Posted by
Jay Teal on Tue, Oct 02, 2012 @ 02:20 PM
Facebook marketing can be confusing, challenging, and worst of all difficult to get any return on investment. Here are 10 Facebook marketing tips to help you get the most out of your social media marketing efforts: 
1. Facebook is a huge time sink - Create a time sink. Facebook is one huge "time sink" - the apps, games, sharing, and digital socialization within the platform can take up as much as 8 hours of browsing time. Create your own Facebook time sink (such as an app, a quiz, or an interactive mini-game) to truly engage your fans beyond the occasional likes, shares, and comments.
2. Facebook fans don't matter until you engage them - Engage your fans. The number of fans you have should not be the metric by which you measure your marketing success on Facebook; it's how well you engage them that truly matters. Indeed, when engagement is there, the numbers will follow as your fans will surely spread word of mouth marketing for you.
3. Facebook Apps can be effective lead generation tools - Integrate lead generation with your apps. You obtain all the lead info you need to acquire the first time people grant permission for your app to access basic info from their profiles, and through what they do in your app, you can qualify at what stage of the marketing cycle these people are. Providers who offer such services include SnapApp and eCircle.
4. Include Facebook in your content strategy, not just your social media marketing plans - A couple of steps to take in this direction include setting up an editorial calendar or schedule of posts, and creating a proper content repurposing format for your blog posts or website content specific to Facebook.
5. Content placement on Facebook matters - Place your most important content on the right-hand side of your page, pin it to the top of your Timeline feed, include it in your mobile news feed, and try to include a log out experience if possible.
6. Facebook social sign-ups on external sites help ecommerce - Integrate Facebook social sign-up for your ecommerce website. It saves time and avoids hassling people to take the time for a full sign-up when they're ready to checkout for the first time.
7. Using the Timeline properly makes a huge impact - Use a good image in your Timeline cover photo (851x315 pixels) and your profile image (180x180 pixels) as well as visible tabs (111x74 pixels) and make sure you maximize the 150 characters in your About section. Pin important posts, milestones, and stars in your Timeline.
8. Introduce your calls to action in Facebook content early - Make your calls to action within the first 90 characters of Facebook content if they are meant to advertise.
9. Brand, brand, brand - Make use of image association and branding everywhere: in Timeline posts, in the cover, in your profile image, and within a branded URL that you can obtain after reaching enough fans.
10. Know the most effective social content types for your audience - Generally, the most effective social content are images with worded descriptions that are above 141 characters in length. All you need to add are tweaks to ensure the social content matches your target market.
These tips span engagement to branding to lead generation and more. Try them out for yourself and see the difference they can make, and continue to learn how best to leverage Facebook for your own business endeavors as part of a successful marketing campaign that spans social, content, branding strategy, and more.
Do you have some other ideas or tips? Please let me know, comment below!
Posted by
Jay Teal on Thu, Sep 20, 2012 @ 12:04 PM
You have a great product or service. You've placed advertising in the right places and successfully driven traffic to a landing page 
that perfectly describes the benefits of doing business with you. You should be receiving inquiries or closing sales right and left, but it's not happening. Why? Chances are it's because you haven't given enough thought to your advertising call to action. In fact, many professionals or business owners who are managing their own marketing campaigns don't include a clear advertising call to action at all.
Unfortunately, that often means that an otherwise compelling campaign falls flat. Here's why:
- Most people aren't decisive: Left to their own devices, most will look around and ponder rather than taking action. If you want them to act, you have to direct them specifically and make it easy and inviting to follow that direction.
- You have competition: Even if you've made your product sound great, your website visitors know there are other options out there, and they will be inclined to look further rather than ending their search. Inviting them to take specific action can interrupt that process.
- It's your job to make it easy for your prospects to become customers: If a visitor has to look around for a way to inquire or make a purchase from you, he may not bother. Even if he does, his initial impression of your company won't be as strong as if you'd made it easy for him.
- You don't want a visitor to leave your site without acting: No matter how interested in your product or service a visitor might be, the chances that he'll take the initiative to sign up, contact you or make a purchase decline if he leaves your site. Invite him to act immediately.
