Why Do You Need a Facebook Fan Page? You may ask, “Why do I even need a Facebook fan page?” Here’s why: Right now Facebook has an Alexa ranking of 2. They are the 2nd most trafficked website next only to Google!

This means your Facebook page will get indexed faster on Google and other search engines, so if you don’t have a fan page, be sure to create one and promote it.

Here are 5 Killer ways to grow your Facebook fans:

#1: Invite People From Your Facebook Friends List

Do you have your personal friends and professional colleagues segmented into lists on your Facebook home page?

I have a number of lists in my personal Facebook account.

You can invite these lists as groups to your Facebook fan page rather of sending individual invites. This is the easiest and fastest way to jump-start your fan base.

When you click “Suggest to Friends” on your fan page, start typing in the name of your friends list in the filtered friends section; for example, “Social Media Experts.” This will automatically send an invitation to your facebook fan page to all of your colleagues listed in that category.

It’s possible that it may take a while before you start seeing those known faces pop up in your fan page because people are busy. There have been a few occasions where I’ve softly nudged them with an individual invite, but I keep that to a minimum.

As you add more people to your network, remember to go back to your same lists and send the invite to the new people you have added. The names of those who have already been invited will be “grayed out” and the invite will only be sent to your new contacts.

#2: Find People With Facebook Search

The updated Facebook Search feature (see the Search bar at the top of Facebook) gives you a view into conversations of your friends and status updates that may even show you who may be looking for the services you offer.

There is even an option to search “Posts by Everyone,” which gives you a glimpse into conversations of people who may not even be connected to you. After entering a search term, there will be a display, “Posts By Everyone.” This allows you to view conversations from others who aren’t in your friend lists.

Here is a screenshot when I entered “buying a home” in the Search field:

As you can see, there is a person saying “I think we are buying a house tomorrow.” If this person is already in your contacts list, the following is a very easy conversation starter: “Hi ______, I saw your Facebook comment about your plans to buy a house tomorrow. Do you need any help with school information in that particular area?”

There is another person stating that they plan to stay in their house for a long time. This can be a potential candidate for a loan refinance. Again, if this person is already a friend on Facebook, it would be very easy to start a conversation without sounding like an annoying salesperson.

#3: Attract People With Facebook Social Ads

Social Ads provide advertisements alongside your Facebook sidebar which show related actions your friends have taken on the site. These actions may be things like “Leah is now a fan of The Offspring. Would you like to become a fan too?” It is possible to tailor ads to your friends and their interests, which makes it more appealing for them to take action because you are interested as well.

This strategy requires a small budget, but can be very effective in finding your target market. It is very important to do a Facebook search with specific keywords in your particular niche to find out if it’s being talked about on Facebook (see #2 above).

If you click on “Promote With an Ad” on your fan page, you can start a campaign.  You can set a daily spending limit of $10, $25, or other appropriate amount. Because I market mostly to businesses with my keywords (such as real estate broker, loan officer, real estate investor, and so forth) which are in numerous profiles as job descriptions I have been able to use Facebook Social Ads effectively for my fan page.

It’s possible to run your Facebook ads for only 4 to 5 days with a $25 per day budget. Then stop the ad for a few weeks if you like and run the same ad again. This allows your fan page to grow in spurts and I have found it to be very effective in growing my fan base without spending a lot of money at once.

#4: Facebook Fan Page Twitter App

The Facebook Fan Page Twitter application is a great tool that brings your Twitter following back to your fan page. When you post a status update, a link or a photo (you can choose) on your Facebook fan page, there will be an update to Twitter with a shortened bit.ly link back to your fan page. This is just pure genius to drive traffic from another source right to your page.

There are other Facebook and Twitter integration applications; however, this is the one that leads people directly back to your page. This gives them an option to become a fan of your page right at that moment if they click on the bit.ly link from Twitter.

#5: Facebook Fan Box Widget

The Facebook Fan Box Widget is a great feature to add to your blog or website. This widget allows you to show your fan base and allows others to become fans instantly. This is just one way to promote your page across several social media sites. It is important to cross-reference all of your social media sites so others can find you and your websites on other networks.

