Month: May 2008

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Social Networking for the Busy Professional

Social networking for the busy professional does not have to be hard work.“What to do, what to do… update LinkedIn or Facebook? Yikes, I haven’t even looked at my MySpace site in a month.” The busy professional has a hard time finding time to keep social networking sites up-to-date and they really only work for you when you are actively “working the network”.

This is why I recommend selecting just one social networking site and then sticking with it. For my age group and profession the social networking site of choice is LinkedIn. Most of my clients are there and this is the site that I get the most requests from to add new friends.

College kids and the younger professionals are using Facebook a lot and nearly no one is using MySpace anymore, unless you are a band. The ebb and flow of the popularity of social networking sites makes it hard to choose one and stick with it.

The reason I like LinkedIn is that the set up time was quick and that I do not have to invest a lot of time in maintaining or updating the site. Social networking is not for everyone and some people will simply have more time than others to manage their sites. Others will see no benefit to investing even a millisecond on sites like LinkedIn or Facebook. For me, this is why I like Twitter so much. Twitter is part blog and part social network. Although there isn’t the friend interaction on Twitter, unless you have social friends there, the ability to see what is happening with others in your field in regards to sites they are watching, new information they feel is important, and the speed in which information is shared, is what makes this flavor of social networking popular for the busy professional. Who doesn’t have one nanosecond to write 140 words about what they are doing right now”?

You can follow me in Twitter from the Twitter Feed bar just to the right in my blog’s sidebar. My Twitter ID is McCordWeb. See you there!

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Building Web Authority with Feature Articles or Linkbait Articles

If whitepapers are not for you as mentioned in our previous post then feature articles or linkbait articles may be the best option for you. With these types of articles, you can easily pay a good web content writer to create a 600 to 800 word article for you on topics that dovetail with the services you provide.

Once created, you can register the articles with a variety of article directories for syndication on other websites, in ezines, or on other blogs. The articles will provide a one-way inbound link back to your website and will appear in Google on the article directory site.

For some clients, we recommend the additional installation of an article directory back on their website as a repository for this created content. If your blogger has written these articles, the research and topics will provide additional content creation opportunities. Additionally these articles can be pointed to by links from within your own website and blog either at the article directory or in your online article repository.

By cross linking all you do with specially created content, you help to point search engines to the content that builds your own authority.

Personally I have found that Google does not really factor in the one way inbound links that you get from article directories to improve your organic position with this technique, but Yahoo and MSN will move you up on the search results page with feature articles registered at the various article directories.

Now the very pointed question, if doing articles, which can be costly, doesn’t help you with Google placement why do them, you should do them to create authority for your website. This is one reason why we recommend an article repository back on your own website; so you build credibility in your readers’ eyes as well as for search engines. We know that articles of this nature do not give you an important immediate organic boost, but much of what builds authority and organic placement is not about immediate results but long-term results for readers PLUS search engines.

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Page Layout Slip Sliding Around

You’ve seen websites like this, the layout slides around over lays other elements and looks very different in Firefox and Internet Explorer. Although the world is moving to all CSS website design layouts, there is still use for table layouts combined with CSS.

I have found that these hybrid layouts may be more cross-browser compatible and may in some cases even load faster then pure CSS designs. I do like the ability to make fast global changes with CSS, but have not stopped using tables all together for best practices.

Case in point, in Dreamweaver CS3 use any CSS three column layouts and then insert a Spry navigation menu. Even with absolute positioning, the menu is not locked down and can slide around the page depending on which browser your use to view your site with. That’s a real problem! If you want it on the right, it needs to stay on the right! Lock the Spry menu inside a table and position the table with CSS and you’ve solved the problem across all browsers.

So will web design be all CSS in the very near future? Most likely not, but more will be moving into that same direction. Now, if we could only get all browsers to follow the same box model that would be huge step, but, sigh with IE not following the path of others, it makes it very difficult to embrace a pure CSS layout and have it look great for everyone. 

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Building Web Authority with Blogging

Web authority is valuable for any business which wants to position themselves as an authority in their field. Building web authority can not only be good for establishing yourself in your clients’ and prospects’ eyes as their resident expert and “go-to” resource, but can be hugely beneficial for improving organic search engine placement.

Web authority is gained on the web from quality content, depth of content on a topic, age of your website, number of pages your website contains, and number of links from outside sources pointing to the content. Web authority is certainly not gained overnight, but many things can be done to your website which will help to immediately create an authority factor.

One of the best ways to build web authority is to blog on your selected business topic. If you don’t want to blog, hire a professional to blog for you, but BLOG! Blogging builds content for your website fast and if the content is good can help to immediately start you on the path to building your authority on a specific topic or narrow range of topics. You’ll get the fastest and best results if you start out blogging five days week, but at the minimum of at least three days a week. If your budget won’t allow you to hire a blog writer indefinitely for blog post five days a week, invest in two months worth of blogging and then cut back to three days a week at the end of two months.

Blogging adds content easily to your website and search engines consider each blog post as if it were a single and new HTML page addition to your website when your blog is filed on your web hosting server under your domain name.

If web authority is important to you stay away from off-site blogging. Use WordPress and have it installed on your own web hosting account using your own domain name in your blog. You can’t get any web authority benefits when you blog at BlogSpot or at Typepad for your website.

In our next few post we’ll discuss other opportunities for building authority such as feature articles for syndication and whitepapers so make sure to come back tomorrow for more information on building your own web authority.