Connecting Your Blog With RSS, Social Media and Email

Before you start creating a ton of content for your blog, just hoping for random people to start stumbling upon your site, it’s important to put the right tools in place to get it noticed. A big part of this is working to connect your blog to the major social networks, as well as a better way to connect with your readers through e-mail and RSS.

Don’t know how to do this? Don’t know the deal with RSS and why it matters? Don’t worry: we’re here to help you out with that too.

RSS and E-Mail Subscriptions

What is RSS and what is with all this talk of feed readers? RSS, most commonly understood as Really Simple Syndication, is a family of web formats that are used to publish frequently updated work, as would be the case with blog entries. By offering an RSS feed, readers are notified when there are new posts on your blog and they are able to read these new articles through services like Google Reader.

The good news is that WordPress will automatically generate an RSS feed for your blog and this can be accessed at http://yourblogdomain.com/feed. The bad news is that this feed can be somewhat limited in its functionality and that’s why we recommend that you sign up for a free account with Feedburner.

By allowing Feedburner to manage the RSS feed on your blog, you are able to know exactly how many people are subscribed to your feed, as well as other useful tidbits of information. You should promote your RSS feed on your blog as it helps to grow a loyal readership.

Even for people who don’t use feed readers (also known as aggregators) like Google Reader, RSS has immense value. That’s because Feedburner also allows you to offer e-mail subscriptions. When someone signs up for your e-mail updates, he or she will get an e-mail message when you have a new blog post. This encourages repeat readership and brand loyalty.

A Facebook Fan Page

Every blog should have a Facebook fan page. Note that this is distinctly different from your standard Facebook profile page, because a fan page is not associated with a person; it’s associated with a brand or product. In this case, that would be your blog.

While you are limited to the number of friends you can have on Facebook, you are not limited to the number of fans you can have on a Facebook page. It also helps to separate your personal life from material that is directly (and only) related to your blog.

You can even syndicate the RSS feed from your blog through your Facebook fan page. Check out Facebook applications like Social RSS and RSS Graffiti to do that.

A Blog’s Twitter Account

Twitter is a great way to stay connected and engaged with the readers on your blog. Every blog should have a Twitter account. This way, readers can interact with you in real-time, helping you “retweet” your blog posts, promote your contests, and all sorts of other wonderful things.

Just as you can syndicate your blog’s RSS feed through e-mail and Facebook, you can also do this with Twitter. There are many different ways to do this. There are WordPress plugins, like WordTwit, that offer this functionality, as well as online services like SocialOomph and Hootsuite.

Other Networks and Services

As much as we love our own blogs, not everyone has the time to visit each blog they enjoy every day to find the latest content. That’s why RSS, Facebook, and Twitter are such powerful channels for staying connected with your readership.

Depending on the nature of your blog, it may also be worthwhile to connect your blog with other social networks too. Flickr is great for images, YouTube for videos, and so on.

Be sure to do “cross promotion” with these accounts too. Actively promote your Facebook and Twitter profiles on your blog, and actively promote your blog on your Facebook pages and Twitter accounts too. This greatly helps to strengthen and reinforce your blog’s brand, lending itself to greater success.

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The most important tip to make your incentive drive more subscribers

Building an email list.

This had been a topic I had been discussing on this blog for few weeks now and I’ll still continue discussing it for few weeks more, if not months.

If that means one thing, it means that building an email list is crucial for your success online, or I wouldn’t have done it at all, right?

And this means I care about you, yeah, I really care about helping you build a blog that boosts your business by blogging the smart, simple way.

That said, let’s dive into this post.

Oh, and if you forgot to check previous posts, make sure to check them, especially the last one, because it’s related to this post.

• Why Email is Important to Build Sustainable Lucrative Business
• How to Get More Email Subscribers Overnight? Tip #1
• How to Boost Your Email Subscribers? Tip #2
• How to Boost Your Email Subscribers? Tip #3

Today’s tip:

in the latest post, the tip I discussed was creating a narrow-niche incentive.