So what do you have to add to this list? Are you finding other effective ways to promote your Facebook fan page? I would love to hear from you and your successes in promoting your pages in the comments below.

If you have any question in this regard, don’t hesitate to ask. You can contact me through our Contact form or just send me an email at Wahid@wahidqazi.com.

Using YouTube as a Video Host

Do you already have videos in your business? If your answer is yes, you can easily upload those videos to YouTube, for anyone to view. (Whether anyone wants to view your videos is another story, however, which we’re going to cover shortly.) Aside from making your videos public, there’s one more good reason to upload your videos to YouTube; when YouTube hosts your video, you don’t have to.

That’s right; YouTube is, at its most basic, a giant video hosting website. Instead of taking up valuable storage space on your own web server, you can allow YouTube host your video instead. You will display the video on your own website, of course, but you do it by embedding code for the video in your site’s underlying HTML. The code points to the video on the YouTube site; YouTube then serves the video from its website to appear on your webpage.

Not only you save on storage costs, you also don’t have to pay for all the bandwidth used when visitors watch your videos and YouTube offers unlimited bandwidth. Yes, you still have a slight bandwidth usage when someone views the text of your webpage, but the bandwidth used to deliver the video comes straight from YouTube.

If you run a small business with limits on storage and bandwidth, letting YouTube host your videos can be a real cost saver. And if your video happens to become popular or even viral, you don’t risk having your servers overload and shutdown; YouTube’s servers will handle the load as I said earlier YouTube offers unlimited bandwidth.

Creating an Online Video Presence

What types of videos can your business make for YouTube? It depends on the type of your business and on the way you want to use the Web.

First, look at any existing videos you might have made for use in your business. Perhaps you’ve taped a company meeting, seminar or webinar, or you have a PowerPoint presentation that’s been converted to video. Or maybe you’re a realtor who has recorded video house tours or a motivational speaker who has a speech or two recorded on tape. Any of those videos could make a good beginning point for moving your business to YouTube.

Take the example of realtor. Today, most realtors take digital photographs of the houses they list, and then potential buyers view those photos on their website. But there’s nothing stopping you from using a camcorder to produce a video tour of the house, editing that tour into a short video, and then publishing that video on YouTube. You can then embed the YouTube video on your own website, so that potential buyers can view the video. It’s a great improvement to a realtor’s selling services, and it doesn’t cost you a cent (beyond the cost of shooting the video, of course).

Here’s one more example for you. If your business is a leader in its category, or if you yourself are an industry specialist, you can establish and exploit that expertise via a series of YouTube videos. All it takes is a video camera or webcam pointed at you behind a desk; you then spend three or four minutes talking about a peculiar topic or issue of interest. Think of it as a professional video blog; if you truly know what you’re talking about, it will help to establish your professional credentials and polish your company’s image.

For that matter, there are a lot of different types of videos that can help enhance your company’s image. There may be value, for example, in placing a video online of your company’s most recent sales conference or at least the part that introduces forthcoming new products. Or maybe your company has hosted a seminar or conference that is of interest to others outside your company. These videos can be edited for duration and uploaded to YouTube, where any interested party can view them.

That said; there is one type of video that you don’t want to upload. YouTube is not the place to recycle your company’s commercials. Users will not go out of their way to view something online that they try to avoid in the real world. Unless you have a really clever, Super bowl worthy commercial that people want to view again and again, keep your ads to yourself and don’t upload them to YouTube.

Promoting Products and Services via YouTube

So far, I’ve talked about videos that only broadly boost your company, in terms of enhancing your company’s image. You can also use YouTube more directly to boost your company’s products and services that is, to drive potential customers to your website where they can buy what you sell. To do this, you need to make and upload videos that function as online infomercials, subtly boosting your company’s products and services.

Let’s say that you offer gift baskets for sale. You create a short video for YouTube about how to make gift baskets something that would be of interest to anyone in the market for them. You prominently display your web page address and phone number within the video, and in the descriptive text that accompanies the video on the YouTube site. Because the video has some informational content (the how-to information), it attracts viewers, and a certain percentage of these will follow through to purchase the gift baskets you have for sale.

