‘Link Bait’ is one of those SEO buzz words that’s been around for a while now – but what exactly does it mean?

Link Bait is content that’s designed to go viral. The goal is to produce something that’s interesting, funny or unique so that it will catch people attention, gain links and be shared across the web.

The major benefit of link bait is links. If you manage to create content that’s shared across the web, you’re going to get thousands of new links from websites, blogs and social media sites that will help build your domain authority and overall rankings.

A good example of a website with tons of link bait is YouTube. Think about how many times you’ve followed links to interesting videos from blogs or social media sites. These links generate a huge amount of traffic for YouTube and they also contribute to the sites overall domain authority.

So how do you go about creating your own link bait?

Well the sad truth is that it’s not easy. It often takes several attempts to create that winning piece of content that will get attention. To succeed you need to be in it for the long haul – remember it only takes one success to open the flood gates.

To help get you started, here’s a list of content ideas from Jim Westergren,

• Make a valuable resource (lists, special reports, history of, how to, etc.)
• Interview (e-mail/phone) prominent people and publish it.
• Build a useful tool
• Write an interesting article
• Run a newsworthy ‘event’ such as a contest
• Test something new that has not been done before
• Be the first in doing something on the internet
• Write something controversial
• Be the first to write the latest news in your niche
• Be the first to expose a scammer
• Disagree with an authority
• Write some funny humor
• Make an interesting picture
• Be the first to research and document something
• Make a theme, plugin or piece of software
• Make a tool that others can put on their sites but that links to you
• Make a joke about a known person
• Make a resource that is just in time for a major event
• Write an outrageous theory and back it up with logics
• Write useful comments on something that is happening
• Give something valuable for free
• Coin a new acronym in your niche and get people to talk about it
• Become an expert in your niche and write valuable information

If you’ve had your own link bait success or failure, let us know in the blog comments below.

Are you monitoring what people are saying about your company and products online? Is anyone even talking about your business?

Without the right tools, it can be a nightmare trying to keep tabs on who’s saying what and where they’re saying it.

And if you can’t see what they’re saying and where they’re saying it, how are you supposed to engage in the conversation which is one of the keys to social media marketing.

So to make your life easier, I’ve highlighted 5 tools below that you should be using in 2012 to monitor your businesses social media presence (or your personal social media presence).

1. Social Mention – A site that offers real-time social media search and analysis. It’s very easy to use and features the most common indicators of social media activity (strength, sentiment, passion and reach).
2. Google alerts – Google alerts allows you to set up search queries for keywords and then will  email/RSS feed you whenever it finds those keywords. Start with keywords that include your company name, products, and your URL.
3. Search.twitter.com – Here you can search for keywords or phrases and view those mentions (up to two weeks) as they occur on Twitter. Once you find relevant keywords you can subscribe via RSS feed.
4. Addict-o-matic – this site creates a custom web page which aggregates the latest buzz on your company or products from a variety of sources including major search engines, YouTube, Flickr etc.
5. BoardReader – this search service scours all the forum and bulletin boards on the web, delivering mentions and comments about your business. And yes, lots of people still use forums – so don’t ignore them.

There’s quite a few others out there, and many premium services that will offer clever analytics and graphical representation of your social media presence.

At the very least , these will cover 80% of whats being said about you and/or your brand online – and they’re free!

What a great little infographic to help explain the myriad of changes made through Google’s Panda Updates – and some tips on how to improve your sites performance in light of the changes.

Thanks to the team at Singlegrain for creating the infographic.

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.

We found this nifty little infographic this morning. The clever people over at Flowtown and Column Five have put it together.

While it misses a few obvious networks (e.g Linkedin), it’s a great primer for small business owners getting into social media.

Enjoy.

Chrome is quickly making up ground in the browser wars…and for good reason. It’s simple, fast and comes with some awesome extensions and add-ons.
I made the move across from Firefox to Chrome about 12 months ago and haven’t looked back.

If you’re a website owner, you might want to start using Chrome and these extensions to help monitor and improve your website.