If you didn’t  check that post, please stop reading this post and go check it first, everything in this post is based on what we covered in the latest post, so make sure to check it and then come back here.

So you finished it? Great.

In the post, I discussed with you why having an incentive is important to get more subscribers. I also discussed why it should be narrow-niche incentive.

After that, I showed you how to create it.

I just want to reinforce the point that it doesn’t need to be long. You just need to go narrower in your niche, 10-pages is more than enough.

Now, you finished writing the incentive, the question now is…

How to sell the incentive for your visitors?

Sell?

Isn’t the incentive free?

Yes, it’s free, but again many other bloggers have incentives, some will even be like yours… you need to sell them the incentive to get them to subscribe.

Even, if they’re not buying it with money, they’re giving you their emails and that’s what you want. You need to sell them the incentive, that they enter their email address without thinking.

But how? How to sell the incentive for your visitors?

Well, the answer is very easy and simple.

Benefits not features.

Yes, when you create your landing page, it doesn’t need to be long, a few bullet points with benefits is enough. Don’t share features… Benefits sell, not features.

But what is the difference?

Here is an example of what features could look like:

• it is 23 pages long
• it has 4500 words
• the sections include this, that and the other
• etc.

But here is what benefits could look like:

• guaranteed to change the way you look to blogging
• 10 strategies that will help you make more money this year
• an eBook that you can’t miss if you want to grow the traffic of your blog.

I think it’s obvious why benefits sell. People don’t know how long the ebook is or how many chapters in the book, all they need is how this ebook will help them, what change they’ll have after reading the ebook.

That’s it.

So start doing the work

If you’ve an incentive already, re edit your copy and think like you’re selling people to subscribe, show them the benefits and not the features.

If you don’t have an incentive already, create one, as I showed you in the previous post, and then apply the above technique.

It’s really simple, but it could help you boost your conversion rates.

So tell me, what are the benefits of your incentive, even if you didn’t create it, this will help you keep track of what you want to share in the ebook, so share it now below

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Increase Page Rank With 10 Proven Tips

It’s a fact that Google gives more emphasis on Page Rank of a website or blog when ranking content in SERPs.

A site with higher Google Page Rank is considered authoritative and trustworthy in its niche.

Pages of websites with high PR always tend to rank higher in search results, even though some of their content is less informative than their counterparts.

Google Page Rank: Google says – The heart of their search engine algorithm, which ranks content in SERPs is Page Rank. This system of content ranking, as well as the term Page Rank was developed by Larry Page, the co-founder and CEO of Google.

Links are like confidence votes between websites and pass link-juice to one another. Links (or backlinks) are devised by Google to help ranking content and better functioning of World Wide Web System.

Definition: Page Rank is the “Quantity (total number) of inbound links or back-links to a particular website or page, along with the quality of the linking pages (Page Ranks of sites providing the links).”

It’s a whole number between 0 and 10. Where, 0 represents the least important site or page, and 10 the most important and authoritative. Without much ado let’s dive in to the strategies to improve Page Rank of a site –

1. Blog Commenting

Let’s start with low hanging fruits – which is blog commenting. It has a surprising effects on Page Rank.

By adopting this technique along with others, webmasters have achieved Page Rank 5, 6 and even 7. But the backlinks should be of good quality, I mean, you have to choose high Page Rank, and leading blogs in your niche to leave comments. Comments on blogs outside your niche may affect your Page Rank adversely.

You should also choose some DoFollow blogs in your niche for blog commenting. Because these blogs pass link-juice and help to improve Page Rank fast. Also remember, try to leave quality comments which add value and take the discussion to the higher level. In this way you are helping other commenters as well as blog readers.

Here, you are hitting 2 birds with one stone – getting backlinks to increase Page Rank + targeted traffic to your blog. But use this strategy in moderation. Leaving 500 comments overnight is a spammy activity and may harm your Page Rank. Using blog commenting software and packages are strictly No No.