Or maybe you’re a business consultant and you want to promote your consulting services. To demonstrate what you have to offer potential clients, you create and upload some sort of short video a motivational lecture, perhaps, or a slideshow about specific business practices, or something similar. You use the video to establish your expert status and then display your email address or web page URL to solicit business for your consulting services.

Or maybe you have a full-length DVD for sale. You excerpt a portion of DVD and upload it to YouTube, with graphics before and after (and maybe even during) the video detailing how the full-length DVD can be ordered.

Likewise if you’re a musician with CDs to sell, an author with books to sell, an artist with paintings or other artwork to sell, or a crafts maker with various crafts and such to sell. The musician might create a music video to promote his CDs; the author might read an excerpt from her book; the artist might produce a photo slideshow of his work; and the crafts maker might upload a short video walk-through of pieces she has for sale. Make sure you include details for how the additional product can be ordered, and let your placement on YouTube do the promotion for you.

As an example, Charles Smith Pottery offers a series of instructional videos on YouTube that demonstrate how to use a pottery wheel. Interested viewers can then access the accompanying website (detailed both in the video and in the video’s description) to learn more and to see what products the company has for sale.

Another example is t he San Francisco Electric Tour Company, which offers Segway tours of the San Francisco Bay Area. The company created an entertaining demo video about the Segway and their tours and then uploaded the video to YouTube. Interested people can view the video and then contact the firm to schedule a tour. It’s quite synergistic.

Then there’s John Pullum, a hypnotist and mind reader who provides corporate entertainment and motivational speeches. He’s uploaded videos of several of his appearances to YouTube; they’re both entertaining and informational regarding the services that he has to offer. Any viewer who likes what they see can then go to his website to learn more or to arrange an engagement.

The key is to create a video that people actually want to watch. That means something informative, useful, or entertaining. It can’t be a straight commercial, because people don’t like to watch commercials. It has to provide value to the viewer.

Once you get the viewer hooked, you lead him back to your website where your goods or services are for sale. It’s a two-step process watch the video, then go to the website to learn more or buy something. If your video is interesting enough, viewers will make the trip to your website to close the deal.

Shooting for YouTube: Proper Production Values

When you’re producing a video for YouTube, keep in mind that the video will be viewed in a small (320 x 240 pixel) window on the viewer’s computer monitor. It won’t be viewed on a high-definition widescreen TV; it won’t even be viewed on the full computer screen. No, your video has to be compelling when viewed in that small YouTube video window.

What this means is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on sophisticated video values. Skip the HDTV recording, skip the widescreen aspect ratio, may be even skip the ultra-expensive lights and makeup. Make your video good enough to be viewed at a 320 x 240 size, and don’t waste your money on production values that won’t be visible to the viewer.

In addition, keep that size in mind when deciding what to shoot. Don’t bother with crowd scenes; all those people will be too tiny to see in the small video window. Instead, compose an image that has maximum impact in the small window. What works best, more often than not, is a large subject against a simple background. That might be nothing more than the speaker full-frame against a light background; it’s a big image with good contrast, which is what you want.

You should, however, spend a few bucks for onscreen graphics. You want a title for your video, appropriate subtitles throughout, and your company’s phone number and website URL. These graphics need to look professional, and be large enough to read in the YouTube video window.

You can shoot a video for YouTube using professional video equipment, a consumer-level video camcorder (shooting in digital video format, of course), or even a computer webcam. Many video blogs are shot with simple webcams, just a person in front of the camera, talking about the subject at hand. You’ll probably want to transfer the video to a computer for editing, of course; any consumer-level video editing program, such as Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker or Apple’s iMovie, should do the trick.

As to length, YouTube lets you upload videos up to 10 minutes long. If you have a longer video say, a half-hour seminar on tape you can simply edit it into several shorter segments. In fact, shorter segments are generally better; I recommend keeping your videos to three minutes or less. Anything longer and you’ll start to bore people and lose viewers. Even if you have a 10-minute video, you might want to edit it into three or four 2- or 3-minute segments. YouTube viewers have a short attention span, and you need to compensate for this.

Uploading Your Videos to YouTube

The hardest part about uploading a video to YouTube is creating and editing the video. The uploading process itself is so simple a CEO can do it.

