Top 10 Free Tools To Monitor Your Online Reputation

With the explosion of Consumer Generated Media (CGM), ongoing monitoring of your personal or professional reputation has become a must. Consumer Generated Media consists largely of social networking websites; blogs; photo, audio and video sharing sites; discussion boards; and any other website that allows users to share their experience, opinion and knowledge.

Facebook, Twitter, BlogSpot, WordPress… people update and write about anything, anywhere, anytime. In fact, they might be writing about you. You can imagine the devastating ramifications of negative word of mouth about your company or yourself. However, you can be proactive and monitor online reputations before disaster strikes. You can monitor your name, product feedback, services, company, competitors, employers, even enemies. The sky is the limit and the tools are easy to set up and free to use, so take advantage of them.

Here are ten free basic tools to monitor online reputation:

10. Yahoo! Site Explorer

Monitor the external links to your blog, corporate website or personal web page through Yahoo’s Site Explorer. This free tool allows you to check who is linking back to your site. There is a very high probability that people who post negative comments, also provide a link to their source of disappointment.

9. Google SideWiki

Google SideWiki is a very useful browser plug-in that allows any Gmail user to annotate or post comments on any website. This web annotation feature also allows the website owner to leave an owners comment on their Sidewiki. It will appear at the top of all other listings. It is very important to regularly check your SideWiki entries to prevent spam and abuse or to address negative feedback. Don’t be offended if there are some legitimate negative comments, but make sure you address them: contact the complainer, post a comment letting the person know you’ve contacted them directly, and take the conversation offline.

8. Knowem

This tool will check the availability of your personal/corporate name or username on over 400 popular social networking and bookmarking platforms. Knowem is a good way to discover if someone is posing as you or if it’s just a coincidence. Checking usernames is becoming essential also for trademark protection and to protect yourself and your business from identity theft.

7. Delicious

Delicious, the world’s premier social bookmarking service, is another handy tool. Almost everybody is bookmarking nowadays, so start discovering web bookmarks that mention your name, services, or competitors. Use the search box or the Delicious tag page to monitor your online reputation.

6. Versionista

If you have been facing online reputation problems and you want to keep an eye on a particular website, Versionista monitors any change of the web page of interest, visually showing the exact words and sentences that have been added or removed. It alerts you by sending email notifications.

5. SamePoint

SamePoint is a useful social media search and analytic platform that allows you to analyze millions of user-generated conversations and monitor online reputations. It is easily accessible, simply type your query into the search box and analyze the social tone: whether it is positive or negative. The “Social Tone” feature indicates how many negative/positive words have been found in the post. Remember to subscribe to your tracking feed.

4. SocialMention

SocialMention allows you to easily monitor and measure what people are saying about you, your organization, a new service, or any topic across the online social media landscape in real-time. According to SocialMention, “the tool monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.” You can create various alerts (similar to Google Alerts) based on your choice of search phrase.

3. Twitter

Twitter is one of the most popular and powerful social networking services. Conduct a search for your target keyword and then subscribe via RSS to get fresh search results. The TwitterSearch plug-in will help you find people by name, if you don’t know their Twitter account. It is a great plug-in. Type in “toptenz” and you will see for yourself. You can subscribe to the feed of your search query.

2. Technorati

Technorati is a leading search engine of the blogosphere. It indexes millions of blogs in real time. Technorati is probably the best tool to monitor blogger conversations. Conduct a search using the Technorati search box and if you are not happy with the returned results, try using quotation marks, for example: “toptenz“. Subscribe to the RSS feed and check it periodically.

1. Google Alerts

One of my favorite free tools is, of course, Google Alerts- a powerful content monitoring service. It’s a great way to stay informed. Google Alerts monitor both social and traditional media. You will receive email updates of the latest relevant Google results based on your search term. If your Web search query contains two or more words, use quotation marks around your phrase to tell Google Alerts exactly what to retrieve. For instance, a Google Alert for “online reputation software” works better with quotes. Here’s a great trick: use negative keywords. If your name is similar (or the same) to another organization or another person, use the search phrase “your name –characteristic of the other company/person” as an alert. Using the negative keyword, Google Alerts will exclude almost all results about the second one. Let’s say that my name is John Smith and I am a Human Resources Manager but Johnsmithsport.com is the corporate website of a Spanish designer. The search phrase “John Smith -johnsmithsport.com” will eliminate results related to his website from my alert. The Google Alerts service has several other settings to help you customize your updates.

