Will Your Business Benefit From SEO?

You know that your company needs an official website to make your brand known online, and Search Engine Optimization or SEO will take up a chunk of your marketing budget. But how will you know if this service will help your business? Are the funds better used on other offline or online marketing and advertising methods?

If you are thinking about hiring an SEO company for this task, ask yourself these questions before you make a decision. These inquiries should determine the viability of your ROI (return on investment):

What is my budget per month?

There are a lot of organizations that will take care of all aspects of SEO, including link building, organic optimization (this refers to the usual search results), and PPC (Pay Per Click) Management. Others would concentrate on a specialization based on their niche. These factors are customizable in a way that will allow you to reap rewards from them, whether you utilize them all at once or separately.

What is the goal of my business?

Inspect your official site. Will it only be used as an online brochure, or will it become a website for e-commerce? Collect a handful of quotes from different SEO providers and figure out how many conversions or visitors you will need to validate the value for money and its overall cost. For instance, if you are selling a niche item like a particular bolt that is compatible with only one type of door, will there be a demand for your merchandise? If your industry has a lot of competition, you will definitely need search engine optimization to attract customers.

Always remember that even if the SEO company you employ is successful in giving your website a high rank, the process is far from complete. Do not place all your investments on this process alone. Tread lightly, do your homework, and you will know if SEO will be worth the investment.

Hottest SEO Consultancy jobs in 2014

There are many roles within an SEO team. It is not just a one-man team, for sure. If you are looking to hire an SEO consultant, know that there are specific roles that are often not merged, mostly because they require a very different set of skill sets and it is quite rare to find one person to have all of them combined. Plus, it is also not recommended to have a one-man team since you are increasing your dependency to just one person. Not very wise.

Here are the top 3 jobs that you should have in your SEO team either as full time members or on a consultancy basis.

Website Content Writer and Editor

Writers and editors make sure that your pages have compelling, interesting content for your readers. A steady flow of incoming published work is necessary either in your blog section or in the news section of your site. What are the qualities of a good writer or editor consultant?

•    Has an excellent written English skills
•    Can write in various tones from informal to factual and credible
•    Works fast since you also need quantity not just quality when it comes to SEO writing.

Most writers can work remotely and can just submit their work on a weekly basis.

WordPress Developer

You can choose to get a consultant or contractual team member for WordPress development. Your first step is to download the WordPress kit and understand how it can help improve your site or even just the blog section. Why do you need a WordPress developer?

•    To help customize the look of your chosen template
•  To help update the pages especially when you want new photo galleries, transitions or menu navigation bar design
•    To help you understand which sections can be edited, compressed or added plugins to

You can choose to hire your WordPress consultant at the beginning of the project and then take it from him after the setup. But if you want seamless update of your site and if you can afford it, get the developer for at least 6 months.

SEO and Data Specialist

Counting and understanding why certain pages get more traffic, why you are not seen by Google or why certain things keep you from getting a high SEO ranking and while others can drag you down.

Understanding what the numbers mean by Google Analytics can take you weeks to read through all of the data that they can give you by default. Then there are the customizations that you can do to make sure you are converting your traffic into money (which what we all aim to do).

How SEO is influenced by Social Media

Google levels the playing field and it is in favor of the smaller but smarter players. You can rank as high as how Amazon ranks if you know how to leverage and maximize the influence of social media into your search engine ranking.

Curious and excited to know how you can beat the big guys? Here’s how.

Google+ is your new best friend

Add a Google+ button in every single page of your site. Don’t have a Google+ account yet? Create one!

Google’s very own social media allows you to recommend links and content to your peers, and it shows up in their Google results when they are logged into their Gmail accounts. Even if you believe Facebook has the higher traction, it does not hurt to start sharing articles into your Google+ circles today.

Increase your index time

Boost the visibility of your content when you share them through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even Pinterest. It is easier to find content via these sites (and domains) as compared to ordinary blog posts. What this means for you is that Google finds you faster and therefore, ranks you faster, compared to doing things on your own.

How can you help yourself through social media?

•    Post a link of your latest update through Facebook and Twitter
•    Include a Facebook recommend or Twitter tweet button at the end of every page to encourage sharing
•    Create witty hashtags associated to your brand and use them with every photo and link you post
•    Ride on trending hashtags like #ootd and #tbt
•    Share other site’s contents on your own social media feeds, give them credit and then link it back to your own products

SEO via social media presence gives your brand more personality and brings you closer to your audience. It also strengthens (and creates) emotional connection to your products easily.