First, however, you have to make sure that your video file meets YouTube’s requirements, which are as follows:

• MPEG-4 format video with either the DivX or XviD codecs
• MP3 format audio
• 320[ts]240 resolution
• Frame rate of 30 frames per second (FPS)
• Length of 10 minutes or less
• File size of 100MB or less

If you shot your video with a digital camcorder or computer webcam, it’s probably in the right format to begin with, so there’s no conversion necessary. Your only concern is to stay within the length and file size limits.

To upload the video, click the Upload Videos link at the top right-hand corner of any YouTube page. This displays the Video Upload page; you now have a little paperwork to do.

First, enter a title for your video. Make sure it’s descriptive without being overly long. Next, enter a description for the video; this can and should be longer and more complete. (And don’t forget to include your phone number and website address in the description.)

Then enter one or more tags for the video, separating each tag by a space. Tags are keywords people use when searching; use as many tags as necessary to capture all possible search words and attract as many potential viewers as possible.

Now pull down the Video Category list and select a category for the video. Click the Upload a Video button when you’re ready to proceed.

Step two of the video upload process is where you specify the file you want to upload. Click the Browse button to open the Select File to Upload dialog box; navigate to and select the file you want and then click Open. This loads the filename into the File box on the Video Upload page.

With all of that done, the final step is to click the Upload Video button. YouTube finds the video on your hard disk and starts uploading it; the progress is shown on the Video Upload page. Once uploaded, take note of the video’s URL (to link to from your site and use in promotional material) and the embed code (to embed the video in your own website). Your video is now ready for viewing!

I am about to bring out some of the hottest techniques to promote a video on YouTube. We’ve used them with clients from all over the world and a lot of them have seen thousands of new visitors as a result of these powerful tactics.

Anyway, here is the list:

• Copy the Top Performers: Look for the three most popular videos with more views in your category and get ideas from them. Copy their video title, video tags and description. Don’t copy anything verbatim, change things up a little and make some difference.

• Create Your Own Channel: Create a new channel and customize to feature your best videos. This alone will drastically increase your views.

• Use the Bulletin Board: This is a great feature that allows you start a conversation around your own videos. But don’t limit yourself to your own bulletin boards, use others as well.

• Add Friends: YouTube is not just a video sharing community; YouTube is a social network. Add friends to your list and connect with them.

• Use Video Responses: Search for most popular videos related to yours and post your video as a response to them. Leverage the views that other videos get.

• Create Something Worth Spreading the Word About: If your video is boring, all these tactics will go in vain. The videos that work best on YouTube are either hilarious, controversial, unique, current trend or very useful.

• Complete Your Profile: Don’t leave your profile empty, YouTube allows you to fill out a profile do it by all means including a “link to your website here” field.

• Link the Videos to Your Profile: You can place your videos link to any page within YouTube. Set it up so when people click on your video they go to your profile directly. And from your profile they are able to click on your website link.

• Create Playlists: Create a playlist of related videos. Include much popular ones on a certain topic and, of course, your own video.

• Join Some Groups and Create Your Own: Join some groups and post both, text and video comments. You can also create your own group.

• Encourage Viewers to Subscribe: End each video asking viewers to subscribe. Many people don’t know they can subscribe or they will forget unless you remind them.

These are some of the techniques that we have used for our best clients. Most of them got more than a Million views. How would you like to get your business in front of a million potential new clients?

If you have any question in this regard, don’t hesitate to ask. You can contact me through our Contact form or just send me an email at Wahid@wahidqazi.com.

Facebook Profiles

Creating a profile is the most basic thing you can do on Facebook and it’is required if you want to do anything else such as create a group or fan page. Make sure you completely fill out your profile because a full profile looks much more interesting than an empty one. You can also add your website URL in several locations and be sure to discuss about your business/brand and plug your website URL in the appropriate spots as mentioned.

Then you have to start adding friends to your profile every day, the current limit is 5,000 friends but this may be lifted in the future. If you add 20 friends a day which would take you possibly 5 minutes, in one month you will have 600 friends! From my testing you will have to type in a CAPTCHA or anti spam code for the first 10-15 friend adds, but after that it seemed to go away and it was much quicker to add friends. I wouldn’t recommend adding to many friends each day because it will come off as spammy.

