First you must create a title tag. It is important to pick one that appears as you want people to search it or read it, no abbreviating or shortening. For example, if your company’s name is Single Vegetarians, do not change it to SnglVeg. Your profile will be much harder to search and recognize. You also have a Twitter bio in which you have a chance to make an impression with 160 characters. This means no funny business. Be direct and make sure to get a message across that embodies what your company is about.

Now that you’ve got the initial setup down, it’s time to stay up to date and start tweeting. The most important thing about your tweets are the keywords. These words should be in the beginning of the tweet and draw attention to the message you are trying to convey. If you are tweeting for Single Vegetarians, some of your key words might be dating, vegetarian, or green. You want to bring in words that draw attention and directly relate to your business or site. Retweeting also seems to draw some attention to what you have to say. What you can do is have Single Vegetarians tweet something, then have the owner of the sight retweet it from a separate account. Once the text is retweeted, Single Vegetarians can retweet their original tweet. You want your tweet to draw some outside attention as well so don’t make it too complex or obscure. You want a tweet that is relatable because the more people that retweet your message, the more exposure you are getting.

If all this retweeting has got your head spinning, perhaps you want to take a different approach. It is important to to integrate back linking into your tweets so that fellow Twitter users can navigate back to your content page. You can use tinyurl to add a link into the tweet. Make sure that the page users are being sent to is one of substance. If they don’t see what they like at first glance, chances are they won’t take the time to stick around and see what you have to say.

Now what are you waiting for? Don’t you have some tweeting to do?

Myth: The more you update your website, the more hits you will get.

Fiction.Although it is beneficial to update your site consistently when you have new information, making minor textual changes will not serve any real purpose. Adding new pages onto your current site, however, has proven to be helpful in increasing visability. The reason behind this being that there are more outlets for other sites to link to.

The Bottom Line: Don’t update just to update. Make sure your changes matter.

Myth: It is easier to receive hits via video posting than it is from text alone.

Fact.The truth is that there are far fewer videos on sites than simply pictures and text, so obviously, if there is less competition, your odds of being the top dog are higher. This does not necessarily mean that once you transition into the world of video you will automatically show up first on the search results page. Before you choose video as your next big site update, there are a few things to consider. In an article for BusinessWeek Magazine, author Liz Gannes wrote, “Because video production is expensive and intensive, and watching a video takes time, which may cut down on conversion, it’s most appropriate for visual industries and branding efforts, not direct response.”

The Bottom Line: Video could be a helpful addition to your site if you have the right kind of product.

Myth: The long tail does not help in optimizing search efficiency.

Fiction. For those of you that don’t know, the long tail is defined as, “specific, niche search phrases, usually more than 2 words in length, that offer a low competition, low search volume and high searcher intent” (Lurie). You would think that these phrases do not make a difference in the grand scheme of SEO, but it turns out it could be what separates you from your competitors. The long tail allows people searching for something specific to locate your site easier without encountering the sites of more general competitors. Taking the time to think about what audience you are trying to reach is crucial to deciding what search words will work best for you.

The Bottom Line: The longtail could be the difference between you and your competitors.

The internet is a competitive marketplace and although SEO has helped to make sure that everyone gets a fair shot, being well-informed can put you a step above. Knowing how to update your site in an effective manner can not only save you time, but also earn you revenue. And isn’t that what this is all about?

Matthew J. Brooks
BrooksStockQuotient, LLC

Pilera is a web-based data and content management system for residential and commercial communities. There’s no need for your management company to spend hours configuring the software to meet your property’s needs – we do all the work for you!

All the tools you will need to manage your community are in place. You choose the tools you want to use – from property directories to package deliveries to license plate records – and you can rest easy, knowing your data is secure.

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With its sleek web design and efficient web application Pilera.com performs and looks to be a streamlining of communication between occupants and management.  It gets rid of the mountains of paperwork facing most property managers, and puts records and document storage online.  Pilera.com is a highly functional web application that stops the floods of emails and phone calls by giving residents and lease-holders access to the information they need, while giving managers the flexibility of grabbing information on the go through its innovative iPhone app.

