SEO tips for Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a great technique for…

• Building links
• Driving targeted traffic
• Spreading your brand
• Increasing your social following
• Building relationships

There’s no reason for concentrating strictly on SEO when guest blogging.  The benefits are diverse and transcend the affects of just the backlinks on your rankings.  However, the fact that you ARE link building shouldn’t be ignored.

Here are 5 seo tips that will help you get better rankings from your guest blogging.

1) Vary Your Anchor Text

It seems like many still hold exact match as the holy grail of anchor text.  The truth is that exact match is and has been losing its effectiveness for a long time.  You can build a much stronger link profile and gain better links from your guest blogging by varying your anchor text.
There isn’t one single formula for varying your anchor text, just get creative!  Use synonyms, extract some terms, include other terms etc.  Your ticket to effective and varied linking text is partial match and synonyms.
Ex. Keyword: WordPress plugins for SEO

• Partial Match: WordPress plugins
• Partial Match: plugins for SEO
• Partial Match: plugins for link building
• Synonyms: WP plugins for SEO
• Synonyms: WP plugins for search engine optimization
• Both: Easy WP SEO
• Both: SEO Plug-ins for your site
• Both: Build SEO rankings with plugins

Like I said, there’s no single strategy for your variation.  The 3 fast and dirty methods I go by: Add terms, remove terms, and use synonyms.

2) Optimize Your Title

We’re stepping into dangerous territory with this tip.  Let me remind you that guest blogging has many uses besides SEO and these tips are for improving your SEO without concentrating only on SEO.
Including your keyword in the title tag will be very helpful for the relevance of your post.  The sooner your keyword appears in the title the better.  By using keyword variation, you give yourself a lot more options for creating a title that is both appealing for users and also optimized for your SEO.

3) Find Relevant Domains

The URL is a very important factor on the relevance and power of a webpage.  One reason for including your keyword in the title is that it will then show up in the URL on most blogs.  You can take this practice one step further by purposely writing for blogs that have part of the keyword phrase you’re targeting in their domain name.

I like to use My Blog Guest to search for blogs in my niche.  You can visit MBG to find a list of websites in your niche that are actively accepting guest posts.

Once you do this you should have a list of sites in your industry.  You can mouse over each site title to preview the link URL.  This way you can see very quickly if part of your keyword is in the domain.
Of course, there are many other important factors so don’t get too concerned with this tactic alone.  Check out the recent posts for comments and social activity to get a better feel for the popularity and liveliness of the site.  A great result would have at least one word from your keyword phrase in the domain and an active audience.

4)  Don’t Use Your Resource/Profile for SEO

Leaving the SEO benefits of your post to the resource/profile links alone is a mistake.  You can use those links to drive traffic to your site by promoting an offer or some other related and appealing page on your website.
One of the strongest types of links you can get is an editorial link.  An editorial backlink is a link from within the actual body content of a page where only the webmaster can edit the content.  It’s a powerful link because only the webmaster has control over this part of the page, and usually webmasters don’t just link to anyone.  It’s a sign of trust.

5) Link Early

The sooner your link the better.
Google values links that appear earlier in the content more than those that come later on.  It makes sense doesn’t it?  If you have an important resource to recommend or if you are writing a response to a similar article, you would link to it right away.  The first links in an article often lead to the pages most relevant to it.
You can use this knowledge to your advantage by linking to the page on your site you’re trying to rank higher within the first 1-3 paragraphs of your post.

Tips for Promoting Your Forum

1) Be Unique :

The internet is crowded with forums and communities on all sorts of topics. You’ve got to do something to distance yourself from the pack. Whether that’s accomplished through your design, your rules, or offering a certain feature that other forums don’t, you need to be memorable. Think about it, how many forums have you signed up for over the years? If you can’t remember, you’ve just perfectly illustrated my point.

2) Discuss Hot Topics : 

No matter what your forum is about, there will always be hot topics to talk about - hot button issues that automatically generate conversation and debate. Industry news, technological developments, and current events are all great topics. Starting new threads or discussions about these “hot topics” can create instant conversation and can often be a shot in the arm for your somewhat stale forum.

