Video On Outreach For Linkbuilding

The latest Whiteboard Friday on SEO Moz is fantastic this week as it is done by Tom Critchlow and he covers what he calls Outreach for Linkbuilding. None of this is earth shattering and you will of course recognize that he mentions Twitter, which I have had great success with in certain niches. He gives great tips on how to reach out to other webmasters and online marketers for backlinks. Plain basic stuff, but broken down for you to easily understand.

SEO Checklist For The Social Media Marketer

A bit under the weather tonight as the weather pops back and forth to warm and cold. I hate this time of year down South. I wanted to make sure I passed on this absolutely great post by jennita on SEO Moz in which she gives a complete SEO checklist for the Social Media Marketer. Read it slow as it might be tough to digest if you are new, but she does a great job explaining the why and the why nots. As you should already know by now, Google and Bing use Twitter and Facebook to influence regular search results. If you are using Twitter and Facebook in certain niches, especially ones you might be or close to authoritative, this will certainly help. I have to admit that I am using Twitter more and more as a search engine for timely updates of news and recent blog post. This is a great post and worth book marking.

Love Playing With Yourls URL Shortener

My newest toy I have been playing with is the great free Yourls URL Shortener script. You can easily set up your own URL Shortener to work not only on site with a Wordpress plugin, but through Twitter and Facebook with Twitterfeed & Tweetdeck as well using your own API. Thanks to my good buddy Hank at Money Code, I got a sweet toolbar plugin portion figured out to show ads above linked to pages not on site. It is included free as well. There are so many things you can do with this if you use your imagination. The coding is solid and pretty secure from all of my scans through it. Quite a few sites use it as you can see in their showcase. This is not for a novice, but is pretty easy to get installed if you have been around the block a little while.

How To Use The Twitter Advanced Search Feature Video

Wow! What a great video put together by Mashable on how to use the Twitter advanced search feature to return great search results. Well put together video. Gives me tons of fantastic ideas.

Twitter & Facebook Influence SEO According To Google & Bing

I am way behind today, but wanted to point you quickly to this post by Rand Fishkin in which he covers that both Bing and Google have confirmed via Danny Sullivan) that indeed, links shared through Twitter and Facebook do in fact have a direct impact on rankings. As you know I have been a big fan of using Twitter, Facebook and other social networks for some time now and I suggest you make it a point to include them more going forward into 2011 once this holiday season is completed. Good stuff in that post.

Twitterfeed Adds Easy Monetization Option With Skimlinks

I came across news yesterday that TwitterFeed is introducing a new promotional partner, called Skimlinks. When you become a Skimlinks publisher you can earn money from your blog’s content effortlessly and transparently, by converting your normal links into affiliate links, and turning product references in your content into relevant, geo-targeted shopping links as well. You can learn more about Skimlinks in the video below.

Future Of Social Media 5 Years Down The Road?

I love social media and have said it time and time again. I get it and have seen the results first hand. Adam Ostrow had a story surface on Mashable a few days back in which he takes a look at the The Next 5 Years in Social Media. Ostrow points out several ideas and the most interesting in his point that people need learn how to leverage the social media giants like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as opposed to how to build the next mega social network. I certainly agree as these giants are already ingrained into the culture and are not going anywhere. There are still ideas that pop up every day in using the Twitter API and Facebook is as p[popular as it has ever been. If you are not learning to market on it or how to do paid ad placement on it, it is not too late. A great read with several offshoot links as well I suggest clicking and reading.

Rae Hoffman On Identifying Industry Leaders On Twitter

A comment and an email came to me wanting to me to devote more time on Twitter per my post the other day. It just so happens that the great Rae Hoffman posted on Search Engine Land a post about, How To Identify Industry Specific & Mainstream Media On Twitter. Rae goes over some great resources to find some leaders in certain industries and how to engage them once you do find them. Going right for the jugular is not the way, as I too have asked too early. Remember that you are networking and often times you have to give first before receiving. Some of these backlinks are very powerful and well worth the time invested in only acquiring just a few. Remember that with these links it is quality over quantity. Just a few of these can catapult a properly SEO'ed and properly researched site in the rankings. Don't forget to ask to guest blog and write content for them as well for the link. Trust me, it works. It just takes some time and patience.

