Adding Social Bookmarking Icons to Your Site

With the rise of social search, it's important for your website to offer the possibility of sharing its content with the users who visit your site. While it's important to remember that the majority of social sites have a nofollow attribute attached to outbound links, and thereofre pass no link juice, it's still remains a mention of your business, and can drive traffic. There is also some belief that despite not affecting rankings through any Page Rank that could pass from these kind of links, there may be something in Google's algorithm which looks at social mentions, citiations - similar to local search.



There is also the added reason that Google has been adding Tweets into it's search results for a couple of months now, and Yahoo! recently announced a deal with Twitter to do the same - meaning it's all the more important for people to be able to share your great content across the web. So how?

Well, the easiest way to add social buttons to your site is through addthis. The clever guys over at addthis have developed a series of customisable buttons for you to download and add to your blog or website. They can even combine the buttons with analytics to show how and through which mediums your work is shared or passed along. All for free! Good eh?

Are you puzzled about your social media strategy and presence online? Contact me for a chat and we can work towards a strategy together. I also offer affordable website optimisation or SEO Training in Barcelona.

Claiming Your Social Media Presence

Social Media is becoming more and more important as a current e-marketing strategy. More and more people are turning to social media for reviews, comments, and up to the second information regarding products and options for purchases. So it's important for your company to start creating that social media presence in those websites that might work. Have you created a Facebook page? Already Twittering? Got your photos on flickr?



There are literally hundreds of social media sites to choose from and depending on your website's audience, some may work better than others. So what happens when you go to one of these websites and your domain name has already been taken? This can happen, and is definitely something that can throw a spanner in the works with regards your branding. Sites such as Twitter are fairly good at helping reclaim a name if they think you deserve it, but it's a good idea to claim your name amongst as many sites as you can, even just to cover all possible options.

Knowem is a site which takes care of a lot of the legwork for you. The site checks your desired user name on 120 social media sites, and also offers a paid service to register those names for you (if you don't have the time). It's a fairly quick process for them to check all the sites (considering the time you would take on your own) and is also a great place to check out some new sites that maybe you didn't know before.

Interested in creating your social media presence online? Contact me at Barcelona SEO for more details. Or if you prefer to find out more about other link building techniques, I also offer SEO Training on a one to one basis or in groups.

Social Media Basics

The majority of you will already be familiar with many of the social media websites out there. Almost everyone is now a member of Facebook, or if you're a professional, LinkedIn, but these are more than likely on a personal social basis. So what about for business?

Well, in my opinion, it's becoming more and more important to create a social media presence online, and it's only going to get bigger in 2009. It's also very important to not become spammy. Social media can be very time consuming, so for beginners, it's often better to concentrate on just a few sites, rather than trying to cover all the bases and signing up for them all. Create a Facebook page for your business/website and choose another.

It's important to point out, that almost all of the social media sites have the nofollow attribute attached to the links, so in terms of building your PageRank, this will not do much good (don't worry too much about PageRank) - it's rather an organic way of getting people to visit your website.

One of the best ways to gain popularity or followers on sites such as Twitter or in your Facebook page is to get in contact with your existing customers or if you have a mailing list, send a mail asking your clients to join your group or become a fan/follower. Then post interesting things on your pages, and always try and reply to anyone who replies as quickly as possible. One way is to perhaps say something that will strike up a lot of attention - try challenging a widely held belief (as long as you can back it up) or announcing some free giveaway on your site or something like that. Top 10 lists are also a good hook, so think about your market and make up a couple of top 10 lists. You can also set up sites like Twitter to co-incide with your new blog posts if you have a blog for example.

For more information about Social Media and other SEO strategies in Barcelona please contact me at Barcelona SEO and we can chat about your site and