3) Create a Blog :

 That’s right, I said blog. Sure blogs and forums are two separate things, but how many of you have clicked over to check out our forums? A great blog post will often attract attention to content that your forum might have otherwise concealed. Blogs are more accessible, less threatening, and require a much lower level of commitment from the average reader. Done right, a blog can be a more gentle way to ease new people into a community. Also, blogs are more “linkable” which allows you to gain even more exposure within your target industry or niche, as well as helping your site rank better in the search engines. This of course will in turn lead to more visitors and hopefully more members. You can also use a blog to reward particularly great posts in your forum. If, for example, you have a member that regularly contributes great threads or topics to your forum, invite them to write an article for your blog. That provides you with more blog content and is just one more way to show your members that you value them.

4) Show your appreciation : 

This one is really quite simple. Your members need to know you care. About them, about their needs and desires, and most of all, about the forum. As pops mentioned, if your members know that you are invested in making the forum a success, they’re a lot more likely to contribute their time and content. So how do you show your appreciation? Tell them. Send your members emails or private messages thanking them for their contributions, offer some type of reward for your most active members, listen to their requests or concerns about the site, anything that can help you form a bond with your members.

5) Be active : 

No one likes absentee landlords, fathers, or forum administrators. A forum is going to take up a lot of your time. If you don’t have time to run it, make sure you find someone that does. The forum administrator needs to be active and visible in the community. People need to feel they have a way to address any problems they might have or any disagreements that spring up between members. When activity slows down, and there will be slow periods, it’s the administrator’s job to stir up discussion and activity (this would be a good time for some of those hot topics from point #2).

6) Invite Experts :

In any field there are well known experts. If you’ve started a forum on the subject, chances are you know who the top dog(s) is/are. Chances are there is already a discussion about one of their products or theories going on in your forum. If not, start one. Then contact the expert and invite them to join in the discussion. Chances are they’ll jump at the chance. They’ll get some free advertising and perhaps a chance to promote their product, and you’ll have the benefit of bringing more experts into your community. The more experts you have stopping in from time to time, the more well known your forum will become. And really, isn’t that why you’re reading this post?

7) Send out Reminders : As we discussed earlier, people often join a forum, participate for a few hours or days, get busy and then forget about their new-found forum. Even if your site is unique and memorable, some people will manage to forget it. Luckily for you, most forums require an email address to sign up. Using this list to send out weekly newsletters with site news, interesting threads, or your newest promotions will serve as a subtle reminder to anyone who hasn’t visited your site for a while.

8) Welcome new members :

 Have you ever asked why Walmart employs a person whose sole job is to greet customers? Ever wondered why churches have those overly friendly people posted at the front door? It’s because people like to be welcomed. And, if it’s good enough for Walmart, it’s good enough for your forum. Be sure to welcome your new members and, if possible, give them a place to introduce themselves to your regular members. A welcome also serves as a great time to make sure your new members read your forum rules; further easing their transition into your community.

9) Participate in the Industry :

I can hear you already. Didn’t you already tell us to be active? Well, yes I did. This time though, I’m talking about the industry as a whole. People often say “It’s not what you know, it’s WHO you know.” In most industries there are conferences or trade shows where hundreds or thousands of people gather and the best part is, they’re almost all your target audience. Of course these events will vary depending on your niche or industry but I’m willing to bet there’s a gathering of some sort. If your forum is about model trains, go to the train exhibits. If your community is art based, attend art shows and exhibit openings. Basically, attend as many of these events as possible, rub elbows with as many people as possible and, of course, during the conversation let them know about your forum.

10) Allow Off Topic Discussion :

Even workaholics don’t talk shop 24/7. Your forum members are no different. Creating a space for your members to blow off steam, tell jokes, and talk about their other interests will allow them to create friendships and unwind. Think of this as a team building exercise. The more your members interact with each other, the more likely they’ll be to visit on a regular basis. They’ll also be more willing to help spread the word about your forum or help improve the community. If nothing else, you’ll gain a few friends in the process. Now who doesn’t want more friends?

As I said before, our forum is far from perfect, and in fact, you may find that one or two of these tips don’t apply to your forum or aren’t easily implemented. But, I’m also willing to bet there’s at least one or two that you’re not currently using. Give it a shot and see which work best for you.

