What are your thoughts on adding Social Media and a Blog link to your website?

[Gordon Akman]

I think I'm going to add links to: Facebook; Twitter; and Blogger to my website. Maybe put hyperlinked buttons in the spare white space under my 'contact us' button. As usual, please give me your thoughts/opinions.

[kathiemt]

If it's relevant, then yes do it. I do and also have them linked in my email signature block.

[Gordon Akman]

I have now added facebook, twitter and blogger links to my website.

[John Debrincat]

Originally Posted by Gordon Akman

I have now added facebook, twitter and blogger links to my website.

Hi Gordon can I give you a couple of SEO tips for your website

1. You have no Meta Description Content in the header. It is very important and is used by search engines to determine keywords for content and Google will use it in search results. It is useful on every page but specially the home page

2. Similarly you need to have a Meta keywords, it is not used by Google but is used by some other search engines.

Link will explain the above - http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp

3. You don't have alt or title tags on any images. That basically means that where you have text in you image the search engines can't figure out what it is. So if you add alt tags then you describe the content of an image to the serch engine. the title tag will show up when you put your mouse over the image to give more information.

Link will explain the above - http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_IMG.asp

4. It is also really important to have your main keywords in the home page title as again the search engines use this to determine important keywords. Putting keywords in your title will improve your rank in search. Just you company name is not effective.

Regards

John

[bradzo]

Gordon

Good idea, and congrats for taking action.

Now, you'll need a way to measure whether doing so is actually beneficial to you. Can I suggest you sign up for a free Google Analytics account, and when you're done, paste the code they give you just before the </body> tag on your webpage(s).

That will allow you to see who visits your website (I assume you don't already have some sort of web log analysis tool that you can run) and also be able to track the links that people click on - your Facebook, Twitter and Blogger accounts respectively.

You can also sign up for a free account at bit.ly - this is a URL shortener service which will also let you track who clicked on that link. Instead of making the target of your social media buttons go directly to say twitter.com/GordonAkman, create a bit.ly short link, and use that instead. You can then log into bit.ly and see how many people clicked on those links.

I use TweetDeck as my Twitter client, and it has a number of URL shorteners that it works with, but I've set mine to default to bit.ly - you'll need an API key from bit.ly that you put into TweetDeck so that bit.ly can track the URL's you make available on Twitter.

That's as clear as mud, right?

If you need help, just holler!

Cheers
Brad

[seb]

I think it's only worthwhile if you're prepared to invest the time in generating interesting content. If the content is there, then definitely do it, but if you're not going to stick at it then there might work against you - a twitter feed with the last post 6 months ago isn't that crash hot!

[QS Supplements]

agreed
were finding it hard to put up content on social media. i think the solutuion is to have some sort of plan of attack. a weekly, monthly or daily message and plan ahead of what you will say. like be prepared one month in advance
all the best

[soliddata]

Originally Posted by QS Supplements

i think the solutuion is to have some sort of plan of attack. a weekly, monthly or daily message and plan ahead of what you will say. like be prepared one month in advance

Great idea,

Prepare a list of messages for each week (or whatever suitable time interval) for next six months. Either write the messages/articles yourself or contract a freelancer to do it.

Kevin

[exstatic]

Its also extremely important that if you do create a social media presence that you are actually part of it!

There is no point creating one and just leaving it, or spamming your website address every few days - that is a sure fire way to lose followers and degrade your brand.

Become part of the market, deliver interesting news to your market about things that might be happening - not just about your business.

Can I suggest using a tool like Google Reader to keep up to date with news in your market..maybe post occasional links to competitors and other offerings that people who are following you might find interesting

Provide value to your market, talk to people in it, interact with people in it!

It is called Social networking for a reason

[soliddata]

Yep true.

So you need to limit your social networks to the ones you can get best bang for your time, and thus you then DO spend the time needed.

Kev