- It's to your advantage to control your own campaign: Even if the prospect is interested enough to take action in the absence of an advertising call to action, it may not be the action you want--it might lead to a smaller sale, a longer sales cycle, greater conversion costs or any number of less desirable results. By including a clear invitation to act, you direct your prospect down the path you want him to take.
Don't invest in an otherwise winning campaign only to drop the ball just when it's time to convert. Think clearly about what you want your prospects to do, whether that's to provide contact information so you can follow up, provide you with additional information, request an assessment or place an order immediately. When you know what action you want, provide a clear invitation and opportunity right on the page, where it's impossible for your prospects to miss.
Please let me know your thoughts, what what are some other reasons why campigns fall falt???
Posted by
Jay Teal on Wed, Jun 20, 2012 @ 01:50 PM
SEOmoz give an excellent breakdown of the Google Penguin Update stating:
- The Penguin Update was NOT focused on improving the quality of search results, rather the update is aimed at getting people to pay attention to proper seo guidlines and practice "White Hat" SEO
- The update was focused on manipulating link profiles
- The marketing service field was severely hit, was this a coincidence or deliberate?
- Will Google make an update to Penguin like they did with Panda?
Check out the below video by Rand Fishkin Let us know what you think!
Web Ninja Facebook
Web Ninja Twitter
Let’s be honest when it comes to search engines, Google is often considered the king. I mean 
think about it, if I write about SEO, I may say search engines in the general of terms, but I very well could just say Google and not many people I would imagine would bat an eye. However, this article isn’t about SEO and how to rise up the Google ranks, no in fact this is a beginner's guide to Googling made easy.
Go to Google, but which Version? If you’ve every been to Google (which I assume you have), you may be interested to know that the version that we see in the United States differs from the version that is shown in other countries. Although if you’re using an IP address from Stateside and looking for information from across, you should ultimately get the same information, however it may take a bit more digging.
In addition to the various versions of Google, which can be found in different countries, the company also offers up a sort of vertical search engine, which is a more streamline variation of the Google we know so well. This streamline version allows users to search for specific content in an assortment of areas such as images, videos, news, and more.
Use your toolbar to Google. The fastest way to search Google is to utilize the Google Search Toolbar that tends to be a standard fixture or option of most web browsers. The search bar is often located directly next to the URL bar in the top right of the browser window.
The search bar is easy to use, all you need to do is input your search phrase and press enter and pages of results will appear momentarily.
Searching made easy. One of the reasons Google has skyrocketed to become one of the most popular places to search for info is because of its ease and now scouring the web has become even simpler due to some of features Google has put into place.
One of the features to make searching friendlier is “Google Suggest”. As you type in your terms or phrase Google automatically suggests topics relative to what you’ve typed in and will look something like this:
Review the Results. After you hit enter, you’ll be directed to a new page filled with results dealing with your search term, some are more relative than others. Some of the content may be news orientated, in a form of videos or pictures, or maybe subject specific content. If you wish to read the entire article, simply click on the blue title.
It’s ok to cheat. After you are brought to the results page, you’ll likely be given an onslaught of information, some of it however may be frivolous for you’re your purposes, however, rather than clicking every link and following to the page to later be disappointed you can save some time and headaches by previewing the page.
To do this, all you simply need to do is locate the magnifying glass symbol, which typically appears at the end of the blue title link. Once you find it, click on it and a preview page from the link will appear and you can make and browse it before investing any time.
For the more articles on Twitter, searching, or other topics of interest, be sure to check back or subscribe for email updates. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
As always, we'd love to hear any and all your feedback regarding this article!
Don't Get BANNED from Twitter Search Results
There’s no doubt that we are waist deep in the social media/networking era, if that much. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn amongst others have crept into our lives to rule our daily routine and at first they were mainly personal, but as their popularity gain exponentially, businesses jumped onboard as well.
Due to the influx in users, some social sites have decided to take certain steps to eradicate fake profiles that are typically bot operated and spam anyone who dares to follow. One of those sites is Twitter, which host about 140 million daily users that over the course of one week can rattle of, oh about a billion or something Tweets... Yeah, I said a billion tweets in one week. Therefore it is easy to see and understand why Twitter has decided to eliminate bot run pages, however, if you are one of the 140 million daily users be sure to be careful that you don’t over do it or you could be blocked from appearing on the Twitter’s Search results.
