The do’s and don’ts of links in articles is beginning to evolve again. Those of us that follow the world of search engine optimization techniques have begun to see signs that our search engines are really beginning to put a value on quality links again. Just when you think you have it all figured out.

For the longest time, the whole Internet was run like a big science experiment, because most of the people using it were sharing academic research across the Internet.  But it did not take long for smart internet marketers to figure out that you could also use links for sales.  Instead of just giving people a link to research, being used like a footnote in a term paper, they would send you to a landing page to buy something.  Soon afterwards, the trick also started being used to take you to a website just to get your email address, address, phone etc.

Links to your own website are still OK, and when used well, they can provide needed traffic to your website. Now though, the search engines also like quality information links.  So, when you are writing articles, add one or two links to your article that helps to substantiate your facts. My trick here is to use big, popular research sites. Don’t use just Wiki references.

Put quality links in your articles, as well as links to your website, and watch the SEO build. That’s my little tid bit today.

Raymond C. Province, M.A., ACMPE

Celtic Ozark Solutions

In today’s economy,  advertising can be expensive.  It can also be hard to really sell your business in a few short seconds. In order to improve your changes to sell your brand, you may want to start a blog for your business.

By pure definition, a business blog, or corporate blog, is a blog that is located on your company website.  An external blog would be one located on, let’s say, Blogger.com.  It can be a great way to draw people to your website more often. Especially if you add RSS feeds, bookmarking buttons, etc., to make it easy to keep getting new information on your company.

The biggest thing to remember is that you need to have quality content. Many times, corporate website blogs get filled with verbal garbage, just designed to hit keywords.  Well, you may draw someone to your site once by search methods and SEO, but you won’t keep them coming back. If you provide quality content, it will keep people coming back for more. That’s the kind of advertising side of why to start a blog for your business.

The other point to remember is you want to keep new information coming.  Static information can only be spun so many times, before people get tired of it, and move on.  You may fool them a couple of times, but that will be it.

Video can also be a nice addition to the blog.  A few scattered videos will really get people interested in visiting your site. I try to use articles and videos both, in a ratio of 10 to 1 (articles to videos).  The articles help with SEO, the videos help the human eye. In fact, I am about due to shoot some new video on this blog. (You see, even people in the business of SEO have to remind themselves to do the basics!)

I really think that it’s time to look at quality, ever fresh content more, and keyword saturation less.  I am now cutting back to around 1-2% keyword saturation.  I also still try to bury the title in the first and last paragraphs.  SEO gets your visitor there once.  Quality, new  content will keep people coming to your website for years to come.

We’ll talk to you soon,

Raymond C. Province, M.A.

Celtic Ozark Solutions

I  wanted to talk a little today about SEO Design: humans versus spiders.  To put it another way, I want to address some tactics you can use to help both of these site visitors get what they want. Here is what I mean.

Let’s talk about website page crawlers or spiders for a moment. The nice thing about them is that they could care less about fancy graphics, stunning pictures, and viral video. They would also have no plugins, no banners, no ads, etc.   The easiest page in the world to crawl is one that has no graphics, no javascript, and no tables. It would be pure text. This is what search engine crawlers and spiders dream of (if they could dream that is.)

From a human perspective, such a website would be guaranteed a place in antiquity forever.  Our graphics and video heavy society would find the page extremely boring, and move on at lightening speed. We want fancy logos, streaming video, and pictures. In fact, those type of attractions will often get an article read.  Don’t even get me started on video. The number 2 website in the world is Youtube. We love our video.

 So, can we meet in the middle, somehow, over the SEO design issue. The answer is yes. Here are some things that you can do to keep both parties happy.

1. Put your keywords in normal type at the very top of your website page, then start your picture of videos. Make the type small, but clearly visible. Say, a 9 or 10 pt type.
2. You can put keywords in the ALT-tags of your pictures. You don’t always have to have the URL there. Both can have a benefit of making it easier for the search engines to find your site.
3. Have around 750- 1000 words on your front page, that can be well crafted. The page should also have your keywords used at a 1-3% keyword density rate.  More importantly, don’t hire some GURU expert for $10 to write the content, and just stuff it full of keywords. Don’t insult the intelligence of your audience.
4. Reduce the number of images and elements before the main body text. I typically try to keep that to just one.
5. Try to get your video in the middle of the road section on your page, but visible on the landing page. My rule of thumb is: if I can’t see the video on my monitor, then it may be too far down. I’ll be depending upon the good will of folks to scroll downward.
6. One simple way to test the design is to look at how long people are staying on your landing pages, and how low you can get your bounce back rate (the measure of how many people leave your website from the very first page they hit, without looking at anything else). Google Analytics can help you measure this type of data, and the account is free.