The Guest-Blogging Strategy for SEO, Traffic, and Audience-Building

How to avoid digital sharecropping

Guest posting takes a lot of work, mental energy, and time. So it’s smart to think about how you can get the most bang for your buck. The more strategically you think when you’re planning out your guest blogging program, the more you’re going to get out of it.

You need to hold two things in your head at the same time - how this post will benefit the host blog, and how it’s going to benefit your own business.

There will be times when you write a guest post to get a single one of the benefits outlined below — maybe to strengthen a relationship with an important content publisher.
But as often as you can, try to include every benefit in this post.

Pro Tip: Before you write a post, make sure you’ll be able to include at least one relevant link to your own content in the body of the post, as well as an audience-friendly call to action in your bio.

1. Guest blogging enhances your authority

When you’re getting started with content marketing, you may be incredibly knowledgeable about your topic — but you have little authority, because no one knows you yet.

Placing posts on other blogs helps your potential audience start to associate your name with high-quality information. And a bit of the authority of your host blog will transfer itself to you.

The more readers see your work, the more authority you will generate. It’s a cumulative process, but one that can happen quickly if you have the ability to put a lot of work in over a short period.

Pro Tip: If your topic is so competitive that you’re having trouble placing guest posts, look for lateral opportunities with content publishers who have the audience you want.

2. Guest blogging brings in an audience, not just traffic

Anyone can buy traffic using pay-per-click or other forms of advertising. And that can be a good strategy. But what you’re buying is just that … traffic.

Traffic from a guest post, on the other hand, is already an audience. In other words, it’s already a group of people interested in your topic who are also intrigued by what you have to say.

You’ll still need to convert those visitors into a longer-term relationship, by using smart content marketing strategies. But with a guest post, you’ve already taken the first few steps in that process.

Pro Tip: In the bio for your post, send traffic to a landing page you set up just for readers of that blog. Use a strong, clear call to action and remember that the content there needs to benefit the reader.

You’ll be able to add, refresh, or update content to your page as your business evolves, without having to ask the host blog to update a link.

3. Guest blogging builds your publisher network

How do little content publishers grow up to become big content publishers?
They make connections. They develop a healthy network of publishers (large and small) who will help them get the word out.

A tweet or link from a big enough publisher (one with a passionate, responsive audience) can get you well on your way to the minimum viable audience that can support your business.

You probably won’t start out by writing for the biggest names in your topic. And you don’t need to. Most successful content producers build their networks by writing for sites with slightly bigger audiences than their own, then gradually working up to sites that have more and more readers.

Pro Tip: Writing one post for a blog is nice, but writing multiple times for the same blog will bring in much greater rewards. Create a relationship with the blogs you write for, and contribute as regularly as you can. Once a month is often a good rhythm.

4. Guest blogging is superb for natural SEO

Building high-quality links is one of the trickiest elements of effective SEO. Guest posting allows you to get a relevant, natural link, using the anchor text of your choice, on a site that has excellent search engine authority.
Just remember: as always with SEO copywriting, keep things natural and audience-friendly. Write for the readers first, and search engines a distant second.

Pro Tip: Don’t stuff your guest posts with links back to your own material. One or two highly relevant links will do you more good. Include a few links to your host blog’s cornerstone content in your post as well.

Why Social Media is Good for Customer Service? Top Reasons

Social media and gadgets are the greatest obsession for the current day world. This is clearly indicating the value and importance of the social media for every business. According to Gartner, refused or failed communication via social media for a business is almost hazardous or harmful for companies. It is almost like ignoring or refusing to answer a phone or mail. Already many companies and businesses are offering customer services via social media networks successfully. There is a scope for 85% of current companies to initiate these services by this year end. Also, it is a significant figure to identify that 63% of the present customer base is into social networking sites. Here, offering customer services via social media platform is definitely not an easiest task to accomplish and it requires predefined organizational structure for every company.

