I have to admit, I have neglected my LinkedIn profile and activity in the last few months. It certainly isn’t as exciting a network as Facebook or Twitter; but I guess that’s not really the point of it.

Having recently started focusing my efforts back on LinkedIn again, I have discovered that it isn’t just a powerful professional networking tool—when used correctly, it can help generate business leads.

With almost 150 million users (business owners, managers, senior management and C-level executives), LinkedIn delivers a ready-made professional audience that is primed for the picking.

I have scoured the internet to compile 12 of the most useful tips to start generating leads from your Linkedin contacts. So here goes:

1. Pimp your profile: Your profile is the core of your LinkedIn presence, and if it’s not up to par, then now is the time to change that. Provide an in-depth look at your current experience and career history in order to give other LinkedIn users a complete look at all you have to offer when it comes to a certain industry or skill-set. A professional looking photo for your profile image is a must – crop it closely so someone looking at your profile can almost look you in the eyes.

 

2. Create a LinkedIn answer feeds: The LinkedIn Answer area provides individuals and companies a great opportunity to demonstrate their expertise by responding to questions in your field. To make it really easy to follow Answers of interest, you can create RSS feeds for specific sections of LinkedIn Answers and track new questions through your favourite RSS feeder tool.

 

3. Connections, Connections, Connections: This ones pretty simple: The more connections you have, the wider your reach, and the more likely you are to be exposed to potential leads and business opportunities. To find more connections, concentrate on categories like current and previous employers, the college you attended or your geographic location. When you find someone with whom you want to connect, take a few minutes to write a brief but personal message. Remind this person of your connection and express your enthusiasm at the opportunity to stay in touch. Those little details can translate into a big first impression, and set the stage for future communication.

 

4. Participate in group discussions: When you answer questions and provide insights, you gain the trust of others—and become a natural resource when it’s time to explore purchase options. There are thousands of groups across LinkedIn, you can find groups for certain industries, schools, cities, interests and other criteria. Join groups where the decision makers of your customers are likely to be found and create discussion.

 

5. Create an effective company page: Do you have a LinkedIn Company Page for your business? If not, set one up! This allows interested parties to get a snapshot of your business as well as your employees. You’ll also be able to see which of your connections are already at a company that you can use to secure warm introductions. Set up your page, make regular status updates – you’ll be amazed at how your brand presence on the platform might grow.

 

6. Share content: An easy way to maximize visibility is to share content on a daily basis (or even more frequently, if you can.) You probably consume a lot of content throughout the day, so why not share what you’re reading with your connections? If you want to highlight your expertise or skills, stick to sharing information that aligns subject matter and write a couple of sentences that detail your thoughts on the piece when you post.

 

7. Search for local events: Scan upcoming events in your area that are posted on LinkedIn to find potentially valuable networking opportunities. Once you’ve established that initial face-to-face bond, you can then continue to build the relationship on LinkedIn.

 

8. Add the SlideShare application: SlideShare will display your webinar or PowerPoint presentations in your LinkedIn profile of how your firm helps solve your prospects’ problems and challenges

How else do you use LinkedIn to generate leads? Feel free to share your own tips below.

While the majority of website owners use Google Analytics to measure their website’s success due to its ease of implementation and lack of cost, there are a few other great analytics options which are well worth checking out.

• Clicky

It offers real-time stats, with a simple, but functional interface. The dashboard is nicely laid out so you can see all of your important site’s stats on the front page. It’s also quite fast to navigate around, compared to some of the other services.

Clicky also supports visitor segmentation. So you can see how many of your US visitors searched for a particular keyword, and how their engagement stats (like Actions, Total Time spent on site) compare with other users. Free version available but features are limited.

• Mint

Mint is a very stylish “less is more” kind of analysis software. Where many others pile on feature after feature, Mint strives to show you the most relevant data about your website in a simple “at a glance” kind of way. Priced per site, starting at $30 each.

