Protecting against social media identity theft

Due to the exponential increase in Social Media, it is becoming more important than ever to make sure that you are using it to best effect for your company. We have even added a new Social Media section to our blog to categorize all of our posts! Because of the power that social media has to manage reputations and increase traffic to your site, there is now several sites that help you to protect your ’social media identity’.

Knowem.com offers a service to check the availability of your username across 120 different social media sites, and unique to Knowem, can then automatically sign you up to all the sites so that your identity cannot be taken by another user. This isn’t a free service, there is an initial cost for the sign up and then a monthly subscription fee which automatically signs you up to new social media sites as they spring up.

I don’t know much about this service, only what I have read online and on Twitter but it seems that quite a lot of people are already aware of the site, which was previously checkusernames.com.  I would be interested in finding out if they have any ‘authenticity’ checks, i.e. if someone wanted to regsiter Elevator SEO, would they need an Elevator SEO email address or could anyone register it? I guess this would be much easier to manage on big names such as Sony or Manchester Utd etc!!

So how necessary is it to ‘bagsy’ all the names across these social media sites? Surely if you signed up to all of them you would have a very diluted social media campaign? Would it not be better to focus on just a few of the primary sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace etc?  Additionally, during the automatic sign up, does it use the same username and password for each? If so, if someone found out your details for one site they would essentially have access to all 119 of the other sites you were signed up to!

After thinking some more about this, percentage wise how important is it to register your identity in other social media sites that don’t have anywhere near the same level of traffic?  Also, protecting usernames is very similar to the issues a lot of website owners used to have with domain names. However, there are always alternatives you can use such as adding hyphens to separate words or adding ‘official’ in the name etc.

What the site does show however is the importance of social media, and just how powerful it can become if this kind of action is already becoming available.  If anyone knows more about knowem, has used the service, or would simply like to add to this post then leave your comments below!

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The dangers of buying links

I get a lot of emails from companies wishing to partner with Elevator SEO, or offering their services as an outsource - normally at a very cheap price. A lot of these companies are based overseas, and their offering is almost always the same. They offer to write blogs, register domains with directories and you can buy links to your domain in the 1000’s for a very small monthly investment. Because of this, it’s easy to see why inexperienced companies who know ‘a bit of SEO’ and decide to do it themselves can make mistakes (see our article on DIY SEO). Also, companies claiming to be SEO consultants outsource to these companies to maximise profit, again in most cases this is through inexperience.

Some specialist broker websites allow you to purchase temporary inbound links to your website at a monthly cost.  As soon as you stop paying for the links, they are then removed.  This has been an acceptable practice for many years with some SEO companies, although it has always been frowned upon, as it really defies the purpose of the link.  A lot of the links that get purchased all come from the same server, the sites look very similar and often have just simple colour changes to the site design, and are created with the simple purpose of linking to other sites. In a worst case scenario, some of the links may even originate from ‘link farms’.

Google is cracking down even more on sites that purchase inbound links to raise their rankings. Google knows if a website has an unnatural spike in links to a domain, and in some cases websites have been heavily penalised for this. Additionally, it also knows which sites are known link providers and the algorithm will be looking more closely at purchased links. Because of this crack down, some websites may find that their rankings drop suddenly in the not so distant future. Additionally, a lot of SEO companies may find that a lot of their clients may also start dropping out of the rankings!

Buying links is not the only way to get good inbound links. There are lots of good strategies you can employ to build inbound links naturally. To find out more, why not contact Elevator?

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#1 in Google local for Manchester SEO company

Manchester SEO company results in Google local

Manchester SEO company results in Google local

After recently writing about the importance of ranking well in Google Local due to recent changes (in our blog post Google local changes SEO results) Elevator is now ranked in the top 10 for the keyword Manchester SEO and number #1 for keyword Manchester SEO Company.

Ranking well within the business directory listings is separate to ranking within the standard organic results. Due to worldwide changes by Google to provide local listings to users based on their geographic location, ranking well within these directories is more important than ever. Most importantly, these results appear above the standard search results. On a laptop, or smaller resolution monitor, this means that the organic listings below may actually be hidden or off the page giving the local results prime position!

What these results show is that it is possible to rank well within the Local listings using a combination of simple techniques and a well thought out strategy. To find out more, you can contact Elevator and we can give you advise or help you with your listing.

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Google local changes SEO results

google-local-manchester-seo

Google have recently announced changes to the Google search that will change the way in which a lot of companies rank in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). The reason for this is to improve the results for searchers when they are looking for a product or service; such as a local restaurant or company. Google local has been in use for a long time, but only normally appears when you add a geographic location or place name to the search string. The image above shows the results for the keyphrase Manchester SEO, which brings up the first 10 SEO companies that are listed in the Google business directory. Ranking within these listings is independent of standard search results, so even if you are ranked number #1 for this term, you won’t appear in the local listings unless you have worked on it specifically.

Google has now rolled out a worldwide plan to present the user with these results regardless of whether a location is entered as part of the keyphrase string or not. It determines your location from your IP address (which captures a reasonably broad location) but you also have the option to specify more specifically using some manual options. This is now making it very important to rank well within Google Local search, as these listings appear before the organic search results.

To find out more information, you can view the original post on the Google blog: Google local blog post

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Free SEO website analysis report

As part of our constantly improving offer to potential clients, Elevator SEO provides a free SEO website analysis report. This report is used to provide a basic analysis of your website, and can give a good insight into it’s current status and the level of work that would be involved in order to realistically meet your goals. The key sections it includes are:

  • Domain / website overview: Such as domain age, page rank, link report etc
  • Keyword ranking: How your site ranks in the top 3 search engines for your chosen keywords
  • Competitor analysis: A look at your top 10 competitors for your keywords
  • Initial recommendations: What you need to do in order to meet your goals

The report is completely free with absolutely no obligation. All you need to do is fill in our online form which includes your name, company (if applicable), URL, contact number, and email address. Once we have qualified your request, we will complete the analysis and send you a PDF with all the information. One of our team will also follow the report up with a phone call, to provide supporting information / clarification and explain exactly what you need to do in order to meet your goals.

To find out more you can contact Elevator by email or you can phone the office (0161 244 5544).

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