SEO Blog

With any business, protecting your company, brand, and reputation is important on all accounts. Making sure people know who you are and what you offer is one aspect, but also it’s invaluable if you are regarded as a reputable company and people recommend your services. Obviously as a business you revolve around generating profit, although some may argue that your reputation is far more important, as this provides a flowing stream of customers which ultimately makes you money. Regardless of how you view the situation, it’s vital to always maintain professionalism within your specific area of work. So what steps would you take if you were on the receiving end of negative comments or your company came under attack for certain actions or behaviour?

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All change in the social quarters once again as Foursqaure has introduced an ‘Explore’ feature on its site. What this essential does is take data from the site’s previous ‘check-ins’ which are then shown as recommendations when you are searching for something in a particular location. Foursqaure say they have enabled this feature on their application and on their site to help people find interesting things nearby at the exact time they need it.

In essence, this new feature makes search more personalised for you, a current trend of the social world after Google also revealed Google Search Plus Your World. After a while, from using the service on a regular basis, it will be able to pick up your habits and base the search results on your previous recommendations and check ins.

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Hitting the top spot in Google has become even harder in recent years, particularly after the Panda update. The algorithm update was brought in to punish the sites that Google deemed to be using poor quality or duplicated content. Some sites that have been punished still haven’t reached the heights they once were since their punishment as they look to rebuild.

The way Google index and even search for information is constantly changing; becoming more complex as a result. In addition to this, because search results bring up blogs, videos and images, it can be harder for websites to take up the space of the first page. During times like this, you have to adapt and go with the changes, finding new ways of getting to the top.

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There are plenty of good reasons for businesses to create their own profile on Facebook; however, this week, the social media giant added two more to that list. First up, Facebook users can now contact businesses directly, just as they might do with their group of friends. These messages remain secret and the lines of communication must come directly from a human user, eliminating the chances of people falling foul of spammy marketing pitches.

Whilst your contact details, including phone number and email address, should be featured prominently within your business profile, this should help to make the process much more fluid. So if somebody has a grievance, they can air it privately rather than using your wall as a platform. Equally, if a customer wants some extra information or pass on some praise, then they don’t need to navigate away from Facebook.

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Social media has really grown in the last couple of years. In September 2011 it was reported that Twitter had over 100 million network users, so when you think that there are around 62 million people living in the UK, it really puts this figure into perspective. It’s not just Twitter that has taken off, with Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more recently Google + all seeing an increase in user interaction, as the social world becomes a greater part of, not only our daily lives, but also our business strategy. The power of promoting a message to millions of people online has never been greater.

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Some of you might already be using the common social media sites and others might be looking to start actively engaging with social media in the coming weeks or the New Year. If you have social media profiles then great, but have you ever sat down for ten minutes to think carefully about your social media strategy? Having a social presence on the web is just a small part of the bigger picture. In order to get the most of these tools you need to think about your business objectives and how you want your business to develop.

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If your business has had some exciting news, you may have written a press release to share with the world. However, in order to generate a decent level of attention, where are you going to send the PR? First of all, you want to tell the local community or national press about a news story and secondly, you want to generate a decent level of traffic to your website as a result of using the online press release as a worthy distribution tool.

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More and more people are becoming familiar with how to use videos as a way to market their product. The rise of social media sites such as YouTube have had a dramatic impact on this contribution, as registered users can upload their content onto the Internet and share their videos with other users online. For those who work for small companies or large organisations, videos are another great platform for you to promote your services alongside existing, or shall we say more traditional and established methods.

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Using social media and older more traditional methods of communication to promote your services, create brand awareness and share your latest news should, by now, be part of your business strategy. If you are not using these on a regular basis then you should be. In the example of social media, if this is where your potential customers are, then you need to be engaging with them on the same platform.

Alongside this, you also need to react to any negative comments or negative feedback that you might receive. ‘Why?’ you might ask. Well if people are posting negative comments on your social sites then this will have negative implications for your company. Without reacting you are leaving the situation whilst people talk negatively about your brand and at the same time you will be losing potential customers.

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Getting clicks through to your site shows that people are aware of its existence and were sufficiently interested to follow the link or a friend’s recommendation – no bad thing. However, a lot can be lost in unqualified statistics. After all, it’s not a lot of use to you if your site receives thousands of visits every day but only converts a tiny fraction of those into any meaningful business.

This is why you have to make sure that you’re attracting the right audience in the first instance. Making sure that potential customers come on to your site’s pages and not just inquisitive folks in research-mode. So how can you make sure you attract the right traffic?
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