Article Categories

• Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• Article Marketing
• Blogs & Podcasts
• Branding
• Business
• Cloud Technology
• Ecommerce
• Email Marketing
• Facebook
• Google
• Keywords
• LinkedIn
• Linking Strategies
• List Building
• Local Search
• Marketing
• Miscellaneous
• Mobile Applications
• Page Rank
• Pay Per Click
• RSS
• Sales Copy
• SE Optimization
• SE Positioning
• SE Submission
• SE Tactics
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Security
• Social Media Marketing
• Social Networking
• SPAM
• SPN Featured Articles
• Technology
• Video Marketing
• Virtual Office/Telecommuting
• Web 2.0
• Web Design
• Web Development
• Webmasters
• Website Promotion
• Website Traffic
• WordPress
• Writing

SiteProNews Blogs

• Editor's Corner
• Darren Dunner
• Jerry Bader
• John Sylvester
• Kalena Jordan
• Mel Strocen
• Titus Hoskins

10 Questions for New SEO Clients

By Jill Whalen in Featured

Hello Jill,

If you could only ask 10 general (non-industry-specific) questions of your new SEO customers, what would they be and why would their answers help you help them?

Thank you,
Andrew

++Jill’s Response++

Hi Andrew,

Great question! I have a variety of different questionnaires that I send to clients, depending on the type of SEO consulting that I’ll be doing with them. For any SEO service, the more information I get from the client about their business and website, the better I can help them with their SEO.

Here’s a selection of some of the questions I ask and why they’re important to the overall SEO process:

10 Ways to Get More Fans on Facebook

By Joy Bing Fleming in Featured

Have you created a Fan Page, but now you’re wondering – “How Do I Get People to ‘Like’ my Page?” If so, you’re not alone. Many people struggle with getting Fans. Here are 10 ways to get more Fans.

1. Create A Customized Welcome Page – Creating a Customized Welcome Page is an excellent way to increase your number of fans. Statistics show that it will help you turn 72% of your visitors into fans.

To create a custom page, you can use the Facebook application, Static HTML iframe tabs.

If you’re not familiar with HTML code, then you can go to Pagemodo.com. Pagemodo is free, and they have ready-made templates that you can use. So, all you have to do is just pick a template.

There’s also a website, Woobox.com, where you can add sweepstakes, coupons, and more to your Fan page.

2. Email your current customer list & invite them to your new Fan page – You can send a nice email out to your current list letting them know about your new page, and you could say something like – I would be honored if you would click ‘like’ to become a fan of my new page (and make sure to include a link to your page).

3. Post Links on your Social Media Profiles like Twitter, LinkedIn, & Your Personal Profile on Facebook – For example, in your Bio on your Facebook Personal Profile, you could include something like: Come hang out with me on my Fan page at: facebook.com/______________. In your Twitter or LinkedIn Bio, you could type: Connect with me on FB at: facebook.com/____________.

4. Use Facebook as Your Page - When you login to Facebook, you can click the down arrow in the upper right-hand corner next to “Home”, then click “Use Facebook as Page”. When you click on this, you will now be interacting with people as your Page (NOT as you personally). So, a strategy that will help you get more fans is to click “Use Facebook as Page” and then comment on other Fan Pages as Your Page.

5. Use Facebook Ads – You can always purchase ads on Facebook to drive traffic to your Fan page. If you use this strategy, make sure to target your ads appropriately and start out small. Start out by only spending a few dollars a day and testing out different ads, so you can determine which ads work best for you (before you spend a lot of money).

6. Add the Facebook “Like” Box to your Website – When you add this to your website, then people can click “like” and become a fan of your Page (directly from your website). When people come to your website and they see that you have a large following on your Fan page, that also helps build up your credibility.

7. Ask Friends to Share your Page – All Fan pages have a “Share” link on the left-hand side of the page. You can always ask your friends to come to your page & click on the “Share” link. This way, your friends can share your page with their followers.

8. Add Your Fan Page Link to your Email Signature – If you do this, then every time you send an email to someone, they’ll see your Fan Page link in your signature. So, they can easily click on the link to go to your Fan Page.

9. Invite Friends – On the right-hand side of every Fan page, there’s an “Invite Friends” link. Simply click on that link in order to invite your friends to become a Fan of your Page.