Pilera.com adds to Patelligence’s retinue of original websites, specialty web application development, and effective SEO work.  So far, PIlera.com has proven to be useful and popular with property managers eager to get out from under their paperwork, and is helping to make a name for the Nashua, NH web development start-up.  For now, they have just one question to ask you: Are you managing property… or is your property managing you?

In order for a website to be effective, it must show up on the first three pages of results for a Google search.  If not, a website is basically invisible, and probably needs SEO stat.  Rank Checker for Firefox is a great tool to use when determining where to focus your efforts.  If your website is not generating the traffic you want, and you already know some of the keywords related to your business, Rank Checker helps you figure out where to start your SEO by letting you easily find your website’s ranking in a search for those keywords.  Also, you can see where your competitor’s sites rank, so that you will know which of the important keywords you need to focus on in your site.

Before doing SEO at all, a basic starting point is to find out where your site ranks in a Google search and see how it compares to your competitor’s websites.  If you already rank highly in a search for one of your main keywords, there is no need to increase your usage of that word in your website.  To do so would probably be a waste of time, especially if you could be focusing on other keywords for which your site is weaker.  This is the main benefit of Rank Checker: it allows you to know how to spend your SEO time.

Rank Checker also provides you with a great way to track your progress in a directed way.  So that you know you are not making ineffective SEO changes, but are actually making improvements, you can see how your site ranks before and after the SEO that you perform.  This way, you can hone your SEO skills on your own.  In the end, Rank Checker makes your SEO work easier and more rewarding, because you know what to work on, and you can see the improvements in visibility that you have gained right away.

The exact algorithm that Google uses to determine the ranking of web pages found by keyword searches is unknown.  Fortunately, there is a vast body of empirical SEO knowledge out there about how to achieve a higher ranking.  It is true that the amount of traffic your website receives boosts its ranking, and short of requiring all employees to visit the site a proscribed number of times, there is no direct way that we can influence this factor.  In fact, the end result is to lure more people to the website, and we have to start at the beginning, and not the end.  There are several ways that a business can manipulate how highly its website ranks on organic Google searches. Two ways that anyone can affect where their page ranks in an organic search are content writing and keyword usage.

In terms of SEO content is important not only for the information it conveys to visitors, but for the effect it can have on search engine result ranking.  Larger pages with more content tend to have a slightly higher page ranking.  So, whatever your business does, it can’t hurt to write a lot about it on your website.

What is most important for SEO is keyword density, which refers to the frequency of the most relevant keywords found within the content of a website.  If a business sells tropical fish food, SEO requires that those three words be mentioned frequently.  We have stated that larger websites rank more highly, but if the new content you produce for your site does not contain enough of your keywords, you could actually hurt your ranking.  If your business sells tropical fish and you write 3,000 words about varieties of tropical fish but only use the words tropical fish three times, your keyword density will only be at one percent.  A 1,000 word article that mentions tropical fish three times will have a density for these keywords of three percent.  A lower percentage of relevant keywords will hurt the ranking of a website in a Google search for those keywords.  So, it is important to include the necessary keywords in whatever content you write for your website.

Web design can be important too, because images go unseen by search engine computers, so text is better for SEO.  If your tropical fish business is called ‘tropical fish store,’ making your image logo into a text logo can really help for SEO, because the title of a page and the main logo carry more weight than other parts of the site.  Rule number one of SEO is to pay attention to seemingly insignificant wording, such as the page title, all the way at the top of a web page, which so many people ignore.  Title may be ignored by visitors to the website, but not by the computer that they use to search for that site. So, if you start by overlooking nothing, using your relevant keywords, and writing more content for your website, you’ll be well on your way to increasing your site’s ranking in a Google search.

Theses are the basics, but what is important to remember is that SEO counts, even though it may seem insignificant.  Many of our clients at Patellignce are amazed to see their pages coming up at the top of the first page of a Google search after we have carried out SEO for their websites.  As Peter Kent put it, in “Search Engine Optimization for Dummies,” ((Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2008), ISBN 978-0-470-26270-2), the website consummates the marriage, but SEO is the matchmaker that sets up the first date.