Are You Networking Enough With Twitter?

I make no secrets that I love Twitter and have done so for quite a while, it helps me stay up to date with happenings in several niches, spurs ideas and topics to write about as well as being a tremendous way to network with other webmasters. This very post was spurned by one of my sites having an article go semi viral inside it's niche today thanks to Twitter. It is so powerful. I have found webmasters willing to let me guest post on their sites, trade links and in some cases even buy some links. In addition, I have picked up several marketing techniques just by watching a few different niche leaders in action on Twitter. I follow around 55 niches daily using the free Tweetdeck software and probably have picked up about that same many of very solid backlinks over the year as well and countless other not so solid links. I also have used it to get in touch with newspaper and magazine writers and have even picked up a small handful of backlinks that way as well. In my opinion, Twitter and Facebook continue to be under used as a marketing method, even though neither is considered new in the social media world. If you are not in the process of using both in some way every day, you are being left behind in the digital age. Do not fight it any more.

Twitter Fall & Tweep Search Twitter Tools

I love Twitter and have made it very clear in the past. There are some good paid tools out there to increase your followers and I stumbled across a few good free ones as well, but you do have to dedicate about 30 minutes a day to them on days you want to increase your followers. The first free tool is called Twitter Fall and if you use the searches filters to show only the Twitter user you are hunting, you can follow the target users and hope the reciprocate. Below is video that shows you the settings and it will take you some playing to get the feel for it. The second tool is Tweep Search and you can use it to do a bio search of all Twitter users to find those that list your target interest in their bio. If you use these two tools for about 30 minutes in total every day. You can build up followers in all of your Twitter accounts over time and increase traffic to your websites in the process with targeted surfers.

Tweepi - A Fairly New Twitter Tool

Tweepi is a fairly new free Twitter tool that will help you build your Twitter followers by finding and following quality followers in a certain niche by researching popular Twitter users already in your niche. If you use Twitter already, that makes perfect sense to you. This tool is safe to connect to your Twitter account and I have tested it myself on a specific account of mine and got the hang of it. Even if you do not use it to build followers, it is good for cleaning out the list of people you follow who might not be following you back or are not as active or Tweeting about things that you want to follow. If you utilize Twitter, this tool will make perfect sense. If you don't use Twitter, it is never too late to start. I always like to refer people to this tutorial by Mashable.

Happy Fathers Day - Twitter Closing In On Google?

I hope you are enjoying your Fathers Day if you are indeed a father or are enjoying it with your own father. I took my brother and father up to the Indian casino today and am taking my self some down time to spend with family. Just so I can deliver you something to read on this lazy Sunday, I point you to this post on Twitter Getting One Step Closer to Google on the Website Magazine blog. I will be back full force on Monday and hope everyone had as great of weekend as I have had.

Make Money With A New URL Shortening Service

I am wore slap out today from a Rotary club charity even today, but wanted to pass along adf.ly. Adf.ly is a free URL shortner that you can earn money with. Whenever someone clicks the url, the surfer is shown an ad on the way to the original destination. I am still playing with this, but it is a novel idea. Especially if you use Facebook or Twitter a ton. You earn around $2.00 per 1000 clicks, but if you have a ton of traffic that can add up. It is what it is though, so I would use on Facebook and Twitter until you get the just of what it is and if you want to use it longer term or not.

A Free Backlink For You

I wanted to give everyone a free gift today. It is a free backlink. If you have a Twitter account, you can get a free backlink at twtBizCard. Ok, not earth shattering by any means, but it is a dofollow link right now and it should be index-able as well. As of this post, my link here is not cached, but by linking to it right now, it should help get it indexed. There are tons of these little social sites all over the place and as I have mentioned in the past, I never met a backlink I didn't like. I do not care if it is dofollow or nofollow. Best of all it is free and another doorway into my site. Your welcome. Also make sure to follow me on Twitter as well.