10. Create an Event Launching your Page – You can create an Event called something like: “Launch of the _______ Page”. When creating the Event, in the More Info section, you could type 1 sentence about your Fan page and then type: I would be honored if you could click ‘like’ to become a fan of my new page at: facebook.com/____________” (Always include a link to your page. If you don’t include the link, then people may not know where to go to access the page).

When you’re Selecting the Guests to invite to your Event, you’ll see a link to “Add a Personal Message”. I recommend clicking on that link & typing the same thing again: I would be honored if you could click ‘like’ to become a fan of my new page at: facebook.com/____________

If you have your Fan page Link in 2 places, there’s a better chance that your friends will click on it in order to become a fan.

---

Article by Joy Bing Fleming. Would you like to learn more about how to use Facebook to promote your business and get more paying clients? If so, please visit: http://lifepassion.net/category/online-marketing/facebook/

Customizing Twitter Backgrounds

By Gregory Stringer in Featured

You don’t have to be handicapped to be different, ’cause everybody’s different.

-Kim Peek

This article is part of a group of posts focused on optimizing ROI in Twitter use.

There are a great deal of Twitter users adopting a policy of consistent branding and positioning carried across from other Webspaces, e.g. Websites, eStorefronts, etc., by employing customized Twitter backgrounds. This would seem to be defined as best practice, as many marketers advise keeping the process of branding both homogenous and persistent transversely through availed channels.

Customized backgrounds lend an air of professionalism to one’s Twitter account. Also, followers tend to be encouraged when they see a touch of personalization and branding. By following these few easy-to-understand steps, you too can be the proud owner of an upscale, bleeding-edge Twitter site!

Several factors must be considered when creating a custom background (the following suggestions and instructions are based on the use of Adobe Photoshop and presume familiarity; if needed, the reader is referred to the Adobe Photoshop tutorials site.

Size

There are two sides of the background which can be customized; right and left (note: the entire background will be one image). By keeping the graphic content of the right side width at 210 pixels (2.917 inches), and the left at 217 pixels (3.014 inches), all branding elements should fit within these two distances from the edges; height should be kept at 809 pixels (11.236 inches). The entire customized Twitter background graphic should be 1439 pixels (19.986 inches) width by 809 pixels (11.236 inches) height. As this is a Web document, resolution should be 72 pixels/inch. The resultant branding message will then be visible in both the “new” Twitter interface as well as the current version. While the space above the feed could conceivably be utilized in the overall creation of the graphic, this could prove problematic. Nevertheless, adventurous designers may wish to toy with this concept.

Background color

The option available that can be used to match the customized background color. It can be found in the Twitter navbar (located at the top of the site) by accessing Settings > Design > Change design colors. When the Change design colors option is accessed, and background, text, links, etc., are chosen, a color selector is provided for the user. In the selector is a dialog box wherein a hexadecimal value can be entered. This value is easily determined in Photoshop, and by matching the values no difference will be detected between the customized background and that supplied via the Twitter interface, as inequalities in coverage may occur.

Sidebar color

By matching the sidebar color to that of the background color (process described above), the information provided by Twitter in the sidebar section, e.g. name, number of tweets, following, followers, et al., will appear to float freely (note: by using a white background color [hex value = #ffffff], the feed itself will float; selecting both background and sidebar colors as white will eliminate page bordering altogether – this is how the Grannelle Twitter site has been fashioned [when employing this method, the sidebar border {appears as a delineation between the feed and the sidebar} can be eliminated by changing the color value to white also, if desired]).

Text and Graphics

All data such as hypertext, phone numbers, etc., are part of the total graphic. They cannot be accessed, copied, or pasted. However, by providing matching information accessible from the sidebar, such as that supplied for the Bio and Web headings (found in the uppermost portion of the sidebar), constancy can be achieved. Repetition of use of the profile picture is also helpful for uniformity. Twitter text and link colors can be selected from the Change design colors preferences to accent those in the customized background, though care should be taken to use contrasting hues. Bear in mind that users experiencing color vision deficiency (color blindness) may encounter difficulty in distinguishing certain color selections.

Total File Size and Format

The total size of the file must be smaller than 800k. GIF, JPEG (JPG), and PNG file formats are acceptable.

While the customized Twitter background graphic can be tiled (repeated across the page), it is not suggested for this method.

Using Photoshop, simply create a document with the aforementioned measurements, building content for the left and right sides of the graphic and choosing background color. Include text information, pictures, and other desired images and illustrations. Adopting a consistently matching background color, create a new document, again with previously described dimensions. Copy and paste the left and right (merged) images onto the appropriate sides of the image. Save the final product. The finished background can be uploaded in the Design section, Change background image, following the same procedure as formerly instructed.

