Just about everyone we know is now using Twitter in one form or another, whether it is for business use or on a personal basis. What a lot of people don’t realise though is that Twitter is a great tool for doing research and searching for information in general but many of us don’t know how to use the powerful search commands that we have at our disposal. Of course as well as a great resource for information, the search commands within Twitter are also great for finding out about topics in your particular business niche so it’s well worth spending a little time getting to grips with some of the more common commands and we will discuss these more in this post.

Basic Search and the Hashtag #

Twitters basic search commands work much like those of any search engine, so for example type in the words social media in the search box and Twitter will deliver any tweets that contain both of these words. You can refine the search so that the results match the phrase exactly by surrounding the phrase in quotes, so for example “social media” will find tweets containing that exact phrase.

Much the same way as in other search functions you can refine this basic search with the use of operators as well such as OR and -. Let’s take our example again, but this time use one of these operators, social OR media will now deliver tweets that contain “social” or ”media” (or both). Using the – operator on the other hand as in this example “social –media” will deliver tweets containing “social” but NOT “media”.

The hashtag or # is a great way for twitter users to group tweets associated with a specific topics for example #socialmedia will find all tweets containing the hashtag “#socialmedia”. So while you can use Twitter’s search functions in many ways including finding people and specific terms in messages the hashtag is much more like a way of indexing specific terms and sorting them into topics and categories that you can visit later. (You can save any searches that you perform in Twitter to visit at any time from the Searches tab on the homepage at the click of a button)

Advanced Searches with Twitter

With the basics out of the way let’s take a look at some of the more unknown commands that can be used with Twitter Search, these include things such as finding people, places, date and attitude searches.

Places search is a great way of narrowing down specific items within a specific location or even a specified distance surrounding that location. So for example using the command “hotels” near:york will find tweets that are mentioning the key phrase “hotels” that have been sent by twitter users whose location is near York. You can even refine the command by adding the operator within:10mi which will add the parameter within 10 miles of the location specified.

Twitters people searches are fairly powerful but there are a few command operators that can be utilised to refine your searches, so as well as the more common @seotrafficlab (which will find tweets that reference a specific twitter handle for example you could use the command from: which will find tweets that have been sent from that person. Using the operator to: will find the tweets that have been sent to that person  and using the operator OR with either of these commands will find tweets from or to both people selected. For example:

from:seotrafficlab

to:seotrafficlab

to:seotrafficlab OR to:localbizgeeks

from:seotrafficlab OR from:localbizgeeks

Attitude searches use another little known or seldom used factor in twitter and that is the smiley, people often use smilies to portray positive and negative attitudes on Twitter as well as on other mediums of Social Media and with the following commands you can find relevant terms that have been enhanced by a positive or negative attitude. So for example this morning I did a search on Twitter Censorship and Twitter Censorship to try and get a feel for what is being said about the new Twitter Censorship Policy in a negative and positive aspect.

One final command that I want to mention is the question search operator that allows you to find tweets that are asking a question about a specific topic which can be really useful if you are looking to build a rapport with other tweeters in your specific niche or topic. The command can be made like this ecommerce ? which will find any tweets that have questions with the word ecommerce, not an exact science this one but it can still prove useful. I am sure that now you know the commands you can probably find better examples than mine on which to use them so I hope this has been of some help.

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We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.  ~Ellen Goodman

It has already been a busy start to the New Year for all of the team here at SEO Traffic Lab HQ and we have been working hard on two re-branding projects, one that sees our own image and brand change slightly with a concious effort in showcasing one of our specialist areas, that of e-commerce seo. Our first phase of this has now been completed and sees the launch of our brand new website which we would love to hear from you about what you think. Phase two will see the re-branding of all of our Social Media properties over the coming weeks and we are looking forward to bringing you all the latest in news and tips from around the world in the fields of SEO, Social Media and Ecommerce, we would love to hear from you on these platforms as well so if you are not following us or liking our page already come along and join us on Facebook and Twitter.

