The reason behind tracking these stats is to improve my site accordingly.

So, here is the visitors stats by region for vinod.pro

(Click to enlarge)

The top 8 regions are;

• USA
• China
• Russian Federation
• UK
• India
• Germany
• Spain
• France

Note: This is purely to understand from which region I get more traffic so I can improve my website accordingly. I do not store visitors IP address.

Despite the conventional marketing methods, businesses benefit more from the cost effective online marketing methods. Apart from various online marketing strategies, social media marketing plays a vital role in benefiting your business provided used in a proper way!

Many business owner are still not aware of the benefits of a social media marketing which is why I often posed with questions from clients, the common questions being

I often come across different type of questions from clients, the common questions I get to answer are;

Before knowing the benefits of social media marketing for business, lets see some statistical data of social media sites.

Facebook

According to recent Facebook press announcement, Facebook statistics are;

• More than 500 million active users
• 50% of these active users log on to Facebook every day, so roughly that equates to 250 million users
• An average user has 130 friends

 The highest number of Facebook users (country-wise) are nicely visualized in the below chart.

Twitter

The following are the estimated Twitter stats based on comscore.

• More than 80 million global users
• Generating more than 60 million tweets a day.

The highest percent of Twitter users (country-wise) are nicely visualized in the below pie-chart.

Blogs

Blogs are the best way to keep your target audience updated on your products, services or even about your business as a whole.

Advantages of Social Media Marketing

The above statistics shows how many millions of users use these sites and how potential are these networks for a business to grow. These social media sites can help your business in

• Increasing the exposure
• Branding
• Knowing your target audience (Start-a-dialog, Interact & Engage)
• Increase the Relevant traffic, leads/sales
• Increase ROI (cost effect marketing)
• Building community around business

Understanding the importance of social media does not get your business the benefits. You need to learn the right way of promoting through social media marketing.

Learn

First things first, you need to learn which social media site to begin your marketing. You do not want to hit the tough road right at the start of your marketing.

Do a your research;

• Based on demographics of the social media sites, you can identify the consumer group and know if a particular site has your target consumer group.
• Know from your existing customers, you can get such information using feedback forms (add this in your regular feedback form along with email id).
• Online surveys can help you gather this information.

The better you understand your target group, the better you have the chance and ability to serve them.For instance, your research tells that majority of your target audience use Facebook and only few others use twitter & 80% of the local people visit local news/entertainment blog.

With such information you can decide from where to start your social media marketing, ie. from Facebook in this instance.

Reach & Focus

Create your company/business profile(s) in the selected social site(s). Let your regular customers know that you have your business profile on these social network site. Invite your existing customers for friends. Target only those whom you believe are your target audience. Reaching the right audience is key here.

Have your focus on your goals and do not make your business profile a personal profile. You should interact with your network friends/fans/followers but should maintain your focus on your goals. Business should staff those who believe in social media and who does not loose their business focus.

Communication & Consistency

Make sure your objective is making more and more sales. Do not sound like a robot or a sales pitch, start a dialog, reply to your network friends/fans & engage. Make sure you maintain the consistency in updating your profile, either it's Facebook, Twitter or your company blog. Consistent transfer of information is very important to keep your social network fans/friends interested and entertained. This does not mean you just send automated updates or sound like a robot.

Attract

Attract your network friends/fans by

• Replying or commenting on their updates
• Giveaways/Discounts
• Special Coupons
• Sharing interesting news
• Be creative and not just copy others

Build

Build community but not with increasing just the friends/fans in numbers. Successful social media marketing depends on how effective the response is from your network friends/fans and how influential you are in the network.

Try to be responsive and responsible as a business, you should be ready to handle any customer's negative feedback. If a genuine case, you address it and get it sorted. Ignoring social media marketing just because you are worried about negative feedback is just like a "bad business wanting good feedback". Businesses can be successful if you aim at customer satisfaction.

Opportunity

Be realistic! if your company has a negative image offline, then you cannot expect an over night image change for just being on social media/networks. If you want to be benefited from your social media marketing, then you should be ready to serve those negative feedback customers and turn them to positive, this is an opportunity to your business – utilize it.