• Mixpanel

Mixpanel is another service that oofers real-time analytics, however it is their handling of conversion funnels that sets it apart from the crowd. Mixpanel offer both free and paid packages.

• Reinvigorate

Reinvigorate’s main strength lies in its real time nature. Providing you have the desktop client plus javascript installed, you can watch visitors land on your site or blog in real time. This enables you to be alerted to goals when a visitor performs a site action. Heatmapping technology is also a plus. From $10 per month

• FoxMetrics

FoxMetrics gives you the ability to track metrics that are specific to your business, in the form of events. Using their API you could for instance track software installs, newsletter views, media consumption or almost any event that you can get to trigger an API call. FoxMetrics offer both free and paid packages.

• Kissmetrics

The difference with Kissmetrics and other analytics services is their attempt to make it personal by tracking and allowing you to easily visualise, the user life-cycle. Kissmetrics allows you to drill down to see the behaviour of individual visitors on your site and how that has changed over time. Packages start from $29/month

• Chartbeat

Chartbeat’s dashboard gives you the pulse of your site, showing you what traffic you have, who is sending it to you, and where it is going. Chartbeat enables you to react to events as they happen: promote or improve a rising story to maximize time on site, participate in discussions about your site on the web, and raise prices in response to demand. 30 day free trials are available.

• Woopra

Developed by former Google employees, it boast features such as data sharing via an API, and runs via a thin desktop client (across all platforms). To access your (live) web stats, you can either use their online application or you can download a desktop client. Apart from the very stylish looks, Woopre boasts some impressive segmentation features. It is currently still in Beta, and during this period signups will be getting the product for free.

• Piwik

Piwik is advertised as an open-source alternative to Google Analytics. It’s completely free to use and fairly easy to install on your own server. The Piwik

Dashboard is nicely laid out, displaying various widgets that show things like the keywords visitors are using to come to your site, what entry pages they are coming in to and more. You can add whatever widgets you want, and use the drag and drop interface to lay out the widgets exactly how you like them.

• StatCounter

StatCounter is one of the better-known free Google Analytics alternatives and it’s been around for a while. You don’t get the “oooh, shiny!” effect when you log into StatCounter, but the data is all there and you can get all the info on visits, visitor paths, popular pages, entrance- and exit-pages, incoming keywords etc. Packages range from $5 to $119 per month

So there you have it, 10 of the best alternatives to Google Analytics. If you have any other alternatives feel free to share and I will add them to the list.

Poorly written SEO copy on your website can be one of the biggest reasons your website fails to be successful.

If this sounds familiar then it could be time to send it to a writer to fix it or if you have the time you could have a go at fixing it yourself.

Here are 8 things to help you work out if the copy on your website needs some TLC (hat tip to Heather Lloyd-Martin from Success Words for the tips):

• Read the copy out loud and hear how it “sounds.” If your content sounds clunky – or if the keyphrases stand out like a sore thumb – send it back to the writer. Over-optimized copy will not do you any favors – and you don’t want your readers bouncing out of your site the second that they arrive.

 

• Do you have the urge to bring out your red pen and slice unnecessary words? Smart SEO copywriting is tight – which means that the writer is using as few words as possible to bring the point home. If you feel like the content is “fluffy,” send it back for editing.

 

• Does the copy make your company’s benefits “pop?” Or is it all focused around features? One tip: Review how many times the writer used the words “we” and “our company.” If you find that it’s focusing too much on features and not enough on benefits, send it back.

 

• Is the copy focused around one single keyword? Good SEO copywriting focused on two-to-three keyphrase variations. If you’re seeing the same word repeated over and over, have the writer rewrite it.

 

• Are there spelling or grammatical errors? Granted, your writer is human – and things happen. But if you are seeing multiple errors and you’re finding yourself correcting the document, stop. That’s what your writer is supposed to do for you.