2. Forum Commenting

Again, a great way to acquire backlinks. A good profile with judicious use of your niche keywords, and a backlink to your blog is helpful.

Find forums strictly related to your niche and leave quality comments. When improving Page Rank, quantity as well as quality of the backlinks matter. So the forums should be top-notch in your subject matter.

3. Directory Listing

Well established and authoritative article directories like Squidoo, HubPages,RedGage are great places to build quality links.

These sites provide you complete control over your outgoing link destination. They are also flooded with content seeking and really engaged visitors. So, along with quality links, you will also receive targeted visitors.

4. Social Media Profile

Use social media networks not only to boost your Search Engine Optimization efforts, but also the Page Rank.

All you need is a keyword rich profile along with your blog URL. Join the leading social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, StumbleUpon etc., even though you are using few.

For your information, the links you are sharing on different social media sites while twitting or posting messages on Facebook don’t help to boost your Page Rank. Here, social profile (presence) and popularity matters the most.

5. Guest Blogging

Links from guest blogging are usually DoFollow and pass link-juice. Bloggers usually allow 2 backlinks inside the author bio box, which are generally DoFollow.

Of course the value of a link from author bio box is less than a link from the article body, but still these are quality backlinks.

Guest blogging is a time consuming and tiring process, but with a rich rewards. Now you are hitting 3 birds with one stone – Backlinks, Targeted Traffic and Authority (or Publicity). Go for it, when you get extra time.

6. Use of NoFollow tag

By using NoFollow tag on both internal and outbound links, you can preserve as well as improve Page Rank.

To preserve the Page Rank of Home page you can NoFollow all the internal and outbound links (leaving from Home page). If you want to promote a special post or pages, you can DoFollow them from Home page by giving some link-juice.

Also, linking (and DoFollowing) your high Page Rank posts to your Home page helps to increase the Page Rank of the entire site (Home page). This way you are making your domain authoritative in Google’s eye.

7. Internal linking structure

Internal linking of blog posts doesn’t directly help to increase your Page Rank. But helps you to preserve the Page Rank or link-juice of important blog posts and pages.

You can interlink important posts of your blog by using desired anchor text to uniformly distribute the link-juice. Internal linking not only increases user experience, but also sends a signal to search engines about the subject matter of linked posts. By using this trick you can increase the Page Rank of your most desired posts and pages to promote higher in search engines.

Finally, use internal linking for preservation and distribution of link juice, and of course better user experience by providing references of old articles. Let’s your old articles get some love from your readers!

8. Spammy Neighborhood

Linking to spammy sites means – wasting link-juice and coming under Google’s suspicion radar.

Frequently giving outbound links to websites involved in spammy activities may results in complete ban and de-indexing by Google. Check for authenticity of the site before linking to it. But, anyhow,  if you have to link a suspicious site on your blog post, then always use NoFollow attribute.

If your site is not hosted on a dedicated IP address, check for the other sharing sites and blogs (for intentions and activities). Sometimes spammy activity by a single website makes the whole pond dirty.

9. Acquiring Special Backlinks

Links from .gov and .edu are difficult to get, but help to increase page rank significantly. I will tell you the easiest method to get some great links from these sites.

Find some .gov and .edu blogs in your niche, which are open for registration and commenting. Leave some constructive comments, otherwise your comments will be rejected or marked as spam, as these sites are very strict in their comment policy.

Use Google Search for finding quality .edu and .gov blogs. Try the below search –

• site:.edu “add comment” OR “post comment” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
• site:.gov “add comment” OR “post comment” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”

Hire a student who has access to .edu blogs. Most students in the US have access to student blogs, forums and pages. Tell him to give you a backlink for 4$ beer money, and he will be happy to do that. You can also request him to write something about your site and place a link to it. You can easily get students like these by searching sites like Reddit or Craigslist.

And don’t forget to get a link from Wikipedia (at least try your luck).

