SEO Guide

Search Engine Optimization: Code OptimizationSEOguy 264x300 Guide For Optimization

What they don’t see, matters. Code is the most neglected aspect of search engine optimization campaigns. Well-written, standards-compliant code makes your site load fast, and opens it up to search engines.

Code optimization is part of successful SEO; it removes browsing obstacles from people and search engines. Pouring a solid foundation. When conducting a search engine optimization campaign, ignoring the HTML code is like leaving the foundation off of your house.

Search engines read the HTML that drives your site and use that code to drive critical decisions in your site’s eventual ranking. When search engines index your site, they look at several factors:

1.  Content to code ratio: They want to see the highest possible ratio of code to content.

2.  Code accessibility: Search engine ‘spiders’ are very simple, and generally fairly standards-dependent. They need code that’s standards-compliant in order to access all areas of your site.

FunnyStuff 300x235 Guide For Optimization3.  No funny stuff: More advanced search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, look for any attempt to deliver one set of keyword-rich but hard-to-read content to search engines, and another, more people-friendly version to everyone else. When they find this type of search engine spam, they may demote or ban your site. No long-term search engine optimization strategy should employ these kinds of tactics.

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How To Boost Your Tweets

Attracting more people who like what you are posting is essential to success on Twitter.  From content to context, hashtags to @ tags, there are many methods to coax your Twitter audience into tapping that left mouse button.

1. Write persuasive tweets

Tweets are just like headlines; the best ones state a benefit and generate curiosity. Make them easy to read; get rid of complicated words, because people scan on Twitter. The easier a tweet is to read, the better the chances of them clicking the link.

2. Focus on keywords

People are always looking for good content on Twitter. If their Twitter feed doesn’t deliver what they are looking for, they go to the search box and enter a keyword for a topic. Make sure your tweet includes relevant keywords so people find them.

I’ve found “How To” and “Guide” keywords work extremely well. They also deliver great conversion rates.

3. Use hashtags

Some people search for hashtags instead of words. If you’re tweeting something about Twitter use the hashtags #Twitter, #sm or #socialmedia; if you’re tweeting something on copywriting, use #writing or #marketing, etc.

Hashtags can make a huge difference on your click-through rate.

4. Post when most of your followers are online

Click-through rates are normally highest in the afternoon, according to Dan Zarrella, but those are just general stats for a general audience.

Figure out the time your target audience prefers by using tracking software such as bit.ly or a service like SocialBro, which figures out your best times to tweet.

5. Place the links early in your tweets

Dan Zarella found that tweets with a link one-quarter through the tweets had a higher click rate. Therefore, place links up front instead of at the end, which is commonplace.

Top Ten Tumblr’s

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TEN –  Secret Republic 

(Secret Republic is a cascade of ideas centered around the sustainability of our urban environments.)  Kasey Klimes, who currently resides in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, studies urban design and sustainable development.  He has an outstanding blog and his passion for improving urban ecosystems is evident in every post. Our two-wheeled friend, the bicycle, gets a lot of coverage, but there’s far more going on, with human scale cities, green roofs, and sustainable economics getting exposure.

NINE - Urbnist

I don’t think there’s a better blog on Tumblr for urban photography. Urbnist posts beautiful photographs of city scenes at an impressive frequency, and would be a fantastic addition to anyone’s Tumblr Dashboard.

EIGHT - Captain Plan it

Any blog that describes itself as ‘Ctrl+v’ing ideas (which, in case you didn’t know, Ctrl and V are the quick keys for paste), innovations, knowledge and pretty pictures from cities around the world’ gets a thumbs-up from me. But Captain Plan it is a worthwhile read because it’s doing a great job with the Ctrl and V buttons. Anything remotely urban gets a reblog, resulting in a varied and exciting selection of urban ideas.

SEVEN - City Breaths

Mark Minkjan looks at ‘respirations of the urban environment’ with City Breaths, exploring the everyday of our cities. City Breaths shares videos, images and links, and Mark is unafraid to challenge urban flaws despite seeming pretty captivated by them.

