As SEO experts, we can tell you that these days a big part of SEO is SMO. Now you know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, but what is SMO? SMO stands for Social Media Optimization.

We have talked plenty about some of the more well-known social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Perhaps you already use those or have never felt that these social media site were for you.

That is okay because there are so many sites out there and you may find that one of the lesser known ones will work well to promote your business and improve your site search engine positioning .

If your business has a spokesperson or a very charismatic leader, you may want to focus your social media campaign on that person, letting people get a glimpse into their everyday work life. Many of these sites connect to and allow you to share updates with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Here are some social media marketing sites for you to consider:

Vimeo- This is a community where people can share videos

Flickr- Lets you share photos. You can refer people to Flickr pages via your website or another social media site like Twitter or Facebook.

FourSquare- This site lets you connect with friends, find out where they are, tell them where you are, earn points and get special badges when you discover new things.

Gowalla- This site lets you inform your friends where you are and then you can earn rewards.

Loopt- Keeps you informed about what is going around you and allows you to connect with people you haven’t met yet so you can make new friends.

PlanCast- This resembles FourSquare Gowalla and Loopt, except that instead of telling people where you are, you are letting people know where you plan to be.

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.

One of our friends recently pondered the difference in what men and women look up on the web. When she typed in one word and Google gave her suggested search terms, she had no way of knowing which gender was more likely to type in “does he like me” or “does the wii play dvds,” but she was willing to hazard a few guesses.

You have surely heard before that men and women each seemingly come from different planets and that we need to learn the language of both to communicate successfully. This idea applies not only to in-person conversations, but to the dialogue that you are trying to develop with your customers and prospects online.

While both genders use the internet to gather information, buy products and communicate with others, they are doing these things in different ways and it would be beneficial for search engine optimization projects  for you to take some time to consider who your internet audience is and how you can best reach them.

A 2009 study found that over half of the female respondents considered the internet their main tool for keeping in contact with family members. The same study found that an even higher percentage of women who responded (nearly 2/3) looked to the internet as the main way to inform themselves about products they wanted to buy.

Of course, this does not mean that men do not use the internet to do these same things, but perhaps they do not consider the internet as a prime communication or pre-shopping tool.

Consider gender in your web site development : Does your website have a variety of ways that users can get information and get in touch with you? Do you include a variety of topics on your blog–ones that would appeal to both genders and some that appeal specifically to one gender?

A recent trend among casinos has been to invite TV stars to make guests appearances or perform. Casinos traditionally give singers lucrative contracts for long-running engagements, but before now they did not book a lot of celebs for one-night-only appearances.

Big-name celebs do not just drop by for free; they do have to be paid. However, casino owners have said that the cost of paying the celeb for an appearance is a small expense in comparison to the revenue that is generated on those nights.

The regulars and tourists who are in town specifically to visit casinos might have come anyway,  however these businesses get an additional bump in sales from people who come specifically to see the famous chef or reality show star.

These folks may stay for dinner or gambling. The hope is that they will not make their first trip their only time there and that if they have a good time, they will return to enjoy what the casino has to offer.

While, you may not be able to get a big name celebrity to make a special appearance on your website, you can still make this idea work for you to improve your site visibility.

Are there people who are experts or well-known in your industry or part of the country?  Or, is there are charity that is near and dear to your heart? You can connect with them as part of your Orange County marketing efforts.

Why not reach out to these people with a proposal that they collaborate with you in some way?

Although your main concern may be boost your site visibility, make sure that you highlight how this collaboration could be to that person’s advantage. The most likely lure being increased publicity and the opportunity to connect with your customer base.

Source: http://seofirm-increasevisibility.com/special-guests-can-boost-seo/

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.

Here are some helpful tips you can do on your own to promote your site visibility:

1. Use the power of your social network. If you haven’t already, create a business page on facebook and include the link to your website. Invite “fans”. Need more “fans”? Offer special promotions through your business that are only offered to “fans” on facebook.

2. Update your content constantly. if you want more traffic, you will want to continuously update your content. This is one purpose that blogs achieve—they provide fresh, updated content while upholding your professional reputation. Prospective consumers will not visit your websites if they do not have good and high quality content.

3. Get the repeat visitor. Use the “bookmark” tool and add it to your site so users can bookmark you. Make sure to always offer the customer an option to sign up for emails and special promotions.