SEO for Chrome

The SEO for Chrome extensions provides easy access to Search Engine Optimization Tools that can help you with Competitive Analysis, Keyword Research, Backlink Checks, PageRank Checks and other daily SEO tasks.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oangcciaeihlfmhppegpdceadpfaoclj

Site Information Tool – 1.0

Shows information about the current page (PageRank, Alexa rank, IP info, server response headers, whois and other SEO parameters)

http://www.chromeextensions.org/webmaster-seo/site-information-tool/

Resolution Test

Resolution Test changes the size of the browser window for developers to preview their websites in different screen resolutions. It includes a list of commonly used resolutions and the ability to customise that list.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/idhfcdbheobinplaamokffboaccidbal/details

Speed Tracer

Speed Tracer is a tool to help you identify and fix performance problems in your web applications. It visualizes metrics that are taken from low level instrumentation points inside of the browser and analyzes them as your application runs.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ognampngfcbddbfemdapefohjiobgbdl

Chrome Sniffer

This extension will help web developer to inspect web framework / CMS and javascript library running on current browsing website. An icon will appear on address bar indicates the detected framework. Version detecting is being implemented.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/homgcnaoacgigpkkljjjekpignblkeae

That’s just some of the extensions I use regularly when surfing the web and managing my websites. There’s plenty more great extensions which you can explore in the chrome store:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions

Just a word of warning… don’t leave all your extensions active all the time, or Chrome will eat up your system resources. Turn them on when you need them for a better surfing experience.

Addressing the concerns of many webmasters who find that Google sometimes show alternative titles in the organic search results, Google’s Pierre Far has given an explanation.

While we all know that Google often changes the snippet or description of a site in the search results, what many of us don’t know is that Google will often change the Title without notice.

Pierre explains that apart from the many signals used, Google still considers the tag as the primary source of a title for your page and then decides which title to show to users. But it often so happens that webmasters use the same title tag for all or some pages on their website which might not be the best one to be shown for all keywords relevant to the site.

Google has some algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for users to recognize relevant pages in your website. After doing some testing Google found that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough rate of a webpage that is beneficial for both the searchers and webmasters. And that is the main reason why webmasters see an alternative title for their web pages.

Apart from this Google also tries to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more ‘to the point’ and descriptive alternative titles so that searchers can get a quick indication of what the webpage is actually about. On other occasions, Google has also found irrelevant titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title that might be leaving the searchers confused. For example, a title using simply the word “Home” is not really indicative of what the page is about.

Pierre further explained that Google has always advised webmasters to create unique page titles and meta descriptions for the snippets as these two elements are the first thing a potential customer views in the SERP’s and then decides whether or not to click and enter the website.

To help webmasters who are still facing problems in writing better titles and meta-descriptions, Google has updated their Help Center article on this topic.

In the past, SEO had little or nothing to do with social media sites. It was always thought of an IT professional’s task of getting your site and content easily found on the search engines and social media was just a personal way of keeping in touch with your friends. But that is not the case in the present day, the past couple of years have seen the line between SEO and social media blur and social media has now become one of the core areas of online marketing plans.

So what is it that makes social such an important part of search nowadays?

Bing says it is because of the change in user behavior. 2011 saw Google and Microsoft shift from delivering search results based on stereotypical algorithms to more personalize results that are based on what you and your friends recommend and follow on various social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Marketing is all about keenly observing human nature and behavior and adapting a business strategy accordingly. Search engines are no different. Bing says they have watched your search behavior and pattern to study and understand how you think and subsequently display search results that will help you complete your search faster. Visual signals like the number of ‘likes’ and ‘tweets’ received  play a crucial role in how your business ranks on the SERP’s.

According to Bing, SEO backed with social media is the perfect formula to maintain your inbound visitors and to make your content marketing strategy work today and tomorrow. But it will not happen instantly. You have to invest your time and efforts into making your business visible on the SERP’s. Start interacting with your followers, build a relationship with them, deliver quality items to them so that you earn their loyalty and in return they will spread your business all over the web.

