Use Twitter and Blogs to Compliment Each Other

Of people who both blog and tweet, the majority would overwhelmingly prefer to have more blog readers than followers on Twitter. This is not entirely surprising, since generally, much more effort is put into a blog post than a 140-character or less tweet, but there is certainly a gold-rush for Twitter followers.

Rowse polled both his ProBlogger audience (which is presumably comprised mainly of bloggers) and his Twitip audience (which is made up of Twitterers). As expected, the Twitip crowd favored Twitter followers slightly more, but there was still a very clear majority wanting more blog readers. Rowse provides the following graphs:

There are certainly arguments for the value of both categories, and Rowse covers them pretty well here. There are some pretty obvious ones for blogs:

- they require more time/effort

- they provide more info

- they are most likely not going anywhere, while Twitter may be hot right now, but who knows where it will be in the future?

- the more blog readers you have, the more times your posts are likely to be linked to on Twitter anyway

There are obvious benefits to having Twitter followers too though, particularly for marketers.

- More followers is a good indication that there is demand for what you offer as a business, and that people are interested in your product(s)

- relationships easier to form (yes blogs have comments, but typically not the real-time conversation factor, and people are at Twitter to talk...they're not necessarily at your blog to do so)

Of course people who both blog and tweet know they don't have to choose between one medium or the other. They compliment each other, and ideally can work to each other's benefits. Twitter can gain you more blog readers, and a blog can gain you more Twitter followers.

It's all in the execution. Write good content that Twitterers want to link to. This has plenty of potential for getting you more readers. Include chiclets on your posts, making it easy to share your content (this shouldn't be limited to Twitter). Include a prominent link for people to follow you on Twitter (a Twitter logo here will help draw attention).

Link to good content from others when you Tweet. If people like what you're pointing them to, you'll likely gain more followers. Who would've guessed it all comes back to content? You could also mention your blog casually from time to time. This may increase awareness of it. Just because someone follows you on Twitter, does not mean they know about your blog. That said, you probably don't want to ram it down their throats either.

It's not all about traffic. It's about conversions. But it's hard to get conversions if you don't have the traffic, and while Google is one of the best potential sources for traffic, Google has other search engines besides web search that people use all the time, and it will not hurt to rank in them too.

Conversions are the goal. Visibility is the strategy. Unfortunately, like most strategies, they take effort and paying attention to detail. The web may be taking a huge turn toward social, but search isn't going anywhere. You need to be found where people are looking.

1. Ranking in YouTube

As you may or may not be aware, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine behind Google. Those businesses using online video are going to want to maximize their YouTube efforts by employing some easy strategies to gain more visibility.

Here are a few tips:

- An accurate and descriptive title

- Make sure your description is just that - descriptive. It should be accurate and unique, and use complete sentences.

- Descriptive keyword tags

- Avoid keyword stuffing

It's best not to overlook the social element of YouTube as well. Active participation on the social level will contribute to your views. And let's also not overlook the fact that YouTube can actually help you rank in Google itself. Some other tips:

- Use Keyword Rich Descriptions and Tags

- Include the word "Video" in your titles because people do search for it.

- Use a link for the very first thing in your descriptions.

- Make sure and utilize your thumbnails. YouTube pulls these from the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 marks. Make them count.

- Encourage participation by enabling everything.

- use meta data

- use captions and subtitles

- use watermarks

- use Google Maps integration


2. Ranking in Google Image Search

One in five searches are image searches, and alt tags and file name optimization are key. Other tips to double dip in image SEO include:

- Add images to your Google Local Business profile

- Enable Google Image Labeler in your Google Webmaster Tools account.

- Add images to local business citation sources.

- Add images to blog posts or news articles for syndication in Google news.


3. Ranking in Google News

News page views are up to trillions monthly. More and more people are getting their news online. That's why the newspaper industry is struggling. I don't have the hard numbers, but I'm willing to bet a significant amount of people are getting news from Google News. The following needs to be kept in mind for Google News:

- Only indexes articles three days old or less

- Only indexes it once

- Read Google News Help for Publishers

- Google News XML Sitemap and monitor it

- Section names (keywords in News XML Sitemaps)

- Host "most popular" and "breaking news" sections on your site

- Sub-headlines or beginning of article copy is pulled in as Meta description

Google itself posted about some facts and myths pertaining to ranking in Google News searches about a year ago. You should definitely read it if you are serious about incorporating Google News into your strategy.



4. Ranking in Google Maps/Local Search

While this one may seem fairly obvious, you need to think about terms a local searcher would use to find your business. They?ll most likely use the city and state in their search, so you?ll want your site to be optimized for those as well as business-specific keywords.

For example, if you run a record store in Nicholasville, Kentucky, you?ll want to optimize for phrases like ?Record Store, Nicholasville, Kentucky?, ?CD Store, Nicholasville, KY?, ?Music, Nicholasville KY?, and so forth. If your business is located in a small town, you may also want to optimize for the nearest larger city. Tips like:

- Anchor Text + Authority Matters, But Less

- Local Groupings

Following are the suggestions for ranking in local search:

- have pages, mentioning your area of service

- your phone number

- your physical address

- directions on how to reach your office

- use landmarks ("after you pass the Street A and Street B intersection, you'll see the Eiffel Tower" that's three landmarks altogether)

- have links pointing to you from local websites and directories

- have a domain hosted locally (if locality is your primary concern)

- have ccTLD (country-specific domain - google.ca, for instance)



5. Ranking in Google Blog Search

Back in '07, Slawski started a thread in the Cre8asite Forum looking at positive and negative things that can have an affect on your Google Blog Search Rankings. Among the positives he included were:

- Number of RSS subscriptions
- Clicks on SERP post links
- Blogrolls
- number of "high quality" blogrolls the blog is in
- ability for visitors to tag posts
- whether or not people are tagging them
- References to the blog by sources other than blogs
- Pagerank

Some negatives he mentioned:

- if posts come in short bursts or predictable intervals
- if post content differs from feed version
- If content includes a lot of spammy words
- duplicate content
- if posts are the same size
- Link distribution
- If posts mostly link to one site

ProBlogger's Darren Rowse also looked at Google's Blog Search patent application and pulled some takeaways from that.

It's important to note that results from other Google search engines often turn up in regular Google results, in case you need any extra incentive to pay attention to them. This is part of Google's Universal Search. There are lots of opportunities to get your site found in Google other than just regular web search. And this is just organic stuff. There are certainly paid search opportunities to think about too.