In some cases hosting your blog under your main website can be a good option. You would then need to make a choice between hosting the blog as a subdirectory (yourwebsite.com/blog) or as a subdomain (blog.yourwebsite.com).

Next week I will publish a post that explains the pros and cons of hosting your blog under the domain of your main –  corporate, primairy or root – website as oppose to hosting it completely separate under a separate domain (URL).

But in this post, I will first discuss the difference between hosting your blog under subdirectory or subdomain.

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Just last December Google and Bing confirmed that links shared through Twitter and Facebook have a direct impact on rankings.

In a nutshell, this means that when an article gets retweeted or referenced a lot on e.g. Twitter, Google uses it as a sign of popularity and will rank the article higher in organic and news search.

Just last week Google announced that they have also made new improvements to Social Search.

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Difference between blog and websiteI’m often asked what the difference is between a blog and a website. For many people active in online marketing, the difference between a website and a blog might seem obvious.

But nowadays, everyone – from PRs and communicators to business leaders and customer service managers – should have a clear understanding of the difference.

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Through the eyes of GoogleA couple of months ago I did a blog post on how to check if your website is optimised for search engines.

Basically, you right click your mouse, select ‘view source code’ and search (Ctrl + F) for meta tags: if they ain’t there, you ain’t optimised.

But, as you have guessed there are more thorough ways of checking if your site is optimised for Google. The easiest is to start using a tool supplied by Google called Google Webmaster Tools!

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Google Rankings no prize for fourth placeAs a marketer on the social web, one of your first objectives is to be found by your potential clients.

And since search engine Google has a market share of 98% in The Netherlands, your website needs to rank high in Google.

But as the graph below indicates, ranking high in Google is not good enough. Nearly 88% of the clicks on Google Page 1 go to the websites that are on first, second and third place!

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Optimising SlideshareMost clients I speak with have heard of Slideshare – the ‘YouTube’ for powerpoints – and some are even using it. But I haven’t met too many who optimise their Slideshare profiles to their keyword strategy.

Optimising means that people can then find your profile and presentations better in Google, or when they search from within Slideshare.

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Linkedin Company Profile Group A Architects RotterdamI have often been asked by my clients how to create a company profile on Linkedin.

Creating a company profile on LinkedIn helps you get found in LinkedIn searches. Your company profile can also be found by people searching in Google.

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Today, it is a simple marketing truth that if you want to get found by potential customers and clients on the social web, you need to know the basics of SEO (search engine optimisation). You need to develop and implement a keyword strategy. You need to apply that keyword strategy in your social channels – and your content!

This will help help potential customers find you rather than spending unnecessary marketing euros on advertising to find them.

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In this post I will explain the concept of Long Tail SEO, how you can beat your competition in search engine rankings by applying it, and even how to get a shot at great search engine rankings for a single keyword!

SEO Longtail Keyword Phrases

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RSS Heart Marketers using RSSAs a marketer, you have countless new ways to get news, industry information, keep an eye on your competition, listen to what your customers say, et al.

You can visit blog and news websites, you can use social bookmarking sites, such as Digg or Stumble Upon, or news aggregators such as Alltop or Popurls, take a dip in your Twitter stream or do a search in Google.

Personally I use a lot of these tools. But my favourite one is good old RSS. I love my RSS Reader.

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