 You can win the battle of SEO design, and make the humans versus spiders issue work.  It just takes a little planning. It is well worth, though, to have a landing page that really lets the public know what your website is all about.

Ray Province

Keyword fit is a very important issue in article writing. Does every word need to be followed exactly though? Can there be some wiggle room? That is our question for today.

From my personal experience, you can add some extra words to a long tail phrase or keyword phrase, in order to make for a better English sentence. Here is an example: eye doctor Los Angeles. You wouldn’t believe how many times I have seen this used verbatim in articles. Take the time to make a proper English sentence out of the phrase.

My logic for this is based upon the intelligent design of new search engine algorithims. Quality English syntax can be handled. Your human readers will also appreciate your attempt to write well.

Leave the keyword fit garbage to the $1 an hour people on Guru.com. Well crafted articles will not hurt your SEO. Get your words in the title, in the first 50 words, and in the last paragraph. You will then be well on your way.

We’ll talk again soon,

Raymond C. Province, M.A.
Celtic Ozark Solutions

Ray Province

The BlogPress iPhone ap makes blogging on your website a breeze.  I am always looking for iphone aps that help me be more productive, when I can’t be in front of a desktop or laptop computer.  The BlogPress ap has made it possible for me to blog whereever I am.

I have the ap set up to handle all my blogs on Blogger.com  It can do much more, though.  It also handles my blogging on WordPress and Joomla.  This includes my websites like this one, which are built on a WordPress theme.  There are setting for MSN Live Spaces, Movable Type, TypePad, Live Journal, and Drupal.  You can also hook in Youtube,  Twitter, and some other sites.

For my wordpress sites, I had to activate the XML-RPC settings in the Settings>Writing section of my admin console.  There is also a setting there to active Atom style protocols.  This allows the iPhone ap to publish to a private website.

In Joomla, you will have to download and install the MetaWeblog plugin for Joomla. It grabbed it from the Joomla extensions site.  You also have to enable web services in the Global Setting section of your admin console in Joomla.

You may also want to grab the free iPhone ap for Dragon dictation. You can then dictate your blog, and paste it into the page you set up in the BlogPress ap.  Pictures can also be added this way. 

The BlogPress iPhone ap makes blogging on your website a breeze. I hope you will give it a try. Then, the world can become your blogging office!

Ray Province

I have been so excited to hear about the new Apple iPad.  The iPad reviews are dismall, though.  It look like the product is not living up to the general expectations of the public.

CNET has been one of the biggest antagonists so far.  From my way of thinking, CNET still wants to put the iPad into the “mini personal computer” arena.  If this is the case, then it is a bit of a disappointment.  At 64G of memory, you can get a better deal on a small Dell style mini computer, with 1G of RAM, and a hardrive twice that big.  Granted, the touch screen won’t be there.

Here is the argument:  it’s too weak to be a good computer. It’s too big to be just a phone. It’s definitely not going to replace the iPod.  So, that leaves us just one basic thought:  is it just designed to be a fancy Kindle?

The size of the iPad may also end up causing sales to dwindle.  If it does not do much more than a good 3GS iPhone, then people may get tired of carrying the bigger version around. We have become a lazy little group.

Blogging is a geat way to start to develop your social media network. It is also a great way to promote your business and services. Let’s take a moment and look at blogs.

By definition, a blog is a type of website used to share information, articles, videos, pictures, opinions on some topic. The sites are usually maintained by an individual or small group, though large corporations are starting to get in the game.
The word derives its meaning from weblog.

My favorite blogs to use are set up on WordPress, Blogger,Bloglines, and Tumblr. Each of these sites will allow you to set a blog, or multiple blogs, for free. You do not even need to write on different subjects. You may carry the same article, or post, on each of the blogs you set up.

My favorite thing to do with a blog is share information on a particular subject of interest. You are reading such a blog entry now. I am fascinated with blogging on social media, and its affects on our current society. So, I share this bit of expertise on these blog sites.

The best blog articles are 500 to 1000 words in length. They will contain keywords in the title, and a couple of times during the article. In this case, I am writing on social media integration. I have used these so called “keywords” in my title, and in the article.