10. Say No to Spammy Activities

Say no to link buying, selling, reciprocal linking and participating in contest meant for link schemes.

Newbie bloggers always become a victim of link schemes by cunning websites. They organize blogging contests and ask bloggers to link certain number of blogs or blog posts or bloggers. Then the blogs you linked will nominate (link) other blogs, and the scheme goes like this…never ending. Stay away from this.

Sometimes, in the name of blogging contest, sites distribute widgets and badges to the winners. And they usually choose 100, and even more than that as winners (1st, 2nd…99th, 100th). These widgets have hidden links of their websites or domains. Their main aim is to get links,not to distribute prizes for free. But there are some exceptions.

99th Point: Register your domain for more than 1 yr. Domains which are registered for more than 2 yrs, 5 yrs and even more trustworthy and non-spammy in Google’s eye.

Make you blog W3C compatible, I mean, your blog  or site should be clean coded. Check your site for any coding error here.

To brush-up your knowledge – Google gives individual Page Ranks to Home Page and Sub-pages of a site. So, all the blog posts and pages have different Google Page Ranks.

To increase your website Page Rank – Your efforts should be to get more number of links (both quantity and quality) and be popular in your niche or subject matter. Every few months (sometimes more than 6 months) Google updates Page Ranks. Let’s check your Page Rank here.

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Leverage The Google’s Sandbox Stay For Higher Ranking

If you have started a new blog since couple of months and staying inside the Google’s Sandbox, don’t waste time by simply playing around and making merry.

Instead, utilize this time by leveraging all possible avenues for better ranking and Page Rank.

What is Google’s Sandbox ?

Google uses a technique to fight spam or spammy sites called – Google Sandbox. Google puts all the newly registered domains or websites in a place with a proper filter. And, they are not awarded any Google Page Rank( PR ), no matter how well they perform till they are not outside the Sandbox.Google PR is a number out of total 10 points based on the quality of inbound links.

Spammers usually apply all shorts of link building tricks but Google doesn’t award any page rank to them till their stay in Sandbox. If a site performs well and built a good reputation by getting quality inbound links in a natural way and consistently publishing original and unique content, Google remove that site from Sandbox and award it a Page Rank ( PR ). B’cos the site is now trust worthy.

How to Leverage yourself During Sandbox Stay ?

• Produce original and unique content consistently.
• Always link to reputed sites from your blog posts.
• Optimal Search Engine Optimization of your blog.
• Don’t involve in any link exchange/link scheme activity.
• Optimize your site for faster loading and keep an eye on your server performance.

Usually, Google’s Sandbox staying period is around 6 months to 9 months.Follow the above tips and get out of the Google’s Sandbox with a PR of 2 or 3 at least.

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How Google’s New Privacy Policy and Terms of Service will Affect Search Engine Ranking and SEO ?

Google’s new privacy policy and terms of service will be effective from Mar 01, 2012. Once again the king of search engine has come up with a new set of features in the name of – Changes in privacy policy and terms of service.

After the recent introduction of – Search plus Your World, the changes in privacy policy and terms will be like Cherry on The Cake for both Google and its users (normal web-surfers who uses Google search engine).

After Mar 01, 2012, Google search will be much more refined, much more personalized and much more user oriented. This step has been taken by Google to give its users – Better user experience, at least Google think like this.

Now, the question is – How it will affects the search engine rankings and SEO of websites and blogs ?

Lets look at the Google’s statement first:

# Tailored search for the users based on the profile data( interests ) in Google+, Gmail and You Tube accounts.

According to Google : Search plus Your World + New Policy Changes =Better User Experience

The above statement is very strong and clearly potrays Google’s intention to – Capture the Search Engine market by providing better user experience by exploring and leveraging user’s social information and, making its social products popular( Google+, Gmail and You Tube ).

Affects of Search plus Your World on the Search Engine Ranking and SEO:

If the user or the web-surfer logged in to his or her Google account while searching something, then Google will place the websites or blogs on the top of SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), which he or she has given plus( + ) or visited earlier and, ranks lower to other websites, no matter how informative they are.

