Twitter book giveaway! Competition on Twitter

Win - "The History of the World Through Twitter" hardback book

This book is more than just a straight re-telling of history...Twitter is perhaps the most potent and versatile phenomenon yet thrown up by the web and the authors have created a fresh, hilarious, original and just occasionally (sort of) educational book which will take full advantage of the extraordinary popularity of Twitter.

On this day in history, 26th October 1965 The Queen awarded the Beatles their MBE medals at Buckingham Palace.

What would she tweet about this?  

TO ENTER: Leave a comment on this blog, or tweet your answer to @1weekSEO with the hashtag #TwitBook

The History of the World Through Twitter

Takes readers on a voyage through world history, told through the speculative tweets of its some of the famous people: from the Lord's commentary at the creation of the universe to Hardy's view from the Battle of Trafalgar, and from the Mona Lisa's reaction to being painted to Jackie K's take on the JFK assassination.

100 key moments from history are picked and reported in tweets - those 140-character maximum bite-sized chunks that are so familiar to Twitter users - and anyone who has read a newspaper in the last six months - today.

Oh, and if you happen to have a website and would like a free SEO website audit email me at seoseomerset@googlemail.com and I'll reply within 24 hours.

Friendly SEO services - see results fast!

You're here because you want your website to perform well in Google search and drive traffic to your website ...... right?

I'm happy to give you a free consultation to give you an idea of how I can help and how cost effective it will be for you.

Based in Somerset UK, my services cover the whole of the UK remotely, there's no need for an on site visit. Working as an independent consultant with little overheads I am proud to offer a wide range of SEO services at a reasonable price.

I have valuable advice to give small businesses with new sites under a year old, but also have solid experience in SEO for companies with a 6 figure turnover, so get in touch for a free consultation today.

Below is a snapshot of traffic to a site that I was responsible for in January 2010.
The spike is from the power of social networking site Twitter and a free giveaway of a pocket 2010 diary. This went viral online and traffic spiked from 600 average hits to over 6,400 in one day!

Contact me if you would like to see your site perform well in terms of traffic and visibility in Google search engine results pages.

So, you want Google page 1?

The sooner people get over the idea of "top of google" as being a definition of SEO, the better. But it DOESN'T suit all businesses, just as other mediums don't. It's real, it's here to stay and for most businesses who plan correctly it can be hugely profitable.

You wouldn't believe a TV ad agency if they told you they could get your ad placed in the X-Factor breaks for £100, so why would you believe you're going to double your business for an equally suspect fee from an SEO company?

Research. Research. Research. People get scammed because in most cases they fail to conduct ANY research at all in the first place. It's basic business acumen. If you feel let down by a previous agency or consultant I would love to hear your story.

With a brand new website, position 1/2 in Google is achievable (in free organic search) with keyword research and regular emarketing I'd say 6 months in all honesty. I'm not going to lie about this and anyone who says different will just be taking your hard earned cash! However - with Adwords I can get you to google page one in a matter of hours. What adword daily budget would you set yourself?

I have worked with new sites and currently work full time on contract for a company who launched in October 2009, 39 hours a week just to put it into perspective the man hours involved are substantial.

SEO tasks include:

• Installation and reporting of Google Analytics
• Submission of URL to Google Webmaster tools, and code installed into your site to verify
• Similar code verification for Alexa, Yahoo, Bing
• Adwords reporting, keyword researching
• Directory submission with full lisiting and photos, images, information
• Article writing (500 words) submitting to article sites and press release sites
• Blog creation on wordpress, Blog on Google (blogspot)
• Google maps directory verification and submission
• DMOZ submission
• Posting on forums, creating identities
• URL submission using a tool for global search engines
• Facebook, Twitter, social networking accounts, creating proper profiles
• Setting up Google Alerts for competitors and your own URL to track appearance on the internet
• Meta tags and meta description for your website, Alt tags on images, proofreading for grammar etc
• Web page copy composition in a style to suit your site

What I say to my clients with a low budget is to agree an arrangement of so many hours a week and I continue through this list and take payment as we go along. The work I carry out with contracting is done in the evenings and weekends.

Beginners Guide to Twitter and Tweetdeck

When I first started to use Twitter for my company I was posting discount vouchers constantly, adding random people I didn't know and repeat postings from a Word document I had created, allowing me to copy and paste previous tweets without getting RSI.

