Please go and read it over there, but in the interests of this post being more than 5 lines, I’ve summarised the bullet points below.

• Use your brand name as your Fan Page name
• Select the best Facebook username for your fanpage
• Install static FBML and create additional tabs and boxes
• Use the ‘about’ text box for optimisation of your fanpage
• Use the ‘info’ tab for high density keywords and text
• Create fresh content regularly
• Attach YouTube videos
• Post direct links and relevant sites on your wall
• Include photos with captions and events with descriptions
• Get more inbound links to your fan page

While I think that people may go a little overboard on the ‘about’ and ‘info’ boxes, I agree with the rest of the advice, and think it’s a great article, so please do read it if you’re interested in using your Facebook fan page to enhance your SEO.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Nikki PilkingtonYou may also like to read:

• Quick Facebook Fan Page tip – your web address
• Facebook changes the rules on business pages AGAIN…
• How do I add Google Analytics to my Facebook Fan Page?
• What is Social Media Optimization?
• Becoming an Amazon Affiliate – And Making It Pay

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Your Facebook Fan Page and SEO is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

It makes adding blogs and comments to your WordPress blog as easy as using Word.

Whether you want to change the colour of text, add a smiley ( ), change the size of your text, or a myriad of other things, it makes them easy.

For me, the best part about it is the ability to put tables into WordPress easily, which allows much more freedom when it comes to writing blogs!

Plus, it allows for ‘styled and colourful comments’ – I’ve not played with this yet but it could be fun

Features

• Replace the default wordpress editor with CKEditor
• Post comment with CKEditor to provide styled and colorful comments(Optional).
• Build-in File manager and upload manager.
• Build-in WordPress “read more” Button.
• Control output format.
• Customizable toolbar buttons
• Integrated with WordPress media buttons:
• Manage and insert Smileys into your post.
• Customize editor’s skin.
• …and more.

Thanks to @cartoono for pointing this one out – it’s going to be a great addition to my clients’ blogs!

To download this plugin, visit the Plugin page.

Not sure how to install plugins? See our Guide to installing WordPress plugins.

Still unable to install? If you need help installing a WordPress plugin, please see our WordPress Plugin Installation Help service.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Nikki PilkingtonYou may also like to read:

• Recommended WordPress Plugin – Facebook ‘Like’ Button
• Recommended WordPress plugin – Photodropper for WordPress
• SEO Steps to take after Installing WordPress Theme
• 10 New Plugins for WordPress 3.0
• WordPress Tip: Remove nofollow Attributes from Post Content

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Recommended WordPress Plugin – WYSIWYG editor for WordPress is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

I know that if you do all of this work yourself, in theory it costs you nothing, but your time still has a value, right? Even if you don’t always charge your hourly rate, you must have one in mind, so for every hour you spend on your Social Media and Internet Marketing efforts, that’s how much it’s cost you. OK not in cold hard cash, but that’s an hour / a day / a week you haven’t billed out your time, so for the sake of this example let’s say that’s what you’re spending on your online marketing.

So, what’s your ROI? Are you measuring it? Are you tracking leads that come in because of your efforts, working out how many of them convert to sales, looking at the lifetime value of the client and working out whether your efforts are well spent?

If your time is worth £65 an hour, and you spend 10 hours a week on your online marketing efforts, then you need to be making a profit of MORE THAN £650 a week FROM YOUR EFFORTS ALONE for it to be worthwhile.

10 hours sounds a lot, doesn’t it? But it’s not really – it’s easy to spend an hour or so a day messing around on Twitter, chatting to people and answering queries. Then half an hour a day updating the Facebook fan page and replying to people on there (ooh, don’t forget to tend to your Farm and Cafe while you’re there!). Then an hour or so a week blogging, ten minutes a day replying to other people’s blogs. It all adds up.

Don’t believe me? Download and install RescueTime - it tracks the amount of time you spend on each website or activity. It’s a fab piece of software as it tracks without you having to do anything, and gives you a lovely report at the end. Find out EXACTLY how much time you spend on Facebook / Twitter et al.

Then look at the leads and clients that you can track back to your online marketing efforts – ask everyone who contacts you where they heard of you, whether they get in touch by email, phone, or call by your shop / office.

For a month, keep a log of all of this info – and at the end of it work out whether your efforts are well spent or not.