Manage & Promote

Managing your social media profile is very important. Delayed response to a query does not really give a good impact. Always protect your profile from spam. There are tools that can help you in managing these tasks. Last but not the least, promote your business profile on regular basis to gain target audience and build your community.

Especially when it comes to generating on-line sales, SEO & other online promotion plays a very important role in gaining relevant user & brand exposure. More than 90% of consumers use search engines as a tool to find products & services. If an on-line business/website does not receive the potential (relevant) visitor, then it will be very tough to make a lead/sale.

So, it is very important for you to optimise your website for right keyword phrases so that you get relevant traffic to your website via organic search results. To identify the right keyword phrases first you need to understand your business well and identify your target market or potential customer(s). To determine the target market and the potential customers, you have to do thorough research and this includes keyword research too. If you choose wrong keyword(s) then your website will not receive good results. Choosing right keyword(s) is very important for both organic search results and paid advertising.

I come across many businesses who stuck with their on-line promotion as they will be struggling in achieving their sales targets, this is mainly because either they end up in selecting too generic keywords for their SEO or they have selected a totally wrong keyword phrase(s) for their website optimisation. For instance, if your business falls in to high competition sector/market and you choose too generic keywords then you will end up in high competition where you may see very low conversion or sometimes no conversion/leads at all. There are different methods to identify the right keyword(s) for your websites. So it is very important to understand the basics.

Basics

You can use this simple method to identify the relevant keywords for your business website;

First list what you are selling and where. Then, make a generic list of key phrases that a searcher use to find products or services similar to what you are selling.. Shortlist the key phrases in combination to the target market/audience.

For Example:

1. You selling Apples, so the list of generic keywords around your product will be;

• Apples
• Fresh Apples
• Wholesale Apples

2. You sell in specific geo-locations, so you now have identified your target market is Birmingham & Derby.

3. Further creat a list of key phrases in combination to your target market/consumers.

like;

• Apples in Birmingham
• Fresh Apples in Derby
• Wholes Apples in Birmingham
• Apples in Derby & etc

The above method helps you to understand and come up with the possible (first phase) of keyword phrases for your website..

Now you should find out how many times each of the keyword phrase (from your shortlisted keywords) are actually searched every month. There are different on-line tools that helps you know how many times a particular keyword phrase is being searched every month.

Once you know the monthly search volumes for your shortlisted keyword phrases you will be able to determine which keyword to actually use for optimising your site and target your off-page optimisation.

How soon I can see the results from SEO?

This entirely depends on your website, it’s content & how competitive keyword you have choosen and your optimisation skills (both on-page & off-page). In general you should not be expecting anything with-in the first month of SEO

How high competition is actually high?

When considering keyword phrase competition, always remember about;

• Your website status (content, how old, how many pages, does it have authority in it’s niche & other factors)
• Your experience levels
• Your website theme/niche

When you workout the above three aspects you will be in a position to determine how high competition is actually high for you

Hope this helps you in understanding the basics in choosing the right keyword phrases

Before you download the PR sites list, always remember that you do a press release only when you have something news worthy otherwise you can try articles submission instead.

Check your PR whether;

• It’s News worthy to say
• It’s not an Advertisement, so get it done by a professional
• Follow the PR guidelines on the PR distribution sites, in general the basic guidelines will be common but it’s worth checking them in all sites as some has unique requirements.

Note: I will keep updating the Press Release distribution sites list file regularly, so keep watching this space at regular intervals for updated list of pr sites.

If you find any press release site of poor quality (spam & etc) or a site that is no longer live, please post here and I will update the same on the actual file.

I have attached the .txt file with this post and you can dowload it from the attached file section below.

