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SiteProNews Blogs

• Darren Dunner
• Jerry Bader
• Kalena Jordan
• Matt Jackson
• Mel Strocen
• Titus Hoskins

The Power of a Tiny URL

By Darren Dunner

With the world wide web of social media and the constant reminder that this is not a fade but a reality, we are all faced with questions on how do I use these Social Media sites successfully and at what point to get others to help.

I was watching the News last night and they were talking about the Lakers big win and how unruly people went out of control and started destroying things in plain view for all the news cameras and security cameras to see. Then they followed up with asking people to go to their twitter account and comment on what they think about these events. As you can see this type of social media is very popular and being used now in ways we never thought possible. When the television starts telling you to use twitter you know we are on to something big here.

I am not going to give any real meat here on social networking but wanted to touch on one aspect here which involves the URL which is most commonly used for the micro blogging sites like “spnbabble” and “twitter“. When postings to sites like this since the character limit is 140 then the need to shorten URLs comes into play as some URLs are so long that it can take up the majority of your message. So sites like MyOpenID start appearing all over the web allowing us to use our own tiny URL to help manage this shortening of URLs.

What I find interesting here is with all this new technology like the open ID URLs we are missing some opportunities here. The idea of the open ID is to allow you to shorten a URL and make the URL look clean. It also masks the actual URL until you arrive at the site. You should also be aware that these tiny URLs are not exactly SEO friendly so it is important to come up with a few ideas on how you can make use of this technology so that it gives you an advantage in the online market. Here are a few ideas:

1. Use the tiny URLs to direct people to your affiliate pages.

Most affiliate sites all use a common string of words in the urls which show a users ID name or number. People are catching on and when presenting your product in a creative way to get people to click on those links they stop as soon as they see the actual URL. Though you may be offering the greatest thing in the world, you are losing potential business because people know this is just another money venture for you. So, use a tiny URL which has a social media appeal to get them to click.

2. Use tiny URLs to link to other resource sites

If you have a lot of great sites to link to on your web pages or blog but don’t want to give up too many links for the SE’s then use the tiny URL and save yourself the time of having to block the search engines from counting those links other sites. A one way link is very valuable now and if you are not linking to other sites as a trade off then why give it away?

3. Use tiny URLs to make use of many online marketing tools out there.

There a ton of sites popping up where you can use your open ID URL to make use of their services. These services often have ways of automating sites out there like twitter.com and can be a very useful in gaining new followers, etc. An example is tweetlater.com which allows you to create an auto response to all your followers. It is a one time message thanking them for following you and allowing you to link to any site using a tiny url and maybe your one chance to sell an item or get a new subscriber. For more details about this read my latest article on Advance Twitter.

If you have not currently signed up for an open ID you should do it fast as your favorite names can be taken very soon here. After you sign up for one make sure to go to SPNBabble and create an account there and connect your open ID and micro blog accounts so you can make use of micro blogging on 1 site but having it appear on several others automatically like Facebook and Twitter. We have also created a wordpress plugin for this to save you even more time of having to bookmark your blogs to micro blog sites.

Can you think of more uses for a tiny URL?

Where to Draw the Line of Pleasing The Search Engines Versus Your Clients

By Darren Dunner

I was reading a blog entry from ChrisBoggs about content for search engines versus content for clients. You would think after all these years of online business and the growing popularity to buy online, find resources or sell your own services, that we would all be instant experts on SEO and proper content placement.

Well search around the net and see how many results take you to sites that make sense versus sites that are so jumbled up with information, it leaves you wondering how they ended up in that search result. Both types of sites make it into the top rankings. It seems the controversy here is quality content version SEO content and which produces results… well, they both do. The real issue is do your potential clients care if you have a nice clean site with information that compels them to use your services versus mixed up words that make no sense. Well, I know you are thinking that quality compelling content is better, but it appears that many site owners are not aware they can have great content and results. A real basic factor to understand here is how the search engines see your keywords and content.

The search engines use algorithms to ready your content. They read your meta data and your body content. But when they read this content it is not the same as you or I reading this content, they see this as patterns and what changes these patterns are basic things like bolding, capital letters, spaces, dashes, font size, etc.

So whether you have compelling content or cluttered content, it does not determine your rankings from the search engines. What improves your rankings in regards to content is your keyword placement, your content and how much of both are used on your site. If you sell widgets and your site does not express this throughout all of your pages then you will not rank for that keyword.

Personally if you are trying to stuff your site with keywords for the sake of traffic results then take the time to make sure the content makes sense to the reader and that you use enough of the keywords throughout the site to satisfy the search engines. There is nothing worse then searching and finding sites that make absolutely no sense. Why are people going to spend their money on your site if you are filling it up with words that that don’t give a clear picture of what you are offering?

If you can’t write good quality content and you are not sure how to properly place keywords then maybe it is time to hire a ghost writer for your site.