 

• Is there a call-to-action? This could mean linking to a sales page, another blog post, or encouraging folks to sign up for a newsletter. Your writer needs to weave your site’s (and your page’s) conversion goal into the copy. If they haven’t, it’s time for a rewrite.

 

• How is your page Title (what appears as the clickable link on the search engine results page.) Does it include the page keywords? Is it enticing? Or is it a bunch of keyphrases separated by pipes? If you’re thinking, “Hmm, I don’t think I’d click on this result,” send it back to the writer.

 

• Is the page easy to read? Long, scrolling paragraphs are visually overwhelming – especially on a mobile device. If the paragraphs are long – and you’re not seeing any subheadlines that break up the text – have your writer rewrite it.

Hopefully these tips help you get your SEO copy back on track.

If you have any additional SEO copywriting tips, feel free to share them below.

Facebook has confirmed that they are testing a feature which allows people to communicate privately with Facebook Pages owners through the message option.

However, it appears that this is currently only available in Asia.

This new feature is enabled when a user wants to send a direct message to any particular Facebook page and they don’t necessarily have to be a fan of the page. When the user clicks on the Message button on a Page, a direct message window comes up where individual users can enter a message. This feature also enables visitors, who aren’t yet fans of a page, to send messages to the page owner, something that was not available in Facebook messages till now. In terms of the aesthetics of this feature, it is pretty identical to the normal message tab available in your Facebook account.

From the screenshots below, it looks like page owners will have the option to choose whether or not they would like to accept private messages.

Administrators or page owners will receive notifications under their admin menu after which they can exchange a string of messages with individual user; however pages cannot initiate private conversations with their fans or others unless the user initiates a comment or posted a message on the page.

Although the test feature looks like a minor update at the first glance the implications of this “Private Messages for Pages” feature can be quite huge. The ability to exchange private messages with members and non members of the social network lets the page owner’s communicate with their customers about services off the public wall. However, if users and fans start using the “Private Messages for Pages” feature as a regular communication method the page might see a drop in News Feed story and will impact the amount of publicity the page would have got when a users friend saw the page mentioned in his recent activities feed.

This move by Facebook is very similar to Twitter where brands that follow their followers back can easily communicate through private DM messages.

I certainly hope this feature tests well and stays permanently on Facebook as it will be a very simple way to communicate one-on-one with those Facebook fans that you really want to.

If you’re business isn’t on Facebook and Twitter, then this post isn’t for you except to tell you to consider setting up a Facebook page and Twitter profile ASAP.

For all those readers who do have a social media presence for their businesses I know how hard it can be to maintain this presence, so I wanted to share some advice to help you out.

Ashley Zeckman from the TopRank blog recently compiled a list 20 do’s and don’ts for social media marketing to help businesses with their social media strategy. So here goes:

10 Social Media Marketing Do’s

1. Save Time, Re-purpose Content
   While this is a great tactic it is important to be thoughtful about the way that you are re-using content. Simply spitting out the same information over and over again will not work.

 

2. Interaction is Where It’s At!
   True interaction via social media can be a tough tactic for many marketers to master. Finding the correct balance of self promotion and intriguing content that inspires action can be very instrumental in using social media appropriately. Take some time to comment or interact with your current clients and prospective clients to show that you’re there, and you care about what they are saying. A simple tactic is to ask questions that inspire a response.

 

3. Try Multiple Media Types
   Social media users are interested in fresh new ways of presenting content and ways that they can share it with their networks. In fact certain forms of media such as infographics or videos have a tendency to be much more sharable and appealing.

 

4. Make it Searchable
   I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you have some sort of optimization in place for your website. Keep the same strategy in mind for your social media content. If it can be searched it can be optimized.

 

5. Keep Calm in a Crisis
   The last thing you need is your social media intern having a meltdown at the first sign of something unfavorable being said about your brand on social media. By keeping a level head and having an emergency preparedness plan ready should disaster strike you will be able to calmly and rationally tackle the issue. P.S. Ignoring it doesn’t count as a plan.

