Pinterest has emerged as the runaway social media hit of early 2012. You probably knew that already. But did you know the company just has 12 people? Or that 97% of Pinterest’s Facebook fans are women?
Lemon.ly, a visual marketing firm, took a deep dive into the data to catalog Pinterest’s stunning rise and produced the infographic below. What’s clear is that with 10 million users, Pinterest has already made its mark in terms of web design influence, if nothing else.
It also has the potential to become a forum for satire, as this fake Mitt Romney account illustrates.
Since the company appears to be the hottest thing going — at least at this writing — consider this a snapshot of the next social media giant or the answer to tomorrow’s trivia question.
While those of us in the United States complain about how we have to pay more for Internet service that’s slower than those of other first-world countries, within the United States there’s a gaping chasm between the haves and the have-nots.
You’ll want your content to take the top slots for your name and various keywords and phrases, so you’ll want to have high-quality, authoritative content. The best way to make sure your content is seen this way to is create content that is forever useful, not trendy and disposable. Create content that people will be reading 10 years from now, and you’ll be getting linkbacks for a decade.
Take a few minutes to login to each of your company’s online profiles. Is the biography up to date? More importantly, is your website’s URL listed somewhere? The incoming links from these profiles may not weigh too much in Google’s mysterious algorithm, but you’ll be surprised what it can do if you have more than a handful of accounts online.
Think about what your ideal clients and customers might be typing into Google, and then find out if your hunch is right by looking keywords up in Google’s free Keyword Tool. Keep in mind that 25% of keywords have never been typed in before, but you’ll want to aim for popular keywords with low competition if you can. Then write content around these keywords and learn to optimize.
I suggest hiring a search engine optimization company or freelance specialist to develop an effective strategy to improve your rankings. The Google Panda updates has made the SEO space even more challenging to produce results, so I suggest outsourcing this task to the professionals. Look for individuals or companies with proven track records, and monitor their bi-weekly reports closely.
Start guest posting on tons of relevant blogs. Blogs love fresh content, and for you it’s a great way to build links, which will boost your rankings on Google.
Yes, creating good content is very important to make your business rank higher in Google. But links are even more important. Google loves links, especially those from other relevant, authority websites. Join any and all industry associations, guest blog with a link back to your website, and submit your site to any relevant directories to grow your backlink profile and your searches.
Video is such a huge thing now for business owners. Not only does it give your company personality, but it can also be spread across networks while linking back to your site. Create great videos filled with information people can share and then repeat. Now videos can be distributed across multiple platforms from one single platform, causing Google to love you.
The biggest SEO secret is that when .edu sites link to your website it gives you a higher Google ranking. Contact college and universities and find a reason for them to link to your site by running a special internship opportunity, for example.
The more often you update your site, the more important Google thinks it is. If you can publish content to your blog every day, Google will start to recognize you as a great source of information for whatever your keywords are. With every blog post, you have another chance at ranking for new search terms, so each article increases the odds of your site being found.
Two effective ways of increasing your SEO rank are tagging articles and keyword analysis. You want to make sure your headlines are descriptive. You should also choose keywords that people are going to look for — so imagine yourself as a searcher.
Many small businesses, especially restaurants and bars, use Flash for their sites because it’s easy to launch, looks good and is fairly cheap. While the sites might look decent, they rank really poorly in Google (without doing some tricks). Change your Flash-based site to WordPress or another platform, and you’ll rocket up the search engine rankings.
Are you a local business? Have you claimed your listing on Google, Yahoo! and Bing? If not, stop reading this article now and go claim your business listings immediately! I’ve seen a huge jump in traffic for businesses by simply claiming and filling out all the fields on these local profiles. The future of search is personalized local results, and these valuable profiles are often overlooked.
The biggest mistake people make in trying to rank high in Google is having no clue what people are actually typing into search engines to find you. An easy way to find this out is to go to the Google homepage and slowly start typing in your phrases. You’ll notice Google suggested searches come up. Use those exact phrases in your titles. That’s what people want, so give it to them.
