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9 Common Title Tag Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

A website’s title tags are very important for several reasons: 1) The title tag shows up in search results as the blue link, and a good one helps the site get more clicks and visitors from search results. 2) Title tags are a crucial SEO element that can help the website show up higher when people search for the words in it. 3) Title tags show up when web pages are shared on social media sites like Facebook. This is important because social media mentions are now a ranking factor in Google search results. So if you have the time to optimize one thing on your website, title tags are it. Here are some of the top mistakes and missed opportunities I’ve seen in title tags. Avoid these and you’ll be ahead of the game. You’ll rank higher in search results and entice more people to click on your site. 9 Signs of a Bad Title Tag: 1.

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9 Common Title Tag Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

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Local Advertising: Devising an Online Strategy That Suits You

Experts squawk about Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, YouTube, designing websites, and a whole litany of online and social media possibilities, but not all of them make sense for every single business. When it comes to local advertising, small business owners must seriously consider how to concentrate their efforts. While we all must utilize the internet and social media to some extent, what will be most effective for one owner, may be a waste of time for another. By reflecting on some key issues, devising a successful local advertising strategy becomes less about what everyone else says and more about what you truly want and need. Before you embark upon any online advertising initiatives, you must decide whether you are going to do it yourself, delegate someone in house, or out source it. All of these are perfectly valid options, but you need to consider whether you have the technical expertise, time, and money to support your decision, whatever it happens to be. Initially, it may be difficult for you to gauge your resources and exactly what this undertaking will require

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Local Advertising: Devising an Online Strategy That Suits You

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Seven Tips for Better Business Writing – A SPN Exclusive Article

In the fast-moving environment we live in these days, those who jump to the top have fantastic communication skills, and that means superior business writing than the competition. You’ve heard the saying, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” Well, in business, you’d better be able to flourish a pen or else you might just fall on your sword. In the Information Age in which we reside, it’s a foregone conclusion that your capacity to communicate is one of the most vital skills you can master. In business, you’ve got to communicate with prospects, employees, suppliers, attorneys, consultants, maybe even legislators. In many cases you can express yourself orally and do just fine; however, you are dead in the water in business if you can’t get your point across in writing. So why is business writing so necessary? Come on, you didn’t know

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Seven Tips for Better Business Writing – A SPN Exclusive Article

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Google’s New Page Layout Algorithm Penalizes “Above-The-Fold” Advertising – A SPN Exclusive Article

On Wednesday, February 23, 2011, a category 5 hurricane named “Panda” swept through the Gulf of Google devastating businesses large and small alike. The hurricane was reportedly named after one of Google’s engineers. So what was the reason for this catastrophic and “game-changing” update? Well, according to Google: “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites – sites which are low-value, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites – sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. It is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.” (Source: Google Blog ) Mission accomplished. Anyway, in the aftermath of the Panda update, there are 11 important SEO facts I’ve learned based on my own personal experiences, the experiences of my clients, and from listening to top SEO professionals across the Internet. The above passages are from an article I wrote last July titled, Google Panda Update: 11 Important SEO Facts You Should Know . In item #7 of the 11 SEO facts I wrote: 7.

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Google’s New Page Layout Algorithm Penalizes “Above-The-Fold” Advertising – A SPN Exclusive Article

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Beef Up Your Internet Marketing and Your Body At The Same Time!

In today’s health-conscious society, everyone has spent at least a couple minutes of their life thinking about (or purposely ignoring) their diet. Is this meal healthy? How many calories are in this? Does this bacon-wrapped butterball make my butt look fat? The theory and principles behind improving your health and getting better results can also be attributed to what you do or do not contribute to the health and welfare of your website’s SEO.

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Beef Up Your Internet Marketing and Your Body At The Same Time!

