Ranking vs. Social Networking - Which Is Best To Focus On?

December 19, 2008

In the past if you wanted people to visit your blog, it was all about keyphrase SEO. If you had a blog about ‘floral design’, then that meant you needed to find ways to get the top results on Google for keywords relating to floral design. The landscape for SEO is changing, but how much of a change is actually occuring?

If you listen to the SEO experts around the internet, then you’ll find that most are starting to see the shift happening in the world of SEO. Looking into the past of SEO, it used to be a very dog-eat-dog system. It was a battle to try and obtain top results in certain keyword phrases. Bruce Clay, an expert in the field of SEO actually made the statement, “Ranking Is Dead”

Matt Cutts, followed up on the statement. He didn’t completely agree that ranking is dead but that it’s less important than it once was.

So, if ranking is going to be falling off in terms of importance what’s going to take its place. Matt Cutts emphasizes that localization, and personalization are the future of SEO. What does that really mean in the grand scheme of things, and what can you do to stay ahead of the curve?

Universal search is now becoming more and more important. Having quality content, in terms of images and videos are becoming power players in getting your site noticed.

As we go into the future of SEO, I believe we can look to social networking for increasing page views. If localization, and personalization are going to be the key factors of SEO in the future, then I see no way other than social networking for this to take off.

I think the two nouns you could use in a description for social networking is localization, and customization. Social Networking is about branching out, and letting people become a part of your community. Whether that’s through a Facebook profile, or a portal to your blog is up to you. I think that’s what makes Social Networking a bright future for improving SEO. It broadens the landscape of what can be considered smart ‘SEO Practices’.

It’s not a great idea to give up on keyword ranking at the moment. It is definitely a smart idea to start investing a large amount of your time in social networking. If you’re annoyed by places like Facebook, MySpace, then there are other more professional options out there to take advantage of.

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3 Essential Tips For Successfully Making Money Out of Affiliate Marketing

As soon as you learned what affiliate marketing is and you think that you are ready to start experiencing and putting in your efforts into affiliate marketing, here are some tips that you may find useful in finding success.

1. Study Your Target Audience

Among the most important things to do when starting an affiliate marketing business to make money online is to know who your target audience is. Without this knowledge, you are likely to fail in your efforts to build an affiliate marketing business. Take the time to know not only the demographics of your target audience but also where they go, how they behave, and how they think especially when they are online. This type of information is imperative to your success as it is these insights that will guide you in determining how exactly you should communicate with potential customers. If you communicate with them effectively and through the right platform, you are likely to make money online out of your affiliate marketing efforts.

2. Be Transparent

When you start your affiliate marketing business, be sure that you are transparent with all the details. It is important that you build a solid reputation with honesty and integrity. Although it may be possible for you to make money online by tricking people into trusting your affiliate marketing business, that kind of business model is not likely to last long. Also, you are less likely to make money out of it. For this reason, you must always be honest with your business as well as the products and services you are promoting. People online are more likely to appreciate this and, consequently, they will be more likely to trust you in the future.

3. Choose the Right Program

Probably the most important thing to do to be successful in affiliate marketing is to find the right program for you. Do not simply go for the ones that have proven to be effective in allowing others to make money online out of affiliate marketing. Instead, find a program with products you are interested in and truly believe in. Apart from this, take the time to evaluate each of the available affiliate marketing programs in terms of reputation, products, services, and other information that would be relevant to your decision. As long as you choose the right program for you, you can be sure to make money online out of your affiliate marketing efforts.

Discussed above are just the most basic things you need to take note of if you want to get started in affiliate marketing. As long as you keep them in mind, you can be more confident that you are on the right track.

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