO Industry should take heed.

read about the story 

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2013/03/01/interflora-suffers-seo-setback-as-mothers-day-approaches/ 

http://www.websearchseo.co.uk/the-interflora-seo-saga-what-can-we-learn-from-it/

 and the solutions / guide lines to prevention 

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/a-reminder-about-selling-links.html

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/why-did-my-pagerank-go-down/

http://www.seowix.com/could-your-seo-strategy-be-as-pointless-as-a-pigeons-life/ 

A video on the back link issue by Matt Cutts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Cutts



The moral of the story is that you reap what you sow, and if you sow weeds and problem plants, you will get weeds which you are unable to eradicate, as their seeds will continue to grow every season, and problem plants that mess your garden and spoil the experience of your visitors.

Think about where you advertise, and what your call to action message is, advertise in relevant places and be clear with your message. SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) are getting bigger, and are looking at an awful lot more variables that they did a few years back.

User experience, and finding exactly what you have searched for are becoming more important to search engines and their controlling SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms), so your adverts need to be more explicit and closer to home. adverts that discuss off page / site topics and use words that are not on your landing page may cause your site some harm, so think clearly of where your adverts are placed and what exactly is the message and call to action statement in your advert.

Remember to use FUFISM and include your whole marketing teams experience as well as keeping the rest of your social media partners in the loop.

Always keep tabs on your stats and when they start taking a detour down south, find out why fast. the longer you take the worse the impact gets, and the harder it will be to recover.

Ensure that everybody in your marketing team knows the rules about SPAM MARKETING , and ensure that your entire team is given a lecture on the impact of SPAM MARKETING at least once a month, with a reminder of the trip down south of your bottom line when they neglect the rules.

The Power of Google Plus is growing, are you prepared?

There have been many rumors that SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is dead, some have even hinted that it is buried. I think that those who started these rumors are FaceBook Marketers who have had some success and achieved some business without using any other platform besides FaceBook.

In my opinion these marketers have just been lucky, and their success has gone to their heads. Those in the online marketing industry know the truth, your products and services will not be found easily online unless they are well placed in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

At the end of the day there are only three ways that your online information will be found by your intended target market

1. They will type your address directly into the address bar of their browser because they were exposed to your marketing in other media such as  amongst others
• TV advertising
• Radio advertising
• Newspaper and other print media advertising
• billboards, flyers and other direct marketing 
2. They will click on a link found in
• your online marketing 
• referral from a social media platform such as G+ or Facebook
•  a web page referencing your work as an authority on your subject matter
• a web site that has a link exchange program with your web site or blog
• your paid advertising link in some body elses pages
3. They will use a search engine to find your online information and click on your listing in a SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Currently (Jan 2013) Google is the biggest search engine and has the lions share of all search querries, so you will need to be listed in the organic SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) that Google provides to ensure that you get the best exposure within these SERP's

Now the trick is to understand how Google plus influences the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)  provided within the organic search results pages. This is where the power of G+ or Google Plus starts to shine and push any pages associated with your G+ profile closer to the top of the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) due to a host of different social signals that are associated with your G+ profile and the posts that you have made within all your associated G+ pages and related communities.

During my research I came across this post by Mark Traphagen on Wind mill Marketings web site

This post was very well written and extremely helpful in understanding the true power of Google Plus


At the end of the day G+ is Googles own Social media networking platform, and they have full unrestricted access to all data on the Google Plus platform, which gives them quite a bit of leverage to use the data in ways that enhance your search experience. Another point to take into consideration is that they (Google Search Engineers) know the structure of the data as well as the data layout which makes their use of this information simpler and more user friendly.

To understand this a bit better you may need to understand the term FUFISM

YouTube tips video annotations functionality

I read a lot of stuff on the net when I am researching SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) issues and I came across this stuff about YouTube and video annotations functionality where they mention how this impacts on your SEO for any YouTube Videos that you may have in place.

HOW TO: Use Annotations to Increase YouTube Views, Rankings

Thanx to REELSEO for this tip 

Read about marketing your videos on pinterest at the link below

5 Ways To Use Pinterest For Effective Video Marketing

  

 practice FUFISM - Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media and ensure that all your marketing gets the SERP's that you deserve

Integrate your video marketing into your complete marketing strategy and ensure that all your social media profiles, and related PAGES link to your video marketing on YouTube for best results.

 

Tips for FaceBook Search Graph

Facebook Graph Search could eventually become a fairly effective local search/recommendations engine. Here are a couple things to know before we get to Facebook’s visibility tips:

Facebook says Search Results will be created by a combination of information created/shared by the business (Pages) and connections of the person doing the search (friends, likes, check-ins, etc.).

Facebook says that its new search bar will return “the top search suggestions, including people, Pages, apps, places, groups, and suggested searches” — notice how “Pages” and “places” are listed separately.

Read the rest of at http://searchengineland.com/

This new search facility within FB that searches only FB pages and profiles will change many things in the SEO industry, and all SEO practitioners will need to learn an awful lot in a hurry, as no body has thought of SEO within FB.

If how ever you apply FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media then you will have half the problem under control because

1. your writings and posts will be focused on your target market
2. you will be using your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) defined key words in your copy
3. Your posts will be receiving social signals from your customers and other interested parties. 
4. your FB post will be receiving positive social signals from your other online efforts  
5. your FB pages will be receiving positive social signals from your other online efforts 
6. your other social media profiles will be supplying social signals to your FB profile
7. Your other social media profiles will be supplying positive social signals to your FB pages

think about your online efforts and apply FUFISM it works....

what is the value of Social Signals in SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation has come a long way since it first became a necessity in getting your information listed near the top of SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) In the beginning it was purely in-page SEO, and that was fine.

but things have changed drastically see video at bottom of page

Along came the advent of Facebook and the social media revolution which changed the way that we as people communicate in ways that are still being investigated and documented. Many other social media platforms jumped up and started having an influence on information sharing and information flow between people at alarming speeds. People were suddenly sharing a whole lot of stuff online that did not make sense to businesses as it was purely of a social nature with people discussing things like

• where they would be spending the week end
• what we will be eating for lunch
• who is having an affair with my cousin
• what colour dress should be worn to a party
• what music is pleasant and what is crappy to listen to
• their personal love life
• their personal thoughts and social affairs
• whats going on at the office when the boss is out
• what movies to watch
• where I waste my spare time

This information was indexed in search engines and because of the size of the base web site that the social media platforms operated, and the size of the user base of these social platforms, results suddenly started appearing at the top of SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) for many keywords and keyword phrases, which carried very little value to the person making the search request. 

Soon the marketing world stepped into the social media arena and started direct online marketing within the social media with alarming  results. These results were at first confusing to many within the search industry, especially those involved in SEO for web sites. The major search engines picked this up and started adding the value of social signals to their algorithms with strange results as they were very experimental.

As the search industry came to grips with the impact of the social media on search patterns things started to settle down and an understanding of how social signals should be interpreted by search engines began to emerge. At Info4u we realised that these changes required an integrated approach to all online marketing, as most SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) use a large variety of issues from different locations to determine the value of any specific page before placing it in any SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Info4u thus coined the acronym FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media  to describe the our approach to all online marketing, as the Search Industry now requires a lot more information from you to place your online information anywhere near the top of its SERP's.

This short video by slingshot (www.slingshotseo.com) found at http://www.business2community.com  discusses some of the related issues focusing on social media issues around social signals and SEO