4. Manage your links to find out what is working and what needs improvement. Link managers such as linkcounter.com and hypertracker.com can track visitors’ movements around your site, monitor clicks on links to your e-newsletters, email signatures, message board posts, search engine listings, etc. These managers can also check for invalid links on your site and show you how many visitors have downloaded something from your site.

5. Select keywords by brainstorming. What words are users going to type in to their search engine of choice to find your business? Brainstorm a list of keywords and type them in to a search engine. Who are your competitors? A good SEO campaign begins with smart keyword choices. Use these key words whenever possible in your blog and comments on other pages with links back to your site.

 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.

Those of you who have heard that there are changes coming to the SEO landscape need not panic. While it is true that very soon that it is very likely that Google and Bing may be locked in some sort of battle, what you need to do to improve Orange County SEO  is not going to change all that much.

Good, solid orange county search engine optimization practices are still going to be what put you ahead of your competition, even as the largest search engines compete with each other.

You still need to:

Work to increase link popularity

Keep your website architecture in good shape

Optimize your HTML coding

Optimize your meta tags

While attending to some of the more technical aspects of keeping your website going, you also cannot forget content. With competing search engine giants out to dominate, you need to make sure that you have good, quality content for those search engine spiders to crawl through.

And you need to do all you can to diversify your content so that you have something to offer to the search engines on all fronts. This means not just having well-written text that makes good use to keywords, but thinking about images too. You want to have photos and video that is tagged correctly as well. And since the search engines are looking at social media too, make sure your blog and Twitter accounts also employ the most relevant keywords as well.

If this all seems like more that you want to take on right now, why not get some help with Orange County web site development ? You know that your website is vital to your business, but if you cannot devote the kind of time to it that you would like, hire Orange County marketing consultant Increase Visibility to help you get the job done.

Earlier this month, Increase Visibility was given a Silver Award for Online Marketing by TopTen Reviews.com. And while we are very excited to be given such an honor for our work in Orange County SEO, we don’t want you to think that we are resting on our laurels–we will strive to be the number one Orange County SEO firm next year. We work hard to do the best we can for our clients, just as you do.

TopTenReviews.com, which functions as a third-party review site that gives users background information, comparative analysis and client reviews, ultimately is geared to help it¹s visitors decide which company or service to choose from in the marketplace. As experts in Orange County search engine positioning  , we had to do a lot of work to get this kind of recognition, but we did not just do this to be noticed—we work as hard as we do because we feel our clients deserve the best.

When someone comes to us for help with affordable search engine optimization, we want to make certain that they are more than satisfied and that they get the increase in web visibility (and ultimately the increase in business) that they desire.

“We are happy to see that our company is really beginning to be noticed in the marketplace for its quality of service, solid reputation and ahead-of-the-curve methodology and it is our aim to be in the number one position on this, and other websites. We are very honored to be recognized but we will continuing working to improve even in this,” said Increase Visibility CEO, James Lisi.

Increase Visibility is based out of Orange County California, and we have team members that serve companies all over the country.  Although many of us cannot remember life before the internet became a driving force in marketing, we consider ourselves veterans because we have been successfully optimizing websites with a combined 20 years of experience. We blend sound marketing principles with up-to-the-minute technological know-how to help organizations increase qualified web traffic.

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that we like to talk about the importance of keywords when it comes to Southern California search engine optimization . These are the words that internet users can type in to find your business and pages on your website that mention certain products and services.

Well, if you can believe it, negative keyword really do exist. And no, this does not mean that you should use unflattering descriptions of your business and products as a way to improve Orange County search engine positioning.

Instead, negative keywords are sort of like photo negatives: they show a different view of the same picture. By including negative keywords in your pay per click ad program, you are actually making sure that those who really want to find you on the internet can do so. With some of your more general keywords, your business can show up in all kinds of searches and although you want to get your name out in front of many pairs of eyeballs you want it to be the right pairs.

If someone who is not looking for you clicks on your ad, you will pay even though that person has no intention of ever patronizing your business. When that happens over and over again, your pay per click ad campaign costs more without yielding you the results you really want. You want the attention of qualified leads.

Here’s is a very simplified example of how it works:

If one of your company’s keywords is “photo” and you are appearing in searches where people type in “photo key ring” and you do not sell products like key rings but do high end photo refinishing, you could make the phrase “key ring” one of your negative keywords.

But before you can get into negative keywords, you first need to be aware of your regular keywords. If you’re not contact Increase Visibility  so we can assist you with a keyword analysis.