Now that you have your profile created and optimized, you are able to create a Facebook group or even better a Facebook page, both of which we will go over below.

Facebook Groups

Groups were available before pages and are more of a place for users to discuss topics such as logo design or automobiles. It’s almost like a mini forum. The benefits for group owner is that they are very viral and you can bulk invite all you friends to join your group. The problem is they are not indexable by Search Engines and not available to view unless you are a member of Facebook.

I would recommend creating a Facebook group for your business, but frankly Facebook pages are really where it’s at and you should focus your efforts on your page instead of your group.

Facebook Pages

Facebook pages are all about business and have many of the same features available in groups, but with some extra key features available. The main advantage of pages is the fact that they are indexable by Search Engines and available to view even if you are not a member so promoting the page is easy.

When creating your facebook page make sure you use your most important keyword as the page name so that it shows as the page title, making your page more SEO friendly. Like you did with your profile, fill out your Facebook page with all important information about your business, website URLS and so on.

The best way to promote your page is to offer some sort of discount offers, coupon codes etc, if you are not a major brand. This way you give people a reason to become a fan of your page. Once they become a fan you can send updates which is the best part of having a Facebook page for your business.

Facebook groups may work well virally, but so do Facebook fan pages. Whenever someone becomes a fan of your page it shows up in their profile and looks something like this: Person’s Name, Became a fan of Your Business/Brand/Company Name.

So if you give your fan page a good jump start it could really take off. The number of fans you can have has no limit and some pages have anywhere from several thousand fans to over 5 million fans!

So if you want to focus on one thing I would highly recommend you to create a Facebook fan page, instead of a group and putting all your advertising efforts towards the Facebook page.

Facebook Applications

The introduction of Facebook Applications is most likely the most popular move made by Facebook to date. They released their API so developers and business owners could cooperate to create fun and cool applications that engage users. The applications created so far vary in purpose; some are cool games, some are useful and some are directly related and tied into businesses.

Many popular applications have thousands of monthly active users and that information speaks for itself, so if you want to read and learn more about how to create a Facebook application, I highly recommend you to check out the Facebook Developers page. Once you have created an application, be sure to add it to your profile and to your Facebook group and page!

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are a great way to really boost your exposure using highly targeted CPC and CPM Advertising. You can target users by age, gender, regional, interests, and even attach friend-to-friend interactions about your business to your ads.

The best part is you can also advertise an external website or a Facebook page. So if you created a fan page earlier for your business and you are looking to build up your facebook fan page you can do so easily by driving the traffic from your advertisements directly to your page.

So join Facebook today and start working on your Facebook promotions, because if your competition is not on Facebook already, they will be soon!

If you have any question in this regard, don’t hesitate to ask. You can contact me through our Contact form or just send me an email at Wahid@wahidqazi.com.

Where there are members there is the potential to get customers, promote your business and drive traffic to your site or eBay listings.  After playing around with Facebook over the last few months, I have come up with a list of ways in which it can be used to your business.

Connect with your business contacts

It is possible that your colleagues and business contacts are on Facebook already.  Invite them to become your friends and join your company’s professional network (if you have one – see below). Facebook is a lot more friendly and interactive environment than other social networks like Linkedin and can be used to form closer bonds with your contacts.

Build a profile for your company

To create a grip on Facebook, create a profile for your company and a company network. This will let you to do the following things:

• Ask your business colleagues, and customers to become your friends, creating a facebook network around your business.
• Make postings which will appear in your facebook friend’s newsfeeds.  These can be about special offers and company news such as job postings.
• List your items in the facebook marketplace (see below)

Promote your Blog

If you have a company or personal blog, this can be imported into your facebook notes.  Your posting will then appear in your newsfeed and that of your friends.

Facebooks notes settings can be accessed from the applications menu in the LHS of your profile page.

List your items in the marketplace

Facebook has a marketplace where items can be listed for sale.  This is free and could be used promote items for sale on your website or eBay.  Products such as Ztail, make listing items on facebook marketplace easy.

Write an Facebook application

Finally, if you think that there is a real opportunity for your business on Facebook, you should look into developing an application.  Applications can help you develop friends and drive traffic to your website. Last.fm were one of the first companies to boost their business through a facebook application.