What free online tools do you use to monitor?

source: Timeea Vinerean

Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization + video

A search engine optimization campaign can easily be divided in three fundamental stages:

1. Choose the right keywords (keyword optimization)


2. Optimize your pages for your selected keywords (web page optimization), and


3. Get quality inbound links to your pages (off-site factors).

In the next few pages, we will teach you how to follow a systematic approach to complete these three steps, using free tools available on the net.

PART I: Keyword Optimization

The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is to choose your keywords or keyphrases for each of your web pages. Keywords are the terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. The right keywords are those that:

1. clearly describe the purpose and content of your site, and,


2. allow your site to show up as close to the first results page as possible.

A good position doesn't depend only on your choice of keywords. It also depends on how well do you position those keywords in your web page, and how many quality external pages link to you. However, choosing the wrong keywords can throw off your entire search engine optimization strategy, so you need to invest a few hours and make sure you do it right.

Let's start with your homepage. Look at it carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try to form two or three word phrases, since competition for one-word keyphrases is fierce, and it is virtually impossible to get a top position for them. That is why, from now on, we will talk about keyphrases, not keywords. Once you have developed your list of potential keyphrases you are ready for the next step: to analyze the demand and supply for those keyphrases, and choose the best ones (those with good demand and not enough supply).

We will first check the demand for your selected keyphrases. For this, we will go to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Overture is a popular pay-per-click search engine. You will then type each of the keyphrases you selected, and see how many people search for those terms. This tool will show you only those searches conducted in Overture (and only in one month time). However, the relative popularity of each search term will be very similar in other search engines as well. In addition to telling you if your selected keyphrases are popular, this tool will show you other keyphrases that you may not have thought about, which may even be more relevant to your site.

For example, if your first keyphrase was "Italian Restaurant", the Search Term Suggestion Tool will also display other popular search terms, like: "Gourmet Italian Restaurant", "Northern Italian Restaurant", "Italian Restaurant Pizzeria", "Italian Restaurant Miami", etc. You may also try other keyphrases, for example: "Italian Cuisine", and come up with more specific keyphrases, like: "Fine Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Miami", "Northern Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Fine Dining", "Gourmet Italian Cuisine", etc.

What you have done is to validate and enlarge your pool of popular, in-demand, potential keyphrases for your web page. The next step is to check the supply, or, in other words, to see how much competition there is for your selected keywords. Naturally, you want to focus on keyphrases where competition is less fierce. For example, choosing "Italian Restaurant" alone will certainly hurt you. There are so many of them that your chances of showing up in an advantageous position within the search results are pretty slim.

Having said that, get your list of keyphrases, go to Google ( http://www.google.com ) and type-in each of them in the search box. Enter your keyphrases within quotation marks (to filter-out less relevant results), and see how many results each individual query produces, making a note of those with a relatively small number of results (less competition). You will stick with the keyphrase that:

1. Best describes the topic and content of your page


2. Is a popular search term according to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool.


3. Generates a relatively small number of results after performing the Google search.

If "Gourmet Italian Restaurant" is the keyphrase that best meets these three criteria, it will become your primary keyphrase. To get even better results, you can choose a second keyphrase to make your page more relevant to an even more specific niche. For example, if your restaurant is in Miami, you can consider "Miami" a second keyphrase. Once you have chosen the keyphrases for you homepage, do the same for the other pages on your site.

After this, you will take your selected keyphrases and optimize your pages heavily for them. This involves placing them in strategic locations in the title, headings and body of each page, as we will see in Part II: Web Page Optimization.

PART II: Web Page Optimization

Once you have chosen your keyphrases, the next stage is to optimize your page for those keyphrases. You do that by positioning your keywords in strategic locations within your page. What follows is a checklist of tips and steps you must follow to optimize your page:

• Keyphrases in the web page title:
  
  
  
  • Create a descriptive title for your page: Your web page title is very important because it is what the search engines display as link text as the result of a search. The title must include your main keyphrases, while at the same time it must describe your business very well and should entice readers to click on it.
  
