Key Words: SEO for Beginners

Understanding how search engines like Google "think" will help you to make your website, blog and social media channels such as facebook, twitter and myspace
more SEO friendly and in turn help them become more visible and accessible to potential customers and fans/followers. Here is a back to basics overview, SEO made easy.

Key words are individual words or phases users type into a search engines search bar.
For example ahead of a night out if I need a new outfit I might go to google and type in "dresses".
Google will come back with websites which have told it (by the content on it's pages) that they sell dresses.

Now, here's where you come in.
1) Think of each of your social media channels or pages as a website. Google can only read text, so all the
fancy pictures you include are great eye candy for your fans and blog followers but not so great when it comes to google's "eyes". That is unless you
have been SEO wise in renaming your image. Instead of a stunning picture google reads your image as the file name so always remember to rename images
to let google know what it's a picture of. Think of it as subtitles for a deaf google (if images were... sound?).

2) Put in it's most basic form google ranks websites on points system. The website with the most points for a key word search will be top of the list which
shown to the user.

3) How do you tot up those points? By featuring the key words the user is searching for! Easy right? Well, almost. The problems you face are that there are many
different ways people search for the same thing using many different keywords. Then there are many, many different people offering the same thing and in Google's eyes
they may be a lot more "popular" and important than you! So if you're a new small fashion boutique you'll find it hard to rank (appear high up on search results
page) for a generic term like "dresses". If however you sell something unique or hard to come by, lets say monkey fur dresses, anyone searching for that is likey to end
up on your site/brand providing you have included those specific key words in your blog post/facebook profile/twitter bio etc.
Another thing to bear in mind is that as well as actually including specfic key words where you use them is also important. If your site/page includes the words
"monkey fur dresses" in your blog post but another site which is similar to yours in terms of "popularity" features those same key words in the title" Google will
trump that site over yours because it sees that is has more importance in the other blog's site/article. Therefore it is important to include key words in your
titles and throughout the page.

4) Say the same thing in different ways to cover as many keywords as possible without spamming! Goolgle and the likes are not stupid, so putting dresses every other
line will not help you. In fact it will make you untrustworthy in Google's eyes and lower your ranking/score. 

Bearing the above four points won't garantee you'll rank top for all your relevant key words but it will give you a much better shot. Remember to apply SEO pointers to your social media channels as well as your blogs and web pages

How to Maximise Your Social Media Channels & Get More View, Fans & Followers

This post will show you how to make the most of your social media channels/websites to ensure your facebook page, twitter account and or blog is viewed by as many people as possible with very little effort from you. I'll go through each channel and give quick tips for each. This will serve as a good checklist for anyone starting out and also individuals and companies wanting to make sure they have all bases covered.
 
Complete Your Profile Information
Always complete your profile on each channel to let people know what you're about. Important! Remember to use key words  which are relevent to your company - tip: think about what people who would like your brand or content would most likely type into the search bar and include these (for a brief beginners guide to SEO & Key words click here).
Complete the "About" sectionon your facebookpage,

All Linked Up
Include links to your other social media channels and websites on each channel so people can always get back to or discover your website or other social site


Use Pictures Wherever Possible
A picture is worth a thousand words and lets face it, people are lazy and or short of time so being able to get the gist of something or decide if it's for you in a split second by looking at a picture will always work better than having to read lines of text.
When posting updates on facebook add a thumbnail. Remember to scroll through the available images to find the one most relevant to your message.
Use twitpics or equivalent to gain the interest of your followers. Not only will you be able to add a message but  you can also get basic stats on how many views it's had. Great for letting your follows experience an event with you, you can also us pictures to reinforce your branding. For example a retailer with bricks and mortar stores will display branded pos to shout about a sale. The same artwork should be used via twitpic to shout about this on twitter (and facebook)