The sign the Facebook is a force to be reckoned with is that there are facebook only businesses developing.  An example of a business which uses facebook is Social flowers, which enables facebook members to send each other flowers.

Calculation, Analysis or Comparison Tools
An online tool that can assist users to compare products/services, calculate rates, money, time or other factors, or an analysis program that can check over documents, work, etc. can be an outstanding addition. It’s important to think like your visitors and imagine what types of information a tool could provide that would be worthful to them. It’s also critical to memorize that presentation and usability are as important as the actual information – make tools that run fast, display the results in a useable way and provide more than just information, but analysis and suggestions too.

Articles & Writing
Sometimes, the better content is just information that’s conclusive, authoritative and direct. Great writing takes practice, editing and effort, but the advantages are worthwhile – links & recognition from the online communities in your field are bound to follow an outstanding article. The blogosphere and several industry forums/communities have to see your work, so make sure to promote your content to these people and make it accessible.

Diagrams, Animation & Visual Content
Great content can be in visual appearance, and fantastic pictures, animations, charts & graphs can help to deliver a point in a way that simple writing often cannot. The key is to think regarding your audience and imagine yourself wishing for a diagram, illustration or animation that could accomplish your information needs goals. Don’t undervalue the value of aesthetics – they can go a long way towards making visual content successful – beauty breeds attention.

Interactive Elements
Online games, quizzes and customizable content can attract lots of attention. These interactive elements have to follow some basic rules. They need to be easy to use and easy to access (download). Macromedia’s Flash is a great way to present this sort of content because of its near-universal penetration of the e-market and relative speed of delivery. Games need to be entertaining, but shouldn’t be excessively complex – often the fun is in the simplicity. Quizzes shouldn’t necessarily be designed to challenge users; they can sometimes be better as an entertainment tool. Customization of products or build-your-own elements have to be useable – easy to figure out and quick to reward changes.

Using these elements can help to enhance your website’s content to greatness. If you discover yourself with a best-of-breed site, you can get additional recognition from awards. But, don’t be disappointed or discouraged if you don’t win, online competition is stiff.

At this time, however, Yahoo!, Bing, Google & Teoma all have dynamic pages in their index and in the top search engine result pages for many different searches. It would seem the issue with search engines has degraded. However, the usability matter of dynamic URLs still exists. From a user’s point of view a URL in the form of http://www.site.com/page.html is considerably friendlier than a URL written as http://www.site.com/page.php?ID=2&TAGformat=945bb399ls3.

No matter if it’s posting the URL to a website, sending it in an email, or save it on a notepad for later, the dynamic URL is something that is definitely unfriendly for users. The advantages of mod_rewrite and other tools that permit for the conversion of dynamic URLs into static ones may be lessened by the new abilities of the search engines, but they are not altogether gone.

So now the issue for website owners and Search Engine Optimizers remains – “How do I rank top in Bing and drive more visitors to my website?”

As you guys know very well that Bing is a smart search engine because if you are an SEO and optimizing a website for a keyword, example: “SEO Consultant” then if you’re optimizing your main page and let suppose your main page doesn’t contain the keyword OR text SEO Consultant then Bing will automatically find the text from your subpages.

While the jury is still out on definitive strategies for higher ranking success in Bing, there seems to be a rising chorus of support for certain tactics, which I have detailed below:

• Backlinks: While backlinks are still used in the bing algorithm, it seems not to the similar level as Google. Backlink counts for top 10 websites in Bing are much lower as compared to Google, suggesting less importance.
• Anchor Text: It seems that Bing focuses more deeply on links with relevant anchor text, so that should influence your linking strategy – get your text anchor text right.
• On-Page Optimization: One of the more contentious factors, but many SEO experts believes Bing is weighting more deeply towards On-Page Optimization, not sure this will remain the case, if in fact it is the case.

• Keywords in URLs add essential ranking benefits
• Title Tags are as important as all the time.
• Internal link anchor text seems to add major weight to content relevance

• Age and Authority: It appears that Bing places a higher weighting on site/domain age and authority as compared to Google. Once more a factor that is surely not sustainable given the importance of social media and blogs in terms of relevant results.