We have also been working really hard on a high profile re-brand for one of our clients which has involved all aspects of our business, assisting with on-site optimisation of their new website, launching their brand across many of the main Social Media platforms and PPC Campaigns to name but a few, and we will let you know more about this exciting project in the future.

After a short break while we got these projects all rolled out our bloggers are back at it and have a wealth of upcoming posts planned with tips and tricks that will help you and your business to gain more traction from your own business websites and social media properties so keep coming back and visiting regularly, and if you have anything you would like to know about drop us a comment and we will endeavour to assist were we can. We also plan on bringing you all of the latest news, products and reviews from as many fields of our Industry as we possibly can, so watch out for all the latest on SEO, Ecommerce and Social Media platforms as well.

On a final note we recently did a post on the new Timeline from Facebook so we thought we would just follow that up a little. Timeline was announced at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in September of 2011 and a lot of people jumped straight on the bandwagon. Like it or not though over the coming weeks Facebook have announced that we will all be getting Timeline so if you haven’t seen it yet and want to take a look have a read of our earlier post “Facebook Timeline delayed but is still coming, so what’s it like?“.

Facebook themselves describe timeline as “telling the story of your life” and “gives you an easy way to rediscover the things you shared, and collect your most important moments”. They have also announced recently that they have now also forged a number of media partnerships that has allowed them to launch around 60 apps for timeline that they are saying “will help you tell your story”.

Let us know what you think as we would be interested, they haven’t announced anything as yet but we feel fairly certain that this new format will ultimately be moved over to Facebook Pages as well which could prove very interesting.

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Social Media and powerful SEO techniques

Whatever your personal feelings about social media networks may be you may be missing out to the competition if you do not already have your business social media profiles up and running. SEO is about optimising your website, and your entire online presence needs to be managed in order to help you achieve all that is possible.

Social Media may have started out for personal enjoyment, but it has quickly developed into a powerful marketing tool which should not be ignored. The behaviour of consumers is constantly changing, and social media has become one of the most important factors which are affecting your potential customers in the modern digital age.

Know Where to Advertise

There are many different social media platforms which are available for businesses. Some of the most powerful tools for SEO purposes include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube. Setting up a basic profile is free on all of these sites, and free advertising and customer research should never be scoffed at.

These sites have proven that they are not just a craze which will die out. The way people shop and spread their likes and dislikes has been permanently changed. The Internet and mobile Internet now mean that consumers are able to instantly react to businesses, products and services in a matter of seconds. You can reach out to millions of people and have an instant response which can be used to drive sales, perform customer research or simply to send a simple message to attract people to your brand.

Search Engines and Social Media

When it comes to SEO it is hard to avoid the discussion of search engine results pages. Hitting the top spot is the ideal of all businesses who are actively working on improving their SEO methods and marketing techniques. One of the largest search engines is Bing who has quickly made themselves a huge competition for Google. This means that you should be looking at ways to optimise your website for Bing and not just Google.

Bing has recognised the consumers’ desires to share their ‘likes’ on social networks. And in a direct response to this they have decided that ‘likes’ on pages such as fan pages and posts on Facebook will be used to help determine search engine results. The more likes your posts receive, the higher you will be regarded on the SERPs. And this is very interesting news indeed for SEO departments.

Have you Been Working on Your Social Media?

Opening an account on each of these social media websites does not really take too much time. Managing all the sites however does quickly eat into time, and in order to make the most out of your media networking it is essential that you spend time and energy on creating an efficient online presence. Your hard work is rewarded by growing a large fan base, having your own consumers helping you grow and stay in touch with their needs and desires for your brands, and the huge potential of creating more revenue.

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One of the first things you will notice is the nice big banner at the top of the page known as the cover image. This can be any image that you already have on Facebook or you can upload a new one, even create a custom image (850×315). To the right of this is the quick jump date range which allows you to easily and quickly locate previous months and years in your timeline.

Just below this new cover image area is the new about section and an area where you can view your friends, photos, subscribers, likes and apps etc and you can drill down into any of these sections to view more details simply by clicking on any of the categories.  Clicking on the map for example will expand this section and show any Stories, Life Events, Photo’s etc that have had the location tag completed.