If the user is not logged in / opted out to his or her Google account then the result will be different.

Affects of New Privacy Policy and Terms of Service on Search Engine Ranking and SEO:

Nope. No affect at all ! I mean same as after the introduction of – Search plus Your World. Infact, SERPs( Search Engine Result Pages ) will be much more refined and tailor made for users.

That means, its a deal between Google and Search Engine Users. B’cos Google has already made a drastic change in its Search Engine Algorithm to make its social features( products ) popular and better user experience.

Yes, Google has definitely made its Privacy Policy easy to read and understand by replacing the existing 60 different Privacy Policies by one which is much shorter.

Don’t mind the – Yada Yada term below the Google Search Engine these days. B’cos, whenever Google announces some major notice, it uses this auspicious term( Yada Yada ).

This is my personal opinion - How Google’s New Privacy Policy and Terms of Service will Affect Search Engine Ranking and SEO. If you have a thought or difference in opinion you are most welcome to comment below.

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How Google’s New Policy Change will Affect Google PPC and SEO Services Firms

Google, the king of search engine, has come up with a new Policy and Terms which replaces 60 existing policies for its multiple social products like Google+, Gmail and You Tube etc. The new policy will be effective from Mar 01, 2012. Now, the question is –How Google’s new policy will affect the firms who provide SEO services and Google PPC (pay-per-click) management services.

With the new policy, Google will collect and store personal data from your multiple accounts like Google+, Gmail, You Tube etc. and use it to serve you the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and paid ads.

This means, Google will remember your likes and dislikes (interests) and allow you to roam seamlessly across multiple Google products (Restaurants) and it (Google) will serve you your favorite dishes (likes & dislikes), without even asking him (Google). So, after Mar 01, 2012, Google will behave like yourmommy dear !

Worldwide, approximately 70% of Google Search Engine users logged in to their accounts when they search something. If, 5-10% users will edit or turn-off the search history, then also >60% is a big number. That means:

#  >60% of Google Search Engine users will experience the tailor made SERPs or paid ads or both.

No doubt, compared to Facebook, Google+ is just like a Hen egg in front of an Ostrich egg. But the way it (Google+) is growing is alarming. Everybody wants to go with the flow. Everybody forcing themselves to accept the power of Google+. And they are 100% correct also, b’cos, swimming against Google means absolute failure.

How Google’s New Policy will Affect SEO Services?

With more and more people jumping in to the Google+ river, search will become much more personalized and tailor made.

In the name of – Search plus Your World, Google has openly challenged SEO service providers.

SEO services work day and night to make their clients’ products or websites to appear on the first page of the Google Search. But, if the target user of their client is logged in with her Google account then everything is in vain. She will be served with search pages with Google+ community and pages which are rich in content and Search Engine Optimized will be ranked lower.

Same way PPC (pay-per-click) management services will also be affected, because users will be served tailor made ads. But, the impact will be of lessor degree here.

Solution for SEO Firms

Go with the flow. Make Google’s – Search plus Your World and New Privacy policy & Terms of service your main strength. If the person infront of you is mighty enough, better to make friendship with him.

Teach your clients the importance of Google+ from SEO point of view. Try some innovative methods to increase your clients’ Google+ numbers.

Google’s new Policy and Terms will definitely affect the organic and paid search results forcing SEO services and PPC management service providers to leverage the Google’s social media in an innovative way to provide better results to their clients.

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Google and Facebook Removed Objectionable Content After Delhi Court Order

Google, the internet giant told a Delhi( India) court that it had removed the objectionable content  from Google India local search, You Tube and Blogger on Feb 06, 2012.

Facebook also produced its compliance report before the court after getting an ultimatum. Google and Facebook are among 22 social networking websites who had got warning from a Delhi court to remove some sensitive and objectionable content including images which are offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

After complaints from few private petitioners, the Delhi court ordered the social networking sites to develop a mechanism to block or remove these sensitive information.