 

6. Customize the Flow
   If you’re like us you have multiple audience members to provide information to online. This could be different verticals or even different departments within a single organization. Do your homework, what sites do your different audience members participate in and what topics are of importance to them?

 

7. Don’t Let Just Anyone Represent Your Brand
   While you don’t want to discourage interaction or squash the dreams of your team it is important that the voice of your social media strategy represents who you are and what you believe in as a company.

 

8. What Was the Purpose of This Again?
   Remember why you’re using social media in the first place. By setting a set of realistic and attainable goals you will be able to test what works and what doesn’t and adapt your online marketing strategy from there.

 

9. Pull Out the Tool Box and Find Your Measuring Tape If you create a beautiful piece of furniture but can’t fit it through the front door what was the point? The same applies to your online strategy. I don’t want to discourage planning big but make sure that you have an effective means of measuring your success in order to identify the true ROI of your online marketing strategy.

 

10. Be Innovative, or at Least Open to Innovation
    You don’t have to be cutting edge to run a successful social media program. However, it doesn’t hurt to have your eyes and ears open to the latest trends. Experiment with your strategy to find new and interesting ways to present the same information to your networks.

 

10 Social Media Marketing Don’ts

1. Hello? Is Anyone Listening?
   One of the worst things that you can do is ignore your audience. Deleting information or simply refusing to answer is a big marketing fail.

 

2. Have You Ever Tried to Have a Conversation With a Robot?
   If you are like me, at one time or another you’ve found yourself screaming at the automated help desk for your credit card company beyond frustrated that you couldn’t speak with a live representative. Try to spare your online audience of the same exasperation and create thoughtful and conversational content. Leave the robots for the other guys.

 

3. I Know You Are But What Am I?
   As we’ve said before it is difficult if not impossible to take things back once you’ve said them online. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with audience members, colleagues, or competitors but there is no need to be impolite. If you take a do unto others approach you will save yourself and your company a lot of damage control.

 

4. Accounts Covered in an Inch of Dust
   You did some research and found 10 new social networking platforms that your company is not signed up for. You assign a task to your marketing team to sign up for these accounts, and unfortunately that is as far as it goes. If you cannot commit to utilizing a platform on a regular basis and setting it up in a way that clearly represents your brand then what is the point.

 

5. One Size Does Not Fit All
   All social media sites are not created equal. As marketers we must consider not only the type of interaction that typically happens on a given platform but also the audience we are trying to reach with that platform.

 

6. The Nameless & Faceless Group from Company XYZ
   In order to make friends online you need to be friendly. Part of being friendly means adding a personal note to your social media profiles. Snap some impromptu photos around the office and share a little bit about some of the key team members. This is an instance where a little bit of extra effort can go a long way.

 

7. Taking Your Relationship To the Next Step
   Romancing your prospects does not end at gaining them as followers. Sure they’ve signed up to receive updates on your company but is that really enough? If your ultimate goal is to gain them as new clients then it is important to have a personalized and meaningful flow of communication that sets next steps in the relationship.

 

8. We Really Care About You. Just Kidding
   Spending countless time and effort to engage with prospects only to abandon them is a completely useless tactic. Handle these relationships with the same care that you would your other business relationships.

 

9. We Have No Idea What is Important To You
   Our company is great, we have so much to offer you, hire us now! I consider each of these to be obnoxious and pitiful tactics for engaging followers. Instead of utilizing your platform as a means for marketing your products and services try instead to offer information that can help solve the business problem of your prospects.

 

10. What Are All of These Followers For Anyways?
    Now that you’ve built up this community of online followers what can you use it for? Your online community is a great resource for crowdsourcing content and brainstorming ideas. If you want to gather a set of your own statistics why not go to your online community and ask them to participate in a study or survey and share the results with everyone.