Directly below all of this is the timeline slider and this is the main difference, the timeline lists all of the ‘stories’ that you have ever posted in a reverse chronological order. Initially there is a complete list of your most recent ‘stories’ but as you move back through the timeline Facebook’s algorithm starts to show what it considers the more important aspects. Down the centre of the blue timeline you will notice that there are a series of blue dots, each of these is an individual event attached to a story and as you go further down the timeline you will notice that there are just dots, hovering over each of these will then display the relevant story. You can view all updates from any given month by clicking the show all stories button at the end of any given month on the timeline.

You can of course edit your timeline, you can add events by hovering over the timeline until the little ‘+’ symbol appears, you can also add status updates, photos videos and even life events if you should so wish. Removing events from the timeline is just as easy, hover over the top right corner of the ‘story’ you wish to remove and click the little ‘pencil’ icon to edit or remove.

The little ‘star’ icon here allows you to make that post a ‘feature story’ which will then expand across the full width of the profile. This is a great way to showcase any elements on the timeline that you don’t wish anyone to miss.

A great option that I really like is the ability to hide the annoying sidebar that everyone has been complaining about. In the bottom right corner of the screen is a little close icon and voila its gone.

You can even change the privacy settings of any post simply by clicking the little icon that appears under the name of the post so you are in complete control.

Initial judgement is that I actually like it, I am sure that I will learn more over the coming months and if I discover any little tips I will endeavour to share them here, in the meantime I’m off for another play.

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Throughout the day there were some really interesting speakers including Jacqui Thompson @pulsecsi with her interesting ‘A Dragons Den Survival Story’ and Malcolm York from Business Midlands @BizMids on the ’11 Step Business Blogging Guide’ among others. Our own Richard Hill gave a really interesting presentation on ’5 Simple SEO Tweaks,Tips and Tricks that will ensure your Business Attracts More Local Custom’ which was very well received and we have already had some great feedback from visitors and exhibitors alike who have been implementing some of the pointers that he gave throughout his talk.

After a brief introduction as to what exactly is SEO and more importantly why should we be using it Richard went straight into the 5 tips:

1. Keyword Research, is the MOST important aspect of any SEO Campaign one of the biggest mistakes that companies make when optimising their website is that they do it for the company name. This is not really going to be of benefit to the company as most people who are looking for you, your products and services won’t actually know who you are yet, so its much better to optimise the site for the products and services that you offer.
2. On Page Optimisation, one of the first things that any of the major search engines see when their robots visit your websites is the ‘Page Title’ and as such it is important to get this aspect right, make sure that you have the keywords that you are optimising the page for in the title of the page, if it is possible always endeavour to have these keywords at the beginning of the title and try and keep them to within 60 – 65 characters long.
3. Google Places, if you haven’t claimed your Google Places page yet then go and do it, this is a great way to promote both the business and the services you provide within your Local area.
4. Sitemaps, ensure that your site has both an html and xml sitemap. Html sitemaps are primarily designed for humans, they outline the structure of the site and aid with indexing in the search engines. Xml sitemaps are designed for the spiders can be submitted to the search engines directly and once again aid with indexing.
5. Link Building, is still one of the major factors when it comes to an SEO campaign and Richard discussed the many, many ways that this can be achieved.

As a bonus Richard also discussed making use of Local Directories when it comes to promoting your website, especially some of the FREE ones such as Business Midlands own directory. Of course we have only discussed very briefly in this post all of the things covered in the presentation given on the day and if any of you attended and would like to have the slide deck to aid as a reminder then you can get this from the following Local SEO Presentation link and to see more pictures from the event check us out on Facebook.

In the meantime we are looking forward now to BizGen 2012 and offer congratulations to the team at Business Midlands on a great event.

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Surveys and findings from the past have long since shown us that the younger generation will quite happily purchase most things they need or want through online shops, although in recent years more and more sites are beginning to accommodate the older generation as this is an area that is proving to be a growing sector, but what else can we do to up our game and gain those all the more lucrative sales and conversions over the Christmas period.

