Social Media Advisors

We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

Social Media Advisors

Optimizing Page Speed For Your Custom WordPress Site

Custom WordPress Sites, SEO, Social Media Advisors

PingdomOne of the things that I do on a regular basis is check the page load speed of my site to see how well it is doing with loading.  Page load speed is becoming more and more important each & every day.  While search engines are beginning to place more emphasis on the load speed of a site for SEO purposes, it’s also becoming more important as the number of consumers visiting a website via a mobile device or tablet is growing rapidly.

One of the ways that I like to check my page speed is by using a site called pingdom.  It will run all sorts of test on your site & show you how the site performs, how long it takes for something to load, and also shares what items take the longest to load on your site.

During a recent test of my site, I found that one of the plugins I used to use to display a way for visitors to share my content to Twitter was slowing down the entire load time of my site by over two seconds, a simple change from that plugin to a different Twitter plugin and I shaved over two seconds off the time my site loaded.

By doing these tests, not only do I learn what works better for my site, but I then know which plugins are better performers for my clients.  Needless to say, I never install that Twitter plugin anymore when building a custom WordPress site for someone.

Structuring Videos On YouTube For SEO

SEO, Social Media Advisors, WordPress Plugins

SEO for VideoAs we are well aware by now, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine with over 4 billion videos now watched each day.  This means that it is an awesome way to gain exposure for your business online.  However, what most do not realize is that there are some basic principles to creating your videos that if followed will make them more popular to the search engines and increase your overall views exponentially.

At first I thought this was a theory until I recently did a video of my daughter and a new toy that she received for Christmas called a My Baby Alive.  This is one of the more strange toys she ever received as it pees & poops.  I wanted to see if search engine optimization mattered or not, so I tested my theory on this video by doing a little keyword research and then implementing it into my video before uploading to YouTube.  Here’s a quick tutorial on what I did:

So, if you apply some basic SEO principles to your video, I really feel you can begin to increase the number of views your videos receive.  Have you ever tried applying these principles when uploading a video to YouTube?

What Will Technology Look Like In The Future?

Social Media Advisors

Future TechnologyToday’s post isn’t a very long one.  It’s more one to hopefully start a conversation and get your creative juices flowing.  I want to know what you think technology will look like in the future.  I had ideas of my own, but those ideas were blown away when I saw this video of some of the current things Google is working on.

So what are your thoughts?  Where do you see technology taking us in the future?

Are You Over Optimizing Your Website?

Custom WordPress Sites, Social Media Advisors, Social Media Training

Life RingWhile search engine optimization plays such a crucial role in how well your business does online, one of the ever increasing issues I see from various SEO companies is the over optimization on customers websites.  While there is great importance in having the SEO information done properly on your website, it is even more important that things do not go overboard.  Going overboard can result in a website being either penalized greatly or possibly even banned from search results.

Also, search engine optimization is not a quick fix for any website.  If your results come that quick, more than likely you are doing something in a way you shouldn’t, and that will catch up to you in just a matter of time.  So, be careful in who you hire to do your SEO work.  Don’t trust those that promise the world for just some dollars.  Get involved and be a part of making your website effective.  Ask specific questions as to what they are going to do to make your rank better.  Don’t let them just decide on some random keywords, but ask what type of traffic those keywords get each month.

Whenever I do SEO work for a client, I provide them with a spreadsheet showing them the monthly search of many of the keywords related to their business.  Not only is this helpful for the initial setup, but this list is also very handy when you are trying to find topics to blog about or just know what keyword phrase to use in the post.  I once had a client that by changing one word in the keyword phrase increased the popularity of searches from 180/month to 8,800/month.

Google Doesn’t Like Over Optimization

When I hear someone say a site is over optimized, I immediately think either someone doesn’t know what they are doing, or they are trying to use some less than honorable black/grey SEO tricks to push a site up the search engines.  While this might do what they are looking for and push that website to page 1 of Google quickly, the site will inevitably be found by Google and penalized.  If you remember back a few months ago, I shared about the JC Penney debacle and how when they were caught by Google, the penalties took them from #1 in the results to not even being found on the first 5+ pages.

Whenever I build a custom WordPress Site for a client, I make sure to try and follow all of these guidelines as close as possible to keep my clients from danger.  Does it make the process of reaching page one results take longer?  Yes, but I’d rather it take more time of them writing good quality blog posts and sharing valuable content that lasts for years than get instant results that end up being banned in just a few months.  Post that I wrote over four years ago on an old blog of mine still bring business to me today.

My main site 210 Consulting ranks well in the search engines for several keywords and I’ve never once paid for SEO work.  Instead, I’ve simply taken the time to write blog posts that are search engine friendly, and done the work on my own of building good quality backlinks through guest blogging, commenting on other sites, and other good SEO tactics.

If you would like more information on how to write blogs for search engines feel free to contact me and we can schedule a coaching session to get your site started in the direction of page one of the search engines to stay.

Baseball Opening Day 2012

Social Media Advisors

Baseball Season 2012Today marks opening day for the 2012 Major League Baseball season.  For those of you who know me, you are aware that I am a huge Phillies fan, and a fan of baseball in general.  This morning I shared a post on Twitter with some friends regarding Social Media & Baseball with some of my other good social media friends, Brad Nix, David Marine, & Matthew Shadbolt.

Upon sharing this infographic which I found entertaining & informative, the regular good old smack talking began across the Twitter Universe.  See, Matthew is a Yankees fan, David is a Mets fan (poor guy) and well Brad, he’s from Atlanta, so you guessed it, he has his beloved Braves.

While the smack talk continued, I decided it was time for us to put up or shut up so I asked them all if they are interested in rewarding the winner of the season by writing a blog post on their site talking about how wonderful the other team is, how great their fans are, and how that person is such a great person for being a fan of that team… IF they win the World Series.  So far, Matthew has agreed to the challenge.

David on the other hand, well, he already bowed out knowing that his Mets are terrible and he has zero chance.  He was though rather proud of the stadium food at Citi Field.  We still wait to see if Brad will join in on the fun.

So would you like to join in with Matthew & I?  If so, leave a comment below with who your favorite team is.