More shares = improved ranking

Resist the temptation to run promos that require people to share or re-post images from your site. This is viewed as a cheap way to get traffic. You can encourage sharing without being in your face by banking on UGC or User Generated Content.

How can you do this?

You can try running a promo where people can submit their own photos using a hashtag for your product. This will generate enough buzz for your product without being too much of a hard sell.

Shared contents within your pages rank higher in the eyes of Google. You will notice that in your typical Google search today, at least one item in the first page of hits has a social media link to it. SEO is really influenced by social media, especially when it comes to determining the relevance and credibility of a site.

Social bookmarks means more foot traffic

Liked pages of Facebook and followed Twitter feeds are disguised bookmarks to your pages. The more interesting your posts are, the more intrigued your readers will be and therefore, the more they will view their post.

Avoid being marked as spam by your audience by only posting about what is relevant and by not posting more than 4 updates within a day. Normally, just 2 per day is fine. Don’t force an update if you don’t have one.

You can still generate social media traffic by answering questions on posts, commenting on other people’s post and sharing links from other nice and yet related sites to your own.

Personalized search results

Probably one of the biggest reasons why Google thinks social media content is relevant in SEO today is that it provides a personalized search results list. Google prioritizes what your friends have recommended, what is trending in your current location and the like.

Photo By: Ted Nguyen USA

Tips on making your business website SEO Friendly

What is the first thing you tell someone when they need to look for something? It’s probably a quick “Just Google it!” response. Everyone uses Google and every time someone keys in a string of keywords to search for something, that is an opportunity for a website to be found.

More than half of the traffic a website gets comes from organic search or via the big search engines like Google. The rest come from paid ads, both from social networking sites like Facebook or web banners positioned in partner websites.

To make your website rank high in Google’s eyes, we have 3 SEO friendly expert tips that are easy to incorporate into your website.

Tip #1: See what Google sees

Use tools like Google’s cache or third-party tools like MozBar, you can get a glimpse of how Google sees your website in terms of search. This gives you clues on how you can:

•    Organize your content so that Google can read all the relevant data
•    Include more text (instead of text within images) that Google can read through
•    Create more title tags (see Tip #3 below) to help categorize your text content

If you see that through tools like the MozBar, there is nothing else beyond your page’s title, then you know you need to make rapid changes to your site to make it readable to Google. If Google cannot read your pages, then it has nothing to report to the millions of uses searching the Internet today.

Tip #2: Organize your link structure

Make it easy for Google to find what people are looking for by creating an organized outline of your content. This is not very different from what you used to do at school – where you have major topics supported by minor details. Here’s a sample outline of a typical eCommerce website structure:

Home
Products
-    New Products
-    Women’s shoes
o    Flats
o    Pumps
o    Sandals
o    Athletic shoes
-    Children’s shoes
o    Sandals
o    Athletic shoes
o    School shoes
-    Sale
Blog
About
-    The Team
-    Careers
-    Store finder
-    Affiliate Marketing
Contact

By organizing your content in a logical and SEO friendly manner, you make it easy for Google to know where to look in your sea of content.

Check your link structures – make sure that all pages link to one another. You might have an About page but if there is no button linking to that page, then how will your viewers find it?

Tip #3: Setup your title tags

Search engine optimization is not just about stuffing your pages with keywords. In fact, keywords are just 20% at the most of the search engine game. One of the most important things you need to do to your site is to make sure you have title tags.

Just like a Microsoft Word document, title tags help label portions of your text content accordingly. H1 or Header 1 is the most important part of the text content, which is often the title of a single article in a page. There should only be one H1 per page.

H2 and H3 are the secondary and tertiary headlines that you want to emphasize in a page. Include important keywords in your title tags and limit these tags to 75 characters each. Do not forget to include your brand in your title tags, since these are the tags read by Google and displayed in the search list when presented to the user.

Write your title tags in such a way that a user can easily understand what this particular page is about and encouraging them to take action immediately.

Photo By: MarketZing

Why Have Your Digital Marketing Tasks Outsourced To The Philippines?

Digital Marketing is a business process that will oblige you to devote your time and effort to it, apart from other aspects which you have to think about in order for this business endeavor to be successful. This is one reason why there are companies that prefer to hire a third party group which can assist them in optimizing their corporate site for the search engines.

This brings one question to light: What reason do more businesses have for outsourcing digital marketing work in the Philippines compared to employing the services of other firms that are based in other nations?

