Search Engine Optimization

    

Interesting 2010 statistics on the top 10 most visited websites in the US just released by HitWise.

The top 10 Websites accounted for 33 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010, an increase of 12 percent versus 2009.

People's high connection with social media is show by the majority of the top website visits being social media sites, or sites which incorporating social media into their site to engage people.

Interesting. All of these sites signficantly rely from content contributed by the public. 

This gives these sites 2 ongoing competitive advantages:

1. All this additional fresh content really helps with search engine optimization (SEO), increasing their search engine rank.


2. This engagement and participation also tightens and builds the ongoing connection with the users.

Facebook was the top-visited Website for the first time and accounted for nearly 9% percent of all U.S. website visits between January and November 2010.  This is a significant jump from third place last year.

Google.com ranked second with 7% percent of visits, followed by Yahoo! Mail (3.5% percent), Yahoo! 3.3% percent) and YouTube (2.65 percent).  

Some of these sites are owned by the same company. The combination of Google properties accounted for 9.85 percent of all U.S. visits. Facebook properties accounted for 8.93 percent, and Yahoo! properties accounted for 8.12 percent.

Experian Hitwise provides daily insights on how 25 million Internet users around the world interact with more than 1 million Websites.

As a business user, what are the websites that you most frequent most that didn't make it to this list?

What are the things that you would want to incorporate into your site to improve your website rank?

Measuring social commerce
Social commerce is purchase transactions that are driven through sharing on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and through “email friends” application. Social commerce is when friends refer, recommend, or "Like" your product or service, and share with others they know.

Are you making it very easy for people to recommend your products and services? Do the pages of your website, and the products in your e-commerce have Share or Like, yet?

So why would this addition make a difference?

There are a number of reasons this makes a big difference to enhance your business income:

- Each "Share" or "Like" refers and recommends your business to their friends. Each "Share" that a person does, posts a note re your product /service with a link to your site`s page to where they are sharing with their friends and collegues. These are sharing to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social sharing sites.

- Each "Share" or "Like" increases your rank in the search engines such as Google.You want to be found on the first page of the search engines. Each Share or Like automatically creates a link to your site from a high profile site. Each new link to your site helps build your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rank.

The social Web fuels the conversation for recommendations and sharing. This conversation isn’t new, but we are now able to track the resulting transactions with unprecedented granularity.

Social commerce is purchase transactions that are driven through sharing on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and through “email friends” application.

In one case study “Social Commerce: A First Look at the Numbers,” Eventbrite shows angible data to quantify the value and impact of social media in driving eCommerce.

Key findings
The key findings of Eventbrite's analysis include:

- Sharing equals transactions: Dollars per share
When someone shares an event with their friends through social media, this action results in real dollars. Most recent data shows that over the past 12 weeks, one share on Facebook equals $2.52, a share on Twitter equals $0.43, a share on LinkedIn equals $0.90, and a share through ”email friends” equals $2.34. On an aggregate level across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and email share tool, each share equals $1.78 in ticket sales. They saw this number improve every week with the most recent four-week average equaling $1.87.

- It’s extremely sticky: Visits per share
The hyper-relevancy of the social graph breeds deeper engagement, greater sales and stickier audiences. For Eventbrite, Facebook is now the #1 referring site for traffic to the company’s site, surpassing Google as people discover events that their friends are sharing and they click through to find out more. On average each Facebook share drove 11 visits back to Eventbrite.com. Averaging across all channels, one share drove over 7 visits back to Eventbrite.com.

- It’s happening everywhere, across all sizes and types of events: Consistency of sharing
Sharing is consistent across event size. Sharing occurs at the same rate an event has 10 or 10,000 people. Classes/workshops and networking events have the most share activity, followed by fundraisers, conferences, and music events.

What it Looks Like:

Summary: Social commerce is the next big thing
Social commerce takes online commerce to a new level. It marries the natural act of sharing and socializing with friends and the act of buying something online. Social commerce brings together social promotion and transactions into a single, unified experience, which breaks the old rules of eCommerce and demands new metrics. And the exciting news is that this is just the beginning.

