There is some big news in the social media world: Twitter is now going to display tweets that are supported by advertisers at the top of search results. They are calling with new program “Promoted Tweets.”

Although Twitter is used by many individuals and companies for promotional purposes, this is the first time that the company itself will step into advertising in the same way other websites do. For a while, the company resisted having advertising, but now they will join other social networking sites, such as Facebook, in displaying ads.

 Presumably, companies that do not want to pay for Promoted Tweets, will still be free to open Twitter accounts at no cost and send out as many messages as they like without paying for it. So if you have yet to start a Twitter account, we encourage you to do so , since it is a great way to improve your site SEO .

Ads that show certain products will be visible when an individual conducts a search that relates to those products. Promoted Tweets will be labeled, so that people know that the tweet has been sponsored.

What do you think? Some feel like this is the beginning of the end for Twitter. Other think it is just a part of the natural evolution of any social networking site. Like many sites, social networking giants like Facebook and Twitter start out small, but then grown exponentially. Although they fight to hold onto that “homegrown” feel, it is hard to maintain operations in the internet without some kind of advertising.

Twitter made this grand announcement without saying much about the fee schedule for this new program. Companies pay for pay-per-click ads [http://www.increasevisibility.com/search-engine-marketing/pay-per-click-adv.php when someone actually clicks on the ad, but we somehow doubt that Promoted Tweets works in that same fashion.

With all the talk of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, we do not want you to forget the importance of the (now old-fashioned) press release  and all that it can do to boost Orange County SEO .

Press releases are a valuable advertizing tool for promoting the products and services offered on your website. And when it comes to Orange County marketing, you can never really have too many ways for people to find out about who you are and what you have to offer. In fact, there are still a huge number of people who will not go near a social networking site. They have ventured as far as using the internet, but they are not ready something like Twitter.

Still, they may be searching for information or even ready to make a purchase and you want them to find you. A press release can help you make this happen in several ways. One way is that an interested internet user could simply find your press release in an online search. Another way a press release could help you is if a blogger or writer for another website finds your press release and links to it or writes about it and an interested internet user finds their way to you because of someone else.

In addition to this, creating additional web pages specifically for press releases and spider crawling will also provide the search engines with more pages to index and this too will ultimately draw more users to your website.

Perhaps you have not spent much time writing press releases or you haven’t written one in such a long time, you are not sure how to get started. That is okay—SEO marketing consultant  Increase Visibility can help.

 For those of you who have ventured into the exciting world of social media to enhance SEO marketing , we want to share some tips with you to make sure that your Facebook fan page is really working for you. Even if you do not have a Facebook fan page (yet), you will find that these techniques can be used in other areas of SEO driven web site development to win fans and influence customers.

 If you are going to take the Facebook plunge, you really have to go into it with all you’ve got. Okay, maybe not all you have got, but you need to make an effort. Experts who have studied Facebook fan pages have found that many businesses only add new content about every two weeks. This is no way to influence your customers. When someone becomes a fan of your page, they are willing and waiting to learn more about you. Don’t disappoint them! (Plus, it is great for Top SEO

You need to post quality content everyday. And when we say quality content, this does not mean you have to post something about one of your products or link to your blog everyday. You can mention or post links to something that will affect your industry or your customer base. You can post photos or how-to videos. Or you can run a mini contest–ask people to respond to a question and promise a prize for a randomly picked winner.

If you don’t feel spontaneous enough to come up with something every single day, you can make an editorial calendar for your Facebook fan page or pick a topic that is similar to what you already have on your blog.

And if you think you are too busy during the day to stop and post, there are a number of online tools that will let you schedule posts ahead of time.

A recent Advertising Age article entitled “Facebook Will Rule the Web During the Next Decade“  gave us some food for thought. Even if you do not agree with its bold prediction, the article has a bigger message: it points to the impact that social networking has had on the way we live and the way we do business. Whether or not you use Facebook, you have to be aware that many internet users turn to Facebook not only to connect with friends, but to get information and increasingly, to conduct business transactions.

The article mentioned that some businesses let consumers purchase products via Facebook without ever sending them to their individual websites. Other businesses do not actually conduct transactions via Facebook, but they do use it as a tool to build relationships with and get feedback from customers.

Depending on the nature of your organization, using Facebook may or may not be a good idea for improving and get more business. However, using the internet to do all you can to connect with the public is a great idea.

Have you found that you are really not sure what your customers want? Do you wonder if certain products are being well-received? Even if you have impressive sales figures, you still need to reach out to your customers. You may learn surprising things: for example you could find out that customers have found new uses for your products. You could make the most of that information using Orange County search engine optimization , if you were aware.