So there you have it, 10 tactics and 10 mistakes for your social media efforts. I hope you found Ashley’s tips helpful.

If you need more Facebook fans and Twitter followers to engage with, then check out our Facebook and Twitter marketing services.

Are there any social media tactics not in this list that you use? If so, feel free to share them below.

As the end of the year draws closer, it’s about time we shared our predictions for online marketing in 2012.

This week I will start with social media because it is an area of online marketing that is of most interest to me. In the coming weeks, our team will also cover SEO and SEM trends we think will emerge in 2012.

Ok, let’s get to it – with the assistance of online marketing guru, Jeff Bulas, here are the trends in social media that are expected to take off in 2012.

• Social Mobile

The invention and evolution of the computer in your hand, the “smart phone” that is connected to high speed broadband Internet is revolutionizing our communications and society. Facebook and Twitter apps are enabling people to take their social networks with them. The latest change to this ongoing trend is that Twitter is now embedded in the Apple iOS5 mobile operating system at the menu layer. Twitter has seen user acquisition increase by 300% since the launch.

Does this signal the end of the humble simple “text”?

• Socialization of Search

Google’s search results are determined by complex algorithms designed and developed by hundreds of clever mathematicians wearing white lab coats and calculated by computers in dark humming data centers.

Google has started rolling out its “+1″ button that they are starting to indicate will be the start of the rise of ”social signals” that will be used to determine what content is being voted on as valuable by humans rather than just machines.

Google and Bing have increased the visibility and priority of social networks in search results. You may have noticed over the last 12 months that YouTube videos, Facebook pages and LinkedIn profiles and other social media are ranking higher in search results when conducting an online search.

• Geo-Targeting of Social Media Marketing

The rise of FourSquare and Google “Places” has made checking in for specials in your local area a reality…. again driven by the “smart phone”. The mobile web will continue to make a major impact over the next 5 years as the worlds more than 5 billion phones become “Smart” .

Another part of this local social marketing trend is the new development of post code targeting capability in social media marketing on Facebook which is being rolled out in the USA.

The self serve paid Facebook marketing platform is now starting to include postcodes along with the other demographic data that Facebook has in its database about you.

• Social Commerce

E-Commerce has been with us for nearly 15 years and is now producing a major negative impact on “bricks and mortar” stores that are not also online. It is predicted that 20% of total retail sales will be online over the next few years.

Over the last 12 months technology has emerged that allows you to take your shop (via “Apps”) to the Facebook “network” so that users do not have to leave the Facebook eco-system to buy their favourite brands. In fact many of the worlds top bands and musicians have their own Facebook store on their “Fan Page”

Commerce is now becoming “Omni Commerce”

• Social Gaming

Games used to be played on a field or park, around a board in the middle of a table or with a deck of cards. Gaming has been redefined with the evolution of “Social Gaming” enabled by rich multi-media and easy to use social networks.

Zygna (which was only founded in 2007) has usurped traditional gaming companies by developing Farmville and Mafia Wars that is currently played by 230 million Facebook users every month. In 2010 Facebook and Zygna signed a 5 year agreement on the use of Facebook credits which returns 30% of all games revenues to Facebook. Revenues will exceed $1 billion in 2012 which is achieved through the sales of “virtual” products.

Jeff has shared additional social media trends in the original post which you can check out here.

What do you think lays ahead for social media in 2012? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

Any time there is an update to Google’s search algorithm its big news. Our readers work themselves into a fluster speculating what aspects have changed and the impact it will have on their website’s ranking.

Brace yourself – Google is at it again. There have been some recent changes from Google, but the good news is that there is no need to guess this time, Google has (for once) released details of ten new algorithm changes it has made to how it shows and ranks search results.

In no particular order (and directly from Google), here they are:

1. Cross-language information retrieval updates: For queries in languages where limited web content is available (Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), we will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results. This feature was available previously in Korean, but only at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language.
   What this means for webmasters: You will now be able to reach new markets that you couldn’t previously due to language boundaries.

