Affordable SEO & Web Design | Brainerd, MN | Optimize Guyz

Back linking is hard. Especially when you are looking for regional links. With the help of Ontolo.com, we were able to generate a massive list of footprints that should make finding Minnesota-relevant back links just a little bit easier. Footprints are simply a pattern of text or characters left behind by certain site-types, page types, and platforms. Think of a blog looking for guest authors, this would most likely contain footprints which we could find by searching for “Submit a Post” in conjunction with our keyword.

For those of you located outside of Minnesota, can swap in your state of choice wherever applicable. The footprints will still work for any state in the US. These will include:

• Article Directories
• Web Directories
• Guest Blog Posts
• Donation Pages
• Potential Link Partners (link exchange pages)
• Coupons and Events
• Business Profile Page Opportunities

We decided (after much debate) to only display 100 here, and include the full list as an attached .XLS file, making it easier for you to record your findings.

Minnesota-Business-Footprint-Guide

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Having trouble utilizing Twitter to the full potential?

No problem! Just tell us how we can help on Facebook, Twitter, or by email. We are here to help.

The “Grow Your Business Using Social Media” half-day event was hosted by the Brainerd Chamber of Commerce and the Lodge. It was great to see the regional folks getting excited about social!

Enjoy the slide decks! Brent also wanted to share a few resources with you.
Social Media Policies
Social Media Management Tools
SMO for Business – A full-on book!!

After all, the biggest failure of all is not succeeding on social. Taking the time to outline a strategy is key. Define three month, six month, and one year goals in whatever metric’s are most important to you. These could be assigning a tangible figure to the following metrics:

@Mentions, Friends, Followers, Referral Traffic, Reviews, Uploads, Downloads, Tags, Check-ins and many more.

One last thought, before you jump right in — define your audience — and the best ways to reach them. Hesitating to move into your social real estate is no longer an option. For anyone still on the fence, check out Jessica’s post at Bruce Clay, Inc. for great resources on entering the Social Media landscape.

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The popularity of two terms are explored: “SEO” versus “Internet Marketing”

SEO is the science of search-engine-optimization, that is, the process of making your web properties more attractive to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask, Tospy, and so forth.

Internet Marketing (IM) is broader than the term “SEO” but it is often used in the same fashion — promoting properties & sites for ultimate visibility.

(rather than focus on exact meanings, which happens very rarely in the real world, let’s look at what will accomplish the most when mentioned to those who are not in our industry)

Here we can see the term Internet Marketing nipping at the heals of SEO. Search Engine Optimization is not in the mix.

The term I prefer is Internet Marketing. Let me explain why.. Read the rest of this entry »

Link Exchange Forum Guide

Just like LuckyCharmz336 asks on Warrior Forum,

“I still believe in link exchanges (to a certain extent), which I know most of you don’t. I was wondering if anyone out there knows of a good forum or website for exchanging links. I don’t like websites like Linkalizer, I am looking for higher quality links that are easier to obtain.”

1. V7N Link Exchange Forum - This one seems to have a higher quality user than Digital Point.  Trustworthy community and very knowledgeable mods.
2. Digital Point Link Exchange Forum – Too much of a good thing. 16-20 new threads per day is not uncommon here. Get ready to become acclimated with the advanced search tool friends. Need help? Tough. Mods aren’t there to help you, but “DP” or Digital Point has a large volume of folks looking to swap links with you. DP forum members, in large part, tend to be heavily black hat, scheming, and untrustworthy. The majority of the sites will have to be passed over. You can find a few good ones amidst the sea of spammers.
3. Webmaster-Talk Link Exchange – A nice “Sort By” feature that can help find relevant link opportunities easily.
4. UKWebmasterWorld Exchange – Exchange signature links, contextual links, and more.

Didn’t Make the Cut:

1. http://www.linkswapforum.net/ – Unfamiliar with the mods & users but it looks to be a good place to make friends.
2. http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-reciprocal-links-buy-sell-swap/
3. http://www.linkexchangeforum.co.uk/
4. http://forum.siteground.com/forumdisplay.php?f=24
5. http://www.wjunction.com/forumdisplay.php?s=afb0eac8927b26ab3c8b6171d8d66d3b&f=33
6. http://www.textlinksforum.com/showthread.php?t=14233&mode=linear
7. link: http://linkexchangeforum.net/Community/link/?PHPSESSID=5028ced6c55cf61ef548dda9df667223 –  in need of a drastic face lift.
8. http://forums.seo.com/forumdisplay.php?55-Links-Marketplace – Must be approved.

