During my time in Texas at OpenCa.mp this past weekend, I reconnected with an old friend. Lee Odden used to write about Marketing on Lockergnome back in the day, and it’s great to see all of the things he has accomplished since that time. Not only did both of us go skydiving with the Army Golden Knights, we were both honored to speak at the event.

Lee and I took a few moments out of our hectic schedules to discuss SEO specifically as it applies to social media.

The things I do are SEO-like in nature… but I’m not an SEO person per se. Everything I do is organic. I create solid content and make sure to use keywords that people may be looking for. The funny thing about social media is that some of us have been doing it since before it was even a term. It has allowed us to really get to know the type of person that someone is. That tends to cause us to be taken advantage of at times, sure. The tools are in place for all of us to use. But it’s easy to see who is gaming the system. Those are the types of the people I won’t follow. This is what I mean by taking advantage of things and people.

Someone who takes an anti-transparent approach is someone I don’t want to associate with. I strive to be as transparent as humanly possible with my business and my life. When a person has to work at NOT being transparent, you have to wonder what the hell is wrong with them – and their business.

Yes, you should use certain tools to help you. But there are a handful of them floating around which are just bad – almost as though you’re cheating the system. Don’t fall victim to get rich fast schemes. Don’t let yourself be swayed by a fast-talker who claims they can turn your site into the most-visited place online. These things will do nothing but set you back several steps, causing you to lose site of your original goal.

You cannot just exist in one place online. It doesn’t matter how people find you. It just matters that they DO find you.

The biggest tip I have for you when you’re starting out on your own blogging journey is that you should not spend any money. There are numerous platforms and design tools available that will not cost you a single penny. You will find plenty of things to help you achieve your dreams without spending a bucket full of money.

Social Media SEO

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I recently attended the WTIA Fast Pitch Forum & Technology Showcase. The conference featured two dozen of the of the hottest technology companies in Washington presenting their business in a competition for “Best In Show”. SEOMoz is a gathering place for search marketers worldwide. They provide education, tools, resources and paid services to help every SEO be the best they can be.

SEOMoz provides consulting, Internet marketing and search engine optimization services. Their goal is to provide you with excellent service and education so that you can use the unique reach of the Internet to help you achieve success.

It takes much more than a few good keywords in order to achieve search engine “success”. Everything from the URL you choose to the way your site is laid out is important. Even seemingly small, unimportant factors can end up being the differnence between success and failure. Links must be properly tagged and worded, and the positioning of content is critical.

If you or your company is trying to build your online presence and improve your search engine page rank – definitely read the articles that SEOMoz has available. You may even want to consider going a step further, and talking with one of their consultants. After all – you’re in it to win it!

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It’s amazing what happens when you email the developer of a WordPress plugin – they respond. At least, most of ‘em do (I’m still waiting to hear back from a couple of ‘em right now, including Red Alt on being able to search posts from his admin search plugin). After blasting a note to Chris Davis about his community-based tagger, I sent a note off to Christine Davis (no relation) about some shortcomings in the current Ultimate Tag Warrior. I wanted UTW to copy tags into the META keywords tag. She responded with code which needed to be tweaked a bit by Shayne:

[php]< ?php if (is_tag()) { ?>
< meta name="keywords" content="‘%tagdisplay%’, ‘default’=> ‘, %tagdisplay%’)); ?>” />
< ?php } else if (is_single()) { ?>
< meta name="keywords" content="‘%tagdisplay%’, ‘default’=> ‘, %tagdisplay%’)); ?>” />
< ?php } ?>[/php]That’s for all you SEO types out there who are also using the wildly-popular Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin (and I’m not just saying that because it supports Gada.be). This is fun!

Ultimate Tag Warror META Keywords