Many companies are taking a back step to offer customer services through this platform keeping in mind the abusive and straight forward customers. This is definitely not a tough task to handle. Identify the real value and importance of this platform for your customer services and make good use of it through following some of the proven valuable tips as below. This approach is to keep abreast with the market trends and to offer utmost value to the customer base interests. People are no longer into time taking phone support or email support. People are more into instant support and answers. Ensure the same for your present and prospective customer base through keeping your presence at all popular social networking sites.
Let us see some of the tips that are capable enough to turn your customer services more effective and beneficial via social media:

1- Open Separate Account for Customer Service

It is always good to create separate account for customer service besides having one for the official account that is open for public. Use this official public account for promotional needs and secondary account for customer services. If a customer posts a complaint from main account, then inform the awareness of problem from the customer service account. Start communicating regarding the customer issue through following his/her account. This kind of practice can keep the issue and resolution away from the public account and it will engage the customer within his or her account until resolved. This is a better solution to create effective platform for customer needs and it will not affect the public profile of the company too.

2- Respond Quickly to Customer Service Complaints

It is always essential and imperative to address a query or complaint or comment from the customer service account within 5 minutes. This kind of faster approach can create peaceful environment between the customer and company for resolving the issues with reduced abusive comments.

3- Create User-Friendly and Serene Environment

Social networking sites are nowadays resulting into more virtual. Your customer service should create serene atmosphere for this purpose through creating humanized experience. Respond with each query or complaint or comment along with name. This kind of representation can develop reasonable trust with the customer for the customer service. Answering mysteriously or anonymous can turn the situation more into troublesome.

4- Avoid Mysterious/Aggressive Tone

Representation from the customer services via this platform should sound more concerned and helpful. Being dismissive or aggressive is definitely a greatest disadvantageous for this service. Always remember that you’re on the public platform and being manipulative or tricky can be identified quite easily by one or other quite easily. It is always imperative that information provided through this service should be clear and serene. Customer can collect back your past answers and this would result into further more complications.
There should be a clear monitoring system for these services. This system should check constantly for the resolved and unresolved issues. Also, team performance should be evaluated on regular basis to avoid unnecessary complications down the line. All the above mentioned tips can turn your customer service more effective and according to the latest trends via social media.

SEO top 4 Tips for WordPress Websites

1. Optimize Your Page URLs

You need to take a look at the page URLs on your site. Are they completely unrelated to the page itself? If a URL on you page for example is, http://www.mywebsite.com/news?page=34vdgd it explains absolutely nothing to a search engine about what is contained on that page. However, if you change the URL to something like, http://mysite.com/news/article/my-great-article-on-wordpress-seo then it’s much easier for search engines to determine what is on the page and direct appropriate traffic to your site in the process.

2. Get an SEO Plugin

One of the great things about and open-source content management systems like WordPress is how easily you can develop plugins and extensions, which once easily installed provide certain functionality that the original software cannot perform. One of the most useful tools to install is an SEO plugin. There are a number of good WordPress plugins; all you have to do is search for “SEO plugins” in your plugin manager and you’ll be given a wide choice. Most of these will provide you with the ability to enter important keywords for each page whilst you’re editing it, doing this will improve the quality of your SEO marketing no ends.

3. Link to Your Related Articles

Another plugin to keep an eye out for is a related articles extension. You will have seen related articles at the bottom of the page on a number of news and blogging websites before and they’re a great idea for your WordPress site too if you would like to improve your SEO. Not only do they give you a great internal link structure, something that search engines will take as a sign of your site’s quality, but many of the plugins work on keywords and article tags, which gives you a reason to fill out your tags and improve your SEO in this way also.

4. Create an XML Sitemap

XML sitemaps are extremely important, especially if your WordPress site is reasonably new. An XML sitemap will let a search engine know that your site actually exists and that it should send web crawlers to it in future. You can get a plugin which will create an XML sitemap for you and it will automatically update whenever you make changes to the site. This means that whenever a crawler comes to visit your site, it will be able to establish exactly what content you have and how much importance it holds. Getting a sitemap is an effortless way of optimizing your site.