Below is a chart that ABC News Alerts produced based some analysis. We compared the top 2 results for the search “Latest News” in Bing and Google to determine what factors matter most for the two respective websites.

As you can see from the general consensus and ABCNewsAlerts’s research, the higher ranking factors for Google and Bing do differ.

The important thing to note is that no one of them competes, so to get higher rankings in Bing and Google won’t compromise each other. Smart site owners should be covering off the factors of each search engine to maximize their website visitors.

If you’ve done your own experiment into what works and doesn’t work for Bing SEO – we’d love to hear what you’ve learnt.

1. To describe the content of the page accurately and succinctly
2. To serve as a short, text “advertisement” to click on your results in the search results
3. To display targeted keywords, not for ranking purposes, but to indicate the content to searchers

Great meta descriptions, just like great ads, can be tough to write, but for keyword-targeted pages, particularly in competitive search results, they’re a critical part of driving traffic from the engines through to your pages. Their importance is much greater for search terms where the intent of the searcher is unclear or different searchers might have different motivations.

There’s a few good rules to follow when writing meta descriptions that take advantage of their use in pulling in search traffic:

1. Always describe your content honestly – if it’s not as “sexy” as you’d like, spice up your content, don’t bait and switch on searchers or they’ll have a poor brand association.
2. Character limits – currently Google displays up to 160 characters, Yahoo! up to 165 and MSN up to 200+ (they’ll go to three vertical lines in some cases). Stick with the smallest – Google – and keep those descriptions at 160 characters (including spaces) or less.
3. Write with as much sizzle as you can while staying descriptive – the perfect meta description is like the perfect ad – compelling and informative.
4. Just like an ad, you can test meta description performance in the search results, but it takes careful attention. You’ll need to buy the keyword through PPC so you know how many impressions it received over a given timeframe and can track your CTR.
5. Unlike an ad, the motivation for natural search click is frequently very different than that of users clicking on the paid results. Don’t assume that a successful PPC ad will transition into a good meta description (or the reverse).
6. It’s extremely important to have your keywords in the meta tag – the bolding done by the engines can make a big difference in visibility and CTR.
7. You shouldn’t always write a meta description. Although conventional logic would hold that it’s universally wiser to write a good meta description yourself, rather than let the engines scrape your page, this isn’t the case. I use the general rule that if the page is targeting 1-3 heavily-searched terms/phrases, go with a meta description that hits those users performing that search. However, if you’re targeting longer tail traffic, for example with hundreds of articles or blog entries or even a huge product catalog, it can sometimes be wiser to let the engines themselves extract the relevant text. The reason is simple – when engines pull, they always display the keywords (and surrounding phrases) that the user searched for. If you force a meta description, you can detract from the relevance the engines make naturally. In some cases, they’ll overrule your meta description anyway, but it’s not always wise to rely on that.

So, we’ve now completed the triumvirate of on-page basics with title tags, meta descriptions and URLs. If you’ve got some valuable meta description writing techniques, please do share.

