There are a number of ways that SEO Positive promotes local businesses online. Submitting company details to free business listings is a fast and simple way to generate interest and place the business in a position to be seen.  The larger search engines actually offer dedicated business listings to aid this website promotion process. For example, Google Places has proved incredibly popular in recent times for local SEO, especially as participants are often propelled to first page SERPs for localized search terms just for placing a relevant listing in Google’s database.

However, the one glaringly obvious drawback to the advantage of getting noticed by doing local SEO is the potential to be shot down in flames by less-than-flattering reviews. This is a sensitive area for many businesses who have dealt with past consumers airing their company’s flaws online, and something SEO Positive has dealt with on a regular basis. Whether posted by a competitor as a malicious effort to ruin your reputation, or flagged up as a genuine concern from a past client, negative reviews can seriously affect your link building work and are a concern that SEO Positive has handled extensively in the past. We’ve compiled five handy tips to help tackle the would-be devastating impact of negative reviews, offering practical advice to businesses hit hard by the definite cons of public interaction.

Local SEO can be very beneficial for businesses ( Credit - TheNetImpact )

• Join In! A response from you or one of your customer service representatives is favoured above simply ignoring the review and hoping it goes away. Like anything posted on the net, it won’t disappear. SEO Positive highly recommended addressing the issue head-on and, if possible, state reasons for your misconduct – be careful to provide an apology rather than an excuse and offer to rectify the problem if possible. This demonstrates dedication to your customers will take the edge off the post.
• Deal with the complaint away from the online arena. Any potential customers don’t want to read the intricacies of your debate and will be put off by any aggressive comments, whether they’re from yourself or the reviewer. Should a dispute arise, offer to deal with it in private. Similarly, if you think appeasing the customer with special offers or complimentary products is the way forwards, don’t advertise this on your site, as you’ll get a stampede of phone calls from aggrieved consumers demanding the same treatment.
• If you feel it’s possible, ask the customer for an updated review. It’s best not to ask if you can remove the review completely, as this might appear to some as an attempt to stifle the opinions of those who need to be heard. You can however ask for the customer to update their review based on the solution and/or high level of customer service they have received since highlighting the problem.
• Try and encourage users to post positive reviews. Make customers aware of the reviewing system and ask them to give feedback based on their experiences. You can argue that this could backfire and you’ll simply end up with more negative press, but it’s a viable alternative to producing fake positive reviews yourself, a technique that we at SEO Positive have seen work to our clients’ disadvantage in the past and ruin their website promotion.
• Let the reviewer know that you’re taking steps to address the issues. Perhaps the reviewer was right after all – perhaps there are things you can do to improve customer satisfaction. Making an effort to implement change, and of course letting your irate customer know that something positive is going to come out of their complaint, shows you are handling the situation to the best of your ability (and will also impress other users browsing your reviews).

By using the review system to your advantage you’re able to greatly aid your website promotion and establish yourself as a trustworthy business.

The above article is edited by RP, who is associated with many SEO and Web Designing related companies like SEO Positive , a SEO Company in UK which is showcased in the article. She excels in writing articles related to web designing, SEO, pay per click services, social media etc.

This post originally appeared at Rumbling Lankan - How to make money online from blogging . Click here to read Local SEO – 5 Tips to Tackle Negative Reviews in a browser.

Share in Facebook

This is one of the best ways to get traffic to new blogs. Generally you have your close friends in Facebook, so they are more likely to visit links you post on your Facebook page. Since they are your close friend you will get honest feedback about your content in a non critical matter as well. If your content is great then they are likely to share it among there friends, giving you more viral traffic.

Get Traffic to New Blogs

Comment in Other Blogs

Commenting is one of the best ways to let other bloggers know about your blog and one of the best ways to get traffic to new blogs. You should start by commenting on blogs that are related to your niche. Most commenting systems allow you to add a link to your blog or website in the comment box. So if you leave a interesting and engaging comment, more often than not he will follow that link and visit your blog. If your writing about the same topics you are more likely to get a new subscriber. To have success with this method you need to add quality comments. If you don't have anything to add it is better to not comment at all or check these blog commenting tips.

Join Blogger Networks

Joining a Blogging network is another great way to get targeted traffic. There are many networks for blogger and I personally recommend BlogEngage , because it has a very active community and you are more likely to get visits and comments compared to other blogger networks. There are many other networks including LinkedIn groups. Just posting links to your blog posts wont work, take some time to connect with other bloggers, vote and like there articles and you will get rewarded for your work.

