What’s wrong with this picture? Could it be that the advertisements lack taste and real value, or could it be that the people who want your business care less about who you are and what you are interested.

What business entrepreneurs are forgetting is that they are on the other side of the fence of social media. They are on the advertising end, which means without a real connection to the “the people,” they are getting nowhere. At some point, a real connection needs to be established or otherwise all efforts to make a sale or spread the word are pointless.

The truth? No one cares about you unless you care about them, particularly when it comes to social media. Let’s say that you’ve got an account with Facebook. Each day when you see those tiny red notifications, you’re dead sure that they signify a message from your friends or family. Unfortunately, you open your inbox and all you see are loud advertisements. What do you do? You delete them, and you do so automatically without any interest whatsoever about what they say.

Advertising gurus are no longer “gurus,” they are simply annoying spammers who have no clue what they are doing. Business owners are missing the point. If their emails are getting read, it’s only by other advertisers just so they can compare tactics and techniques. Another sad part of it all is that no one is coming up with new techniques. Everybody is following someone who they think is successful, but in reality, no one is making any money because of their lack of effort and knowledge.

If you haven’t noticed (and you most likely have), all online entrepreneurs go about advertising their businesses in the same way. First, they request you as a fríend or become a follower (Twitter). Some of them may greet you with a “thanks for the request” or some other similar phrase, while others jump straight to the point and start bombarding you with their “winníng” sales pitch. Who are you more likely to communicate with? Nothing screams “delete” louder and faster than a sales pitch.

Some of the “thanks for the request” people might actually make it, as long as they don’t jump the gun too quickly. Unfortunately, the majority of them end it right there and automatically go on a link-posting frenzy, and immediately begin flooding your inbox with details about their products with no mention of how they might benefit you individually. It’s almost as if they are “demanding” that you purchase from them without any clear reason as to why.

On the other hand, some people are making sales. They are the ones who take their time in getting to know people. They ask questions and take a true interest in their prospects. Developing customer relationships is the most important part of advertising on social media because in the real world, customer relationships are a must.

It helps to wear the shoe on the other foot. Picture walking into a store with workers that aren’t friendly and don’t seem to have your interest anywhere in their top priorities. They are anxious for you to purchase something and that is it. They don’t care what you purchase or why, they just want your money. When you leave, they want you to come back over and over, even if you’re not interested in what they’ve got. It’s a horrible experience for both you and them.

When you look at it from a different perspective, it helps to see why social media is dying for your company. What people want is warmth and a display of interest in who they are, not lousy sales pitches. As soon as business professionals establish a connection, then they might have a chance, but until then, it’s best to just stick to more familiar means of advertising and leave social media to what it was always meant for. Bring common sense back to your marketing.

By Duncan Wierman

SM sites were intended to allow people to present a profile and keep in touch with interested parties. In essence a combination of email and webpage, they exploded in popularity with the sort of overnight success common to the Web. Of course users drive popularity, and where there are users, there is a captive audience – and businesses are always keen to adopt a potential audience.

Now Web writing and development resumes often need to include Social Media Networking experience, and businesses have their own Facebook pages. The Web is ever sensitive to the principles of competition and advertisement, so in the wake of this upsurge in popularity and usage come the techniques and principles of Social Media SEO.

Search engines rate all websites based on their internal criteria, and this increasingly includes Social Media pages such as Facebook. With that in mind, let’s consider five key ways you can apply SEO techniques to Facebook in order to drive interest.

Method 1 – Respect Your Audience

We’ve covered the power of individuality on the Web. While it is true the Web offers exceptional degrees of anonymity and collective activity, at the end of the day every user has his/her own judgments to make, and will make those judgments known via clicks and comments. There are websites solely devoted to expounding on peoples’ bad experiences, such as the popular Not Always Right. Rest assured that if you stick to sales pitches and infomercials, your work will be forgotten or derided quite quickly.

Instead, focus on promoting interesting, non-sales material on your Facebook page. Comment on interesting developments, or explain a personal angle from one of your employees that helps people connect with your organization. Some of the most profitable sites on the Web don’t make any major sales pitches, so take advantage of the chance to have a conversation and keep people interested.

Method 2 – Identify and Use Your Keywords

We’ve talked about keywords before, and they remain relevant still. Search engines are able to provide more precise listings based on effective keyword usage, and good placement in a search return is often dependent on how your keywords relate to user searches.

Keyword usage requires research. It isn’t a matter of simply plugging in all the buzzwords in every awkward conversation – this is a good way to get sites to blacklist or penalize you in their rankings. Take the time to really examine what key roles your business works toward, and then research the keyword usage of related activities. Pick out those keywords that seem most relevant, and then work them into your site as naturally as you can.

However, keyword use doesn’t always require focusing on the content and writing portions. Your Facebook profile includes an ‘about’ section. Putting your core keywords here is a good idea but keep it concise; more than two or three keywords risks diluting the impact of your message.