Ready to add social commerce to your website to increase sales? Contact Synergy today at info@synergycc.com or call 604-681-0516.

We’re also keen to hear your thoughts and feedback on the subject. Post your website below, and we'll check it out and provide you with some ideas that would enhance your business. Comment below on what worked for you.

While businesses are using social media to connect with potential clients, using social media is also helps build internet search campaigns and search engine optimization.

A recent survey shows how dramatic the improvement is.

Forty-four percent of respondents reported seeing noticeable boosts in search engine campaigns. Forty percent saw a lift in search engine referrals, 25 percent observed higher click-through rates on their paid search initiatives and 25 percent increased their conversion rates. 
The majority of these companies leveraged social media to improve search engine optimization.

• - Two-thirds (66 percent) are using the platform to create in-bound links.;
  


• - 64 percent are using extended profiles to reap more hits from search engines.
  


• - 62 percent are tuning in to social media conversations to plan keyword strategies.

The benefits of social media campaigns inspired many firms to hire more social media experts.

• - More than half (56 percent) of companies are devoting more budget to the platform,
  


• - 15 percent are hiring staff

A great extra benefit of adding adding YOUR OWN customer community / social media ON YOUR OWN website using the Synergy Connect web software platform is in the search engine optimization.

Significantly more updated content is appearing within your site, thanks to your customers or fans responding to your community, sharing information, sharing photos, etc.  Almost all of this content will include words (keywords) that correspond to the keywords you want your website to be found under.

As well, users viewing your content in your community can press the Facebook LIKE button and/or the Share button on all these community pages within your site, resulting in many more inbound links to your site.

Each of these increases your search engine optimization, and helps more new customers find you.

With hundreds of millions of consumers using social media and online shoppers conducting more than 16 million searches per month, the combined power of social and search channels enable brands to reach a large audience

________

Interested in implementing this positive impact for your business?  Adding your own customer / fan community to your site using Synergy Connect is easy.  It can connect to almost any website.  Your community will be implemented with your business' brand.

Just contact us at Synergy today to get started. Ask about a free internet strategy session.

There was a good question posted recently by J. Michael in the Linked-In Social Media Forum.

"If a company has $10K social media marketing budget, which of the following is the best plan?

a. Convert the budget to staff hours and let them do social media participation and moderation
b. Use the moneys to advertise in social media (banner ad, text ad, ..)
c. Combination of a and b"


Definitely A + D give the greatest return.

Very important to teach your staff. Your staff know what is new in your business and what is important to help create informed customers for your product or service.

Director of Operations at Wallstreet*E Financial Services, Don Lee, had a point that we agree completely with. "I think A is extremely important for several reasons. First if the employees are contributors to the social networking such as blogs then there will always be new content. The idea behind social networking is really the content on the web that drives traffic. Another reason is if employees are involved, the blogosphere or social networking environment can promote employee morale. The having employees involved also has several points of view which can create rich content."

Then agree Marita has an interesting tip, let these trained staff start connecting and socializing with customers, partners and other business friends 20 minutes per day.

D is there can be a much bigger impact if the main customer community is actually within their own site. (Like a blog on steroids). Then, this is complimented by postings in Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, etc that draw customers back to your business.

Rather than sending your customers away from your site to Facebook or LinkedIn to have main conversations, draw people to your site where they interact, and also can easily see your services and buy.

• Make your site interactive and helpful for customers.
• You build your list of people interested in your business
• It's your brand, on your own site.
• Get a higher search ranking with all the extra content and updates on your site.
• No Competitors Ads showing up in your discussions with your customers
• You retain full ownership of your content

If anyone is interested in learning more, and could use this for their own site or their own clients, love to help you out.

<link='http://ca.linkedin.com/in/kathywoolverton/Kathy

So, what would you pick, and why?