Because let’s face it, it’s easy to let Internet Marketing and Social Media descend into the realms of ego – how many times you’re retweeted, where you’re mentioned, whether someone replies to your blogs. But at the end of the day we’re all here for the same thing – we want to promote our businesses and make money. It’s great if my latest Tweet is retweeted 56 times – but if I’ve spent 15 hours promoting my company in the last week and had no sales or leads, then those retweets aren’t going to put food in the mouths of my kids.

Leave the ego behind and find the facts – are YOUR efforts online paying off?

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Nikki PilkingtonYou may also like to read:

• Stop Wasting Time on Worthless Techniques
• Do I need a small business website?
• 10 Benefits of a Website
• Google Analytics For Better Search Engine Marketing
• Don’t Take the “Social” Out of Social Networking

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Are your efforts online paying off? Really? is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

I generally implement my optimization campaigns in two phases. The first phase is a quick run through to get as many of the site pages “search engine friendly” as possible. The second is a much more thorough process that provides a complete optimization for each page.

Quick process can often be done in a matter of hours for the entire site, while the best process can take days, months, or even years to get through it.

Do SEO Fast

You can’t start the SEO process until you know what keywords you are going to target. Fortunately, you don’t have to complete the entire keyword research process to get through this fast stage.

Once you know what your core terms are, and what page should be optimized for each core term, you’re ready to get started.

There are four things you want to work your core term into:

• Title Tag
• Meta Description Tag
• H1 Tag
• First paragraph of text

The goal isn’t to optimize each of these perfectly; they will be revisited in more detail later. But you do want to make sure that you are working in your core term into these areas while also keeping the readability intact.

The process for each page should take no more than 10-15 minutes, but can often be done in five.

The goal here is to get as many pages optimized for their core terms as quickly as possible. The search engines will begin to pick up these keywords and you’ll see some slight improvement in the rankings. Once you start the more detailed optimization process those efforts will help improve the overall performance of the site. Having the pages optimized–even on this most basic level–should help get you more exposure and better rankings overall.

Before you move into the more detailed optimization process (or at least while you are doing that) you don’t want to neglect some of the site architectural issues. A lot of times the architectural problems should be addressed before you begin any SEO, but some of these elements can be done as the SEO progresses.

Do SEO Best

Once your site has been made “search engine friendly” you can start diving into the more detailed optimization process. I suggest taking a single page at a time. Doing it this way allows you to perform your keyword research on a page by page basis instead of trying to do it all at once.

In this phase you’ll revisit all the things you did in the fast optimization but on a more granular level. This isn’t just about working in some keywords into the content. You want to take a more measured approach to not only work in keywords but to focus on the content and marketing abilities of every area of the page.

Here are a few things you want to consider:

Title tag: You’ve already worked in your core term. See if you can adjust the tag to add the more important qualifiers that might also entice additional click through.

Description tag: Same as the title. You can generally work in a lot more qualifiers here than you can in the title. Be descriptive and compelling.

Headings: Ensure proper hx use throughout the page using proper hierarchy. Don’t do a lot of keyword stuffing in your headings, but use them as it makes sense.

Content: Look for opportunities to write or rewrite the content to work in keywords, explain your features and benefits and keep visitors engaged in your site. Make sure you use a consistent voice from page to page and include active words with regular calls to actions. Keep your content scannable with good paragraph heading, bold, and bullet point usage.

Review the page from a customer standpoint and look for anything that breaks the intended conversion process. This includes finding poorly worded sentences, titles or headings that may fail at their jobs, and ensuring that the reader absolutely knows what they are expected to do next and/or drives them to the information they came for in the first place.

Make sure the page is able to convey its purpose visually, both with images, formatting, etc. We’ll add or change things as necessary to ensure the page provides the reader with the best possible visual representation.

Internal linking: Don’t miss an opportunity to link to other areas of your site from within your content. Link keywords relevant to other content, informational and product pages.

Images: Use the ALT attribute for your images and describe each image properly. Use keywords when it fits.

Code: Streamline your code. Reduce the amount of code on the page by eliminating unnecessary tables, JavaScripts, CSS and whatever else that might help you increase your page’s download speed. Ensure there is no bad coding or malformed HTML issues that might prevent the search engines from properly indexing your content.