What is “Outsourcing” anyway?

When you have your tasks outsourced, it means that your company is hiring another group what will take care of some of the work for you. Its either you employ a team of individuals or you basically hire one person to handle some of the workload. The branches of Digital Marketing such as SEO (Search engine Optimization), SMM (Social Media Marketing) and Content Marketing are popular niches where it is a good idea for outsourcing, since you get to take in or take out new team members in any event that the outcome that you are anticipating is not want you wanted.

The question still remains. Why is it better to hire a digital marketing firm that is based in the Philippines to handle some of your tasks, and what benefits will your company get out of this?

The biggest reason for more firms outsourcing digital marketing work in the Philippines is that labor is affordable, and the Filipinos take pride in the high quality of their work. A comparison between the Philippine digital marketing firms and the enterprises from India shows that Filipinos deliver excellent results for half the labor cost of organizations that other nations charge for their services. Filipinos are also fluent in business English, so that helps a lot.

Photo By:  Orem Utah SEO Services

How to Avoid Keyword Cannibalism

Have you ever written a fresh, high quality article in hopes of it ranking high up in search engines, only to find out later that another post from your other domains or social media accounts rank higher than the original post? 

    Image From: http://techlunatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Keyword-Cannibalism-In-Google-Search-Results.jpg

This phenomenon, also known as #keyword cannibalism, is a by-product of an #seo campaign gone wrong. It occurs when you overdo SEO-ing your articles and blast your social media accounts with backlinks to your site, thus your key terms “cannibalize” your preferred articles and your other entries like those in your Digg, Stumble Upon profiles and other web portals end up ranking higher than those in your primary website. Naturally, the best way to avoid this ill effect is to observe proper SEO techniques and to stop overdoing things. Ever heard of the saying too much of anything is bad? That goes for SEO too.

●    Create variations in your titles

    Always ensure that each post is unique, and that you employ varying long tail key phrases for ranking instead of just a highly coveted single short tail one. If you have to submit your content to social media portals like Digg, create a new title for each copy you submit so that you don't lose a well-crafted entry on your site to highly trafficked ones that have higher PageRank.

●    Spice up key terminologies

    Make use of synonyms when drafting content to ensure optimum benefits per post, and so that spiders     don't get your posts mixed up due to redundant permalink structure. While it's wise to stick to your     particular niche, it is not any wiser to repeat the same keywords time and again in ALL your articles just     so you'd have desired keywords ranking high up the hierarchy. Spice up your blog with an assortment of     keywords, both short-tail and long-tail. Not only will this prevent keyword cannibalism, it will also keep     readers engaged and interested.

●    Don't overdo optimization

It's easy to fall prey to overdoing SEO efforts to achieve more than what you'd normally expect for a post, but try not to do so. Overly optimizing anchor text links is a surefire way for unintended posts to cannibalize your intended article.

●    Place a no-follow attribute on your site

This may seem counter intuitive to SEO, as a no-follow attribute means you don't want your material indexed by crawlers. And why would you post something that you wouldn't want to be indexed? Well, for the reason that you do not want to dilute search pages or for some posts that are stuffed with keywords to over power one that you wish to rank high.

With more and more blogs cropping up out of nowhere each day, we as SEO marketers wish we could all bag first prize in the keyword competition. Remember though that sometimes less means more. Don't go over optimizing content; you might find that sometimes doing so will reap more benefits for you.

How Social Media Signals Play A Part In Your Rankings

Two years back, #seo expert Danny Sullivan explored how #socialmedia signals affected search engine rankings. Back then, he surmised that while Facebook remains irrelevant to Google, retweets has become an invaluable part of building links. Immediately after, Google mogul Matt Cutts confirmed that organic SEO is indeed influenced by social media signals.

Although many SEO professionals are still evaluating the extent of social signal’s effect on rankings, various research studies prove that they are correlated to an increase in site traffic, rankings, and consequently, revenue.

Image From: http://socialmetricspro.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/connection_ssignals_seo.jpg

 

Social signals affect rankings in two ways: direct and indirect. Direct social media ranking signals include:

·         Facebook likes and shares

·         Twitter followers and retweets

·         Tweets where your brand is indicated or which pertain to a linkback to your site

·         Individuals who included you in their Google+ circles

On the other hand, indirect influence is directed by these factors:

·         Inbound links and mentions

This is the most important role of social media. The more linkbacks and social media mentions you procure, the more brand awareness and online visibility you raise. In fact, inbound links , especially from high quality sites, are far more important as a ranking criteria than social media and Matt Cutts has made this pretty clear.