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Another Solid Reason For Making Use Of Twitter

Like it or not, Twitter is here to stay. Full of spam you say? Absolutely, but so is Google, Yahoo and Bing. Here is a break down of searches done on Twitter compared to other search engines. Now if indeed these numbers are true or close to being true, then as you can see it passes Bing and Yahoo combined. Pretty astounding. I must admit I have used Twitter search a few times myself and found exactly what I was looking for. As I have mentioned in other post, it is very easy to feed your RSS feed into Twitter. It takes only a few seconds to set up and your done. Also using Twitter to network inside niches is priceless. It is a very under done resource. I do not mean blatant spamming either. Those that continue to discount Twitter and how it can be used effectively are missing the boat, but those same people will also tell you it is nothing but spam and just haven't seen it's effectiveness in action. I am glad to say, I have. Hopefully you do as well.

Confusion With Twitter & EPN

I had a very confused BANS user contact me in regards to using Twitter as a means of promoting their niche and BANS site. They were under the impression that using Twitter will get you canned from EPN (ebay Partner Network). Let me clarify a few things as told to me by my EPN account manager a while ago. You can use Twitter to promote links to YOUR sites, you can not use Twitter to post links to products on eBay that include your affiliate code. Yes, yes, I know. You see tons of people on Twitter promoting links that include their affiliate code and go straight to ebay. I see them as well. All I can say is the end is near for them. Many likely are already terminated as most are automated feeds set to post into the users Twitter account. Twitter is full of those. The same goes with any site you do not own like Blogger or a free Wordpress.com hosted blog. If the domain name is not registered to you, you can't post Ebay products on it. The exception right now is Squidoo and Hubpages at last check, but you must already have an approved EPN account to use these. You should read up on both of these sites rules and regulations first before using though.

Leverage Twitter In Just 10 Minutes A Day

I have become a big fan of Laura Roeder. She knows her stuff when it comes to Twitter and how to leverage Twitter properly to promote your niche or website. Laura pointed out to me that by "driving blind" on Twitter you will not only see zero results but can actually damage your reputation as well. Used strategically, Twitter is a shortcut to placing yourself at the top of your field. But if you're just stumbling through the dark, your Twitter account could be the public embarrassment that sends you straight to the bottom of your niche. Laura has a video training system is called "Your Backstage Pass to Twitter" - once you know the insider's secrets to how Twitter is REALLY used, it becomes effortless to tap into Twitter's existing stream of customers, prospects, and business partners. Laura actually goes into her OWN private twitter account to show you exactly how she manages her settings, followers and messages so that you can do exactly the same. Her methods are not a get-rich-quick scheme or script to get a million followers overnight. It's just the real-deal strategies and techniques for twitter results for both online AND offline businesses. To grab her free video on how to fully Leverage Twitter In Just 10 Minutes and learn more about Your Backstage Pass to Twitter, click here now.

Checking Your Bit.ly Link Shortener Stats

Many of you might be new to using link shorteners. I like to use bit.ly when I can as I like the stats interface it has. Especially when I use it to post links on Twitter. If you use a Twitter application like TweetDeck, it gives you the ability to automatically shorten all of your links if you choose with bit.ly. You can quickly get a look at each links stats page by merely adding a + sign to the end of the link in a browser should you choose so. Here is a link I posted a few days ago with a plus sign added. http://bit.ly/66Joyj+

Using Ping.fm Instructions

Ping.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social network accounts a breeze. Before you just get on and start spamming away, I suggest you watch this video by Jim Morris. He gives you a bigger picture on just how to use the service and get the most from it and also how to build a social network presence easily without being perceived as spammer. I also suggest that you visit all of the social media sites that you do not belong to and see the rules, regulations and format that each uses. It will take you a bit of time to get everything researched and set up, but will help you get the word out about your niche articles and blog post. Well worth the time to use and learn.

How Dell Makes Money On Twitter

Jennifer Van Grove did an interview with Richard Binhammer from Dell and asked him about Dell's Twitter success. Dell's main strategy as she notes is to turn Twitter into an opportunity to build better relationships with customers. They use it as a platform to directly connect with the customer. She goes on to list the 3 principles that Dell applies when using Twitter.

Tons of big and small businesses are getting on Twitter. Most use it as a spamming tool first until they learn how to use it properly. If you are throwing up links to products on every tweet, do not expect to be successful with Twitter. Many think Twitter is just full of Spam and refuse to accept it as a legitimate tool.

On a final quick note, Jennifer has some excellent articles at Mashable. If you get a chance to browse her work, it is worth the time.