There is nothing quick about this process. The goal is to get everything done in the most perfect way possible before the page goes live. Go through as many edits as you need to ensure that all the elements are in their place and will do the job intended.

It’s unlikely that this version will be the most perfect version either. It may take further adjustments to get better rankings or improve click through and conversion rates. You can always find ways to improve.

If you’ve performed the quick optimization process first, you don’t have to worry about getting every page fully optimized immediately. You’ll get benefit from the fast optimization which will then be expanded upon as you continue to optimize each page on a much more thorough level as time permits.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Search Engine GuideYou may also like to read:

• Forget SEO, You Need SPO: Search Person Optimization
• Internal SEO
• What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
• SEO 101: Everything You Need to Know About SEO (But Were Afraid to Ask) – Part 1
• Search Engine Optimization In A Nutshell

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Do SEO Fast Before You Do It Best is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

When you’ve been writing about SEO as long as I have you sometimes feel that you’ve run out of things to say. We forget that there is always someone new just learning about SEO and hasn’t had the chance to read every article ever written on the topic. Not many people have that kind of time on their hands.

In light of that, I wanted to spend some time going back to the basics of SEO.

I recently was invited to speak to a group of beauty bloggers being hosted by L’Oreal in New York City. Most of the attendees write their own blogs or were responsible for the blogs for the company they work for. A good share of them also sold products through their blogs. Many of the illustrations I’ll use in this series will be directed toward that audience, however they can be applied across the board to any industry, including those selling products or services.

The trick with going back to the basics is deciding what gets included and what doesn’t. I’m sure there will be a lot of “basics” left out while some of the things noted here could be considered more advanced. Either way, the SEO information I’ll provide here are those things which I consider essential. And perhaps that’s a better way to look at this, not as SEO 101 but rather, SEO Essentials. Hopefully, whether you’ve been around a while or just learning about this stuff, you’ll learn something new, have previous misconceptions expelled, or other thoughts confirmed.

Every site has to start somewhere. When it comes to people we’ve heard it said that beauty is on the inside. The same is often true of websites. The design of the site may be pretty and eye-appealing on the outside while the SEO elements are something a bit more creepifying. With a little work you can turn any SEO-ugly website into a gorgeous web marketing goddess.

But the point is, you have to start somewhere. Short of moving forward with the implementation of a good SEO strategy your site will be falling short in a number of different ways.

There are four basic benefits of SEO that are the foundation of the online success that it brings. In the end, what we are all looking for is more business. But in order to get that there are a few things that need to be dealt with as part of your optimization strategy.

Four basic benefits of SEO

Indexed pages

Before you can get your pages to rank for your targeted keyword phrases, you need to be sure that the search engines can first find them, and second decipher them. This goes back to making sure that you have a strong, search engine friendly website architecture. You do this by ensuring your links are properly navigable. The navigation of your site must have a properly established hierarchy, and your content needs to be readable. I’ll touch on these things in more detail later in the series.

Rankings

This is what we all want SEO for, right? Actually, I hope not. We’ll discuss the other two benefits which are far more important next, but while rankings are an important part of SEO, they are not the goal in and of themselves. Too many people look at rankings and think “I’m losing x amount of business because I’m not ranked #1. This may or may not be true. Different rankings produce different bounce rates. It’s important to understand that rankings don’t make sales, they just provide a way in the door, and those that come in at #1 may not be as ready to buy as those that come in at #5.

Visitors

Once you start getting rankings, even for low-volume but important keywords, you’ll start to see your visitor count rise. Again, this is good, but not the ultimate goal you’re trying to achieve unless you get paid on a cost per impression basis.

Conversions

This is the big goal. The end-all, be-all purpose of search engine optimization. SEO is more than just helping you get rankings and drive traffic to your site. It should also help you increase your conversion counts and percentages. A conversion can be anything you want it to be; a comment on your blog, a download of a white paper, a follow on twitter, or a purchase of a product. Its important to know what your conversions are so you can set your optimization goals to help achieve them.

Search engines are stoopid

Throughout the process of SEO it’s important to keep in mind that the search engines, as smart and advanced as they are, are still pretty stupid. They can’t tell the intent, so if intent is needed in order to determine relevance of a page or keyword, the search engines are unaware. Part of the SEO process is going out of your way to spell things out to the search engines so no guessing is needed.

