SIX Ways to Improve Navigation and Increase PageViews

There have been numerous posts written by many people on how to increase traffic to your Blog. This “How To…” is for after you have gone through all of the basic steps such as SEO and Linking etc.

Once you have gotten people to come to your site, how do you get them to stay?

Navigation…

Most Blogging platforms leave a lot to be desired in helping your readers find anything on your site other than the landing page and Archives listed by week or month. Here are some simple steps to help visitors find things that they may be interested in or if they want more information on something you may have written previously.

~~ Use Categories. Not every platform (especially Blogger) has the capability to enable Categories. They give a quick reference to what other Subjects you have written about that may interest your reader. I explained in a post a while back on how I Added a Category List to my Blogger Blog.

~~ Intra-link. There are a lot of times you’ll find that you had written something previously that is relevant to your current topic. If that is the case, provide a link within the text (as I did above) to that information so the reader doesn't have to go looking for it.

~~ Related Posts. After you have been writing for a while, there is usually something in your archives that you know about that will provide additional information or is related to the subject in some way. Put these links at the bottom of your post as a reference source.

~~ Recent Posts. Not every platform and template provides for a list of your most recent posts, in that case you will want to add some type of Plug-in. Luckily, I didn't use one but you want a reader to know what had been written recently. Most will allow various amounts of days shown, I set mine for 7 days.

~~ Recent Comments. I found the bdp-comments Plug-in to show comments on different posts and the author in descending order. There are many variations out there. If readers see that other people are commenting, they may be tempted to join in and voice their opinion.

~~ Link to Series. Most likely you have written at least one series of posts on a particular subject. In that case, you don’t want them to get lost. Put a link to the First post in the sidebar and make sure you have links on each post, one to the next (if you use Blogger). I found the In-Series Plug-in for WordPress that simplifies the process.

These are not the only ways to improve page views and length of time visitors spend reading your material. Can you add to the list?

Write your answers on the comment  box below...

Four Ways Publishers Can Optimize for Facebook's New News Feed

Facebook unveiled its "new" News Feed Thursday, and while we won't know the full range of effects it will have on the pages of brands and publishers for some time, Facebook has provided a few clues to help administrators optimize their pages ahead of its rollout.

First, let's take a look at the changes. The new News Feed is cleaner, more visual and has more filtering controls. The size of photos and videos have been enlarged, making the quality of visual media more important than ever before. That's great news for magazines and other publishers with deep photo resources; for publishers that rely largely on Creative Commons or stock imagery, the challenge is greater.

In addition to larger photos and videos, Facebook has introduced a number of "sub feeds" to give users greater control over what updates appear in their streams. Users can opt to view updates from All or just Close Friends, only photo updates, only music updates, only updates from pages and public figures they follow (i.e., subscribe to), only updates from Groups and only updates from game apps. They can also view updates in reverse-chronological order.

While these changes could have a negative impact on publishers' pages, particularly if users opt to spend all or most of their time viewing updates from their Close Friends, Facebook insists it could be a boon as well, because users can switch over to the "Following" feed to get updates outside their friend circles precisely when they want them.

Beyond those changes, the look of the new News Feed is far more consistent across smartphones, tablets and desktops than previously. For a visual overview of the alterations, click through our slideshow, or check out Facebook's official overview.
Optimization Strategies

Publishers can make some changes to their content to take advantage of the coming changes. Here's a few recommendations:

1. Invest in high-quality, high-resolution images. High-quality imagery is more important than ever before. Photos now make up nearly half of all News Feed stories, according to Facebook, up from 30% just a year ago. That growth is likely to accelerate now that Facebook is enlarging the size of photos in the News Feed. Facebook recommends publishers use images with a width of at least 552 pixels. As a bonus, publishers no longer need to upload full-sized images next to their story links. According to one Facebook source, Facebook will now display thumbnail photos pulled from story pages at the same size as images uploaded directly to the News Feed. As such, it's important for publishers to upload thumbnail images with a width of at least 552 pixels on their sites.


2. Improve your cover photo. Publishers may have had little incentive to invest in a great cover photo until now because it never showed up in the News Feed. That's about to change. When a group of friends Like or otherwise interact with a Facebook page, that Page may be highlighted in the News Feed with its cover photo on display. As Facebook says, "Having an engaging cover photo that tells your or your Page's story is even more important to improve your discovery through connection stories."

3. Post about trending topics. News stories about a single topic will be highlighted in thumbnail-rich carousels in the News Feed, like the one featuring Taylor Swift stories, below. Thus it may be more advantageous to share trending rather than outlier stories on Facebook.

4. Share different types of media. If publishers want to have a presence in users' sub feeds — namely, their photo and music feeds — consider sharing more photos, and linking a company Spotify or Rdio account to Facebook.