Social media is here to stay so if you haven’t already, then the new year is the perfect time to build the social media presence of your business. Here is Bing’s Duane Forrester main tip to increasing your social media presence:

Be engaged. Easy to say; time consuming, all-encompassing and life altering to put into action.  The simple truth is that if you want to get the most out of social and the benefits it can have on search, you need to invest in it.  You need to build a relationship with followers where you deliver quality items to them, and they remain loyal to you because you’re the best.  No easy task, as you’re going to need to experiment with topics, post types, link structure, time of day, day of week, tone, the type of hook you use and so on (ego, humor, controversy, etc.).

This is not something that happens overnight, so as you’ve heard so many times, create a plan.  Execute that plan and stick to it for a while.  If you are diligent, you will build a social following and become a resource to those following you.  What a good example of how to get it right?  Guy Kawasaki nails it time and again.  Short, simple, catchy tweets.  Each with a link to highly interesting, useful items.  He runs an 8 hour cycle, ensuring 3 tweets a day for each item, which means pretty much everyone has a chance to see his posts at least once.  He has a team that helps him manage this, but the path is pretty clear and the results speak for themselves.

Where does social media fit into your marketing plan for 2012? I hope it features quite heavily because the benefits to your business will be great in the long run.

Ever wondered whether your targeted audience is really finding your website useful? Is the high bounce rates from any of your pages a matter of concern for you? Well, you’re in luck… Google is giving out some simple and handy tips on its latest Webmaster Central Blog that will help you understand and analyze the usage of your website from a visitor’s perspective.

For example, did you know that on average users scroll down 5.9 times as often as they scroll up, meaning that often once a page content is scrolled past, it is “lost” .

If you have never though of these things before or did not succeed in finding an answer to these questions before, this is a good opportunity to find an answer to these questions.

I have outlined Google’s advice for you below:

First, think about your user

Whether you are launching a new web project or completely revamping your existing site some important questions need to be asked answers to which will add value to your website.

• How might users access your site—home, office, on-the-go?
• How tech-savvy are your visitors?
• How familiar are users with the subject matter of your website?

Simple Testing

Even before you get started a brief profile of your user’s behavioral patterns will give you enough information to help you plan the website content and design as per the user’s liking. So basically you should be looking for information that helps you score your site for its functionality, ease of finding information and common site interactions.

• Sample size: You can start with your family and friends and even a group of five people can provide substantial information on the common problems in your layouts and navigation.
• Choosing your testers: While every tester will give a different feedback, concentrate on the feedbacks that only focus on a particular pattern rather than on every individual issue encountered by the testers. For example, if more than 50% of your testers have the same usability issue; it’s likely to be a genuine problem on site.
• Testing location: Getting the users to navigate your site in your presence will give you an opportunity to observe how every individual navigates the web in their personal natural surroundings. For those who cannot do this remote testing is also a possibility and Google+ hangouts is a handy tool for this purpose.
• How to test: Ask your testers to complete 4-5 tasks, which summarize your website’s goal, and observe them. If they are around you ask them to speak out their experiences and opinions rather then giving it to you in writing.
• What to test: You can use a basic test model in HTML to test the basic interactions, in case you do not have a fully functional site for testing. This way, you can test different navigation and layouts alternatives and check their performance before actually implementing them.
• What not to test: Your focus should be on the usability of your site rather than appearance, because only quantitative tests conducted over large groups (200+) will get you a real feedback about the appearance of your site. To test the effectiveness of your design you can offer a few descriptive keywords and ask your users to rate them as per their liking.

Apart from these, keep a check on things like:

• Highlighting hidden text/content appropriately so that it is easily accessible by the user.
• Use proper and effective language that is eye catching as well as easy to understand. Avoid using “Learn more…” in link text—as users seem to avoid clicking on a link which implies they will need to spend time learning about something.
• Check your page load speed on various network connections like public places with WiFi, secured office connections etc. Google’s Page Speed tool comes in handy over here.

All in all Google has come up with solutions to your long pending designing/redesigning woes and investing some time here will surely help you reap good returns in the future.