·         Positive feedback in Google, Yelp and other similar sites

Through social networking channels, businesses are able to create a distinct and presentable image for their brand. More importantly, it allows them to establish genuine customer connection and trust and boost customer loyalty. This is turn, increases the likelihood of more positive reviews on sites like Google Local and Yelp.

Positive reviews mean satisfied customers. The number of positive feedback directly affects local and national search rank. The more satisfied clients you have tweeting about you or promoting you on their Facebook accounts, the better chances you have of attaining a higher ranking.

·         Less bounce rate and longer visitor time on website

Decreased bounce rate means visitors are pleased with your web content, thus compelling them to spend more time on-site. Similarly, if more consumers are aware of your brand through social media, then the higher chances you have of acquiring repeat visits, and the longer time-on-site you have. Google is able to accurately gauge if a website did satisfy customer queries and how many repeat visits there are to the same site, which makes this metric an effective tool for increasing organic search ranks.

There’s also that recent implementation of Google AuthorRank, which is aimed at identifying credible authors so that their content do not just receive higher search engine rankings, but also give more value to their outbound links.

 

While the impact of social signals are still under continuous study, their expanding role in algorithms that pertain to ranking can not be denied. Companies who welcome social media signals with open arms and eyes have been proven to enjoy wonderful benefits in terms of lead conversion, customer loyalty and awareness, word-of-mouth advertising and ultimately, profit.

Web Design and SEO Go Together

How a website looks and feels from the outside is a vital factor in attracting visitors. But from then on, there has to be that glue that makes consumers stick to a site beyond aesthetics. With the population of web users and websites alike growing exponentially by the day, it has become obvious that that certain thing that makes them stick, is good SEO technique, and it is indispensable.

As of writing there are over 130 million active sites on the Web, and this figure is expected to increase significantly throughout the years to come with more bloggers joining the digital arena. As the space gets more packed – add to that the volume of competitors who provide similar content - raising brand awareness and getting readers' attention are becoming extremely challenging by the minute, even for established websites. 

         Image From: http://www.primolution.com/wordpress27/wp-content/themes/seo/images/seo-web-design.jpg

No matter how eye-candy one's website is, it can be buried underneath a pile of competitors in an instant without search engine optimization. In these revolutionary times, great design just doesn't suffice. Businesses, bloggers, and webmasters all have to incorporate sleek SEO strategies to ensure survival and success on the web.

Over the years, we have seen marketers create a monster out of SEO, employing shabby strategies to get ahead of the game. These people have found a way to trick their way into higher Page Ranking, more backlinks and higher search results status. Thanks to the implementation of Google's Panda/ Farmer Update, quality content is making a glorious comeback as an accurate parameter of online credibility and fame.

The challenge now is for businesses to find that middle ground to succeed. Successful, well-established sites share a common ground: exceptional web design and SEO. These two go hand-in-hand in baiting loyal, “hooked” customers. Design provides that initial physical attraction,  ensuring that the consumer's attention is captured, and SEO, through valuable, one-of-kind content, offers the inner beauty beyond   visual pleasure that will make visitors stay and go back a second, tenth, or hundredth time.

In addition, search engine spiders are text-based; they are unable to understand images which make SEO even more important. If great design is intended to please the human eye, SEO aims to lure search engine bots so that more site traffic is generated.

There is an adage that goes like, “You only have one chance to make a first impression.” Make a good first impression with visually appealing designs, but also make sure you have relevant, well-written material and enough SEO strategies under your belt to turn that good first impression into a lasting one.

Things You (Probably) Don’t Know About Rand Fishkin

If in Hollywood the most talked celebrity recently is Kim Kardashian (and her upcoming baby), in the SEO world, the hottest nerd to have hit piqued our curiosity is Rand Fishkin. Now if you’ve been to an alien SEO planet, you might be wondering Who is Rand Fishkin?

Fishkin, SEOmoz’s CEO and founder, claims to be crazy about all things tech, including SEO, inbound marketing and entrepreneurship. He is also known as a highly-esteemed speaker at various SEO conferences, a passionate blogger and frequent flyer together with writer wife Geraldine.

                                             Image From: http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/randfishkin-500px.jpg

But aside from the obvious (and the frequently published bio), here are ten interesting facts about the nerd of everyone’s dreams:

•    He has never bought a car

With all the money this guy makes and the celebrity status he’s basking in, you’d probably think that he has a limo, or maybe a shiny Porsche or a Ferrari hidden in his garage. Truth is, the only vehicle he’s ever had is a scooter, which he purchased in 2008.