Get Traffic to New Blogs Using Social Media

Social media is a great way to get traffic to new blogs, but it is a method that you should use with caution. In general how social media sites work like a voting system. You submit your content and other users vote or like your submission. If it gets enough votes it might reach the front page and you an get a flood of visitors. Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, SlashDot are some of the most popular social media sites. I said use them with caution because self promoting is not ethical and usually doesn't get popular in these sites. It is acceptable to submit your own content but makes sure to keep them to a minimum and submit lots of valuable content in between your posts. One Digg from a Digg power user or one share from a regular StumbleUpon user can bring lots of traffic to your new blog, so spend some time building a reputation in these sites. If you don't have time to focus on all these networks then I suggest you focus on StumbleUpon, which has the potential to bring long term traffic.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is something that is overlooked by most new blogger. Search engines are one of the best ways to get traffic to new blogs and they bring in qualified and targeted traffic as well. There are lots of things involved in a good search engine ranking strategy. But basic on page optimization like adding proper post titles, keywords in sub headings, good keyword density are fairly easy to implement. The five or ten minutes you spend optimizing these simple things will bring huge benefits when you rank in search engines.

Quality Content is the Most Important Thing

For all the above mentioned traffic getting methods to work you need to have quality content. Quality content is what attract visitors and search engines alike. I see many people starting blogs just to promote affiliate links. It is acceptable to make money from your blog, but just promoting affiliate links through blog posts wont bring you much success. Building a quality blog and good community around it is the best way to make money from your blog. The above mentioned methods are more than enough to get traffic to new blogs, provided you have enough quality content.

Know of another way to bring traffic to new blogs ? Leave a comment and share it with the others.

This post originally appeared at Rumbling Lankan - How to make money online from blogging . Click here to read Get Traffic to New Blogs Methods That Work in a browser.

Key word rich title and url

When creating a Squidoo lens you are given the option of selecting a title and a unique web address for that squidoo lens. Make sure to add relevant key words in the title and the url. This will help you rank for those key words in search engines.

Tags

Tags describe what your lens is about. Make sure to add as many relevant tags as you can. Check the stats of your Squidoo lenses and check what key words are bringing them traffic and add them as tags. Stumble your lenses and add relevant tags in Stumbleupon to bring more traffic

Image

Make sure to add a relevant image to your lens. Name the image with proper key words. ( eg - make-money.jpg instead of image1.jpg ) . Remember that Squidoo lenses are indexed pretty quickly and because of the higher trust you can get a considerable amout of image searches.

Google Search

Make sure to add a Google search widget to your ever lens. They can be buried under the comments section but make sure to add one. This will make your lens look like its updated frequently to Google. Google crawl rate increases for regularly updated lenses.

RSS

As I mentioned above my main objective of using Squidoo is to build back links to my blogs. One of the easiest ways to do that is to add the RSS widget to your Squidoo lens and give your blogs feed address as the one to fetch the feeds from. If you are looking for traffic you can add this widget at the top of the lens , but if you are just looking to build back links then you can add the RSS widget at the very bottom.

This post originally appeared at Rumbling Lankan - How to make money online from blogging . Click here to read Tips to create a squidoo lens in a browser.

Coming up with new posts in not an easy task and sometimes you might be stuck without ideas as well. Seven easy ways to build content might help you to get through those times where you are stuck for ideas. I am already implementing some of them and I have learned a few new tricks as well. Hopefully you will too.

If you are an expert on Youtube videos you might already know this but with Youtube you can link to a specific part of the video. For example if you want your readers to watch from minute 3 onwards you can easily do that with method. Check out this post to learn how to link to a specific part of a Youtube video.

Want to jump start the traffic to our blog. Then this post by Jeff Johnson will surely help you out. Its not an intant method and does require you to do some work but it will surely boost your traffic. Check out Traffic getting Jump start.

Where to add Adsense code and how to add Adsense is something that most people new to blogging struggle with. In my blog and in most other blogs the ad block with the highest click through rate is the Adsense block inside the post. Lyndi at Nice2All has a great article which teach you to how to have more control over the placement of your ad blocks using short code to add Adsense.

Thanks to Lillea for suggesting 11 WordPress plug ins for Internet marketers. I think the list is not complete without a plug in for link cloaking but there are some good ones listed there.I especially like the opt in pop up plug in and might give it a try. Link cloaking is a must have tool for every Internet marketer and there are some free ones that offer a decent service .

I hope you will find these articles useful and if you have a article that you think is great feel free to share in in the comments section. It just might get featured

This post originally appeared at Rumbling Lankan - How to make money online from blogging . Click here to read Blog posts I found interesting and useful in a browser.