 

2. Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content: This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.
   What this means for webmasters: Ensure you have relevant and quality content on the right pages of your site and spend less time manipulating your header descriptions, and alt and meta tags.

 

3. Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors: We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.
   What this means for webmasters: With this information laid out by Google, it is clear that site wide linking (in headers, footers and blog rolls) will not lead to any better ranking.

 

4. Length-based autocomplete predictions in Russian: This improvement reduces the number of long, sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian. We will not make predictions that are very long in comparison either to the partial query or to the other predictions for that partial query. This is already our practice in English.
   What this means for webmasters: Good news for Russian users, but pretty useless for the majority of searchers who use English.

 

5. Extending application rich snippets: We recently announced rich snippets for applications. This enables people who are searching for software applications to see details, like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This change extends the coverage of application rich snippets, so they will be available more often.
   What this means for webmasters: software applications must now include descriptive rich snippets in order to get a higher ranking.

 

6. Retiring a signal in Image search: As the web evolves, we often revisit signals that we launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, we decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.
   What this means for webmasters: This tweak is aimed to improve image search function. But maybe Google is trying to decrease the link juice from sites like Flicker, Dailymotion etc.

 

7. Fresher, more recent results: As we announced just over a week ago, we’ve made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.
   What this means for webmasters: In order to rank well in the SERPs, you must be updating your content almost daily especially on blogs.

 

8. Refining official page detection: We try hard to give our users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, we adjusted how we attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.
   What this means for webmasters: Basically, this is good news for long-established brands. The official sites will get better rankings and the industry giants get a stronger hold on search results too!

 

9. Improvements to date-restricted queries: We changed how we handle result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range. This helps ensure that users get the results that are most relevant for the date range that they specify.
   What this means for webmasters: If your company’s news is in Google News then expect it to be given more prominence now during the time that the news is still relevant.

 

10. Prediction fix for IME queries: This change improves how Autocomplete handles IME queries (queries which contain non-Latin characters). Autocomplete was previously storing the intermediate keystrokes needed to type each character, which would sometimes result in gibberish predictions for Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.
    What this means for webmasters: Nothing specific, just that the user experience for non English speaking users will get better.

 

What’s significant from this news is that Google is now providing additional details on both large and small algorithm alterations. Do you think this is a sign of things to come? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Is your Google Places page showing up at or near the top of local business listings in search results? If you answered no, then keep reading.

Here are my top eight tips to improve your Google Places page’s chances of being found by local searchers:

1. Get Verified
The first step to get your Google Places listing on Google SERPs is to get it verified. This can be done through Phone SMS, Phone Call or through mail. Google will send you a pin code which you simply have to enter into your Google Places account.

2. Add keywords to your business description, but not too many
Throughout the setup process of the Google Places page you can describe your business in up to 200 characters. While you should use your most important keywords in this section, don’t just stuff keywords in. Write a useful, compelling description that will appeal to readers and Google.

3. Use the right categories to describe your business
With the categories you have to play by Google’s rules a little bit – you need to choose at least one or two categories that actually exist. Start typing and see what Google suggests to you, then you will still get the chance to invent three categories based what you actually do.

4. Make the most of the ‘Additional Details’ area
Not only is this a great way to get some more details of your business onto the page, it is also a great place to insert some of those keywords that will rank well. Most people just don’t seem to bother filling this in – stay one step in front of the competition!

5. Get list in other online business directories
Listings of your business in directories such as Local.com, Yellowpages.com, your local city’s chamber of commerce, or a directory affiliated with your profession can help boost your Place page’s ranking.

6. Space out the time when customers’ reviews are posted
Google will smell a rat if your reviews appear all at once. This might cause Google to push your Place page down in search results. So make sure your customer’s post their reviews in a steady stream.