One area of your websites that we are always preaching about is content, it is essential for the continued success of your e-commerce business to ensure that there is always a steady stream of fresh and relevant content on your site, well written and keyword based articles and news items will help to drive repeated traffic to the key areas and landing pages of your site, especially if these are pages that are detailing your latest offers and services.

Make sure that your Christmas delivery times are easily accessible and more importantly ensure that your cut off points for Christmas delivery are clearly defined, there is nothing worse than coming back in from your seasonal holiday to a mountain of complaints because you have dissatisfied customers who didn’t receive their goods in time.
Make sure that if it is possible to use an upsell in your shopping cart that you are making good use of it, customers are looking to buy and if you have a relevant item to their purchase that is also an absolute bargain or very special offer than statistically they are more likely to buy this item alongside an existing purchase.

Look into using the new social networks for improving your customer service, if you have an online chat system ensure that it is manned during your normal business hours, prompt and satisfactory response to enquiries helps maintain good communication with your customers and this ultimately will encourage trust in your brand and your business promoting better relationships and long term loyalty from your customers.

If you have a blog on your website make sure that you are posting to it regularly, this is a great way of keeping your customers updated on news and special offers that you may have and again is a great way of providing fresh and relevant content to your site. If you don’t have one then don’t forget that for a limited period we can still offer a free blog installation with any of our e-commerce seo packages.

The internet is without doubt one of the first places consumers go to research and in many cases ultimately buy product and services, ensuring that your customers can find what they want from your website is a sure way of seeing your e-commerce business succeed.

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Over the past few weeks we have been discussing several aspects of the utilisation of SEO when it comes to an Ecommerce site, we have already discussed at great length the top 35 tips for eCommerce SEO and even more recently we have discussed the Power of Blogging for Ecommerce SEO and it still amazes us as to how many businesses, especially ecommerce businesses ignore both of these important issues.

I know that at the minute everyone is enjoying this fantastic weather we have been having and for October as you may be aware we have already set a new record for the hottest day recorded in this month and we know it’s a subject you don’t want to discuss yet but did you know there are now just 83 shopping days left till Christmas. Have you got your SEO Strategy in place? If the answer to this question is NO then you really do need to get your act together and your finger out of the proverbial. SEO strategies work and in the current world economic climate businesses need to use every tactic available in their arsenal, but SEO is not an overnight fix or sensation, it takes time and planning.

Despite the economy being in a much deflated position UK Merchants have throughout the year predicted and expected strong growth in ecommerce and online shopping trends with a staggering 77% of them expecting revenue to increase. A recent report released by Capegemini & IMRG showed that in the first six months of 2011 had exceeded expectations with an increase of 19% a full 1% more than predicted and yielding £31.5 Billion in online sales at its peak. Part of the reason for this online growth has been associated with UK consumers looking for better value for the products they are purchasing and they are using the search engines online to do this research. During this same period the high street has reported another drop in sales by more than 0.5% which some say is highlighting a trend and a major benefit for ecommerce retailers.

How can you get a piece of this action?

It’s not the first time we have said it and I doubt very much that it will be the last but a great way of generating both interest and traffic to your website is through a Blog, Blogs are a great means of promoting the exchange of ideas and when it comes to Ecommerce SEO they are a great way of promoting your main website and driving more traffic and potentially more business to the monetised side of your company, Google loves blogs.

Setting up and managing a blog within your existing company site can have a huge impact on your search traffic, from now until the end of October it has got even simpler, take out any of our national SEO packages and we will not only setup a FREE Blog for you but we will create and update weekly content completely FREE.  (We usually charge from £895 setup fee plus a monthly management fee.. HAVE WE GONE MAD !!!)..  Please note this offer is only valid for the first  5 new customers only …For full details call a member of our team TODAY.. 0800 8499933.

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There are still a great many businesses out there that don’t appreciate the power that a blog can bring to your site, especially in the world of ecommerce SEO. Blogs are a great means of promoting the exchange of ideas and when it comes to Ecommerce SEO they are a great way of promoting your main website and driving more traffic and potentially more business to the monetised side of your company, Google loves blogs.

