On November 7th LinkedIn announced that they are launching a new feature: LinkedIn Events. This feature combines social networking and search with a unique twist for business professionals to find events that may be most beneficial to their networking endeavors.

How it Works
Members will receive notices on their Events home page about events that are recommended based on their interests (preferences already established with the creation of a LinkedIn account). Events can also be searched for by location, date and even specific industry.

Why it’s Useful
Even with a valuable tool such as this, it wouldn’t be social networking without providing the capability of a somewhat “mass appeal”. Therefore, LinkedIn also allows users to see who will be attending a particular event. Users can additionally indicate their own attendance status - basically a social RSVP.

Those who indicate interest for a particular event can keep track of updates. Plus, after the event, can check back to see all that took place up to the event: those in attendance, discussions, etc.

Overall, the LinkedIn Events feature benefits the target audience of LinkedIn users: business-oriented individuals looking to do some professional social networking. The site, founded in December of 2002, has more than 30 million registered users and spans 150 industries. With such an “in-demand” audience, LinkedIn is sure to create even more exponentially helpful tools and features like LinkedIn Events real soon…entrepreneurs (and business-minded professionals alike) take notice!

For more information on social networking (or linking) check out our Social Media Marketing blog category or visit us at MorePro.com to learn more.

Brittany Passante

Content is King.

Web content.  What is this “king” that search engines, web-savvy intellects and other industry gurus refer to?  According to Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville in Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, content is broadly defined as the “stuff in your Web site” (second edition, page 219).  While this may be a loose definition, web content can be further defined as the text, data, applications, images, video files, and audio – among other things – that make up your site.  In other words, anything that is textual, visual or audible in nature can be deemed web content. While each of these should be focused on, as far as optimization goes, in order to improve a website’s results within the search engine rankings, textual content is the most viable for optimization – and a primary focus for most SEO departments in an online marketing company.

Yet, when referring to “Content is King”, “content” is implied as the written HTML text, or a derivative thereof, that is easily index-able by the search engines.  So…how is this relevant to SEO?  It’s relevant for a couple reasons.  One being, that if a search engine can index the text available on a site quite easily, the search engines can then determine which categories, keywords, etc. that each page of a site is about.

Now, you may still inquire as to the relevancy that the content plays in optimizing for organic results…to which I continue to my second point.  So, how is content useful in gaining rankings within the search engines?  Easy.  Since search engines use the information that they have indexed to “match up” with what a searcher seeks when querying for a certain phrase or topic, the pages of a website that have the most relevant content on that particular phrase or term (topic) will be those delivered to the searcher in the order of most related sites to least related.  Therefore, the more a certain phrase is used within a page – or multiple pages – of a website, the more likely that those pages will appear in better positions of the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.

For example, I have a website that sells designer handbags.  I carry some of the following designers: Prada, Louis Vuitton and Chanel.  If I want to show up in the top spots for terms such as “Prada handbags”, “designer purses”, “Chanel hand bags”, etc., I better make sure that the content I place on my site includes these phrases.  Keep in mind that I will also want the page of my site that features the latest Prada bags to include relevant and optimized Titles and Meta Tags featuring these keywords as well.  I would not include terms that are irrelevant to the products I offer.  Some examples of keywords that I would refrain from using include:  snowboard equipment, dog collars, picture frames.  Why?  Well…hopefully it’s obvious, but none of these terms have anything to do with my site or the products I offer because I only sell designer purses and handbags.

Once you understand the important role that content plays in the scheme of website optimization, you should better understand the need for your site to update its content or improve its relevancy.  As one of the most important elements in reaching desirable rankings within the search engines, it is no wonder that content is king!

For further information on the do’s and don’ts of content strategy…stay tuned.

Brittany Passante

The Almighty Title Tag

While it might seem that the page Title Tags and Meta Tags aren’t very important, it’s quite the opposite.  Most notably, the Title Tag is arguably the most influential on-site component of the search engine’s algorithms.  If you want to rank for a keyword phrase, it should be in your Title Tag.

The Meta Tags are much less effective because of heavy spamming in the late 1990’s, but are still an important component that should not be overlooked.

Your rankings will not only be affected by doing your tags the right way, but doing them the wrong way could cause lead to problems that are easy to avoid.

So…what is a Title Tag?

A Title Tag is essentially one of the most important components to your site’s rankings other than the content itself (and of course the quality links that you’ve acquired as well).

If you want to achieve high search engine rankings, it is recommended that you fix your title tags to make them not only unique, but also to optimize them for the terms you wish to rank well for.

The Title Tag is what shows up at the top of a browser and what also appears within the results of the search engines - that notorious clickable link on the search engine results page - when listing the top ranked sites.  With just the fix of your site’s Title Tags, you are sure to receive appreciable differences among your rankings. 
 
 Title Tags should contain keyword phrases that you wish to receive desirable rankings for.  You can include, and it is recommended, that you include your company name within each Title Tag – preferably at the end of the Title Tag.  You will receive better results if your targeted keyword phrase is placed toward the beginning of the Title Tag rather than leaving that open to insert your company name.

Most importantly, make sure that your Title Tags are relevant to the copy found on the page each Title Tag is intended for.  You should not be writing a Title Tag about basketballs if the page you are writing it for only features baseball equipment.  However, it is imperative that you refrain from copying a string of text found from the content of that page into the Title Tag.  As mentioned above, each Title Tag should be of unique, well-optimized content.

Brittany Passante
Search Engine Optimization Manager