Who cares you ask? Well, you should because if you don’t appear on search results on Twitter, consider the number of people and potential opportunities for leads or growth that are being withheld.
Here are some simple tips to ensure that you continue to appear on the Twitter's search results page.
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We heard you already! Be honest there is nothing more annoying than having someone continuously posting the same link/tweet over and over again, it’s like hear the same joke, we get it. To help elevate the problem, Twitter has taken a page out of Google’s book, which punishes for duplicate content, and now does the same to users who spam your feed hoping for visibility.
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Don’t be aggressive. No one likes a person who’s overly aggressive, well neither does Twitter. A smart way to not get blocked from the results page is to gradually grow the number of people you follow and to keep a rather reasonable ratio between followers and followings.
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Everything in Moderation. Abusing hashtags or trending topics is a stellar way to get blacklisted, although due to the increasing popularity of Twitter Chats, which utilize a specific hashtag to help keep track of a conversation those who are flagged for this, generally are gratuitous with their usage.
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Personalization Tweet/Replies. Automated tweets and replies will definitely put you on the fast track to be blocked. Rather than automating your replies, consider taking the 15 seconds or so to respond with something a bit more personal, could make the difference in the end.
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Individualize. Posting the same or similar message across different accounts is a surefire way to booted from appearing. The sacrifice and time to successfully operate various accounts is understandable, however, it is vital that you take the necessary steps to individualize the content per each account.
For the more articles on Twitter, searching, or other topics of interest, be sure to check back or subscribe for email updates. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Also, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this article and if it helped you any.
Posted by
MK DUNPHY on Fri, Jun 01, 2012 @ 12:50 PM
Anchor Text Links
Anchor text links are the hyperlinked words on a webpage that you are able to click on. If used correctly, anchor text links will be a big help regarding search engine optimization.
Why Anchor Text Links?
Search engine bots that crawl through your webpage do not 
actually understand all of your content; they scan your keywords, titles, pictures, and anchor text links. You want to make it so that you can scan through your page, just the titles and keywords and know exactly what it is about, without actually reading the content. You need good anchor text links to rank high on the SERP.
Relate Anchor Text Links to Content
The landing pages visitors end up on when they click your link should be strategically chosen so that your website is maximally optimized for the search engines. If the links you place throughout your site have nothing to do with your page, there is no point in having them in there at all. Anchor link texts are most effective when the pages you link relate to the content of your page. Ideally, your landing page should reassure the reader of the information you have already given them.
If you have a gardening website and are talking about John Deer lawn mowers, “John Deer lawn mowers” should be made into an anchor text link. Because you hyperlinked this term, when people search for “John Deer lawn mowers”, your webpage is more likely to pop up on the SERP or search engine results.
Pay Attention to Your First Link
The first link you put in your webpage is very important. The first link is often the one considered when ranking your site among the search engines. Being that the first link is so important, you should use a keyword that summarizes the purpose of your site so that your site will be more likely to show up on the SERP.
Anchor Text Linking is important to your SEO endeavors and if you follow this simple advice, you will rank higher with major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
If you have any questions concerning search engine optimization, visit us at our website or follow us on Twitter.
Twitter Search Engine Expert
Most people when considering to search for information automatically think to go to Google, which is fine especially if you can use it like an expert, however, there are other platforms to search for the right information, one of them being Twitter.
Don’t be alarmed, I’m not crazy. Twitter does in fact hold the potential to be an incredibly useful search tool. With over 140 million active users the possibilities are virtually endless. Twitter search can help you find interesting articles, keep tabs on your industry or company, or even attract new followers.
If not sure how to use Twitter Search, here are 5 simple tips to help you be a Twitter search expert.
Use Advanced Search: Most people are some
what familiar with Twitter Search, although to get better more useful results try using the Advanced Twitter Search option which offers a variety of options to yield the best results. For example, users can search for tweets containing a keyword from either all users or narrow it down to a particular user.