Blogs are not a new thing by any means and they have been around now in one form or another for a great many years. Recently however there has been a large surge in the number of people using them to promote themselves or their business and we can certainly say that they are most definitely here to stay.

It can often be very difficult on an ecommerce site to deliver quality content that is fresh and relevant to the market area of your business, especially if the control of your back end system is either complicated or not actually being managed by someone that can make updates and changes without having to contact your developer.

Setting up a blog is a relatively simple process even for the less technically minded of us, and can usually be setup and created within minutes, even if you have to get your developer to do this for you it is still well worth doing, the benefits to your ecommerce site can be amazing. Make sure that whichever way you do this that the resulting blog sits directly on your domain and isn’t separate, so for example your blog would be something like http://www.tvstandsuk.co.uk/blog/ as this is going to greatly benefit your main income site.

As for the package that you use to create the blog there are several good ones out there but we usually recommend using the WordPress platform, it is easily one of the best out there with something like 14+% of the world’s websites being driven by this platform. WordPress is simple to set up, is simple to use and is very SEO friendly with lots of great plugins and add-ons that can make it even more so.

So why does blogging benefit so much?

We have often discussed the importance of content and how content is still and probably always will be king, and a blog is constantly adding fresh and new, relevant content to your site, each time you create a blog post you are creating a new page for your site and as we have said before many times, fresh content is loved by the search engines. Of course the content has to be unique and ensure that you stick to the content of your ecommerce site, it needs to be regular to be of any real benefit as this is still known to be one of the ranking factors given high importance by Google.

Blogging gives any website a great platform but if your business is ecommerce then it is the perfect way to introduce your products and services to potential customers, don’t treat it as just another advert though you need to make the subject enjoyable to your readers and not just a blatant selling tactic. Think of your blog as having your own community with you, your products and services being the centre of your circles influence, give them what they want to read and find interesting and they will come back again and again to read what you have to say and more than likely recommend what you are talking about to other like-minded customers.

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If you prowl around on the Internet looking for SEO related material, it won’t take you too long to find blog posts where someone is complaining about their SEO not working. This is a common problem when businesses attempt to create their own SEO campaign by using free information, from blogs such as ours, and very little in-depth knowledge.
Besides not using all the know how which is provided by a SEO company, the D.I.Y optimisers often expect to see results almost instantaneously. A further issue is that the website may reach the first page of the SERPS, but keeping it there is an on-going battle. SEO in the UK cannot be achieved without hours of dedication and a campaign which is built to progress and evolve. Think of it like your business, an idea is turned into a plan, which needs constant effort and hard work in order to progress.

Simple SEO Tips to help you

If you are adamant that you would like to work on your own optimisation campaign then you will need all the advice you can get.  A good idea is to request training directly from a SEO company.  The training will provide you with the skills which are implemented by the experts.  Training often involves travelling to the offices of your SEO Company and is designed to be very hands on.

Once your training is complete you should have been provided with the knowledge of how to optimise your website, be able to build your own links and understand the purposes and given everything you need to help you to improve your search engine ranks.

Create Enough Time

SEO needs working on, a lot.  You will need to free up enough time in your working day, or dedicate several hours from outside office hours to build a successful marketing campaign.  If you have marketing staff, you might need to delegate certain aspects of SEO between your employees to relieve some of the pressure.

Think of each part of your total SEO plan, from working on your website to producing frequent written content to use in press releases, article marketing, newsletters, emails and blog posts.  Then you will need to consider who will be responsible for:

• Paid Advertising
•  Directory Listings
•  Back Linking
• Video Marketing
• Social Networking
• Social Bookmarking

Analyse Every Aspect of your SEO UK Campaign

Finally in order to closely monitor which parts of your entire SEO  Campaign are working, and which aren’t, you will have to master using analysis tools.  All aspects of SEO can be analysed so spend time getting to grips with all the webmaster tools which are available.

The three major search engines will have their own tool pages to use, and you may have separate webmaster tools. The social media sites will provide you with insights into the success of your profiles and each individual post you make.  Remember SEO is about organically finding your ranking in the SERPS; nothing will happen overnight, it takes time.

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