7. Don’t forget to add videos and images
While this isn’t going to be a huge help to boost your ranking, geo-tagged photos and videos in particular may give you a bump. You can add up to 10 photos and up to five videos for free and these may make your Places page more appealing to searchers.

8. Monitor your Places page statistics.
By logging into your Places page account every so often you will be provided with a variety of statistics to help you better optimize your page. This includes the top search queries that caused users to see your listing and how many clicks occurred to your website over the past week or month.

These are just a few Google Places page optimization tips you must follow in order to get good rankings, do you have any additional tips? If so, we would love you to share them with our readers below.

The field of SEO is one that is seen by some as being the be-all and end-all to effective online marketing, while others see SEO practitioners as shady.

There has always been this idea that Google has it in for SEO practitioners and frowns upon SEO in general.

Well, Google have once and for all come out to dispel this myth in a recent video from Matt Cutts, head of the Google’s web spam fighting team.

Put simply, Matt says “No, We don’t consider SEO to be spam.” He also added that SEO is “a valid way to help people find what they’re looking for via search engines.”

Matt did mention though that there are both good and bad SEO tactics and website owners should steer clear of SEO companies that practice black hat SEO techniques. Before you get too frightened by the thought of dodgy SEO practitioners, there are plenty of good SEO companies out there (including ineedhits). Actually the majority of SEO companies practice “white hat” techniques, but, just like in any industry, there are a few rogue practitioners that you must avoid.

If you’re in the market for an SEO company to do your online marketing, here are some things you should consider before making your decision:

• Do They Practice What They Preach?
  How high does the company’s website rank in organic search engine results? This is a great indication of the company’s abilities to perform SEO when it comes to optimising their clients’ sites.
• Willingness to Offer Information
  If the company is secretive about their SEO practices and are not willing to answer your questions then they might be practicing some black hat SEO techniques and you should steer clear of this company.
• Proven Experience via Examples or Testimonials
  Ask the company to provide you with some customer feedback. The company should be able to provide you with examples of sites it has successfully optimised.
• Ongoing Reporting
  Ensure the company provides you with regular reports so you can monitor the SEO campaign every month or every quarter.
• In house SEO
  Before hiring a company make sure that their SEO work is done in house and not outsourced to overseas sources, where the quality of work could be lower.

I have included Matt’s video below as it provides more details about Google’s stance on SEO and is well worth watching.

Last week I shared a checklist of the SEO tasks for new websites and one of the items on the list was to ensure that you have a custom 404 page when visitors come across an error on your website.

I wanted to expand on this a little more and share some tips on how to make a custom 404 error page that will ensure your visitors still stick around on your site.

Visitors can stumble on to a 404 page for many reasons including:

• The URL they are entering has been spelt incorrectly
• They have followed an old link to content that has been moved or deleted
• The link they are following has been truncated in an email message etc

When visitors land on these pages, it’s very likely that many of them may just leave because they can’t be bothered searching through your website to find the correct URL. To combat this, instead of returning a “File not found” error page, try creating a more useful 404 error page.

Every website is different but here are some suggestions of what kind of links/information to put on your 404 page:

• Links to popular pages
• Links to popular products
• Links to important company, customer service, or contact information
• Links to important FAQ’s
• Links for technical support or contact
• Don’t point the finger. Tell the visitor what went wrong but don’t tell them it is there fault. The phrases “might have” and “possibly” are good ones to use.
• Include a search bar. Visitors who land on your 404 page may know what they are looking for and it will be easier for them to simply type in a term that sort through your navigation.

If you’re not sure how or where to get stated with a custom 404 page, then I would suggest checking out the “Enhance 404 pages” section in Google Webmaster Tools. It’s a great resource for creating 404 pages that are going to make your visitors take further action of your site instead of disappearing altogether.

If you want to get creative with your 404 page, then I have included my favourite 404 pages below for some inspiration.