Internet marketing is a hot ticket item. Nothing about this industry is slowing down. More searches each year, more ad spending, more social media users, and much more content throughout the web.

SEOmoz – Ten Things We Learned in 2010.

So what are some of the interesting things we saw in 2010?

1. Yahoo & Bing Merge – Adcenter is the new YSM for average users. We don’t have to include both Yahoo & Bing in the monthly ranking reports. Will Search Engine’s PPC programs be overshadowed by social media PPC, sponsored tweets, and other strategic placement methods?
   
2. Many more Social Media management and monitoring tools come to life – Trackur, Alterian, and others are going to define how to do business on social media.
3. New back link software – Software like Ontolo, Link Insight, and others will also change the way white hat SEO is done.
4. Blekko goes live – Open search engine. This new yet small search engine team makes a search engine that does not hide links, internal algorithm values, and showing us why they rank sites how they do.
5. Marissa Mayer  goes loco local - Head of Search for Google moves to Google Local. Major changes on Local SERPs within Google, David Mihm heats up Local Search Optimization, and Google hires 100′s of more employees to sell local advertising.

A new web site has an amazing pull on sales today. Rather than get something just because it “looks good,” it is important to ponder a few other crucial points of condideration as well. Users need to be able to use it, not just you. Search Engine’s need to be able to access main categories, pages, and looking good is not a bad thing either!

If you are considering buying yourself a web site you should carefully examine this post. This post covers a few questions you should ask before you buy a  site. This can save you a lot of unnecessary effort and expenses.

A very common problem is when a company buys a web site and ends up with major disappointment. It does not meet the needs, users can not use it, or search engines can not properly categorize/crawl the site,  which will probably result in dire consequences for YOU or your business!

In order to avoid disaster, you’ll need to ask, ask and ask.

Inform yourself about the new web site you’re about to buy, don’t you inform yourself about a new game, book, or movie you are going to buy? The best way of informing yourself is to get the information from the seller by asking him a lot of questions, don’t worry he wants you to buy his web site, so he will gladly answer all your questions.

So what should you ask?

Here a quick list of important question that should be asked before you buy a new web site:

1) Do you keep server updated?

An old or outdated server can be a hacker’s haven. The more popular your site becomes, the bigger the risk is for hacker activity. We have seen businesses work very hard to build up a lot of authority to the domain and have it taken over just for links.

2) Do you use Flash or AJAX? Read the rest of this entry »

Local Advertising Case Study Effectiveness

Overview:

Over the next few months, we will be testing the effectiveness of various advertising channels on a local level. Follow along as we delve into offline marketing with several different advertising methods.

Method #1 will be radio syndication over 30 days – 3x per day -  thanks to 3Wi radio.

Normally, sharing the results of various advertising campaigns is not something we are able to do publicly so sharing the results of advertising methods with our readers should be a lot of fun! Not only that, sharing the results of our advertising methods across many platforms and have readers participate in our findings may give us even better ideas for the case study. Read the rest of this entry »

Google Reader is not just another Google product. It is, but it isn’t.

Google changed the RSS game by not only creating an easy and fun to use RSS reader, they made it easy to track site updates even if the site did not have a standard RSS/Atom feed. Google also bought feedburner back in ’07.

“Screen Scraping” or the track changes feature was recently disabled. For those of you doing reputation management may have to venture out beyond Google reader. Sure, there is Google Alerts, but that is not always the most precise way to stay on top of brand activity. One would be wise to not rely on the Google index for reputation management.

For anyone that often allows oauth to authorize a site to access their Twitter profile, you might just want to stop doing that for now. That is until Twitter does a better job of locking down direct messages.

We became aware of the issue early this morning.

The scary thing is this could be happening to your account right now and all your DM’s could be emailed to the site owners for list building purposes.

Without a doubt, this will become even more of a widespread problem as it is becomes more of a public issue.