Reputation Management SEO: 6 Advanced Tactics

1: Cultivate the Right Social Profiles in the Right Ways

A big mistake many in the reputation management field make is to register social profiles at dozens or hundreds of sites and point links to as many as possible, hoping that some will take over those top rankings. This actually dilutes the effectiveness of the strategy, as those links could be consolidated across a few powerful profiles instead, often with much greater effect. The general sites I recommend include (in order of profile effectiveness):

1. Twitter
   
2. LinkedIn
3. YouTube
4. Flickr
5. Facebook

That said, another big mistake is presuming that just registering a profile is enough to take over the rankings. My experience has been that participating heavily in the sites (for example, on Flickr, uploading lots of photos and sets, making lots of friends, getting others to comment on your photos, etc) can be more valuable to help those profiles rank than just earning external links. This is why if you're passionate and active on a community like DeviantArt, Quora, Armor Games or another niche social site, those can outrank even the big guns of the social world. Regular, authentic partcipation is key.
Some additional rules to remember with social profiles include:

• Name your profiles correctly. If possible, don't use pseudonyms, but rather your full first and last name (or brand name) either as a single word or with hyphens
• Fill out the profiles completely - photos, bio, videos, links, topics, tags - whatever the platfrom offers, take advantage of it fully.
• Leverage your address book or a list of your social media active contacts - friend/follow/connect with them on each of the platforms.
• Make new connections on each platform, too. Use OSE's top pages tab to find the most linked-to URLs on the social platforms and see if you can comment, connect or otherwise get your profile linked-to from those pages.
• Don't forget about relevance - if the page looks unnatural or keyword-stuffed, you risk having the profile banned by the admins of the site and jeopardize your ability to authentically participate and make connections with other people, brands and content.

Like everything else in life - nothing worth having comes easy. Invest in your social profiles and they'll reward you with controllable front-page real estate in the rankings.

2: Author a Universal Bio with Embedded Links

If you or your company appear in press, media, at events or even receive mentions and references on the web, there's almost always a stock "bio" or "profile" that's requested by the publisher. This stock paragraph is a remarkable opportunity to link to your various pages on the web in relevant, appropriate ways. For example, let's say I'm crafting a stock profile for SEOmoz to be used whenever we're a sponsor, participant or reference-source in an event/media piece). I'd go with something like:
SEOmoz is a Seattle based software startup focused on making SEO (Search Engine Optimization) easy and accessible to all marketers. The company's popular SEO blog serves more than 80K daily subscribers, while their SEOmoz twitter and Facebook accounts interact with thousands more in the social world. For more about SEOmoz, see funding + investors via Crunchbaseand job opportunities on LinkedIn.
Notice the multiple links with reasonably good anchor text pointing back to pages we control on the web? This works reasonably well for companies, but is even more effective for individuals, as these "bios" tend to follow you everywhere in your professional/public life. Be sure to follow up when you send these to press outlets, places you're advertising or events you participate in/sponsor to make sure the links are included. 50% of the time or more, you'll need to send a reminder email to make sure they're properly attributing.

3: Speak, Invest, Donate & Hire

These four tactics are the most effective ways I've seen to get your brand/bio/links propogated across the web. Speaking at events is typically free (other than travel), promotes yourself and your brand, and almost always carries a high quality bio with links. Investing in companies or donating to non-profits or even individuals is similarly effective and can save the travel/pitching/Powerpoint. Even small amounts carry recognition from powerful pages, press releases and media articles to help boost your links.
Hiring is unique, because the ads are often temporary. However, many sources for job ads will maintain a permanent profile so long as you regularly or intermittenltly have jobs available. If you're used to posting only on your own site or on Craigslist (where ads do dissappear fast), consider leveraging other services and including your company/personal bio when you do. Even if it's only a contractor position or a role you are considering, these can have a dramatically positive impact (and you might find someone great to add to the team!).

