Archive for the ‘seo’ Category:
10 LinkedIn tips for recruiters based on common mistakes recruiters make.
- Don’t make your profile private. How will clients and candidates connect with you otherwise.
- Add your picture and complete your profile. This gives assurance that you are not a group of consultants maintaining a LinkedIn profile.
- Be available to network with both candidates and Clients. This is the reason most people join LinkedIn is to network.
- Seek recommendations from both clients and candidates. This gives your network the assurance that you are good at your job and offers an independent view of you and your organisation.
- Don’t require a user know your email address to join your network. How else will people be able to network with you and contract your services as a consultant and recruiter?
- Use the status box for general job openings. Not specific individual jobs. Maximise the limited characters and advertise all of your jobs.
- Keep your status updates current or clear it when jobs are not available. A status with a job opportunity that is weeks old or even months old can give the impression that you can not fulfil roles.
- Join Industry groups within your country and participate in the conversations so people know you. How else can you keep informed of trends with your stakeholders ?. This also gives you and potential clients more opportunity to network with you.
- Don’t ask for someone’s CV that has just joined your Network. This is what LinkedIn is if used correctly “A living and up to date CV”.
- Be responsive to all requests and messages. Clients may become candidates and candidates may become clients.
Recently the media highlighted the need for small businesses to monitor their online presence. It reported that a competitor altered their competitions Google Local Business Maps details and that it took sometime for her to get caught.
Too often small businesses in New Zealand believe that they are immune to being hacked and that nobody would defame them or their business online. This results in the common thought that they should not bother to invest in online technologies to monitor their online presence.
An even more common issue for New Zealand Businesses is that they do not have any consideration for for Search Engine Optimisation or online marketing. Thus, they do not list themselves in online directories, instead waiting for an automatic listing to occur.
The media report states that a Hamilton Florist manipulated her competitors Google Map listings resulting in her competitors loosing an alleged substantial amount of business.
Google Local Business Maps is an effective and reliable free option to be ranked high in search engines and is an easy way to find local businesses in your area. You log in and add a number of details about your business such as location info, contact information, services, hours of operation and business website link.
To register your organisation in Google Lcoal Maps you need to have a free Google account.
While most organisations in the English speaking world have holidays over the Christmas period your web sites SEO results could be hampered by your competitors still being active over the Christmas break or a number of other situations occurring that could hamper your search engine results.
Other considerations to keep your site updated over the Christmas break include:
- 1. Not everyone goes on holiday
- In the quiet period people use the Internet more to find information and products.
- During the holiday break people make New Years resolutions and have a chance to think about things they need to do. Maybe your updated site will be more appealing.
If you have a Word Press web site with a Blog you can schedule a number of pre written posts to be made at prescribed by you times. This will keep your site up to date over the Christmas period and will not effect any thing that you might add to your site.
To Schedule your Posts
- Write a new Post
- In the top right hand corner is a box called Publish
- Look for “Publish immediately Edit”
- Select “Edit”
- Select the date and time you would like your post to be published
- Select “OK”
- Select “Schedule
To ensure your online brand is safe during the break.
Set up an automated system that will send you RSS feeds, Tweets and Google alerts to a low traffic account. Perhaps create a new email account only for this purpose so you will not be flooded with other emails during your break.
Perhaps once every few days you can check your online brand or even have alerts sent straight to your mobile phone.
FaceBook recently added a new shortened URL “fb.me” to make it simpler to access pages, profiles and groups.
Initially it may appear that there is no need for such an URL shortener as most people have heard of FaceBook and know the FaceBook Url www.faceBook.com .
But there are 3 main advantages:
- The increasingly popular Twitter service with its 140 character limit can show readers that it is a facebook link and promote your brand at the same time.
- The popular mobile market that access the web via their smart phones and other mobile devices.
- It is much easier to give people a short URL to your pictures on your profile.
There are 2 main disadvantage at the moment.
- There is no way to track how many clicks your links are getting which will make online marketing with the fb.me URL difficult to analyse its success.
- If your Fan Page does not meet the minimum criteria of 25 Fans then you do not have a vanity url and therefore your Fan Page will not have a memorable fb.me URL.
The benefits of having statistics and other analytical tools associated with a URL shortener are so emence that we would expect that FaceBook will roll out the new features in the near future.
Digital Engagement – Internet Marketing that Captures Customers and Builds Brand Loyalty. Authored by Leland Harden and Bob Heyman. Published 2009.
This is an easy to read book of about 230 pages of text that is well spaced out over 11 chapters. The language is almost conversational and is accompanied by plenty of illustrations to some of the more detailed dialogue the authors create.
It is not a book I would recommend to any competent Internet consultant nor is it a book that will make you a competent Internet consultant. But I do strongly recommend this book for any small business owner that is thinking of creating an online presence or who already has an online presence.
Too often consultants mislead their clients as to what is required or omit to tell their clients of available services as the consultant does not have the necessary skill set to deliver these to you the client. This book gives a brief overview of what you should expect and the available services to market your online presence.
Digital Engagement is a little USA centric at times. But overall the advise is relevant for the New Zealand market but just with different resources, links and organisations.
Chapters cover an array of online marketing topics including; Search Engine Optimisation, Viral marketing, Video, Affiliate marketing, paid advertising and social media.
In summary this is a great book for any small business but you should still carefully choose a Internet consultant.