Then I downloaded Tweetdeck - I really recommend this free software (it will auto shorten URLs and you can add photos and pitures with a drag & drop). After then I realised, how uninteresting I must be, who wants to be bombarded with repetitious discount codes for a product you don't specifically need at that time.

I learned the basics of Twitter:

• Names are preceeded with '@'
• E.g. - senting out a tweet to Thefunkypigeon will not show up on their page, it needs to be @Thefunkypigeon
• RT = Re-Tweet, repeating some else's post and crediting them by mentioning their name
• # the hash symbol represents a group, e.g. I am interested in any local tweets, so I have #bristol and #somerset saved on tweetdeck
• # groups that are being tweeted about (by mentioning this in your post) that are the most popular are called "Trending Topics"

Trending Topic

A regular trending topic is #FF or #FollowFriday where tweeps looking to increase their followers will RT their follower's names in their posts and the circle goes on - here's an example:
Here's some great tweeps for #FF @somerset1 @bristol2 @personalised This really helps increase your followers, because they join in with the #FollowFriday they WANT to follow and be followed.

Another tip is to follow a tweeter called 'goodbyebuddy' which will notify you daily when anyone chooses to 'unfollow' you, this will help you understand how to make your audience stay with your tweets

I faded out the promo tweets and started to interact directly with local tweeters, and tweeters who have similar business, by re-tweeting their promotional tweets, effectively helping out their reach, and with good success. In the first 2 weeks of using Twitter, I had appeared on local radio and booked an advertisement in an eshot who I would have otherwise never come across before. You can also tweet to advertise #jobs or #vacancies online, real time, for free.

I hope this you have found this useful as I should have researched Twitter before I went barging in full steam ahead. One twitterer said there are 3 golden rules on Twitter which I adapted slightly:

30% Personal tweets and observations

30% links to interesting, pertinant articles and webpages

30% Promoting aspects about your own business / services

That leaves 10% to do what you like - for me it's following celebrities and replying to their tweets, and tweeting about trending topics...

Hope this was good reading, please feel free to leave a comment.
You can follow me on Twitter @SEOukSomerset

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nina_Greaves

Website Optimisation for www.funkypigeon.com

Following a website re brand a new domain was registered in September 2009 - my aim was to be ranked on Google Page 1, result 1. This was achieved on October 27th 2009, just 10 days after going live.

How did I do it?

This was a full time - 40 hours/week - task.

First of all I used the Admin tool to optimise each of the main landing pages, from the meta title, description and keywords, to writing script for the actual page and matching the keywords accordingly.

Networking online is a huge opportunity and best of all it's free, so I created and maintained accounts on Twitter, Facebook, BeBo, Wordpress, press release and article sites and of course, blogger.com.

Once the site went live after a week of testing, I then launched into my social networking, also promoted the launch offer of a 30% discount code on an online voucher code site and got on board with an affiliate to work with us.

Google Adwords was already running, so I created several ad campaigns, each targeted with specific keywords, and wrote each advert to be enticing to surfers.

The site was verified with Google Webmaster, I changed address in Webmaster from the old to the new, installed Google Analytics and linked to Adwords to be able to report on ecommerce and how the Adwords campaigns were performing in revenue.

301 redirects were used from the old landing pages to the appropriate new landing pages, leaving the old homepage up with the ability to transfer traffic for all visitors with just one click.

Utilising the customer database of over 60,000 accounts, an e-shot was sent out in stages, to the most frequent customers first, and then to single use accounts secondary, informing them of the change of website address, and their account details remained the same. We also included a disocunt code.

Discount codes were different for every online promotion, allowing me to guage the ROI of each campaign, to identify the best performing sites for us.

Directory submission manually by myself went full speed ahead, yes it can be painful and give you a serious dose of RSI but once they're done, they're done. Following the first week of submitting, I decided to spend one afternoon a week in searching and finding directories as an ongoing task.

There was a competition launch which was another slant to the promotion, and free ringtones were created which was a great added bonus to shout about, this went down really well on My Space, You Tube and StumbleUpon.

The Alexa rating collapsed from 2 million to under 700,000 in ten days. Yes, that's right, 10 days! Orders more than doubled on a daily basis and everyone is happy.

Here's the website for you to view: http://www.funkypigeon.com/