4: Avoid Wikipedia Pages & Other Free-for-All Sites

Wikipedia pages are powerful, right? Thus it must follow that it's wise to create profiles/pages about our companies or ourselves on the site to use for reputation management, too? Wrong.
The first rule of reputation management is - own the listings with pages you control completely. If other people can leave comments, edit your material, insert additional references or otherwisely editorially negate your work, don't bother. I've actually had to fight with Wikipedia's bureaucracy on two separate occassions to have my page there taken down. I have little faith in the accuracy, quality or intentions of their editorial board and with such a powerful profile (my Wikipedia page, the day after it was first created, with no additional external links I could find, ranked #3 for my name in Google and #4 in Bing), it's not worth taking chances.
This applies to many others (actually, TechCrunch's "Crunchbase," which I linked to above in the SEOmoz profile example, is another potentially risky candidate). Before you invest time, effort or external links, be sure of the general practices of the site around control of content and profiles. Generally, places like LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter, etc. let you control that real estate unless you're engaging in serious mischief (and even then, they won't allow negative material to be posted about you on those URLs, they'll just take them down).

5: Start an Alternative Blog

Blogs naturally attract a lot of links and external references, which is why so many reputation management SEOs recommend registering firstlastname.com or brandnameblog.com and using it as a professional or personal blog. What I don't often see, but have observed working brilliantly, is alternative blogs on separate topics using a similar system.
For example, imagine I want to control my name "Rand Fishkin." I'd not only run a blog at randfishkin.com, but I'd also strongly consider starting a cooking blog or a sports blog or a travel blog at randfishkincooks.com or the like. Yes, it will take work to set it up, author some real content and build up a web profile for the new domain, but if I can tie it to something I already do and love sharing, the references will come fast and furious.
Be sure, when doing this, to leverage your existing network for blogroll links and share via Twitter/Facebook/etc. You'll be surprised how friends, family and business contacts will come out the woodwork to link to your new property.

6: Leverage Lower Quality Links for Social Profiles, Higher Quality for Self-Managed Domains

I'd never suggest buying crappy links, but if you must or if you have other links you control that are of questionable quality or you think search engines might consider low value or even manipulative, don't point these to your newly registered domains or the sites you own. Instead, point them at the powerful, high authority social profile pages you've created and let the engines decide what/whether to count them.
This works particularly well for nofollow links from comments, wikis and other social participation forms on the web. I'm not sure whether the nofollows directly get counted or if the pages get scraped and re-published in some followed format, but time after time I've seen examples of nofollows seemingly doing the heavy lifting to get social profile pages ranking.
If you own some old, neglected sites that are questionable in quality and rankings from the engines' point of view, you could try testing these by pointing them to other social profile pages (and observing/testing the impact on those URLs' rankings) before pointing them at your own profiles. Better to be safe than sorry, and there have been plenty of cases where aggressive SEOs have gone too far with linking to social profiles and had either the search engines penalize the pages or even the site administrators pull down the profile, wasting hours or days of work.

Online Reputation Management (ORM) – Reverse SEO Services

Do you want to know what prospect, customers, and critics are saying about your company? Maintaining your reputation online has become a huge concern in the days where the internet lets anyone anywhere in the world discuss and review goods. It is critical to be aware of what is being said about your company and products.

“Image is everything!”… and for better or worse – first impressions count; therefore, you can’t afford to have negative feedback.

That’s why the main goals of our Reputation Management program are:

• Push negative press down to 3rd page and beyond on Google and the other search engines and review sites to clean up
• Rebuild your online reputation
• Be proactive with a plan to prevent any future negativity

180Fusion has extensive experience in restoring reputations online using Reverse Search Engine Optimization, among other tactics, to provide positive Online Reputation Management Services (ORM Services). When an individual or company name is being searched in Google and the unwanted page or website appears, we can push this page back in the search results where it will rarely, if ever be found. Each circumstance is unique and therefore a custom ORM campaign will require a custom quote.

Benefits

• A stronger brand with more positive content about your business
• Positive feedback and reviews at the top of the search engines
• Push back negative content so prospects can’t easily find it
• 
  

Example Tools Used:

• Creating Positive Pages to rank above the unwanted indexed pages
• Press Releases/Articles
• Blogging
• Social Networking
• Requesting the removal of pages from webmasters

Where to Monitor your Online Reputation:

• Google Alerts – google.com/alerts
• Yahoo Alerts – alerts.yahoo.com
• RSS feed subscriptions to Search Engine Results such as Technorati, Feedster, Yahoo & Google News, BlogPulse.
• Social Media Tags such as: tagbulb.com, keotag.com