Its almost the festive season, the sun finally came out in Vancouver today after three weeks of rain and there is lots going on online.  Check out our new media reasons to be cheerful for this month:

Grooveshark – groove to your favorite music while you work.

About Men – a new men’s health site in BC.

Twubs - making sense of Twitter hashtags #.

Twittersheep – see what your followers are Twittering about.

Sprouter – collaborative networking tool.

Slickplan – Create flowcharts and site maps for free.

SiteScan – verify your Google Analytics tracking codes.

Enjoy!

Lots of new media reasons to be cheerful this month.

Microsoft has a new offering the promises to change the way we search the Internet. Its called Bing and is still under wraps so we’ll have to wait and see if it will better the mighty Google.

Not to be outdone, Google also has a new offering in beta. Google Wave promises to change the way we communicate and collaborate on the web.

Make your own book with Blurb and BookSmart.

Have fun with your desktop at Bump Top.

Twitter tools: Untweeps (get rid of anactive users), Twilert (Twitter keyword listening tool) and Just Tweet It (another Twitter directory).

Here are 10 great ways you can easily improve your search engine positioning without putting your hands in your pocket and without having to be a SEO technodweeb.

1. Update your site regularly – this may seem obvious but many corporate sites rarely change.

2. Post a video – it can be short and sweet but has the added benefit of enhancing your image.

3. Add a podcast – our traffic peaks every time we podcast and by submitting the podcast to top pod sites, the effect ripples. Coincidence? I think not.

4. Label your images – most sites don’t bother but this is viable real estate on your site, use it. Image titles should relate back to your keywords and offering for maximum impact.

5. Use Google’s webmaster tools – make sure your site is crawled regularly, submit your sitemap (okay I concede you might need a technodweeb for that) and identify any problems so that you (or your technodweeb) can fix them.  If you can’t work out how submit your sitemap do it page by page in Google.

6. Get bookmarks – book marks are like links the more you have the better. Hit on employees, partners and colleagues to bookmark your site.  Good sites include Digg,  or Stumble Upon.

7. Comment regularly on relevant blogs and always remember to insert your url correctly.

8. Spend some time developing a keyword map for your products and services so as to identify the most effective words to use and those to avoid.

9. Use bold and headings to identify key terms in your text.

10. This one should be first on the list but it seems so obvious I almost left it out. In case you haven’t done so, remember to submit your site to Google and other search engines otherwise there’s no hope whatsoever.

1. Understand your prospective customer: who they are, why they buy, when and so on – do they buy on-line or use the Internet to research product information – are the using social media and if so which tools?

2. Your company – what resources are in place or will be made available. Also consider existing web presence, company culture, mission, goals and policies.

3. Competition – check out what your competition is doing on line, track blog and RSS feeds that mention them as well as comments on their products or service from users. Also consider the actions of similar companies operating in different jurisdictions.

4. The market – is your market place experiencing and up turn / down turn or is it in a state of flux? These will all impact the approach you take.

5. Integration with your overall marketing and advertising strategy is imperative. Each must complement and support the other by conveying the same brand image and messages.

6. If you don’t have web savvy resources in house then don’t worry – get guidance from people who do this (like us ).

7. Positioning – find out where you stand in the web rankings in comparison to others in your field.

8. Traffic – who visits your site right now, how often and how long do they stay.

9. Pricing – if your offering is considered “prestige” then your web strategy will be different than if your its aimed at the masses.

10. Consider all tools at your disposal to promote your web presence and don’t forget to consider newer technologies such as wikis, social networks and microblogs for effective online marketing.

1. Write an article that relates to your area of expertise and submit it to ezine and article sites (the ones with the highest Google ranking).
2. Update your site often – a blog is a great way to do this.
3. Add forms to your site – check out Jotform.
4. Get more backlinks – find out which sites link back to your top competitors and submit your site to those with the highest traffic – don’t use a mass submit tool.
5. Podcast – add audio or video content to your site and make sure its listed in the podcast hubs.
6. Have the right content: effectively use keywords and appropriate SEO copy writing (listen to our upcoming podcast to find out more).
7. Get active in social networks – LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and make sure that those link back to your site.
8. Encourage community – use your blog or podcast to build community and invite others to get involved.
9. Remember that Google may be the most common search engine but there are many others – take these into account when considering SEO.
10. Utilize the hot spots on your site to the best advantage. The top left hand corner is valuable real estate – use it to tell the audience (and the engines) what you do.

Links are like gold on the Internet, the more your have the better your ranking. Link building however can be arduous and frustrating and if you don’t know what you are doing you can spend a lot of time chasing your tail.

Here are some tips to make your efforts more effective:

1. Always ensure your site is listed in all of the major search engines prior to starting your link building campaign.
2. Only submit links to quality sites.
3. Target your linking to sites that are pertinent to your business.
4. Remember to add your links in appropriate directories.
5. Quality is better than volume. Link to sites that have good traffic stats.
6. Track your progress – set up a spreadsheet to track submissions.
7. Many sites require a reciprocal link. Decide in advance if you will take this approach and add this to your web site.
8. Only pay for listings if you can determine your ROI.
9. Go for the low hanging fruit. Request a link from customer and partner sites.
10. And this is perhaps the most important. Don’t get disheartened. Effective link building takes time and commitment. Results are not instantaneous and it often takes several months to see the full effect.