  
  • Unless your business is big and well known (like Microsoft or Coca Cola) don't start your page title with the name of your company. Start your title with the words search engine users will most likely use (your keyphrases)
  
  
  • Put your main keyphrase at the beginning of your page title (keyphrase prominence) and keep your keyphrase together (keyword proximity).
  
  
  • Put your second keyphrase somewhere else in the title.
  
  
  • Make the title short (8 words or less).


• Keyphrases in your Keyword Meta Tag: Search engines rarely use the Keyword Meta Tag any more (Google completely ignores it). However, place a list of your main and secondary keywords in the Keyword Meta Tag of your page, just in case search engines decide to use them again in the future.


• Keyphrases in your Description Meta Tag: The Description Meta Tag is still important, since some search engines use them to elaborate on the results link. Remember to:
  
  
  
  • Include your keyphrases (main and secondary) in your Description Meta Tag.
  
  
  • Make your description 'descriptive', concise and professional. Avoid using hype.
  
  
  • Make it short (25 words or less).
  
  
  • Don't make your description sound just like a collection of keywords.
  
  
  • Keep your keyphrases together.
  
  


• Keywords in the body of your page: It is important to use your keywords heavily on your page, since this will help the search engine determine the topic of your page. Follow these tips as much as possible, since they will help search engines determine your page's relevance to your chosen keyphrases:
  
  
  
  • Use your keyphrases several times, and place them as close to the top of the page as possible.
  
  
  • Place your keyphrases between Header Tags (H1, H2 or H3) in the first two paragraphs of your page.
  
  
  • Place your keyphrases in bold type phase at least once.
  
  
  • Repeat your keyphrases often to increase your keyphrase density. Repeating your keyphrases between 5 to 10 times for every 100 words in your page is considered effective.
  
  
  • Since you have to repeat your keyphrases often, you must be especially careful not to make your text sound awkward. Your visitors should be able to read your page fluently and effortlessly. Remember that ultimately it is your readers who will decide if your page is worth the time they spend on it. A pleasant experience will make them more likely to come back.
  
  

A good resource on how to write search engine friendly copy without losing readability is this special SEO writing report by Jill Whalen.

• Other Web Page Design Considerations:
  
  
  
  • You must make your page easy to navigate by the search engines. Search engines heavily favor text over graphics, and HTML over other editing formats.
  
  
  • Use text heavily, especially in your navigation bar. Avoid placing text in graphic format since the search engines won't be able to read it.
  
  
  • Avoid frames. Search engines have trouble following them, and they may index only the framed content page and not the navigation frame.
  
  
  • Avoid Flash and JavaScript: search engines don't follow either one. If you use flash, make an HTML version of your site available to your readers and the search engines. If you use a JavaScript navigation menu, include an alternate text menu at the bottom of the page, so it can be followed by the search engines.
  
  
  • Create a Site Map that includes all the pages in your site, and place a Site Map link close to the top of the homepage. When the search engine follows the site map link, it will find and index all the pages in your site!
  
  
  • If you use a left navigation bar, the search engine will read it before the body of your page. Make sure you include your most important keywords there, too.
  
  
  • Make sure that all your internal pages link to your homepage.
  
  
  • Don't try to describe all your products or services in one page. It will confuse the search engine and dilute your page's relevance to your selected keyphrase. Instead, create different very focused pages, each with its own content and keyphrases, and optimize them too.
  
  

This is pretty much all you have to do to make sure that your page is optimized for your chosen keywords. The next and final step to increase your site's ranking is to get as many links to your site as possible, from quality sites that have a topic related to yours. This is what we will see in Part III: Off-Site Factors.

Part III: Off Page Factors

Once you have selected your keyphrases and optimized your pages for them, the last step is to make sure that you get linked from the best directories, and from lots of quality sites with a topic related to your site's. The best search engines, and in particular Google (who alone can deliver 80% of the search engine traffic to your site) "crawl" the web looking for links to your site. They interpret a link to your page as a vote, and the more links (votes) you have coming from quality sites the higher your page rank will be, and the higher the possibility that your page will achieve a good position in the search results pages. It's that simple. Following these four steps is the best way to get the quality links you need:

1. Get listed in DMOZ: The Open Directory Project ( http://www.dmoz.org ) is the world's largest directory. It is maintained by voluntary editors who review your site prior to inclusion. Being listed in this directory is important because it is used by Google and America Online to build their directories. Getting listed is free, but it may take a few weeks or even months to get listed, which can be a bit frustrating. However, there is a strong believe among search engine optimization experts that an Open Directory Project listing can significantly increase your page rank in Google, so you must take the time to submit your site and do it right (list your site in the right category and strictly follow their submission guidelines). For how to get listed in the Open Directory Project go to: http://www.dmoz.org/add.html .