By playing with and trying out these ideas, users can have a polished and professional Twitter site!

---

There is no sound, no cry, no voice in all the universe that can be heard until someone listens.

Gregory Stringer is a student of eCommerce, Social Media, and eMedia marketing. His blog, Grannelle’s Social Media, is a collection of articles dedicated to the scholarly study of Social Media and eNetworking. He is also founder, CEO, and CMO for Grannelle, an eCommerce outsourcing firm.

3 Ways to Get Readers More Engaged in Your SEO Content – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Nicole Beckett in Featured

It’s something that you hear all the time – all of the SEO content in the world doesn’t do you any good, unless your readers are really engaged in it. After all, people don’t buy products, sign up for email lists, or share links if they think that something is “just OK”. If you’re not publishing SEO content that really gets readers involved, you’re missing out on countless link opportunities, traffic, and sales.

So, how exactly do you create SEO content that’s going to engage readers?

1. Don’t Overlook the Importance of “You”

Your SEO articles, blog posts, and optimized sales pages are not formal research papers. The best way to get results out of them is to make each reader feel like you’re speaking directly to them. Luckily, you can do that by focusing on one little word – “you”. Writing in the third person (using “he”, “she”, or “they”) is impersonal; writing in the second person (using “you”) brings your SEO content to a personal level.

Take a look at this sentence:

“People have a hard time driving traffic to their websites because they haven’t defined a target audience.”

It’s not a bad sentence. It contains an important fact that is easy to understand, and it’s certainly better than some of the gibberish you see floating around out there. Your readers will look at this sentence and probably agree with it. Unfortunately, though, there’s no personal investment on their behalf. Instead, they’ll probably think, “Sure, ‘people’ probably do have that problem. So, what does that have to do with me?”

Choosing the Right Online Backup Service – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Lou Lynch in Featured

Online backup services, such as SOS Online Backup, Carbonite and Mozy, fill a definite need by making the prevention of data loss, affordable, automatic and secure. To use one of these services, you must install software on your computer to scan the hard drive for every file that you want to back up. When you do, the files are compressed and encrypted, and the information is uploaded to servers, which located at multiple data centers with military-grade security.

Choosing Your Service

This depends on much more than the annual fee involved. Start by considering how the service chooses – or allows you to choose – what will be backed up. Generally speaking, most of them will automatically select your Mac user or Windows my document folders. In most cases, you can fine-tune these choices by using a window containing a file directory tree and a folder. It also has check boxes to indicate the files and folders you want to back up.

What You Can Do

Some services also provide additional choices with the right-click menu, including backing up, deleting or restoring files in your online backup set. In addition, every service installs a system tray icon, which enables you to launch the browser that acts as its interface or to access the program window. With this icon, you should be able to begin a restore or backup at once.

Along with the encryption most services use when they store files on their servers, many of them will also allow you to be the only one who has the password protecting those files, and it cannot be accessed by their employees.

Your Main Choices

There are two types of online backup service that are commonly used. With scheduled backup, by using the service’s software, you decide when you want the required processing and uploading to be done, overnight in most cases. Conversely, you may be looking for continuous backup, and certain services, including SOS Online backup and Editors’ Choice, provide a hybrid of both methods. This allows the user to determine what individual files should be monitored continuously and backed up when any changes are made.

With a scheduled backup, the entire bandwidth of your internet connection will be left to you when it is not in use, while a continuous service will necessarily siphon off some of your bandwidth. However, if continuous backup is your main concern, a service like Carbonite or Backblaze is exactly what you need.

Finally, note that any sizeable backup can take a substantial amount of time, perhaps even weeks, to upload several gigabytes, and will vary with the speed of your online connection at the start. After that, your service will only have to upload the parts of a file that have changed, and subsequent backups will be much less time-consuming.

---

Lou Lynch is a seasoned technology professional currently working in online education. For more from Lou our his team of education writers visit College.com or look for his articles right here on sitepronews.com

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

Home Newsletter Archives SEO Forums Webmaster Tools Webmaster Resources Link to SPN Top SEO Tools Website Templates SPN Partners Contact Us Privacy Advertise

ExactSeek SiteProNews MetaWebSearch SPN Videos EzineHub ISEDN DropJack NewWebDirectory.com SEO-News SEO-News Forums Blog Search FreeWebSubmission SmartWebGadgets