Whether you want to delve into social networking, or improve your customer outreach through your current website, the Orange County SEO consultants at Increase Visibility can help. We can help you with Orange County SEO  so that more people find your website when they are online.

The little things really do make a big difference and when it comes to getting better SEO (search engine optimization) in Orange County, you will find that paying attention to the tiniest details can really add up.

We have mentioned before the importance of keywords. And that if you do not know the kind of keywords an internet user would use to try to find your website, the Orange County SEO consultants at Increase Visibility can help you figure this out. We offer affordable search engine optimization in Orange County and beyond, starting with our free website analysis.

Beyond keywords, they are all kinds of other little ways to connect with customers that may slip through the cracks if you are not careful. Here are a couple of examples:

Acronyms
Yes, they are confusing, can change from industry to industry and are not always helpful when they appear in certain documents…but they can make a difference in Orange County search engine positioning. Why? Internet users use acronyms all they time, even though many keyword tools do not. Does this mean that you should replace all phrases with commonly used acronyms? Certainly not. What you can do is mix it up or find a way to include the acronyms as well as the complete phrase so that you can reap the SEO benefits and attract more business.

Single vs. Plural
Since we spend a lot of time contemplating SEO and best practices, we have tried typing in certain items as singular and plural to see if the results change. We can assure you that your potential customers probably will not do this–and that is okay. It is up to you to find ways to make sure your online content refers to your products in singular and plural formats so that you can reach as many customers as possible.

We sometimes idly toss around all those old says like, “A little goes a long way” or “Some is better than none” or “An ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure” without really considering that there is some valuable knowledge there. Consider that some effort to expand your online marketing efforts is a lot better than sitting back and waiting until you can it all.

There are so many ways to give and receive the same advice, so here is our bid to get you to get started in improving orange county search engine positioning for 2010. The same way we are told that we can get our homes and offices in order by developing the habit of tacking small projects on a regular basis is the same way that we can work out way towards Orange County search engine optimization. Sometimes incremental improvement beats out an exhaustive all-at-once overhaul.

You really do not have to tackle your entire website and all of your SEO practices at once. Here at Increase Visibility, it is our job as Orange County SEO experts to help you improve Orange County SEO and we understand that you may not want to do it all at the same time.

Once we have conducted a comprehensive website analysis on your site, we can advise you on which pages of your website you should tackle first. There may be some pages that need to get updated content that makes good use of keywords right away and some pages that are less of a priority. The same applies to images on your site. You may find the need to replace and tag some images using relevant keywords right away, while you can leave others as they are for a little bit while you attend to other aspects of Orange County SEO.

Contact us today to get started. We are committed to affordable search engine optimization in Orange County are happy to provide you with an professional website analysis at no charge to you.

Here at Increase Visibility, we are excited to usher in a new year and a new decade. Like you, we could not have imagined the changes that the ever-expanding internet has brought to our lives over the last ten years. The internet has truly changed the way that people around the world to business and we cannot imagine what we would do without it. When the decade started, many people feared that a compute glitch would bring our modern way of life to a grinding halt. The much-feared Y2K crisis passed us by and ten years later we find that we rely on computers more and more.

Your potential customers are no different from you–they are logging onto social networking sites, downloading apps to their various electronic devices and relying on the internet to get directions, tell them movie times and to recommend what they should buy and where they should shop.

And you want to be right there with them, so that when they seek some information on a product or service, they will see your organization as a provider of what they want. As a top Orange County SEO firm, Increase Visibility wants to help make sure that you show up in searches and online meeting places through standard Southern California search engine optimization practices and innovative organic search techniques.

We have learned a lot about what works in Orange County search engine positioning and what does not and we are ready to put that knowledge to use by helping you. We have worked with a wide range of companies, from mid-size businesses to Fortune 1000 companies, and can tailor an online marketing program to fit your unique needs.

Contact us online at info@increasevisibility.com or if you prefer to talk it over, call us at 877-SEO-ADVICE (877-736-2384).

During a recent screening of the 1986 film “Pretty in Pink”, some of the computer savvy members of the viewing audience debated over whether or not it was possible for one high school student to send an image to another via computer as quickly as one character did in the film. We have certainly come a long way since then. Images and even video appear to internet users at lightning speed these days. And if you are at all concerned about California SEO, you would do well not to forget that unique and relevant online content is not just words, but images too.

