For those who are not familiar with www.slideshare.com,  it is a site where you can share PowerPoint presentations with people online.  Using SlideShare can be a great way to promote your business, or to demonstrate products or services to potential clients.  Other benefits from SlideShare include opportunities for link building and more presence in thesearch results.

Slideshare offers users an account where they can upload a profile photo, include information about themselves and include a link to their website.  This profile page contains the link to your site.  It does not have a “no follow” attribute, so you can get some link juice passed to your site from SlideShare once your page is indexed.  It is important to complete all the necessary fields when signing up for an account to get the maximum benefit. 

Once you upload your presentations to SlideShare, you can then get and “embed” code to share your presentations on other sites and blogs.  This embed code also makes it easier for others to share your presentation.

Like many other social media channels, SlideShare has a community section.  This community allows you to share ideas and resources with other users.  You can also have people follow you and follow them back, like you would in Twitter.  Having followers and being involved in the communities can help you to connect with those who are already interested in your products and services.

While browsing through one of my favorite morning show websites, I noticed pictures of a charity event.  As I followed those links and went to the event’s page, I also noticed that there was a page with a list of sponsors.  To my surprise, the links to the websites were not “no follow”. The links also contained quality anchor text.

This made me think about how sponsoring events could be a great link building opportunity.  Sponsoring local events in your area is positive for the community and beneficial for your link building efforts because the links are high quality and relevant. 

With the summer approaching, many communities and organizations in your area will be hosting events, fundraisers, running events and more.  Keep your eye out for these events to see if there are relevant sponsorship opportunities to incorporate into your link building efforts.  Sponsoring events can not only help your link building efforts, but it can also increase your brand’s reputation on and offline.  Showing your customers that you care about the community can help to solidify their decision when choosing your goods or services versus a competitor’s.

So, the next time you are involved in an event, ask about the sponsor page and think about the possible link building opportunities that can go along with it.

Creating good title tag text is not just important for search engine optimization. A recent study by Nielsen Research has found that users were more likely to comprehend and click on links in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) that contain the main subject of the page closer to the beginning of the title. The most successful link text didn’t contain bland, made-up or many “filler” words.  Title tags that were to the point and described the page’s content were more likely to be clicked on by users.

The study focuses on the first 11 characters of the link text and the ability of users to understand the content found there. The researchers found that when the first 11 characters contained a clear description of the page content, searchers were more likely to choose it. 

This study further strengthens what we teach our clients when we provide them with Meta Tag reviews. When creating your Meta title, you should use the keyword that you are targeting for the page as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible.  This will give search engines, and more importantly users a better understanding of what they will find on the page.  For example purposes, let’s say we have a page about a new product such as  “Widgets”.  A good title for this page would be best if written like this:

Widgets - New and Improved from ABC Corporation
This title contains the keyword first and then describes it later on. 

According to the study, if the title was written like this:
Introducing New and Improved Widgets from ABC Corporation
It would not do as well with users.  The reason behind this is that using language like “introducing” or “new and improved” is so common and bland, that users are not enticed to click on it. 
If you feel the need for more descriptive language, use it after the main keyword, or reserve most of it for use in the description Meta tag.

To view the study from Nielson, please visit: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/nanocontent.html