If you have looked at most blogs they have chosen %postname% as there custom structure and even I had it like that until yesterday. Yesterday I installed this free SEO blog plug-in ( if you think giving your e-mail address is free ) , what id basically does is recommends some plug-ins for you and then set there settings and some WordPress settings for you. So I installed it and activated it and did the necessary steps mentioned in the instructions and one of the changes it did was change my permalink structure from %postname% to /%post_id%/%postname%/. It looked a bit ugly to me but anyway decided to do some searching before changing it back to the previous one. And was pretty amazed to find out this in WordPress documentation about Permalinks.

For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or post_name fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure it takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text "page slug" as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties). So, it is best to start your permalink structure with a numeric field, such as the year or post ID - WordPress documentation

Another thing to remember is this performance issue will only come for blogs with lots of posts.If your blog only has 30-40 posts then you want have a performance problem. But you never know whether your blog will take off and you might decide to write lots of posts. So it is always a good idea to have a permalink structure with numbers in it.

I would like to know whats your permalink structure and what are your reasons for using them. If your using only %post_name% field will you decide to change it now or what's the reason for not doing it. Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

This post originally appeared at Rumbling Lankan - How to make money online from blogging . Click here to read Best Permalink structure for WordPress blogs in a browser.

E-mail received by first time commentator

As you can see it has a whole lot of information for a first time commentator and also plenty of links pointing back to the blog. First of all there is a link to the blog , then gently pointing at the RSS feed asking the commentator to subscribe to the feed. Then showing a link to the Twitter profile and asking for a follow. Then he is providing a link to a free service he is giving away , which usually is a good way to bring visitors to a web site. Then contact information is provided and finally there's a link to a paid service which is a back link building service. This e-mail was miles ahead of the lame e-mail message I used to send with Comment relish. So immediately after receiving this I changed my message sent out by Comment relish. It is pretty similar to this one but I did some minor changes which I think would perform better.

• Instead of pointing to the blog I linked to the post that the comment was made. I think this way the user is more likely to click on it , at least to check if the author has replied.
• I added the link to my RSS feed but added a link to subscribe to the feed by e-mail as well.

Now that added a link to the post the comment was made I have to make sure that the return visit provides some value to the commentator. Comment relish sends out e-mail almost instantly the comment is made. That doesn't leave me a lot of time to reply to the comment. That's where this article about personalize your comment relish message came in handy. What it basically teaches you is how to get the mail sent to you, so you can personalize it before sending it to the commentator. Want to see comment relish in action ? Leave a comment

This post originally appeared at Rumbling Lankan - How to make money online from blogging . Click here to read How to greet your first time commentators in a browser.

As you can see being an administrator of  a Facebook group is like having your very own mailing list where you can instantly get traffic to your web pages, the only difference being Facebook handles the mailing and you don't have to pay a cent to maintain the list . As any Internet marketer will tell you don't abuse the list, use it sparingly and send some valuable ( preferably free stuff ) to the group as well. Gain there trust and they are more likely to buy from you. Comments are always welcome and if you know of some other ways to earn money from Facebook feel free to share them in the comment section.

This post originally appeared at Rumbling Lankan - How to make money online from blogging . Click here to read Getting targetted traffic from Facebook in a browser.

Features you get with Blog Box

I will list down the features in Blog Box and how it compares to the importing your blog posts through the "Notes" application.

• Automatically import posts from your blog. ( same as Notes )
• Editing your posts from Facebook. This will come in handy if you want to edit the excerpt a bit more to suit your Facebook friends or you want to add an extra link in your post shown in Facebook.
• Link to the original post and proper link shown in the post. This is one of the biggest benefits of using Blog Box. Under the excerpt there is a link to the original post instead of a redirect shown in Notes ( http://rumblinglankan.com instead of http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=74751075689&h =b4484e60153c636&url= http%3A%2F%2Frumblinglankan.com ). Also inside the posts the proper links are shown instead of redirects.
• Original post tags are shown. The tags given to the blog post are shown on Facebook and if the reader clicks on them posts relevant to that tags are shown.
• Profile box and profile tab available ( same as Notes )
• RSS feed available ( same as Notes )
• If you are not importing post but using it as a stand alone blogging application in Facebook there are some additional features like Adding YouTube video to your posts etc.

As you can see Blog Box offers lot more functionality than the "Notes" application that comes with Facebook. If you already using "Notes" to import your blog posts to Facebook then Blog Box is a far better way to do it. If you are not importing your blog posts to Facebook then I suggest you give it a try using Blog Box.

This post originally appeared at Rumbling Lankan - How to make money online from blogging . Click here to read Blog Box – Promote your blog on Facebook in a browser.

