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Facebook adopts hashtags

June 13, 2013 by Peter Mahoney

Facebook adopts hashtags Wordpress SEO ExpertHow does this affect us, other than seeing lots of ironic #heresahilariouscommentaryonmyownlife links flash on our Facebook walls?

It gives Facebook a feature that it’s been lacking, the ability for us to see a stream of activity based around a single theme, site-wide.

It’s a great way to build your audience, by joining in threads that reach people far outside your own friends/subscribers list.

And while in a really busy hashtag search your comment will be replaced pretty quickly by the slew of other commentators, if you write the right thing at the right time, you’ve the potential to massively grow your sphere of influence.

Facebook has announced plans to introduce clickable hashtags for users.

The tool is already widely used on other media, such as microblogging site Twitter, so users can find out what others are discussing.

Facebook users have long-adopted the hashtag, often using it as an addition to comments and status updates. But they will now be able to click on the hashtagged words as a search term and view a feed of discussions relating to that topic.

via Facebook to introduce clickable hashtags | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

Filed Under: Social networking

https twitter com petermahoney status 345121732585222144

June 13, 2013 by Peter Mahoney

Today's Top #SEO Tip (it's the same everyday): share original, on topic content, often. DO IT!

— Purple Web Marketing (@purpleweb) June 13, 2013

Filed Under: Nerd-stream, Uncategorized Tagged With: search engine optimisation, seo, tweet

New product http www peopleperhour com hourlie build…

June 10, 2013 by Peter Mahoney

New product!!

http://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/build-a-custom-facebook-app-that-redirects-to-your-website/60269

“I can build a custom Facebook App that redirects to your website for £93”

Filed Under: Nerd-stream, Uncategorized Tagged With: app, custom, facebook, product

I’m making a point of marketing myself more…

June 10, 2013 by Peter Mahoney

I’m making a point of marketing myself more, by actually contacting people. 🙂

My website is well thought out, structured, and gets lots of visits, but I need to be going TO people as well. Case in point, here’s an email I just sent to a bunch of my LinkedIn connections.

___
(This email contains a FREE GIVEAWAY, keep reading for details).

Your website is your best online sales tool. Fullstop.

Search Engine Optimisation should be easy, but all too often geeks and nerds try to blind you with their science.

You can sign up for a free copy of my E-book “SEO, THE PRIMER” as well as my regular WEB GURU SECRETS here: http://petermahoney.net/web-guru-secrets/

The first FIVE people to sign up today will receive a FREE WOODEN 2GB USB Memory Stick.

At its core, SEO is about reinforcing. Reinforcing your messages, your values, who you are and what you do. Learn how to maximise your search potential.

Peter Mahoney
Web Guru
http://petermahoney.net

Filed Under: Nerd-stream, Uncategorized Tagged With: #webguru, direct marketing, email, linkedin, marketing

Search Engine Optimisation, primer complete

June 10, 2013 by Peter Mahoney

On Friday I published part five of my five part primer series on search engine optimisation.

For your convenience, you can get to each piece of the SEO puzzle here:

  1. Code
  2. Site speed
  3. Social integration
  4. Blogging
  5. Back-links and all other things link oriented

The series will give you an understanding of SEO, how to approach it conceptually and practically, and contains some easy to replicate tips and tricks.

And if you need help with any of it, let me know.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social networking, Website Speed

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Links & stuff

June 7, 2013 by Peter Mahoney

In the final part of my SEO primer series, let’s look at the bit most people think about first. Links.

Back links, social links, white-hat links, black-hat links.

I called this post “Links & stuff” because while the value of links is simple enough to understand, the jargon and terminology can make it seem more confusing than it is.

At its most simplistic—you really want as many links to your site as possible. You want them on blogs, local news sources, forums, social media, even from competitors sites (I’ve got a tip for that later on).

Because the more places on the Internet that link to you, the higher you get ranked in search engines. Google has always been very transparent about this, in fact the idea of indexing websites based on how many other places deem them useful enough to link to was their whole original idea. Which naturally has been replicated by other companies ad nauseum.

In a nutshell, that’s it. But like everything with SEO, it’s the nuances that make a real difference.

A link to your online presence from a popular website dedicated to your industry is better than a little-read blog. Links from Facebook sit somewhere near the lower end of that scale, with Twitter slightly behind. It’s all worth having, but what you really want are high quality links on respected websites.

Sometimes the best way to get high quality links back to your site (backlinks, as they’re known) is to just ask for them. You’d be surprised how many professional blogs relish having guest bloggers—people who write once off entries for them, or perhaps even a short series of posts. It can take the stress of deadlines off them, or help them out when they can’t work owing to illness or preferably, a holiday. And of course they always link back to your site in the byline.

A quick way to generate backlinks that are from well known sites related to your field of expertise is to comment on posts that are already there. It’s quick and effective. In my case, I go to Google, search for “SEO”, and click on a recent high profile blog result. After quickly reading the article, I’ll post my thoughts in the comments, and link back to a related post on my own site. If I don’t have a related post, I make sure I do very quickly. It never hurts to have published my own ideas on a recent hot topic anyway.

And that brings us to the cheeky competitors site tip. Go to their site, and comment on their blogs. If possible, find an article there that relates to something you’ve already written about, and say so. “Interesting to see you finally catching up with this one, I’ve been thinking about it for ages”. Cheeky. But include a link to your post, and not only do you get the SEO benefits, but you can hijack part of their readership.

Make sure you have Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin profiles that can be publicly accessed, and link to your posts from there.

Make sure other people can share your posts socially easily too; sharing buttons beneath each post on your website can make a real difference.

I maintain a separate blog, peter.mahoneywebmarketing.co, which has the sole purpose of containing links to my own work. But (importantly) it has other short content there too, after all if it was nothing but links to my own work Google would see right through me.

And that brings us to the whitehat/blackhat concepts. In computer jargon whitehat is most simply defined as “not doing anything dodgy”. Blackhat is the opposite.

There are all manner of techniques for building backlinks to up your search engine ratings. Anything you pay for is usually blackhat. Not illegal, but not exactly cricket either.

Here’s an example. Link pyramids. These used to be very popular, and at times quite costly. You’d pay someone to create an army of low-level links on social networks and lesser known blogs. Then those would link to more popular sites, but again these were all manufactured by the vendor. Then they’d point to a few really highly ranked site, and in turn they would point to your pages.

You were at the top of the pyramid, enjoying the view from the top of search engines rankings.

Then the search engines realised what was happening, and wrote highly intelligent algorithms to find these pyramids, and penalise them. A lot. I’m managing SEO for a client who had to move domain names just to get away from their previous ill-gotten reputation (earned before my involvement, I hasten to add). They had thousands of links, felt at the top of their game, then woke up one morning to find in the eyes of the world wide web, they barely existed anymore.

And then the link building industry moved to a link wheels, and again the cycle began, only to fall later.

And this is a very important lesson I can’t impart strongly enough. SEO is a long game, because it should be organic.

Yes, you can optimise your code, your site speed, your images, etc. Yes, you can spread the word by sharing links to your site on other related blogs, but that’s all real people doing real things. Have great content that people will want to engage with, and share.

But if you try to cheat the system, you’ll be slapped for it. And for many of us, with so much of our business conducted online, a slap can send us under.

Organic growth. Humans interacting. It’s what the Internet was supposed to be about. Search engines make unexpected guardians of that dream, but when it comes to being found online, they hold all the keys.

Filed Under: Backlinks, Google, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social networking, Website Speed

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