2. Get listed in Yahoo!: Submissions to Yahoo! are no longer free for commercial sites (your site can be reviewed in about a week for a fee of $299 although inclusion in the directory is not guaranteed. However, if you do get accepted, the $299 fee will be due every year if you want your site to continue to be listed). A link from Yahoo�s directory is still one of the best links you can get, and it is worth the money you spend getting listed. For tips on getting listed in Yahoo! go to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/ .


3. Submit articles: There are many sites where you can publish articles in your field of expertise. This is a great way to establish yourself as an expert and to drive quality traffic to your site. The key is to include your resource box at the end of your article. A resource box is a small paragraph with a brief description of you and your business, where you include a link to your site. This way, every time somebody picks up your article and publishes it in their website or newsletter, your link will be there for readers and search engines to see and follow. For tips of getting traffic by writing articles you can visit: http://www.theinternetdigest.net/archive/write.html .


4. Exchange links with reputable sites: You must try to find quality sites that are compatible to your site's topic (not direct competitors), and ask the webmaster for a link exchange. This will give you highly targeted traffic and will improve your score with the search engines. For tips on a good link exchange campaign, visit: http://www.theinternetdigest.net/archive/inboundlinks.html . If you liked this article and feel inclined to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you may want to check out Aaron Wall's SEOBook.

source: TID

How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business!

Can Twitter actually help my business or is it a complete waste of my valuable time?
This was the very question I asked myself only a few months back.

Perhaps you’ve pondered the same?

When people I respect started singing the praises of Twitter, I decided to give it a go. At first I just didn’t get it. However, after a short while I was shocked at the level of access to high profile individuals I was able to achieve.

This article reveals how bestselling authors and business professionals use Twitter to grow their businesses and reveals ideas you can employ to achieve Twitter success.

In fact, I used Twitter (and LinkedIn) to source much of what you see here!

What is Twitter?

“Twitter is instant messaging made available to the public,” stated talk show host and author Hugh Hewitt.

I think that’s a fair starting point. I’ve heard others call Twitter a micro-blogging platform.

Here’s what you need to know. According to the State of the Twittersphere report, each day 5 to 10 thousand new people join Twitter. Current estimates of total users top out around 5 million. That’s a lot of opportunity.

Twitter allows you to post updates (called Tweets) as often as you want (and limited to 140 characters). When you follow other people on Twitter, you see their tweets. When they follow you, they see your tweets.

It’s a constant stream of communication. The good news is you can turn it on or off as often as you like. Twitter also keeps a public record of all updates, which can be mined with Twitter Search.

Why High-Profile People Use Twitter

Twitter is not just a fad. When very high profile folks begin evangelizing Twitter, it’s worth closer examination. Here’s what some of those gurus told me:

Duct Tape Marketing founder John Jantsch identified 3 BIG advantages of Twitter
(1) I get great insight when I ask questions,
(2) let’s face it, I get traffic, and
(3) people on Twitter spread my thoughts to new places.”

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com said, “We’ve found that Twitter has been a great way for us to connect on a more personal level with our employees and customers. We use it to help build our brand, not drive direct sales. It’d be like asking how does providing a telephone number for customer service translate into new business when they are mostly non-sales-related calls. In the long term, Twitter helps drive repeat customers and word of mouth, but we’re not looking to it as a way of driving immediate sales.”

Bestselling author David Meerman Scott said, “I have personally connected with hundreds of people I otherwise wouldn’t have, and I booked an interview on NPR and a big daily newspaper using Twitter.”

Copyblogger’s own Brian Clark said, “Twitter Search is an amazing way to see what people are saying about your products or services. For example, I’ll do searches for Thesis Theme and people will be asking questions about our WordPress Theme. I’ll use the reply function to answer the question, which has led to direct sales. Plus, my answer creates awareness of Thesis for others that follow me. It’s a form of constructive promotion.”