Method 3 – Remember Reciprocity

The interesting thing about your Facebook page is that your company website doesn’t host it – Facebook does. This puts your content in two distinct places on the Web, potentially doubling the coverage you can receive during Web searches. Take advantage of that by remembering to provide links from each site to the other. Your company homepage should be linked from your Facebook profile, and vice-versa. This will improve traffic to each site by bringing in visitors from the sister sites, and takes less than a minute to implement.

Method 4 – Harness Multiple Media

Broadband is common now. Perhaps it was still acceptable to lack significant video content in an online venture ten or even five years ago, but modern broadband connections cost customers less than the first dialup connections, and can channel extraordinary amounts of video and audio.

Given the social nature of Facebook, it’s an appropriate page to include ‘related’ content to your venture that isn’t strictly relevant in the normal sense. Consider a site focused on pet care and related products. Rather than tying in a sales video, post the latest adorable kitten video from one of the many cat websites on the Internet. Tag it with keywords related to your focus by all means, but the key here is to give people additional reasons to visit your site and help drive your numbers.

Method 5 – Learn From the Best

A writer once commented that every good story has already been written – what remains is for the good writer to borrow judiciously. If there is one thing the Internet is good for, it is copious amounts of free information. Take a look at popular Facebook sites and take notes on what they’re doing. You do not exist in a bubble, but rather a network of ideas and interactions. Consider adopting different approaches that others are making work, or putting your spin on them for even more success. Creativity drives much of the Web, so feel free to experiment.

Author
F. Cesario

Specifically, the rather startling news from Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa that Google has ditched PageRank from Webmaster Tools.

“We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true,” states Moskwa. “We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.” (Source: WebProNews)

Now, for SEO reasons or for ranking in Google’s index, PageRank has long been eunuchified by Google. However, even missing a few dangling bits, history has shown us, eunuchs still wheel tremendous power. PageRank is no different.

Regardless of what Google wants to happen, PageRank is still extremely important to anyone marketing on the web, especially if you’re selling SEO services or operating a web business. Try selling SEO services when that little green bar on your site is pointing to PR0 or worst yet, pointing to a solid gray bar.

Obtaining a high PR7 or PR8 simply means more business and revenues… regardless of how Google is or is not using PageRank. People know how to count and they learned long ago, a ten is a lot more than a big fat zero.

Placed against a PR1 site, a PR8 will win more respect in the eyes of potential clients and can produce enormous profíts for the site owner and we won’t even mention the still widely practiced habit of selling links, which Google is desperately trying to stop. Total and full elimination of PageRank would be an honest start, but it will still be an uphill, if not an unwinnable battle, for Google to fully eliminate link selling.

Even with my modest sites, I have turned down a small fortune by not selling text links on any of my sites. When I had a PR6 site instead of a PR4 – those link requests were nearly doubled. So one can easily understand Google’s position and the need to downplay PageRank, if they want to put even a small dent in all this link selling and buying, which is still running rampant on today’s web.

PageRank is Google’s creation, and unless they drop it fully from their system and the Google toolbar, then PageRank still Counts. Actually, in the whole scheme of marketing your website on the net, PageRank counts big time. And in more ways than one.

There are several reasons why you shouldn’t count PageRank out.

For years Google has been downplaying the importance of PageRank and states it’s only one of about 200 ranking factors which determine how Google ranks its index for keywords. Obtaining top organic rankings for popular lucrative keywords in Google simply means money in the bank. Actually, even a movement of only one or two places on those first page SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) can make a major difference to any online marketer’s bottom line.

Now while you can have a lower PR number and still rank above other higher PR pages for your chosen keywords, I have even had many times when my PR drops but my actual SERPs rankings in Google goes up, mainly due to building related relevant backlinks. So PageRank counts little towards your keyword rankings, but it can’t be totally dismissed.

Mainly because, even if PR is just one ranking factor, in close competitive keyword battles (I am presently fighting tooth and nail for some very choice keywords) just one ranking factor such as high PR can make the difference of whether or not you get to the top spot. Big dogs are still jumping and for those of us who know how to count, getting a number one spot in Google makes all the difference in the world.

Not only because Google controls roughly 80% of all search engine traffic, but more importantly Google has established unmatched credibility and brand recognition in the eyes of potential customers visiting your site. Web users trust Google. Web users look to Google for guidance and direction. Web users believe what Google is telling them. In the online world, rightly or wrongly, perception is everything.

As an online marketer, I am completely amazed each day at the marketing power Google now commands with web surfers and with the general population. Google is king of online search and no other search engine even comes close to Google.

PageRank is Google’s ranking system, and in the eyes of those who notice these things, it still wields tremendous influence and power. By default, PageRank is Google’s opinion of your site, and web users can count (at least to 10) and if Google believes people are still not counting when it comes to PageRank, then they are fully mistaken.

Author: Titus Hoskins