Exact Match: When looking for a particular word or phrase it’s best to use the exact match option found on the advanced search page. Another suggestion could be to enclose the search phrase with quotes to keep them grouped together.
Subtract Words: Even though you may find the exact phrase you looking for, chances are that some of the results do very little for you. If you are searching for a business, be sure to remember that most names aren’t absolutely unique and that there is a possibility that the name is shared with other organizations or items. There is a solution, remove keywords associated with extraneous results. Simply put a minus sign before the word you want to remove from the search inquiry.
Filter for Links: Even though users are limited to 140 characters, they are able to share links to other articles that are more in-depth than any tweet ever could be. If you’re on the hunt for results that only have links simply adding “filter:links” after inputting your search query.
Put the Pieces Together: Knowing the operators to assist in an expert-like search is nice, but just like in school, it doesn’t mean as much unless you can make sense of them and put them all together. Using multiple operators will help you narrow and better define your search, which will in turn provide you the most useful information.
These are just a few of the many command operators to help manipulate Twitter Search to your advantage. The entire list will give you many more operators to help you get the most out your searches.
For the more articles on how to search more effectively or other topics of interest, be sure to check back or subscribe for email updates. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Also, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this article and if it helped you any.
Written by Jason Oliveira
Become a Search Engine Expert
If you’re anything like most Americans, you likely use Google when you need an answer for virtually any question, after all, the popularity of search engine giant is what got itself to be considered a verb and ultimately find it's way into the Oxford English Dictionary, but I digress.
The vast majority of individuals who use Google tend to use the search engine in it’s most simplest form -- input a search query, click search, change search phrase or word if desired results aren’t found, and repeat. That’s a basic process that should be limited to the application of shampoo, not searching for information.
Well worry no more, because in fact I present to you today 8 easy tips that will make anyone into search engine expert.
Specific Search Phrase: In many situations we are using search engines to look for content relative to a specific term, say for example marketing techniques. Instead of just typing marketing techniques into the search query, we would be better served by grouping the words together and having it search for that specific phrase. To do this, we will simply surround phrase we are searching for with double quotes.
ex: “marketing techniques”
Selective Omission: Lets say you searched for effective marketing techniques but all that came up were articles about advertising, which you wanted to stay away from. In order to hide particular words from coming up in a search, you simply need to place a hyphen or minus sign before the word you wish to omit.
ex: “marketing techniques” -advertising
Similar Words: In the event that you would like to include a word in your search as well as similar words, you simply need to place “~” in front of the word the word.
ex: “marketing techniques” ~effective
This OR That: Search engines will automatically include all terms in a search query. However, if you looking for content on either of two possible searches, then you can separate the two by using the word OR. (Note: The OR has to be capitalized).
ex: marketing techniques OR advertising
Phone Listing: Ever get a call from a number you didn’t know? Well if you want to know who called you who simply use “phonebook:” followed by the number.
ex: phonebook: 617-379-3856
Stocks (Ticker): In the event you want to check on the status of a particular 
stock that could make you live the life of champagne and caviar, all you need to do is input the ticker symbol in the search bar and a thumbnail chart will appear accompanied by all the vital numbers you’ll want to know.
ex: AAPL
Calculator: Need to do a quick calculation but don’t have your calculator near by? Bet you don’t want do the math out because you hate long division, well don’t fret, you can enter the problem into the search bar and let search engine figure it out. (Note: To multiply use the asterisk, to divide use a backslash “/”).
ex: 56742*15.39
Easy Dictionary: Next time you need a definition for word, keep the dictionary where in belongs, as a paperweight and simply use "define:" followed by the word you wish to look up.
ex: define: superfluous
Now that you have these simply little tips, I wish you the best in your future searching endeavors whatever they may be.
Was this article helpful? Was there something I missed? If you have a thought, comment, or opinions regarding this article I’d love hear from you.
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Written by Jason Oliveira
As mentioned in a number of previous articles, content is king; well if that’s the case then keywords could be considered the queen.
There’s a little hitch though, there’s two kinds of keywords, branded and non-branded keywords… so which one is queen and which is the bitter lonely sister?