Google spokeswoman Paroma Chaudhry said, Google review team has looked at the content and removed from the Google.co.in domain and also from You Tube and Bloggers.

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Keyword Stuffing Penalty and How to Fix it

Keyword stuffing is quite commonly practiced by newbie webmasters and SEO practitioners. While writing an article or web page they focus so much on SEO that, they forget that stuffing keywords might end-up their website being banned by Google.

Every webmaster wants to put his best keywords across the web page, but, that doesn’t mean he will repeat the same/related keywords 10 times in each line and Google will give the page higher rank.

Like every successful organization Google also place its user experience on the first place. And, why not ? That’s why (better user experience) Google is Google today. According to Google the results or web pages rendered by its search engine should give the best possible user experience to the searchers or web surfers. And, keyword stuffing makes the statement null.

As a webmaster you should always think about the user satisfaction first, then comes the SEO part. You should always sprinkle the keywords on your web page in a natural manner to make the article natural to a reader.

Why penalty for keyword stuffing ?

For example: There are 2 sites. Site A and Site B. There is a common keyword for both the sites, say “ Keyword Stuffing Penalty ”. If site A repeats the keyword 10 times on its page and site B 11 times; don’t think Google will always rank site B higher that site A only due to more repetition of the same keyword.

If, that would be the case, every web master would be stuffing their pages with keywords without thinking about user experience/satisfaction, making the WWW an ugly place. That’s why Google imposes penalty for keyword stuffing or over optimization for search engines.

Example of keyword stuffing

Here, the webmaster is trying to rank higher for the word “ SEO services ” by repeating it frequently, throughout the page. Who knows, he might have repeated the same keyword 1000s of times by setting the font size to “0” and making it invisible by setting the font color and background color the same.

The ugly truth is, if you try to fool Google; Google will fool you. Yes, Google takes this practice very seriously and penalizes very often.

How to fix keyword stuffing ?

Review your site, either the particular pages or the whole site and remove or restructure the keywords. So that it looks natural to search engine users or readers. Once you have made the necessary changes and confident that your site no longer violates Google’s guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration HERE.

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Search Engine Penalties – How to Detect and Fix it

Search engine penalty – The ugly and dreadly word for any webmaster but its a reality that many sites suffer penalties by search engines due to unethical practices. Search engine doesn’t think about whether the bad practices are due to ignorance or a known commitment of the webmaster. It is prudent to know, how to detect search engine penalties and fix it as early as possible.

One thing you should always remember - Search engines frequently changes their algorithms. Google changes its algorithms more than 400 times in a year ! If you are dealing with search engine penalties you should be aware about the latest algorithms followed by major search engines.

Basic Search Engine Penalties Check

Important: Always remember, simple downgrading of your page or post by 5 to 10 ranks lower doesn’t constitute a penalty by search engine. This phenomenon is called “ Google Dance ” and we will discuss about it later on.

OK, you have performed the basic check using the above flow chart and found that your site is actually suffering from search engine penalties.

Fixing Search Engine Penalties

Fix the root cause or problem responsible for search engine penalties

Technical problems like invisible text, hidden links, involvement in link scam,keyword stuffing, spammy outbound/inbound links, pages with excessive irreverent words, duplicate content, doorway pages, numerous sub domains with duplicate content.

Its always time consuming to fix the root cause, if you are engaged with multiple manipulative activities. But its the reality. It is even harder, if your site is banned due to unintentional/unknowingly SEO errors from your side. But, unintentional SEO error is extremely rare.

File a “ reconsideration request ” to search engines

1. Reconsideration request to Google for search engine penalties

Google Webmaster Tools —> Click on the Tools —> Click the “ Submit a reconsideration request ”.