Keep in mind visitors can also be pretty dumb themselves. Business owners are always complaining about calls they get asking for information that’s clearly noted in the website. Of course, it’s not that your visitors are really stupid, it’s that they are impatient for things that are not easy. The harder your site is to navigate, find information, make a purchase or get that conversion, the more likely the visitor is to leave. They’ll move on to another site where things are easy.

As we go through this SEO process we’ll be looking at things that make your site easier to understand, navigate and process for both the search engines and the visitors. And while much of this information is “basic”, it’s these basics that still matter to the search engines.

Stay tuned for parts 2-15 (give or take) coming over the next few months.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Search Engine GuideYou may also like to read:

• Forget SEO, You Need SPO: Search Person Optimization
• Search Engine Optimization In A Nutshell
• Do SEO Fast Before You Do It Best
• Are You Optimizing for Search Engines or for Customers?
• Top Five Ways to Make Your Site More Popular

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SEO 101: Everything You Need to Know About SEO (But Were Afraid to Ask) – Part 1 is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

First they renamed Fan Pages to Business Pages, now they’re messing with the way things look.

I have to say I’m not too happy with Facebook over these changes, as they’ll affaect thousands of people who have invested time, effort and money in their Facebook pages.

So what’s happening?

1) The Boxes facility and tab is being removed. So if you have spent time making a really nice layout on your Boxes tab (which some people have) – you’re going to lose it as from next week. It’s not being changed, moved elsewhere or streamlined – it’s being removed. That also means that if you used the boxes facility to have a sign up form, or Google Analytics, or nice graphics, in the left hand side of your Facebook page, you’ll lose it.

2) The size of custom tabs is being changed. So if you spent money on a custom welcome tab, it won’t fit. The new size is 520 pixels, so if you’ve designed to the old 750 pixels size, your tab is going to look mighty odd.

Now I’m unhappy about this on my page, but I’m also unhappy about the 100+ pages we’ve set up for clients – all of their custom tabs will now be the wrong size, and if they want us to fix them, we’re going to have to charge. Yeah yeah, I should be happy I can make more money, but I’m not. To put it bluntly, it’s going to be a lot of work if everyone comes back wanting them changed, and I hate to have to be the one to tell them.

How are the changes going to affect your page?

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Nikki PilkingtonYou may also like to read:

• Your Facebook Fan Page and SEO
• Don’t Take the “Social” Out of Social Networking
• Why I think you should always include a picture in a blog post
• Quick Facebook Fan Page tip – your web address
• Are your efforts online paying off? Really?

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Facebook changes the rules on business pages AGAIN… is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

One of the most popular ways to promote your site is through social networking.

However, many of you are taking the “social” part out of the equation because you are relying too heavily on automation.

By automation I mean using various online tools and apps that automatically post content to multiple social networking sites at once.

Don’t get me wrong, automation has its place and it can be immensely convenient, but it’s not always the best way to announce all your content all the time.

I just created a FaceBook fan page last week and I’ve spent a great deal of time researching other successful/active pages.  One thing I’ve noticed is that most successful pages have the right mix of automation and personal interaction.

FaceBook vs. Twitter

While many people use FaceBook and Twitter to interact with people and websites, there are thousands of people who hate FaceBook but love Twitter and vice versa.  Not to mention, people use these sites very differently.

A lot of people like Twitter because they can get quick updates on their favorite people/sites.  They don’t necessarily want to engage in lengthy discussions (not to mention the character limit makes that challenging anyway).

Then you have those who love FaceBook because of the personal interaction, and they love giving their opinions, getting involved in discussions, etc.

So while an automated tweet about your latest blog post is fine for Twitter, perhaps there’s a better way to word this same update on your FaceBook fan page so you engage your fans.

You may want to manually post this update to FaceBook and follow up with a question or comment.

This often sparks comments, questions and discussion which can make your fan page more engaging/interactive (if that’s your goal.)

This is about knowing your audience.  As a whole, FaceBook users have different expectations and behaviors than Twitter users.  So it’s up to you to find the right mix and balance so you’re getting the most out of each social networking scene.

Automation Isn’t Always Bad

Now, I realize there may be times when automation is appropriate.  That’s why I love the Selective Twitter FaceBook app.  It allows you to post selected Twitter content to your fan page by simply adding #fb to the end of your tweets.