SIX - Entrapped Spaces

A Tumblog where ‘all comments are made purely of kick-ass’. Entrapped Spaces rethinks the city, finding fun in the everyday and sharing some great quotes. They use YouTube videos to make it even more fun.  Check it out.

FIVE - The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space

Our only region-specific entry on the list, MoRUS aims to ‘preserve, research, archive, and exhibit the historical squats and gardens of Manhattan’s Lower East side’, and the visual end result is pretty captivating stuff you can appreciate whatever part of the world you’re in.

FOUR - Human Scale Cities

No prizes for guessing the topic of this Tumblog. Manu Fernández presents a ‘sketchbook of ideas’ exploring scale and the human side of cities, leaning heavily towards literature on the topic. If you’re after some reading material beyond blogs, this would be a good site to follow.

THREE - Urban Funscape

Another one where the clue’s in the name. Urban Funscape is This Big City’s latest Tumblr obsession (and our final addition to this list), providing a stream of images that never fail to bring out a smile. Cities can be hilarious places – often unintentionally – and this Tumblog has captured moments that most urban dwellers could relate to.

This Big City has been on Tumblr for almost three years now, and as we approach our 1,000th post (tumble?) we thought we’d highlight some of our favourite urbanism Tumblogs. There’s a great community of urbanism bloggers on Tumblr, and choosing our ten favourites was no easy task, especially after we asked our followers to nominate themselves for an extra look-in. But we did it. Here’s ten of our favourite urbanism Tumblogs (in no particular order, I should add):

TWO - Urbalize

Urbalize presents a portfolio of images and videos exploring imaginative use of urban space. Whilst some content is a vision of what are cities could be, a lot looks at what cities have already achieved. A pretty positive vision overall, despite this being their opening quote: ‘It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.’

ONE - SPATIALforces is a lot of fun. I hope that’s the point. A good chunk of their recent posts have been text-heavy images, providing ‘food for thought’, or something to have a chuckle over. See above. Comments like ‘if you want to change society, don’t build anything’ won’t keep the developers happy, but they probably aren’t on Tumblr anyway. Well worth checking out.

Related posts:

  1. Urbanism in Print: September’s Magazine Review
  2. Twenty-five of the Best Urbanism Quotes
  3. Urbanism in Print: A Magazine Review

Top 5 2011 Social Media Books

1. Hierarchy of Contagiousness by Dan Zarrella.  For those who are obsessed with stats (or, like me, have clients who are obsessed with stats).  You gotta pick this one up–it’s less than $10 on Kindle. You can never get too much of a good social media scientist. If you want to understand what (technically) causes things to go “viral”, check this book out.

2. Launch by Michael Stelzner. As a small business owner (B2B), Stelzner’s book inspired me. I learned that I can run a successful business… I can do it!!  He tells an inspiring story about how he built the Social Media Examiner, and gives all sorts of practical advice in this book.

3. Measure What Matters by Katie D. Paine. If you get one book on measurement, make it this one. Katie Paine writes in real-people language and will straight forward tell you what measurements really matter to your business.

4. No Bullshit Social Media by Jason Falls and Erik Deckers.   This book combines good information, humor,  irreverence,  but no frills.  Just the good stuff that you need to know.  From the CEO to the consultant, read it.

5. The Now Revolution by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund. These two managed to articulate the enormous power social media has to transform a business or organization in a practical format. Lots of memorable takeaways. Good reading.

Christmas Facebook-style

Everyone knows that Christmas has a meaning… a story to explain how it came to be.  Some believe and some do not, but the gist of it is that Jesus was born of his virgin mother Mary and was pronounced the savior.

The following video is really interesting!  Imagine if Mary and Joseph had Facebook accounts back then.  Would they tell us their deepest thoughts?  Would we know exactly how they felt about each other and their new baby?  Would we find out the specifics on what they had for breakfast?????  Let’s find out:

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