2. Reconsideration request to Yahoo! for search engine penalties

Fill out all the required data and submit. Click here

3. Reconsideration request to Bing for search engine penalties

Bing Webmaster Tools —> Bing site owner support form —> Fill out the required information —> Submit

Remember while filing for search engine penalties

• Take your time and try your best to fix all the problems responsible for search engine penalties.
• Mention clearly, the wrong or bad practices you have done which resulted in banning your website.
• Mention, few examples via links that you have corrected the root problem.
• Promise them it will never happen in the future.

Search engines provide you the traffic. So, they have the authority to make rules on their own and publishers have to abide/follow it.

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14 Viral SEO Tips for YouTube Videos

Do you SEO your YouTube video to make it viral?

Do your YouTube videos appear frequently in the Google vertical search (video search)?

Yes, video-blogging is the latest online avenue being tapped by the webmasters all over the world to get tons of traffic.

Data suggests that more than 600 million unique visitors visit YouTube per month, which has become the No. 2 search engine on the web. And, if you are not optimizing your YouTube videos, then you are definitely missing a serious traffic for sure.

Actually, videos are binary files and can’t analyzed by the search engines properly, if sufficient metadata is not provided.

Without much ado I am telling you the 14 most important SEO tips to optimize your YouTube videos for a viral effect.

SEO of YouTube Videos

1. Metadata: Always provide the best possible metadata (title, description and keywords) in your YouTube videos.

2. Link-back: Always link-back your videos to the original content on your site or blog, which should be clickable with a complete URL.

3. Compelling content: Create compelling videos for viral effect. Even an instructional video on – How to SEO YouTube video is compelling to someone who needs the information.

4. Video quality: Quality is King in YouTube! Quality always comes before quantity. If your video is visually substandard, no matter how useful it is, nobody is going to watch it. Leading to a dead end.

5. Branding: Produce videos within your niche which represent your brand to the masses.

The aim should be, if the video goes viral, it should be helpful to your brand and your site/blog as a whole.

6. Searchable: Use the word ‘ Video ’ in the metadata on a regular basis. B’cos people always suffix the term Video in their search phrase.

7. 5 mins to famous: You video should be 5 mins or less in duration. If it exceeds 5 mins, your visitors will be bored.

8. Great title: Title plays an important role in convincing a visitor to watch the video.

Make sure, your title is keyword rich and should not be more than 62 characters (Prescribed YouTube limit).

9. Nice thumbnails: Many You Tubians decide whether to watch the video or not by simply viewing the thumb nails of the videos.

Make high resolution and good looking thumbnails to lure your visitors.

10. Ratings: Allow your users to rate the video. By getting higher ratings, not only search engines will place it higher, but also your visitors will like to watch it.

Each rating sends a +Ve signal to both YouTube and Google for higher search engine placement of the video.

11. Watermark: Always put a watermark at an appropriate place of your video to indicate the origin (site or blog). It will help in a great way if your video goes viral or copied by other sites.

12. Keywords: Always use proper keywords in the video file name and URL, as YouTube gives more importance to it while ranking.

While naming a video file, don’t use any stop words like ‘ and ’ or ‘ the ’ etc.

13. Anchor text: Your link-back text (Clickable) to the original content should contain appropriate keywords or anchor texts. YouTube and Google  give more importance to keyword rich anchor texts while ranking videos.

14. Voice recognition technology: YouTube and Google are indexing/ranking videos by hearing the voice content on it. This is called Voice Recognition Technology (VRT).

So, produce videos which are keyword rich and related to your niche or topic for better use of Voice Recognition Technology.

Make a short YouTube video (2 to 3 mins), optimize with the above 14 SEO tips, and check how high it is ranking in the YouTube search. Then get back here to make a comment.

If you have any YouTube optimization tips, please add it via comment.

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Top 5 SEO Myths (Mistakes)

Search Engine Optimization is a culture. It’s not a means to over-night success.

In small & medium companies, even in large organizations – there are lots of misunderstanding about SEO among their marketing team. Company heads & their employees think – hire an SEO specialist, tighten the nuts and bolts, and get an overnight success. SEO is not like that.

