featured – Social Media Juander INC

With all the advances in technology your business can go from being a thought to an real business with a website, logo and business cards within a day. When I started my business over 3 years ago I was amazed at how much I could get done with Vistaprint. I was able to get 500 business cards for about $10.00! There are many more services available to small business owner’s today. Moo.com is the new Vistaprint offering custom cards. As soon as you register your domain you will be inundated with requests for your money to save you time. SEO Strategy companies offering you free assessments of your site, Online listing services offering to get you listed on over 50 sites with just a click of a button. You know you need to optimize your site, but do you need to pay an arm and a leg for it? One of the best ways to gain page rank organically is to have back links, or links to your site, thus increasing the relevance and page rank of your site based on the referring sites linked to it. I have received many requests to pay to have my site back linked to a network of sites to improve my ranking quickly. I was tempted, but I wanted to see what the experts thought about link building so I did a little research and here are the results.

To understand the need for back linking you have to understand the usage or importance of a link. If you compare the internet to the US, your site would be considered a great hole in the wall microbrewery. I’m in Washington D.C. but you are in northern California. The Natural Bohemian (Natty Boh) brewery is just a short drive up 295, it’s convenient easily accessible and familiar so I buy from them constantly. A friend from California comes to visit and brings a 6 pack of your beer from California and I am hooked. I go online and buy a case, and the next time I visit California I make it a point to visit the actual brewery. My friend from California supplied that link that lead me to your brewery. This is the same with back links to your site, if your site is new no one is referring to your site for information or for services so your relevance is low. My friend created a link to your brewery/site. My friend was a trusted source so the conversion rate was high. This is the same thing as with link building links from influencers, authorities on the industry and educators confirm the relevance of your site. But how do you build these links? Moz.com has a detailed strategy that goes the natural route but is very effective.

1.) Natural Editorial Links: These are other sources linking to your site as a resource.

2.)Manual Outreach: These are links that you manual contact a blogger, website etc and ask a back link to your site.

3.)Self Created: These are links that are created by sites that have guest book sign-ins or blog comments. These can be plentiful but

have low value.

If you are looking at the list you can see how daunting a task link building can be. With that in mind, most SEO Strategist and Small Business owners will opt for the pay per link model. Google, Bing and other Search Engine frown upon this option. The reason being, you may be linked to low quality sites that may not be related to your site simply trying to trick the system. As most Web Masters and SEO Consultants know, Google’s refresh will always catch up to you. If is found that you have paid for link building then your site will be effected significantly.

Although the thought of paying for such a task seems wise, the consequences could be extreme. It takes a long time to build relevant quality links, but manually building links is the only way to go. The best way to achieve this is to create quality, useful content and others will link to your site. You may not be able to afford the cost of the alternative.

Juan De Cruz, Jr.

http://www.socialmediajuander.com

jdecruz@socialmediajuander.com

(240) 479-0082

Google Ranking Help, Online Marketing, Organic Search, Paid Search Marketing

Dominate Locally To Compete Globally……The Importance Of Local Listings To Boost Organic Search

October 14, 2014February 17, 2017 socialmediajuander

Small business owners have enough to mark off of their checklist when starting out. Once you have devised your business plan, the next thing is to create your online presence. You either pay a web designer or embark upon building your own site by using one of the many drag and drop web design platforms. No matter how you arrive whether paid or free…..the need is the same……TRAFFIC. With all the other start-up costs, you don’t want to create a huge Google Adwords bill so what do you do? The answer is to dominate your local online listing!

Most people think claiming your online listing means registering your domain with Google, Yahoo and Bing. While that is a huge part of the equation, you can quickly gain relevance for your domain by claiming local online listings. This is especially important if you live or do business in a suburb outside of a major city. You can’t compete with companies with huge Adwords budgets but you can Search Engine Optimize your site to claim local searches for your product or services. Most SEM companies buy keywords based on Metro areas because they have no knowledge of surrounding towns or counties. The first step is deciding which online listing service to use. I Googled top-online-listing-service and came up with this list from Hubspot.

Top 50 Online Listing Sites

This is a great place to start if you are a do-it-yourselfer optimizing your own site, but if you are a Search Engine Optimization Consultant this is a daunting task. The screen shot above only has twenty sites listed, think of going through all fifty one by one! One of the most visible is Yext.com. Yext.com has partnered with many online listing services such as Manta, Mapquest, Yahoo, Superpages and Yelp. They offer to save you time and effort by providing a single point mass listing service. For about $500.00 you can have them list and correct errors for 50 sites. I felt there had to be a cheaper option, so I continued to search and found Synup.com. The dashboard is very clean and easy to use and the best part…..it’s FREE! The site checks your listing over 182 sites. You can either go to those sites and correct your listing yourself or just click on the correct listing link and have Synup correct the listing for just $1.50 per listing. That’s 182 sites for about $273.00! This is a quicker and more cost-effective option if you’re a small business owner or a Search Engine Optimization Consultant. You can add multiple sites/listings and it keeps them all organized. There is also a function on Synup.com that allows you to check and respond to reviews received from your listings.