•    He fancies art

Whenever he’s not speaking at conferences, visiting national landmarks or doing work-related stuff, Fishkin muses at visual arts, specifically that of the 19th and 20tth century. His favorites include French impressionist Georges Seurat and American landscape artist Winslow Homer.

•    The guy once dreamed of becoming a dog

He confesses that as a child, one of his lifelong dreams was to be a canine, because of how loyal and friendly dogs are, and well, because everyone adores a dog.

•    He didn’t actually descend from a Fishkin

As an immigrant in America, Rand’s great-grand dad had to adopt his employer’s last name, which is, you guess it right – Fishkin.

•    He dropped out of college

For four years till 2001, he studied at the University of Washington but dropped out to pursue a job in his mother’s PR firm. Not too long after, he founded SEOmoz and became one of the youngest CEOs in SEO history.

•    He used a TV commercial during his proposal to Geraldine

What he did was pay for an entire commercial which aired during Geraldine’s favorite TV show. Talk about creativity!

•    His darling wife might just be cooler than he is

Geraldine is a feisty traveler who blogs about their husband-and-wife travels and gastronomical ventures (and then some) at www.everywhereist.com. She describes her blog as a “big, long, cuss-filled love letter” to Rand, whom she follows ‘round the world. If you have been to her site, you’d know how awesome, brilliant, witty and funny this gal is. And if you haven’t, well, it’s time you should.

•    He wears yellow shoes as a trademark

Apparently, the yellow pair of shoes we always see him in is his personal fashion statement. In fact, he has had several pairs of it and is currently on a hunt for one more as they have already been out of production at Puma.

•    He shaved his beard for charity

The SEOmoz team recently raised more than $4,000 for Movember, a fund-raising event dedicated to male health issues. Shaving his beard was part of the program. In addition, he’s also active in other charitable groups such as Vittana.

Best Practices for Mobile SEO

This day mobile is the way to go. With the increasing demand for smartphones and tablets, businesses are finding it necessary to offer mobile versions of their web pages and applications to increase audience reach and promote their brands effectively.

And by all means, they should. Studies show that over 30 percent of total search engine searches are generated through mobile devices. More so, around 85 percent of the world’s population are using mobile devices to access the Internet, primarily for entertainment.

But to ensure full user engagement, businesses must also employ effective mobile SEO practices. These may be as simple as knowing search differences between desktop and mobile users, or as complex as understanding how to set a website for optimum mobile viewing.

 

Image From: http://cdn.swellpath.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mobile-seo.jpg

Through their hand-on experience with previous clients, our SEO specialists have discovered these best practices for mobile SEO:

•    Focus on short-tail queries.
One of the primary differences between desktop and mobile users is that the latter opt for shorter phrases, often targeted towards local searches. Take advantage of this by optimizing meta descriptions to suit short tail queries.

•    Think social, then mobile.
Majority of mobile users use mobile Internet for entertainment and amusement, a way to pass time. When creating applications or content for mobile use, keep this bit of information in mind. Develop mobile versions that are entertaining as they are appealing. Your website must also have embedded mobile tools for social media sharing. This increases site traffic, brand exposure and user engagement.

•    Optimize for both user and SEO
Optimize your website for mobile use in that both users and search engines can easily find the same version. Avoid strategies that can get your website penalized or flagged.

•    Streamline
Consider touchscreen features of mobile devices when developing webpages. Ensure that mobile users can focus and easily navigate through the site, particularly through important pages. Vertical menus are recommended as they are easier to use when it comes to link navigation.

•    Avoid scaling to fit
Don’t develop pages such that your website’s mobile version becomes a mini of the desktop version, scaled to fit a smaller screen. Webpages should be specifically developed to scale for mobile searches. Better if servers are created in that your site’s mobile version is placed under a sub-domain that directs to your primary domain. There must be a clearly stated link that leads users to the primary desktop site so as not to limit access to the full site, allowing for optimum user experience.

•    Install direct call for customers.
Not only should your page indicate your business contact numbers, it should also have a direct click-to-call tool per page.

•    Include quick-loading rich content
Content like photos and videos make reading through a website more pleasurable. This may however be, slow to load on mobile OS. To ensure faster loading times and proper functioning on mobile device, reduce the file sizes as appropriate.