SEO is like a culture. It should be instilled in all the employees of a company to get the results in online as well as offline world. It starts from the fine-tuning of online property of the company to the offline branding by their marketing team.

I will tell you the top 5 (most common) SEO mistakes or myths among digital marketers in present times. Let’s start with the commonest first…

1. SEO is an online activity

Most of the marketers and company owners believe SEO is confined to online medium only. But in reality, it is well extended to every sphere and every activity associated with the company or business.

Most of the online links can be acquired by attending, organizing and interacting with other influential people in various marketing forums, workshops and expos.

Same way, you can get great citations, mentions and press coverage rooting from the offline world. And branding, the most important component of SEO is not limited to online only. A company’s activities in the offline world, like charity, road shows, flash-mob, billboard advertising, etc. carry the brand forward.

2. Social media signals improve SEO

Majority of the online marketers believe social media signals play a big role in search engine optimization. And they madly run after Facebook likes, Tweets & Re-tweets, and Google +s.

It’s a proven fact that more number of likes & tweets don’t help a web-page to rank higher in search engines. Yes, more number of social likings and sharings indicate the content is of high quality and liked by the readers. Thereby, spending more time on the page. And “time-spent” is an important ranking signal in Google’s search engine ranking algorithm.

Example: This monsoon, it’s raining like cats & dogs. And majority of the people in the town have bought yellow raincoats. This doesn’t mean – most of the people have bought yellow raincoats, so it’s raining like cats & dogs. It’s merely a correlation, but certainly not the causation. And we’re good at correlating correlation with causation.

So, social media marketing augments your SEO efforts. It’s a component of SEO. But social media signals don’t help content to rank high in search engines.

3. SEO Plugins do magic

It’s one of the commonest mistake done by bloggers. WordPress is one of the most successful CMS (Content Management System) in present days. Along with bloggers, lots of small and medium business owners also run their online portal using WordPress. There’re a number of SEO plugins available in WordPress repository.

The problem is – webmasters install these SEO Plugins in their blogs and websites, forget about it, and hope, it will do all the SEO work for them. In reality, SEO Plugins don’t do any magic on their own. After installing you’ve to configure it according to your needs, then every time you publish a piece of content you’ve to fine tune it with different features of the plugin.

The point is – you’ve to dedicate some time to your SEO Plugin with every piece of content publication. It will not do any magic on its own.

4. Long formats rank higher

Content marketing has gained a tremendous momentum in recent times. Whether it’s publishing blog posts on own company blog or guest blogging on other authoritative blogs; digital marketers are doing it in large scale to acquire prospects, customers, and search engine optimization.

There is a false belief that – the more content (word counts) your blog post contains; the higher will be its ranking in search engines. With the introduction of Panda algorithm and In-depth article section in SERPs by Google, this belief has become more deep among bloggers and online marketers.

In reality, Google ranks only high quality content at the top of the search results; irrespective of word counts. A high quality blog post with 700 words can easily outrank an ordinary post with 1500 or 2000 words. So, Google always looks for quality, not quantity.

5. Ranking @ top 3 spots is everything

It’s OK to rank at the top 3 positions of Google search results. But, many a times, ranking at 5th or 7th positions also get more clicks than top 3 positions.

It’s because – the title tag & meta description of the article. An article with a great title tag and a complete and catchy meta description, ranking at 5th position on Google search results can get more clicks and attention than an article at 1st position with a dull or boring title and meta description.

Again, ranking at the top of search results is not everything for a company or website. It’s the conversion which matters the most. The content should’ve enough potential to transform a visitor in to a prospects, and then in to a loyal customer.

Finally, for a company – Customers & revenues matters the most; not the top spots in Google.

SEO is a fast changing field. Search engine rules come and go. You’ve to keep yourself up-to-date and away from all the above mentioned SEO myths or mistakes to get a sustainable & long-term results for your company.

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