Eleven Guidelines to Successful URLs

1. Describe Your Content
   An obvious URL is a great URL. If a user can look at the Address bar (or a pasted link) and make an accurate guess about the content of the page before ever reaching it, you’ve done your job. These URLs get pasted, shared, emailed, written down, and yes, even recognized by the engines.
2. Keep it Short
   Remember always; brevity is a virtue. The shorter the URL, the easier to copy & paste, read over the phone, write on a business card, or use in a hundred other unorthodox fashions, all of which spell better usability & increased branding.
3. Static is the Way & the Light
   Not to bring religion into this, but I can tell you with certainty that some of the engines absolutely DO treat static URLs differently than dynamic ones. And no human likes a URL where the big players are “?,” “&,” and “=.”
4. Descriptives are Better than Numbers
   If you’re thinking of using 114/cat223/, go with /brand/adidas/ instead. Even if the descriptive isn’t a keyword or particularly informative to an uninitiated user, it’s far better to use words when possible. If nothing else, your team members will thank you for making it that much easier to ID problems in development and testing.
5. Keywords Never Hurt
   If you know that you’re going to be targeting a lot of competitive keyword phrases on your website for search traffic, you’ll want every advantage you can get. Keywords are certainly one element of that strategy, so take the list from marketing, map it to the proper pages, and get to work. For dynamically created pages through a CMS, create the option of including keywords in the URL.
6. Subdomains Aren’t the Answer
   First off, never use multiple subdomains (e.g., siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com) – it’s unnecessarily complex and lengthy. Secondly, consider that subdomains have the potential to be treated separately from the primary domain when it comes to passing link and trust value. In most cases where just a few subdomains are used and there’s good interlinking, it won’t hurt, but I wouldn’t take the chance. To me, the benefits derived from reputation management (by flooding the SERPs with your subdomains) are minimal compared to the potential loss of link/trust juice. I also think that subdomain takeovers of SERPs is not something the search engines see as beneficial to their users and may shut down at any point. Luckily, if you’re doing it now, you can always 301 to the main domain.
7. Fewer Folders
   A URL should contain no unnecessary folders (or words or characters for that matter), for the same reason that a man’s pants should contain no unnecessary pleats. The extra fabric is useless and will reduce his likelihood of impressing potential mates.
8. Hyphens Separate Best
   When creating URLs with multiple words in the format of a phrase, hyphens are best to separate the terms (e.g. /brands/dolce-and-gabbana/), followed (in order) by, underscores (_), pluses (+) and nothing.
9. Stick with Conventions
   If your site uses a single format throughout, don’t consider making one section unique. Stick to your URL guidelines once established, so users (and future developers) will have a clear idea of how content is organized into folders and pages. This can apply globally as well for sites that share platforms, brands, etc. Re-inventing the wheel in situations where reliance on convention makes everyone’s tasks easier is folly.
10. Don’t be Case Sensitive
    Since URLs can accept both uppercase and lowercase characters, don’t ever, ever allow any uppercase letters in your structure. If you have them now, 301 them to all-lowercase versions to help avoid confusion. If you have a lot of type-in traffic, you might even consider a 301 rule that sends any incorrect capitalization permutation to its rightful home.
11. Don’t Append Extraneous Data
    There’s no point to having a URL exist in which removing characters generates the same content. You can be virtually assured that people on the web will figure it out, link to you in different fashions, confuse themselves, their readers and the search engines (with duplicate content issues), and then complain about it.

Example Time
The following are some grievously heinous violators of the guidelines above:

• http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/602-9912342-3046240?_encoding=UTF8&frombrowse=1&asin=B000FN0KWA

Target (who’s powered by Amazon) doesn’t describe their content, use keywords, or keep it short. That and the horrifyingly useless data that can be removed from the URL without changing the content make this URL downright ugly.

• http://etsy.com/view_item.php?listing_id=477443&pic_id=2

Despite being one of my favorite sites, Etsy’s URLs provide no descriptive information, use multiple dynamic parameters and separate breaks with underscores.

• http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=98115&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1&iwloc=A

Google should be ashamed – their guidelines for URLs practically set the town for the recommendations, but their maps feature is almost unusable due to inefficient, bloated URLs (when they must know that millions want to copy those URLs into emails)

These few below are doing a considerably better job, but could still go the extra mile:

• http://men.style.com/news/gadgets/092006

It’s almost there, and one could almost argue that the subdomain use here is justified for branding purposes. It is too bad they gave us so much data, but then cut out keywords and descriptives right at the end

• http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1

Nasa has uselessly appended dynamic parameters onto the page, and added /home/index.html for no logical reason

• http://www.newyorkmetro.com/fashion/fashionshows/2007/spring/ main/newyork/womenrunway/marcjacobs/

They’re trying to be descriptive, which is great, but not separating words and going 7 folders deep is really pushing it.

These last examples have done nearly everything right:

• http://www.wahidqazi.com/seo-help/

Brilliant – it’s short, descriptive, static and obvious.

• http://blog.wahidqazi.com/11-best-practices-for-urls/

Despite the subdomain, everything else is near perfect.

• http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jk35.html

I’m letting the White House off the hook for not using “john-kennedy” as the page title, because they’ve wisely also provided his number (the US’ 35th President).

URLs seem like one of the most simplistic parts of SEO, but I find myself returning to this issue with nearly every client. Hopefully these guidelines can help a few folks make use of best practices before it becomes an issue down the road.