They seem to have sprung up all around us and now the internet is flooded with them. What is a social networking site (SNS)?

Well they are an internet based service that allows users to create profiles about themselves and interact with other people on the site. In short, they are a way to communicate with friends and family on line. You can post photos and videos of and share them.

One of the most popular sites for University students and those in full time employment is facebook.  Since infiltrating the UK market in February 2007, it has grown to over 175 million active users. MySpace users are a younger profile, mostly aged from 14 to 18 years old who are still at school or college. MySpace has been used by many people in the music industry to promote themselves, Lily Allen found fame through MySpace.  She now uses another social networking site as well called Twitter.  Many celebrities are using this site which is third position behind MySpace and facebook.  Users can update their own blog with “tweets” , posts of up to 140 characters and you can subscribe to be part of their updates.

You don’t need to put all your information on these social networking sites as this can lead to identity theft.  It is recommended to set your profile to private so that only your friends who you know can see your photos.  And be careful when updating your profile, don’t do it during work hours especially with comments such as “I am bored” or “I have such a bad hangover”.   Your boss could be reading this and decide to show you the door. Be careful when changing your relationship status as these appear on the home page feed of facebook and people may be rushing round to congratulate or commiserate you.

The best thing about SNSs is to have fun, share photos and videos and don’t take it too seriously.

SEM – otherwise called Search engine marketing, covers both SEO – search engine optimisation which is “organic” or “free” growth and paid search, also called ppc “pay per click”

It is important to understand the difference between the two which can be broken down into

Traffic

Display

Cost

Implementation

1. Traffic

With PPC you can increase the amount of traffic to your site much faster than with organic search.  You can set up campaigns easily through google analytics or msn or yahoo.

However, if you have built your site to be seo friendly, then you will see people click on your organic search listing in google.  Studies have shown people are more likely to click on the organic listings than the paid listings.

This brings us on the point 2.

2. Display

The paid ads are located in the top ad sections on a search result and in the right hand column where it says sponsored links.

The organic listings are below the sponsored link section. Most people only view the first page, so it is very important for your ad to appear on page 1.  Anything lower down may not be seen,

3.Cost

PPC stands for pay per click, everytime someone clicks on your ad, it costs you. The cost per click is dependent on the compeittion for the keywords you have bid for. The trick is to bid for the keywords that have the highest search volume but the lowest competition.  Easier said than done, I know.  With PPC you need to monitor your keywords closely, as competition for the words can change, one day it could be 25p a click and the next it could be 75p.

SEO costs in terms of time.  You need to build your site to be seo friendly from day one, which means including the meta data, increasing links to your site.  If you do not have this, then yes it may cost you a lot to implement it.  But if you start off from day one with SEO in mind then you will not have to encur expensive seo consultant fees.

This leads us on to the fourth and final difference.

4.Implementation

With PPC you can get to a high ranking quite quickly.  Simply open up an account with a search engine such as google adwords and bid for the keywords you want to use in your ad.  You may need to pay a lot for your ad especially if there is a lot of competition, but then you will get a lot more traffic to your site.

SEO on the other hand, takes a lot longer.  As I mentioned, you should build the site with SEO in mind from day one. Using all the meta data, submitting site map to google, updating the site with rich and dynamic content, maybe even having a blog. This way you will be able to create traffic to your site from day 1 and if you want to increase traffic for specific periods like Christmas or summer sales you could also use PPC.

Keywords are very important in SEO.

Content is king and it is imperative that you have keywords in the content.  It needs to be rich and dynamic – meaning you update it regularly.

If you are unsure what keywords you should use on your site, do a competitive analysis and look at their sites. Using seotools like keyword density, you can simply type in the competitor’s URL and it will give you a list of the number of keywords on the page with the density percentage. A percentage of higher than 3% but less than 10% is the best result. If you repeat keywords too often, use synonyms so the theme of the page stays strong.

What is seo?

Seo has to be one of the most talked about subjects on the internet.

Seo stands for “search engine optimisation” and is the process of how to increase traffic to your website from search engines. Some of the most well known search engines are google, yahoo, alta vista and msn. Seo is a fundamental part in website development and maintenance and everyone who is managing a website whether at home or at work should be clued up on seo.

Don’t worry if you are new to this, if you keep reading seojoblogs, you will be an seo pro in no time.

Building a brand new site

If you are building your site from scratch you will want to  liaise with your graphics, marketing and development team to plan the site. If you are lucky enough to have these people on hand to help you.  Most of the time you will have to do this by yourself.  Don’t panic, here are a few simple steps to get you on your way.

1. Content is king

That has been said over and over again but I cannot stress the importance of dynamic and rich content which include targeted keywords.  You should have relevant text on your website which you update regularly.  This means when someone types in for example “Seo blogs” they will come to this site.

2. Meta information

The meta tags are the keyword and description tags.  The description tag is seen in the search engine results page and is therefore often seen as more important than keyword tag. However, both are important and contribute to search engine ranking. The meta information is in the code behind the web page and look like:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1, keyword2, keyword3″>

3. Title Tags
The title tags of each page are the most important element for SEO.  It describes a specific web page. Creating relevant title tag is a very important factor in achieving high position in search engine. Title tag should contain no more than eighty characters. The title tag is a representation of the core keywords.

4. Image Tags
Images on the website should all have ALT tags. Alt tags help visually impaired people browse the site.  They are also a place where keywords should be inserted to improve rankings in SERPS.

5. Header Tags
H1, H2, H3 etc. tags are not strictly essential but they do contribute to ranking.
H1 Tag are the main heading describing the content of the page.
H2 Tags are the subheadings on each page.
H3 tags are the smaller headings.

6. Sitemap
A sitemap page is essential to help Google find all the pages and also gives you a place to link to any new ‘SEO pages’. A sitemap is an interactive table of contents that visitors can view. The site map breaks down the website’s information into different categories and can include every page of the website. Normally it is found on the footer of a website.  Some, have all the links displayed below the fold of their website and it occurs on every page.  This is a great way to provide in bound links to your site – which I will talk about next time.

That’s it for now.  That wasn’t so bad as the introduction to SEO was it?

This blog is aimed at all those who want to get into seo but are lacking the experience and need a little bit of TLC and patience to get to grips with the best thing since sliced bread!