Grow Twitter followers using a software like TweetAdder or SocialOomph

This is by far the easiest way to grow your Twitter following. What these software do is start following users of similar interest ( you specify interests through keywords ) automatically and after a specified time start unfollowing users who haven't reciprocated your follow. This unfollow part is important because Twitter has placed limits on the number of people you can follow. One of the best software I came across is TweetAdder , which is perfect for new users because it has built in systems to prevent you from overdoing things. It has for more features especially when it comes to finding targeted users. It has the ability to search user profiles, search by geographical location etc as well. Although HummingBird is the best and most respected thing out there for some the prize tag is a bit too much. If you are someone who wants to tryout things before going for the real thing then SocialOomp might be the thing for you. This service is targeted more towards small business owners. This has support for Twitter and few more social services as well. Sort of like one place to get them all done. Its a free service that you can upgrade to professional. The great thing is once you join the free service you get full access to the professional service for 7 days. You will be asked to upgrade after 7 days and if you don't it will revert to the free service so you want be charged anything. Try out SocialOomph for free.

Services You can try out

• TweetAdder ( 55$ - 188$ for lifetime depending on the number of profiles )
• SocialOomph ( 33$ per month / free trial )

Grow Twitter Followers automatically using software

Automatically submitting tweets is another great way to grow Twitter followers

In my last post about how to grow your Twitter followers I mentioned the importance of updating your Twitter feed on a constant basis. Most people search for specific keywords in Twitter search to find relevant people to follow. So if you tweet a lot it will appear more on Twitter search and you have a bigger chance of getting Twitter followers. However it is not easy to keep doing this on a constant basis and that is where service like Twitter feed comes in handy. Its a free service that lets you specify a RSS feed and it checks the feed time to time ( you can specify how often to check ) and tweet the latest entries in that feed. So if you are interested in making money online you can set up a Google news alert for making money online and submit the RSS feed of that alert to Twitter Feed and it will automatically does the tweeting for you.

Above two methods are one of the easiest ways to automatically grow a targeted Twitter following. If you know of another good strategy feel free to share it in the comment section. In a future post I'll show you how to get people to tweet and retweet your links for you . If you like this post you might want to follow me on Twitter

This post originally appeared at Rumbling Lankan - How to make money online from blogging . Click here to read Grow Twitter followers automatically using software in a browser.

Tweeting useful information

Whatever your niche if you are providing valuable useful content people will follow you. Because Twitter shortens url's you can easily trick people and direct them to your affiliate page or whatever , this might get you a few initial sales but soon people will start ignoring your links or worse yet unfollow you. I'm not saying that you shouldn't promote your products or affiliate links , but don't spam your time line with those. As a practice I try to tweet at least 10 useful article per day. Since I'm looking for an Twitter audience related to making money blogging they are mostly focused on SEO , making money online , affiliate marketing etc. Once people start to see that you are providing valuable information they will follow your and start recommending you to others.

Promote your Twitter profile thorough other online mediums

If you have a blog , a digg account , a stumbleupon account be sure to link to your Twitter profile from them. More people coming to your profile means more chance of people following you.

Have a nice profile picture and a Bio

Twitter feeds are syndicated in many places , when you start tweeting your updates will appear on many places. If they like your tweet they might click through and take a look at your profile. If you have the default twitter profile picture and an uninteresting bio then you are loosing followers. Take the time to upload a nice picture of you have a good looking bio. It is also important to have some tweets visible in your time line. If someone follow me I usually follow him back , only reasons I don't follow is if he has very few updates ( less than 5 ) or if the time line is spammed with affiliate products.

Be consistent with your updates

Don't start doing around 20 tweets in 10 minutes. Keep in mind that your followers are following others as well. There are many Twitter clients out there that lets you create groups and your goal is to get into that "someone important" or "someone useful" group. Doing many tweets in a short period of time may frustrate your followers and get you into the ignored group. It is up to you to find the right balance , more you tweet more chance of getting new followers but be mindful of your existing followers.

Be helpful and be conversational

Try to reply to questions , say thank you to new followers and retweet some of your friends links. As your numbers grow this might become difficult but try to active as much as possible. If people see that you are genuinely looking to help them they will keep on following and recommending you.

I hope you will find this tips useful in growing your Twitter account , in a future article I will show you how grow your twitter followers automatically and how to viraly spread your Tweets and get more followers. You can follow me on Twitter where I share more great articles.

This post originally appeared at Rumbling Lankan - How to make money online from blogging . Click here to read How to grow your Twitter followers in a browser.