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Creative Ways to Use QR Codes for Your Small Business

What are QR codes? Glad you asked. Quick response codes, or QR codes, are quite similar to barcodes in that they can be printed on virtually any surface. They originated in Japan and were seen on the sides of buildings, in brochures and even on public transport. The little codes became so popular that other countries wanted to cash in on their popularity. Why use a QR code at all? Many times consumers may want to know more about an advertisement, but they don’t have pen or paper while putting information on your phone can be time consuming and a hassle. So QR codes truly are the perfect solution. To put it mildly, QR codes are quickly becoming local internet marketing’s best assets

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Creative Ways to Use QR Codes for Your Small Business

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How to Position Yourself: 6 Easy Steps – A SPN Exclusive Article

Small business is pretty competitive these days, whether you’re a professional speaker, a lawyer or a software provider. What are you doing to get noticed by meeting planners, industry leaders, and your clients? Making loads of cold calls and strewing Faxes all over the world? Buying email lists to total strangers? Come on! The secret word is positioning. I consult 90% of the time and only speak 10% of the time for my daily bread, so I have zero time to cold call and plead with meeting planners or worse, total strangers from a call sheet. I position myself as a subject-matter expert through write-ups and blog posts that I write to create business opportunities coming at me, and so can you. Adhere to this 6-Step Process to professional positioning with words: Have Sustenance This one is obvious. It’s rather easy for professional speakers, you’d think, but you’d be shocked how they and business leaders at large cannot really explain what that is.

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How to Position Yourself: 6 Easy Steps – A SPN Exclusive Article

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Are SOPA/PIPA Dead?… A Shocking Turn of Events – A SPN Exclusive Article

Last November I wrote an article titled The Advent of Internet Censorship in America . To recap: “The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R.3261, was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith [R-TX] and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The aim of the bill is to help U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders fight online transmission of restricted intellectual property.” (Source: Wikipedia) Opponents of the bill says it goes too far and threatens to shut down or censor legitimate websites that might inadvertently link to or display such content. Anyway, when I wrote that article back in November, the bill was sitting in the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet. It had yet to be introduced to the floor for a vote.

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Are SOPA/PIPA Dead?… A Shocking Turn of Events – A SPN Exclusive Article

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Build An Unstoppable Online Business

There is one single truth to understand if you want to succeed in your business. “Success is built with others!” If there is one thing I realized from day one, it was this: “I could not do it alone”. Why? Because I didn’t know everything (and I still don’t), because I didn’t want to waste money learning everything to start with then only getting results a couple of years later, because I wanted to identify an easier path for me. We all need help at different levels, but you must be strategic about it otherwise you may very well lose yourself, your time and all your money getting help where you don’t really need it at a particular time. And it all boils down to 3 questions: 1. What do you want with regards to your business?

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Build An Unstoppable Online Business

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Google+ phases out incoming stream

Google is set to axe its ‘incoming stream’ from Google+, in an effort to keep things simple for users. Engineering Manager Dave Besbris quietly announced the changes in a Google+ post , stating: “The ‘incoming’ stream was a part of Google+ from the very start and it served an important purpose at the time to help discover others on Google+. “Since then however we’ve added a suggested user list, What’s Hot, the ability to share circles and in-product search with saved searches.” Through the incoming stream, users could see posts and activity of others who followed them but whom they didn’t follow themselves – however, critics argued the feature was too confusing. The move away from its ‘incoming stream’ comes in direct response to user frustration, and tweaks to Google+ have incorporated some of the features of the incoming stream to other aspects of the social networking site. “We’ve also greatly improved our friend suggestion algorhithms. these changes all serve the same purpose that incoming originally did: connecting people,” Besbris said. “Based on your feedback and our user research, we learned that the “incoming” stream was a very confusing part of Google+. Not surprisingly, this feedback was reflected in very low usage of the “Incoming” stream compared to the rest of Google+, so we decided to remove it and simplify things.” The young social network has been constantly refining its services to make them more user-friendly since its initial launch – tweaking existing features and introducing new ones. And, with Google’s latest Search plus Your World updates , activity on Google+ is now even more visible in search results – a move that will likely encourage users to engage with the social network even more.

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Google+ phases out incoming stream

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