A keyword is a word that someone might use to find something about my business in a informational search on a site like google or yahoo.
So, I use the keywords social,media, and integration as a way for people to find my work on the Internet. In fact, I even own a website named http://ping.fm/YEPC0 or http://ping.fm/36UWc

When I first opened my Twitter account, I had a great deal of trouble learning to “say what I want to say” in the 140 character limit. After serving for years as a minister, I have learned to write in a conversational style. This method does not work well in the new world of social media.

Then I went through a denial phase. I just started doing multiple “tweets’ to get my whole message out. That didn’t work either. No one was responding.

So, I went back to an idea first taught to me by my philosophy/religion professor in undergraduate school. He had us write one page summaries of all our reading. Talk about a task! This is now my “mantra” for Twitter.

So how long should tweets be? The answer is simple in concept: you should tweet with the fewest possible characters to get you message out! Just like a haiku: one concept.

Other considerations for the length of a Tweet include two important items: any “re-tweet or index code” and any URL you add. My re-tweet is @celticozarkian. That knocks out 15 characters. If I index my social media tweets, #socialmedia , that will take 12. Add a tinyurl, and you can easily be down to 100 characters left.

Here are some new tips on Tweeting for length of message:

• Make the message component 80 characters or less. 50 seems to be the new 140, so shoot for that!
• Make your URL as short as possible. There does not need to be clear meaning in the URL itself. Example: my social media site is http://socialmediaintegration.info . I don’t need all this in the URL, to get people interested in clicking the URL. That is the job of the message.
• Text message jargon is typically OK. Most people now understand an OMG, or IDK, or LOL. It saves you space. (My daughter says I still will not be cool!)
• Use caps to express emotion. Just don’t do all caps, unless you intend to be angry.

Talk to you again soon,

Ray Province

Ray Province is a retired minister, who now works as an IT programmer in the healthcare industry. He also owns Celtic Ozark Solutions, and IT Company specializing in website, development, SEO, and social media marketing. You can reach him at celticozarksolutions@gmail.com or @celticozarkian on Twitter.

What is a good time to tweet? I have spent a lot of time looking at this issue lately, as I try to optimize this process for my own tweets. The answer is not always apparent.

I live in the Central Time zone in the United States. So, I have a several time zones behind me, and one if front, just to be able to tweet with people in the United States. This does not count my friends in Ireland, Scotland, England, etc.

My research is a bit unscientific at this point, but I have a good following for test cases. At last look, I tweet to around 4800 followers. What I have found is that I have the best luck between 11a to 5p CDST.

This is not to say that people don’t tweet later in the day, or earlier. I just seem to get the best responses during these hours. I do know that my tweets late in the day tend to be better recieved when they are on personal type issues, things going on in my life, etc.

This is not a surprise: business gets done during business hours. Tweeting for business purposes tends to follow this plan. Bear that in mind as you are looking at the best times to tweet for your business.

We’ll talk again soon,
Ray Province

Ray Province is an IT programmer in the healthcare industry, and owner of Celtic Ozark Solutions, and IT company that specialized in website design, social media integration, and SEO. You can reach him at celticozarksolutions@gmail.com or @celticozarkian on Twitter.

The longer I study Twitter and Facebook, the more I realize it is all about tweeting with attitude.  The way you phrase things can make a big difference in whether or not your messages will be read.  Here are some thoughts on messages that have some attitude.

One of my favorite tactics is to be definitive in my message. Get it said with as few a words as possible. I used to have a boss that told me “5 words or less, Ray!” This hold true for getting to the point!

Another tactic is to use some humor in your messages.  Life is serious enough now, without someone getting too serious with the messages we read. That is why, I believe, people love funny jokes, cartoons, videos, etc.  If you can get a bit of humor in your message, it will almost always increase the hits.

 I throw this one in for my daughter.  Try the OMG shock value!  People love shocking and amazing stories as well. Give people a little OMG factor, and it may be more than they can handle.

Messages about current events and famous people can also help get your message out to the world.  One of my personal favs of the past was “Barach does this. You should too! “ This is not always an easy task for every type of business, but it did work to promote  a Twitter article.

So, that is what I mean by tweeting with attitude.  If you are going to tell me about what type of oatmeal you had for breakfast, then you had better tell me Barach eats it, or it was purple, or you spilled it all over your spouse’s new shoes!  There you have it!