You can install this app by visiting this link and selecting “Add to My Page.” Then follow the instructions for linking it to your Twitter account.

It’s easy to fall in love with all the apps and tools that automate content publishing, but don’t rely on them so much that you appear too robotic and impersonal.

Remember, it’s called social networking for a reason.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from 2 Create A WebsiteYou may also like to read:

• What is Social Media Optimization?
• How to promote your Facebook Fan / Like page to your Facebook contacts
• Running A Small Business Website
• SocialClean- Free Social Network Icons
• 10 Top Tips for Facebook Ads

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Don’t Take the “Social” Out of Social Networking is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

It’s not difficult to do – all you need is:

• A Google Analytics account
• A Facebook Fanpage
• The FBML application
• Some generated code
• 10 minutes spare

There’s a fantastic guide to it here: How to add Google Analytics to your Fan Page

The basic premise is:

1) Add a new profile in Google Analytics

2) Use the Analytics Tracking code here to generate some code

3) Install the FMBL application on your fan page

4) Add the code generated in step 2 to the FBML page you want to track.

5) Check stats tomorrow!

The guide in the link above is great, and walks you through the process easily.

If, however, you’re having problems and can’t get it installed, then we’re offering a basic no frills installation in return for a donation. You can purchase it below. Why a donation? Because although it takes next to no time, we can’t offer it for free or we’d be inundated and have no time for ‘real’ work. This way, if Leigh spends 6 weeks adding Analytics code to Facebook pages, at least she’ll get paid for it! You can choose the amount you pay, so just pay what you think it’s worth.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Nikki PilkingtonYou may also like to read:

• Open Source And Live Web Analytics: SlimStat
• Publish Website RSS Feed in Facebook Notes
• Insert Google Analytics without editing your theme
• Facebook changes the rules on business pages AGAIN…
• Your Facebook Fan Page and SEO

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How do I add Google Analytics to my Facebook Fan Page? is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

First of all click on the link on the left, underneath your Fan Page profile picture, that says “Edit Page”. This takes you to the page where you can change different parts of your fan page. You can see what this link looks like on our fan page from the image on the left here.

Once on the editing page, you need to scroll down and look on the right of the page where you will see ‘Admins’. This will show you who is currently listed as an admin on your page – more than likely just you at the moment.

On the right is a link to ‘Add’ an Admin, and when you click on that, it brings up a list of people who are fans of the page (see image below). If the person you want to add is a fan of your page, you can simply find them in the list and add them as an admin – they will get an email telling them that you have done so.

The other option (if they are not a fan of the page) is to add them by using their email address. Again they will be sent an email to tell them they’ve been made an Admin of your page.

It’s worth noting that once someone is an Admin on your Facebook Fan Page, their posts on that page will appear to come from the page, not from them personally, so the avatar next to the post will be the one of the Fan Page, not their personal one – this can be a little confusing if 2 of you are posting things on the wall and replying to each other, as it looks as if the page is talking to itself!

Hopefully this will help you to add Admins to your Facebook fan page if necessary – drop us a line if you have any issues!

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Nikki PilkingtonYou may also like to read:

• Quick Facebook Fan Page tip – your web address
• Publish Website RSS Feed in Facebook Notes
• How to promote your Facebook Fan / Like page to your Facebook contacts
• Why I think you should always include a picture in a blog post
• Just because I LOOK as if I’m wasting time, doesn’t mean I am

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Adding someone else as an Admin on your Facebook Fan Page is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

This little gadget will tell you if you’ve got it right by generating a ‘cloud’ based upon the phrases and words it thinks you are targeting. The larger the text, the more you are targeting that word or phrase.

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-cloud/

Here’s my front page cloud:

If you’ve got big bold phrases in your cloud that are nothing to do with your site or the phrases you’re targeting, then you really need to rethink your copy! Drop me a line if you have any questions, I may be able to help!

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Nikki PilkingtonYou may also like to read:

• Do I need a keyword rich domain to do well in Google?
• Cloudy – Website Template
• Adding someone else as an Admin on your Facebook Fan Page
• Google Adwords Tutorial
• 67 SEO Pointers for Blogging Beginners – a free guide

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Are you focusing on the correct keyphrases? is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website