Be sure to check out this Business Week article that surveyed 18 CEOs and how they’re using Twitter to help their businesses.

Practical Ways Twitter Can Help Your Business

This is where it gets interesting. A lot of people are doing some very innovate things with Twitter. Here’s some of their stories.

The Twitter Plan

Cindy King, an international sales specialist, saw a huge boost in business inquires by implementing a strategic Twitter plan.

“Following the right people on Twitter was key. There are some people very gifted at building relationships on Twitter. As I followed these online community builders, I realized that some of them are also excellent direct response copywriters. They get their Twitter followers to take action,” said King.

“Light bulbs went off, and I spent a weekend putting together a tweet marketing plan and entered in 6 weeks worth of tweets, 5 a day, using TweetLater. I used a mindmap, created categories, varied times on tweets and used BUDurls so I could track results and improve my tweet plan the next time around. That was a month ago,” explained King.

When King finds a spare minute between projects, she logs into Twitter and watches what folks are talking about. When she Tweets, about 90 percent of the time she presents useful information and resources to her followers. The remaining tweets are surveys and questions. Following this strategy, King saw an 800 percent increase in inquiries about her business after she setup her Twitter campaign.

Getting In Front of High Profile People

B2B copywriter Terri Rylander took a much different approach. At first she was very skeptical of Twitter. “I looked at it but couldn’t figure out why people would continually send out messages about the size of a text message, unless they were a teenager. Twitter was for sending updates they said. I don’t have time for updates, and besides, who would care?” said Rylander.

She later came across a peer in her industry that was using Twitter and suggested Rylander follow her on Twitter. “That’s when I discovered Twitter as a business tool. I’ve been in my particular niche for over 10 years and know who the players are (though they don’t know me). When I checked who she was following on Twitter, there they all were! It read like a “Who’s Who” list.”

Rylander joined Twitter and began following and interacting with the people she respected. “Other than a cold call on the phone or e-mail, I would never have the chance to get my name in front of vendors, industry analysts, and industry experts. I’ve had a number of Twitter conversations that have also led to personal conversations.”

To stay top of mind with experts, she offers interesting links, responds to tweets, and posts her thoughts for conversation at least a few times a day.

Getting Traffic & Leads

Pam O’Neil, VP of Marketing at BreakingPoint said, “Twitter has all but replaced our PR agency as a large percentage of our followers are press and analysts. A writer for ZDNet wrote about us and linked to us based on something we tweeted and that resulted in a huge spike in web traffic and at least one deal with a major service provider.”

Mike Damphousse of Green Leads said, “Twitter is new to us. That said, in a few short weeks we’ve had definite increase in all sorts of traffic. Out of the normal inbound leads, the number has increased 15% and two of the inbounds are now active pipeline opportunities. We’ve found one extremely valuable partner relationship. We are also building PR relationships, although finding the contacts is a bit of a chore.”

Are you beginning to see the potential here?

A Few Tools to Help Your Twitter Experience

Twitter has a whole world of available support applications you can employ to gain the most of the service for your business. Here’s a few of my favorites:

TwitterFox: This Firefox web browser plugin allows you to view Tweets within your web browser (in a popup menu). This is very handy and eliminates the need to constantly go to Twitter.com.

TweetLater: This powerful service allows you to schedule tweets (much like you would schedule emails). Another very powerful feature is the ability to receive email digests of keyword activity in the Tweetosphere. This allows you to join a conversation or track topics and trends.

Ping.fm: If you have accounts with many services, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, this amazing site allows you to post updates across ALL of your social media sites in one single step.

Twitter for Facebook: If you are on Facebook, this application forwards your Twitter updates directly to Facebook as status updates.

And just in case you get addicted to Twitter, here’s some advice from one of the leading authorities on Twitter. Chris Brogan says, “Most people who see Twitter the first time either flat-out ‘get it,’ or they say, ‘why bother?’ Here’s what people miss. They believe one should read every single update that rolls across your screen of choice. Don’t. Just let it roll past like a stream.”

So what are you waiting for? Go check out Twitter and report back here with your experience.
Has Twitter already helped your business? If so, tell us your story.

source: Michael Stelzner

CLICK my logo to experience great inexpensive solutions to GREAT BRANDING!