Branded Keywords
Branded keywords or phrases are words that include your brand name or names in addition to variations of it, which include but 
are not limited to domain names and misspellings. For example some branded keywords for this website would be:
Web Ninja Dojo
webninjadojo.com
webninjadoj0
Non-Branded Keywords
On the other hand we have non-brand keywords, which are those keywords that do not incorporate your brand’s name or such variations.
But why should you care? Well, you should care because the differences between branded and non-branded keywords is huge especially if you’re a large corporate entity, in which case your brand keywords contribute the most to organic search engine traffic, the funny thing about those brand keywords though, they aren’t a function on SEO, and for two reasons.
First, due to the fact the word is branded it will virtually always receive top billing in a SERP, and since you can’t generally do better than the top spot, there is nothing to optimize.
Second, because you and your site/company have made specialized a meaning for a word you end up not competing on the same field as similar company’s, therefore, whenever someone places your branded word in a search it becomes less about standing out via SEO techniques and procedure. It’d be no different than someone inputting the specific domain name for a brand into the URL bar.
Therefore, if you wish to better understand your SEO efforts, you’ll need to wade through your analytics to find which non-branded keywords are generating you the most traffic. Once you figure out which words they are, you should create a list 3 to 5 non-brand keywords that have been most beneficial thus far, and focus your optimizing efforts on those words.
In the end you want the marriage between your content and keywords to be strong, even though branded keywords will help you to a degree, non-branded keywords make for a better companion.
For the more articles on keywords, SEO or other topics of interest, be sure to subscribe for email updates. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
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Written by Jason Oliveira
Posted by
Jay Teal on Fri, Apr 27, 2012 @ 03:27 PM
Measure SEO Success
Attending a gym and businesses that utilize SEO practices are slightly similar. For example if you go to the give for a number of weeks or months, you are generally looking to see results over that period of time and if results or progress aren’t seen, then we question spending the money on the membership and the time and effort put aside. The way SEO is similar is by the simple fact that if you spend the time, money, and effort to go through the trouble to grow your company you want to see results. 
Much like working out, patience is important as results may take some time. There are however six ways to measure your SEO success.
Traffic - It is important to keep tabs of your websites traffic particularly from organic searches. This isn’t something that requires daily checkups, a weekly basis would be satisfactory. This will assist in the determination as to if changes need to be made or if changes already made have begun to have a positive impact.
Lead Generation/ ROI – Website analytical tools such as Google Analytics make it easy to see the frequency that your website has appeared on organic SERPs as well as keywords. In addition, such tools can also allow you to various conversion areas (i.e. visits, leads, customer, etc), which will in turn give you a greater grasp on your SEO investment.
Indexed Pages – An easy way to measure the growth of your website is to check the number of webpages that search engines have indexed. It is important to have a large number of pages indexed, because the more pages that are noted by the search engines, the easier time your website will have to rank with other keywords.
To make it easier for you to check on this, HubSpot’s Website Grader is a free tool, which shows you the exact number of pages indexed. It is recommended that indexed pages should be checked on a monthly basis. If this number ever appears to go down, something is wrong.
Inbound Links – Since SEO is a dual-prong approach, you should also always check the number of links from other sites directing people to you. This is the also the easiest way to gauge success in terms of off-page SEO, after all any growth here is good. It is recommended that you check this monthly.
Keywords – This is what essential runs the ship when it comes to SEO. It is a smart idea to create of list of keywords that have routinely brought traffic to your website from organic searches. It is recommended that you should dig deeper at least once a month, into your organic search traffic to pinpoint what keywords were the catalyst for traffic coming to the site. A large majority may be related to your brand keywords, however, pay closer attention to the non-branded keywords.
Rankings – Its not impossible, however, it is not very likely that your website will rank with every keyword. That being said, there is no reason why your website couldn’t rank for 10 keywords. Make a list of those keywords you want to rank for and every month conduct a search to see where you stand. Record the rank and compare to previous months to see if there’s be an improvement.
If you routinely check these 6 metric areas, you will give yourself a competitive edge as well as be able to see what works and what does not. Remember though, success will not likely come immediately and may take some time.
For the latest information on all things SEO or other topics to help your website, be sure to subscribe for email updates. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well.
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Written by Jason Oliveira