If your website is lacking in video, consider adding some, but keep the following in mind:

• Don’t just throw videos up on your website because you can. You want to make sure that the videos you include have useful information that would benefit from being presented in a visual format.
• Busy website users prefer videos to be brief, so try to edit your videos so they are no longer than five minutes. If you find that you have a lot of material, serialize it as a video series.
• Make the most of the video space and the captive audience by including your logo in the corner of the screen.
• Your videos are more likely to attract the attention of web crawlers if you have a video sitemap. It is also a good idea to list them in your Google Webmaster Central account.
• We talk a lot about Google, but it is not the only search engine to consider. In that same vein, we want to remind you that YouTube is not the only place to upload videos. Don’t forget to upload your videos to MSN, Yahoo and other reputable sites.
• Make sure your videos are in good company. In other words, anchor them with text that contains relevant keywords. A search engine does not consider the video in a vacuum; it also examines the text that surrounds it.

Video can help with SEO, but not if the rest of your website is not up to par. When it comes to California SEO companies, Increase Visibility is highly rated. So if you are looking for a California SEO company, call us at 877-SEO-ADVICE (877-735-2384)

Last week, we were talking about Twitter and SEO. There are a number of prominent journalists and well-known SEO experts who place little value on Twitter, but as time goes on even some of Twitter’s most die-hard opponents may change their tune. As a top-rated California SEO service, we can tell you to take dismissive Twitter advice with a grain of salt.

As of right now, Twitter may not have revolutionized the SEO landscape, but it has become one of many tools that you can use to enhance your SEO. And as you know, anything that contributes to improving search engine optimization is a weapon that you want to have in your online arsenal. When it comes to California SEO, you want to make use of all of the tools at your disposal.

Besides updating Twitter on a regular basis and connecting and sharing with other Twitter users, there are some very simple things you can do to optimize your Twitter presence for better results in California SEO and SEO in general.

What’s in a name?
A whole lot when it comes to twitter. You need to make your title tag fall in line with whatever phrase you want to get picked up by search engines. On Twitter, a user’s title tag consists of that person’s name followed by their username. If you work for Beauty Cosmetics, then you want that to be your name on Twitter because that is what search engines will pick up. Don’t alter that (i.e. Beauty_Cosmetics or Beauty Cosmetics!) unless you are trying to build SEO on some alteration of your name or your business’s name.

Stay connected
We talk about links a lot on this blog. And with good reason, useful, relevant links are a great way to build your reputation as a knowledgeable resource and build relationships with others. But how often do you link to your own website and other online ventures? And more specifically, how often do you link to your Twitter account? If you are not doing this give it a try. Link to your Twitter profile using your name/business name for the anchor text. You do not have to do this every time you mention your name in something online, but just here and there–that way people who were unaware that you were on Twitter or who had not thought of following you, may be persuaded to keep up with you on Twitter.

Some journalistic stalwarts like to make fun of Twitter, but at the same time, some of those same people use Twitter. Even as they use Twitter in an ironic way, they are still taking advantage of it. As skeptical as they are, they know if you can’t beat ‘em, you might as well join ‘em.

There are also some SEO experts who doubt Twitter’s SEO value from a purely technical standpoint. But since all social media marketing has some bearing on SEO, we think it is a worthy endeavor. It is okay if you are not ready to step into those waters, that is fine, but be wary of any California SEO firms who tell you that you should totally ignore socially media marketing. However, if you are looking for a California search engine optimization company to help you get up and running on Twitter and other social media marketing tools, look no further than Increase Visibility.

Since Twitter limits the length of each communication to 140 characters, people who use Twitter shorten URLs they want to share. Someone has asked us if these short URLs still count–of course they do! When it comes to indexing, the full URL is what counts with search engines. To a search engine, a shortened URL is simply a placeholder.

Whenever a link to your site appears anywhere on the World Wide Web, there is the possibility that someone will click on it. And using Twitter simply increases the chances that you will connect with someone who will be interested in what you have to say about your organization and about your industry.

The people who created sites like Twitter and Facebook spend a lot of time saying that these sites are all about creating community, but at the same time they are constantly looking for ways to find ways to make these communities more profitable.

Profitable or not, connecting with people and building relationships is the cornerstone of success, in California SEO and SEO in general. There is no doubt that websites like Twitter will change over time, but can still make good use of them now.

We still do not know just how Twitter will change and it is possible that in the future, Twitter will become even more important than people can foresee. Those who have been using it all along will have a bigger payoff than people who wait and join when they see that Twitter is becoming a huge deal. If Twitter draws people to your company’s website and ultimately to your company itself, then you need to take advantage of the opportunity to reach out to as many potential customers as possible by considering using Twitter now rather than later.