The book can be purchased from the usual online book stores and is available at the local library.
There are several ways you can follow us online to ensure you have the most up to date social and web media news, alerts and tips.
Your own web address/domain name makes it easy for your friends and family to access your FaceBook, Twitter etc. If you are a job seeker then it is equally easy for your potential employer to remember you and to seek out your professional profile.
The default addresses that FaceBook once offered were hard to remember and not intended for human reading. You should at least try to register your own FaceBook name. But for many this is not a reality. Likewise sites such as LinkedIn offer personalised addresses but if you have a common name or are not the first person to register your name then you will be left with a decision to keep the default address or be creative with the default address by using first initial,last name or lastname,firstname etc. The later suggestions are not very effective at all.
Registering your own domain name is cheap and an effective method for people to remember your address and can be used to access all of your online pages. There are many options for personal domains names such as .me , .pro, .com . Choosing the right memorable domain name is important.
Those that do have their own domain often use it ineffectively by:
(a) Use it to go to one of their sites as opposed to all of their sites.
(b) The domain name goes to a social media site but the address shows the social media address and not the domain name.
Effectively use your own domain name.
Firstly ensure that your domain name provider offers redirection and sub domain services freely of charge. If they do not, change your provider.
Single site
If you have one site say at My Sapce then point your domain name to that site and remember to make sure that only your domain name appears in the browser window and not the other complicated address.
Multiple sites
You should use sub domains. A sub domain is any relevant word you think of that is added before the main part of your domain name. Net Mania sub domain for its FaceBook Fan Page is http://FaceBook.NetMania.co.nz. Thus making it relevant by using the word FaceBook and easy to remember. DO this for all of your social networking pages.
Google is offering businesses the opportunity to get $75 of free advertising on Google sites. The offer is only open to new Google advertising accounts.
To see if the offer is available in your country and for further details, visit the default Google page for your country then follow it with a /stimulus .
For example, New Zealand businesses visit http://www.google.co.nz/stimulus .
To fully make the most of this great opportunity to experiment with online marketing we sugest you use all of the Google tools available to select key words and tips on writing your adverts. We also advise to use Google Analytics on your web site.
Once you have the free advertising running on Google, you will need to proactively manage adverts to ensure you can adjust to changes in behaviour.
FaceBook will release Vanity url’s ie a FaceBook address with your option of a name in it such as http:/www.facebook.com/JohnSmith as opposed to the current system of un memorable names. Release date is Saturday 13th at 4.01pm. Countdown clock here http://www.facebook.com/username/
Users can choose a name for their profile and Fan Pages (If you have 1,000 fans before May 31). For individuals and companies who have common names you should be ready at 4pm to register your names before some one else does. The consequences are significant if you miss your prime name as eventually vanity URL names will become the normal way to find companies and individuals on FaceBook. If you miss your company name then your competitors will be gaining your traffic and visitors.
Your vanity url should be the same as your organiastion domain name to avoid future confusion with your customers.
For individuals you should consider future employment prospects will be able to find you more easily so you should use a name that you will still be happy with in the future.
FaceBook have made names non transferable. This means you get one chance at your vanity url name and removes much of the motivation of cyber squatters to bulk register and resell names at a later date.
FaceBook vanity URL’s are now in line with Bebo, My Space and the many other social networks who already offer vanity URL’s.
Some web companies consist of individuals or teams of people with only one skill set. This skill set is usually web site design. By this we mean individuals or teams who can make a site look visually appealing without any consideration for security, search engine rankings, who visits your site and where/why they leave and sometimes even navigation of your site.
While the look of your site is important, there are also a number of technical considerations to ensure you gain maximum benefits from a web site. There is no point having a nice looking web site if no one can find it on the Internet and you have no idea about how many visitors your site receives.
A web designer should not be responsible for the technical tasks and likewise the technical team should not be responsible for the visual design of your site. There should also be a search engine optimisation/online marketing person in the team.
Typically a web design company will tell you that you must host your web site on their servers for maximum returns. They neglect to inform you that the maximum returns are not for you the customer but for the web design company itself in terms of revenue gathering.
If your design company use a proprietary system that allows you to make updates to your web site, then you will essentially be stuck with your company for ever. Make sure your design company use an open source system that can be moved from one server to another.
An example of the need to move will be if your web design company cease to exist, prices are raised high due to the monopoly or you become unhappy with the customer services provided.
Often Web design companies resell hosting space on behalf of a dedicated web hosting company and usually at a greater price than you could pay directly for the service from the hosting company. If this is the case, be aware that there could be long delays in gaining customer support – if any support at all. Many resellers offer no or very little technical support.
The same is true for your domain name. Many web design companies offer to register your domain name so you do not have to worry about the technical issues. If you can read and write English then there are no technical issues except maybe writing the name of the server where your web site is at. Something like ns3.netmania.co.nz . Reputable hosting companies have this information available on their web site or freely offer the information.
Some companies whom register your domain name will add their contact details to your domain name in the technical, and admin fields. But some will also add their details to the registrant (domain name owner) field. Hence you will not own your company domain name.
To check your .nz domain name visit http://www.dnc.org.nz . If you do not own your own domain name our advise is to talk with the company that registered your domain name first. If you can not solve the issue there, there are solutions at the www.dnc.org.nz web site.
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