HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Search engines and search directories are not the only tools you can use to bring visitors
to your Web site. The next section takes a look at some other options.
Reach out to your current and potential Web site visitors with
Social Media Optimization
(SMO), which is described by Rohit Bhargava as optimizing a Web site so that it is
“more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search
engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs,
podcasts and vlogs.” Benefits of SMO include increased awareness of your brand and/or
site along with an increase in the number of inbound links (which can help with SEO).
This section introduces a variety of methods to implement SMO.
A key principle of SMO is making tagging and bookmarking easy.
Social bookmarking
sites such as Digg (
http://digg.com)
and del.icio.us (
http://del.icio.us)
provide a way for
people to store, share, and categorize Web sites. Make it easy for your visitors to add
your site to social bookmarking services by adding quick buttons or links such as the
Digg badges offered at
http://digg.com/tools.
Chapter 1 introduced
blogs,
which are easily updatable and readily available journals
on the Web. The power of the blog to share information and elicit comments is being
used by businesses of various types (ranging from Nike to Adobe) to build and expand
customer relationships. Most blog hosting sites, such as
http://blogspot.com
and
http://wordpress.com,
offer free RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary)
feeds of blog content. The
RSS feed
for a blog is an XML file (with an .rss file exten-
sion) that contains a summary of postings with links to a blog or another Web site.
Your customers or business partners can subscribe to the RSS feed and be automatically
updated when you've posted new content. RSS feeds are usually identified by an orange
button with “XML” or “RSS” in the text. The Firefox browser has a feature called Live
Bookmarks, which displays RSS news and blog headlines. There are numerous free and
low-cost RSS readers available, including Headline Viewer (
http://www.headlineviewer.com
)
and NetNewsWire (
http://ranchero.com/netnewswire).
To see a blog in action, visit the
textbook's blog at
http://webdevfoundations.blogspot.com
.
Join groups on social networking sites such as Facebook (
http://facebook.com)
,
MySpace (
http://myspace.com),
or LinkedIn (
http://linkedin.com
) to find and connect
with current and potential visitors. Create portable content that promotes your Web site
and publish it on YouTube (
http://youtube.com),
Slideshare (
http://slideshare.net)
and
other similar sites. Be active on microblogging sites such as Twitter (
http://twitter.com).
As mentioned in Chapter 1,
BusinessWeek
reported that Dell's use of Twitter resulted in
$500,000 of new orders within a 12-month period. Blog and tweet about your content.
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