Here are the results…

• A is for Argos.co.uk
• B is for Bbc.co.uk
• C is for Currys.co.uk
• D is for Debenhams.com
• E is for Ebay.co.uk
• F is for Facebook.com
• G is for Maps.google.co.uk
• H is for Live.com
• I is for Itv.com
• J is for JohnLewis.com
• K is for Klm.com
• L is for National-lottery.co.uk
• M is for uk.msn.com
• N is for Next.co.uk
• O is for o2.co.uk
• P is for Paypal.co.uk
• Q is for Qvcuk.com
• R is for Rightmove.co.uk
• S is for Sky.com
• T is for Tesco.com
• U is for Youtube.com
• V is for www.virgin-atlantic.com
• W is for news.bbc.co.uk/weather
• X is for Xbox.com
• Y is for Youtube.com
• Z is for Zara.com

The interesting part is the letter “u” showing youtube.com in Top spot and sub-domains & sub-folders are given equal importance as long as they are relevant and satisfy the Google search algo.

The below screenshot gives you overall visitors to the site (ofcourse by region) in 2009.

(Click to enlarge)

The top 7 visiting countries are;

• USA
• UK
• Russian Federation
• China
• Germany
• Spain
• France

• Selling links
• Poor Quality resources
• Not being updated regularly & etc.

Today I thought to check some of the popular directories to see how well organised and what level of quality resources they have. As I started browsing one of the directory I felt like it would be more interesting to see a particular niche rather than random directories. So I started with Topseos.com

The website has

• Google PageRank 5
• When googl’ed you will be prompted with useful links (Some of the SEO treat such websites as authority websites in that particular niche)

• Good number of back-links
• Well placed in Google for different relevant search terms.

Well that was a small intro about the topseos.com in Google. As I browse the Best SEO section, I saw some of the corporate SEO companies listed and were ranked by topseos.com

Well thats a good sign. But as I browsed the directory further I discovered some of the companies don’t even exist now and the listings do not have their office details either. I doubt how come topseos.com didnt care to maintain the overall quality of the directory rather than just ranking (hyping) those companies which are already successful and top corporate companies in the industry?

For instance, there is a listing for the website “Just web traffic” which does not even exist now and theres no contact information either. How come topseos.com management has thought that this kind of listings would help their end users who are looking to hire an SEO consultant?

Is it because topseos.com dont care about the listings that are listed under “basic membership”?

Is topseos.com rankings really a buying guide or just built to provide the corporate companies an additional benefit?

I am sure that topseos.com management must be proud for having some of the gaint companies as directory memebers & who has listed their companies in here. But how come they don’t even bothered about the rest of the listings?

I wonder why Google ignore this topseos.com directory even when it has too much of crap/spam listing(s).

Lastly I pity on those corporate companies who are paying to get listed in this kind of directories where there is no space for quality. I suspect how one would like to see their website within a bunch of spam listings.

Its time for Topseos.com to maintain overall quality rather than just ranking those who are already on top in the industry.

Wish you all get plenty of quality references to your site

Fingers crossed

Most of these scripts cost from $30 – $1000.

People who uses the stollen/nullified scripts normally dream to earn $ – $$$$. If you want to earn online then be legal. Because you cannot establish a soaring website using stolen/nullified scripts at least for a long run.

The below are few reason (not limited) why you should not use nullified scripts.

a. People cannot trust your website.

b. Most of these nullified scripts have virus or vulnerable loops which will allow hackers to use your website as their base for phishing activities and similar things.

c. You will not have professional support/updates for the scripts, may be even if you get from warez forums you need to rely on others to share them with you.

d. I am not going to say “If you cannot afford to buy a script then you do not dream to earn”, But I do say “If you cannot afford to buy a script at given price, then do start with what you can afford”. You will always have a choice to earn online using open source scripts. May be you won’t start something similar to the script which you dream to use, but you do earn money which can be used in near future to buy your dream script.

Why you should buy a script?

a. Simple, because you like it and want to use it

b. You will have script provider support for upgrades and can use the providers community

c. You can market your website without your head down.

d. You will have peace of mind.

e. With regular script upgrades, your website will stay more secured and your visitors will build trust in your service.

So next time when you plan to launch a website based on a particular theme, then do your research by considering these below factors in addition to your own set of factors.

1. Are there any open source CMS which can be used to launch the website and provide the services/products?

2. Are there any commercial script which has all the features that match your ideas and enables you to launch your website?

3. Compare both the available open source and commerical scripts

- Cost, Features, Stability, Provider, in comparision to your own objectives.

4. Choose the option which is most reasonable and will help you in acheiving your goals and objectives in long run.