Identify any other optimization strategies for the new News Feed? Please share them in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Facebook

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How SEO Can Help You To Get Best Returns From Your Website

 

What is an SEO?
SEO is a short form for ‘Search Engine Optimization’ or ‘Search Engine Optimizer’. SEO is normally used to explain the procedure of optimizing the website in such a manner that it will come out higher in rank while exploring the search engines of the world wide web. The natural or organic results denote those search results that are put back on left side of screen. Specialized SEO services intend to advance your position in organic search result. A website that is optimized using effective SEO tools can obtain vast returns from your online business marketing.

Why is SEO so Significant?
Since several users utilize the search engines, especially Google, to check on the services and products prior to opt for purchasing, it is vital for the powerful and strong existence on the internet search engines. If your product, service or brand cannot be seen on the search results, users will obviously turn to your competitors in the same field who have top rankings of their sites at the time of search results. If your internet presence has been set up strong with an attractive and search engine friendly web site the opposition parties or groups will fail to pass you through in the search engine results.

Why to Opt for SEO?
Though ‘Pay Per Click’ results can increase the clicks to your website fast, for long term, it is a very costly means to advertise your website. It is believed that if PPC is used combined with SEO, it can get you clicks of numerous targeted visitors. Some of the benefits of SEO which you must know about:

• Majority of Click fall On Organic Results – Researches have proved that internet surfers are more tempted to go for the site appearing in result in this sector than on paid results.
• Branding – It is the high position in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) that helps you to build a “top of mind” branding among the customers and it is a highly influential means of marketing.
• Free – Different from pay per click (PPC) marketing, if your website is optimized and developed once and standing on top for the required keywords, you don’t need to pay and it is absolutely free for going to the organic results.
• Long Term Traffic – If your page is well-optimized, it will usually rank on the top position of the search results for over prolong period, and will get dividends in due course.

How SEO can help you get Best Return from your Website?

• Keywords Analysis: Select the best keywords for your website.
• Website Optimization: SEO ensure your website is content wealthy and search engine friendly.
• Link Competition analysis: SEO assess how many links will be needed to get your site into that looked for after 1 and 2 rankings on key search engines.
• Link Building: SEO make appropriate and permanent links that make targeted traffic to your site and augment your place on search engines.

Proper use of Search Engine Optimization helps your site to render what the customer need and to appear before the customer when they search. Search Engine Optimization increases the exposure of the website to increase your profitability. To sum up, SEO is certainly one of the most important and helpful internet marketing methods to attract customers offered today…

If You’re Worried About Likes, Avoid Posting To Facebook From Twitter

Facebook is showing your content to far fewer people than they used to, says Nick Bilton at the NY Times, pointing out that while his subscribers have soared, the number of likes per post has declined rapidly. Josh Constine writes his thoughts here.

Bilton’s theory is that Facebook wants to incent people to pay to promote their content, so they show unpaid content to far fewer people. Hunter Walk has other theories (and correctly points out that comparing old data to new could be explained in other ways as well).

Occam’s Razor suggests Bilton is right, simply because Facebook has the incentive to make the free views scarce to increase demand for the paid views. But I just don’t know. As an aside, when I promoted a post back in November, Facebook told me I “had 969x as many views because you promoted it.”

Here’s what I do know – if you really care about Facebook likes, don’t just post your stuff to Twitter and then rely on it being republished automatically to Facebook. In my sample size of one, Facebook penalizes you significantly for that and shows that content to far fewer people.

I have Twitter auto post to my Facebook page, and I occasionally post things directly to Facebook as well. I’ve always noticed that the direct-to-Facebook approach generates far more likes, but I’ve never actually gone back and run the averages. Today I did, although only for the last few weeks of posts.

Here’s what I found. The average post published to Facebook by Twitter gets 13.6 likes. The average direct to Facebook post gets 81.1 likes.

I don’t care enough to change the way I publish to social networks. But you might.

Disclosure: I am a partner at CrunchFund, a venture firm. I and CrunchFund each own shares in Facebook. CrunchFund owns Twitter shares. More information is here.

Social Media Optimization Plans

 SMO Plans
Social media marketing is all about marketing through social networking sites.

1. Facebook

• Fan page
• Likes
• Status posts
• Comments

2. Twitter

• Custom Background
• Following
• Followers
• Tweets
• Reply

3. Linkedin

• Profile setup
• Connections
• Group Creations
• Status posts

3. Pinterest

• Profile setup
• Followers
• Pins

4. Video

• Creation
• Submission
• Optmization

5. Social Site submission

6. Classified Ads Creation & Posting

7. Article

• Creation& Submissions

8. Press Release

• Creation, Submission & Distribution

9. You can put your site’s link by initiating and participating in discussions related to your services: 

• Blogs 
• Forums 
• Groups on Linkedin 
• Groups on yahoo 
• Groups on Facebook 
• Yahoo answers

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