I registered with about 20 sites and then did a test search using the term chain-music-social-media based on a blog that I wrote yesterday. Here are the results: The NUMBER ONE spot!

I then searched social-media-consulting-waldorf-md which is a suburb of Washington D.C.. I Search Engine Optimized my listing to highlight my local area and Washington D.C. to get added traffic.

The first spot in the organic search is the manta.com online listing. When you click on the link my company is listed number two. I didn’t opt for the premier listing or pay anything extra. I just built out my free listing.

The task of dominating local web traffic is a very hard one. You need to make sure your listings and content are optimized with local terms larger SEM firms may not know. As your site gains relevance based on your local search, your search results will ultimately improve. But whatever you do, remember to Dominate Locally To Compete Globally!

Juan De Cruz, Jr.

http://www.socialmediajuander.com

jdecruz@socialmediajuander.com

(240) 479-0082

Social Media Uses

All black everything…..the proposed future of the internet! (A layman’s guide to SOPA)

January 18, 2012February 17, 2017 socialmediajuander

You’ve probably seen the blacked out Google logo, the WordPress.com blackout and please don’t try to look up anything on Wikipedia today! You may have heard of SOPA/PIPA, but if you’re not an attorney or super nerd, how do you decipher the legalese, and what does it mean to you? I am not an attorney and while I may be a nerd with swag, I’m not a super nerd, so I was as confused as others. Most people simply scan issues and if they feel that it does not concern them they quickly move on. While at first glance SOPA seems as if it only affects the big guys like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube…..look a little closer. I’m always about enlightenment, so please don’t take my word for it. You can click on this link (SOPA) and view the bill for your self.

The Particulars

The goal of SOPA is to stop piracy on the internet by FOREIGN websites that are not under US jurisdiction/and also those that are, the way they are going about it is a little extreme. We have all downloaded a leaked copy of an upcoming CD or even a movie or two. The goal of SOPA is to regulate this copyrighted material. This is where it becomes a little ambiguous, that enforcement can trickle down to bloggers and those who post content like myself. The internet, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube has created a wroldwide info-share that rivals any news outlet. When the recent Italian Cruise ship crashed, I had articles, reports and pictures many hours prior to local news outlets reports on the tragedy. For argument sake, say that the site I received info from had one photo or portion of content that was deemed copyrighted.

Under the rules of SOPA, the Attorney General can:

1.) Require the internet service provider to block access to the site within 5 days.

2.) Search engines will be required to remove all mentions of the site from it’s indexes.

3.) Ad providers will be required to stop ad service to the site.

4.) Payment providers will be required to stop payment to the site operator.

That international news source would be blocked from me. I know you’re thinking that sounds extreme, and you’re thinking it really doesn’t affect you, but let’s look a little deeper. Any site that has a comment box that allows it’s users to post comments, media or links can be in violation of this. Say if you posted a parody of your favorite song to Youtube. That song is copyrighted, so you would be in violation. Even if you were not intending to profit from the posting of the video.

The main thing with SOPA is, we all are infringing on copyrights, we all post news articles, photos, songs and videos to our Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts. But this knowledge share is what makes up the digital community. I am a blogger and Social Media Strategist, while I do create my own content, there are times that I spool the internet for interesting stories and articles to post. As an independent marketer under SOPA, I could pay the exorbitant fee to monitor my website to ensure that all of the content that I or my followers post is not infringing on any copyrights, or risk being pursued by the Attorney General. It’s a digital “Witch Hunt” in my opinion. Think of how stripped down the internet would be when everyone is scared to post content that may be deemed in violoation of SOPA?

I understand the feelings of groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) who are looking out for their interests in regards to piracy. But the issue isn’t right vs. wrong, left vs. right or good vs. evil, it’s a simple issue of new vs. old. Piracy is wrong but in an attempt to end piracy, SOPA allows a blanket restriction of the new forms of news, idea and thought sharing. No longer is news simply confined to national viewing audiences, as we saw with the revolution in Libya. The internet and Social Media has leveled the playing field when it comes to the distribution of the news. The public can decide what is newsworthy, versus ingesting what ever news story is fed to them. We can form our own opinions, arguments and feelings based on the uncut, uncensored truth. And isn’t that what America is all about? Let’s not stop free speech on the way to stopping piracy!

Juan De Cruz, Jr.

The Social Media Juander

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