•    Consider relevance versus application installation
For many companies, mobile applications serve as a great business and resource tool. However, for some, they may simply be irrelevant to users. Determine the reasons why your audience visits your mobile webpages. Then you can decide whether to push through with applications or not.

•    Get mobile versions in line with search engine versions.
Your website’s mobile version for users should lead to the same version that search engine crawlers are directed to. Duplicate content could hurt your rankings and could result to penalties.

What Is Google Penguin?

Google, the search engine giant, recently gave its program algorithms a boost with the Penguin update. It has been one of the most discussed topics within the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) community because of the strategies they need to tweak to be able to comply.

A year ago, most of the major revisions focused on the Panda update, and it was followed up with the release of Google Penguin to work with all the updates. If you are a new webmaster who is not aware of what this update is about, keep reading.

This search engine update was released on April 24, 2012. According to the official blog, the Penguin update is an important algorithm change that looks for “webspam” (a term for keyword stuffing). It is designed to bring down the rankings of those sites that may be violating the present quality process of Google.

Those who employ the conventional black hat SEO gimmicks (including keyword stuffing) will receive warnings from the Google updates, and the placement of improper outgoing links which are directed to a particular site is not a good idea either. Webmasters should have Google Webmaster inspect their accounts in an event of a notice from the search engine giant about a likely penalty because of spam activity.

How will you keep your site in the good side of Google updates? Here are some tips:

Always check your keywords

When the update started, all Internet users were happy because it would prevent over-optimization. The problem is that some webmasters changed their sites to the point that they were not optimized anymore. It all comes down to keywords.

Do not just stick your keywords in after writing the content. This will appear unnatural. Incorporate your keywords in your articles as you compose.

Your Link Building must feel unique

Your keyword links must be less than your brand name links. Ensure that your precise URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is used. Your profile’s links will look natural if you add actual words like “visit us here” or “Click here” instead of a URL.

Quick and Dirty Notes on Web 2.0

If you’ve been to another planet between 1999 to present, you might be wondering, “What is Web 2.0?” But for many of us earthlings who have been long around to witness the not-so-gradual transitions and developments in web technologies, Web 2.0 simply means the web as we now know it, a place where everyone and anyone can be connected, with all its interactive features like Facebook, IM, blogs, RSS, SEO and all those other cool digital things that we love.

Image Credit:Wikipedia

This widely-used jargon originated from Tim O’Reilly during a 1999 brainstorming session among O’Reilly Media and MediaLive International, where it was referred to as an updated version of the World Wide Web that previously utilized static pages. It is an umbrella term that describes how software and program developers and web users now utilize the Web – through collaborative and interactive social dialoguing in digital communities like social media channels, wikis, hosting and video sharing services and other web applications. In contrast, the olden Web 1.0 offered less interaction for users, allowing mere text or graphic viewing of content.

Along with the birth of the dot-com came revolutionary interactive applications and sites, which signaled the turning point for the entire WWW era. In Web 1.0, there was mp3.com, the online Britannica, personal websites. Web 2.0 gave birth to their alter egos: Napster, Wikipedia and blogs.

Today, more than being a medium for interaction, Web 2.0 has become a channel for aspiring job seekers and businesses to market what they have to offer.

·         Blogs

For many content writers and freelancers, blogs serve as their online portfolio for clients to look at should they require work samples. Companies also use these web-based journals to showcase their offerings and artwork. Videographers for instance, use vlogs to embed previously crafted wedding videos for potential clients to see. Others like strategic digital marketing firm 9Dotstrategies, use blogs to create more awareness among virtual communities and help web users gain additional information when it comes to web development, web design and content.

·         Instant Messaging (IM)

IMs like YahooMessenger and Skype make real-time web interaction possible across the web. For some companies, interviewing applicants online is coursed through IMs especially if the interviewer (usually a high-ranking senior) is based off-shore.

·         Podcast

This is an audio file which can be downloaded and played on mobile devices, and is typically used by employers when they need to send audio messages to applicants.

·         Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a strategic method that involves web-based technicalities in order to increase search engine traffic to a particular site. Many bloggers and businesses apply SEO techniques to effectively drive more visitors and consequently, more revenue – through ads, among others – to their sites.

·         Social media channels

Beyond social networking sites, social media also includes web-based applications like blogs, photo sharing, RSS and video streaming which enable faster and more efficient communication and sharing of files. This is a very effective tactic for engaging an audience and boosting online presence.

If you are an individual or company who seriously needs to take your business up a notch, take advantage of the virtual powers of Web 2.0.