And as the number of social networking sites grows, so does the number of services that are created to measure, track and monitor those services. What’s a marketing professional to do?

To help you cut through the clutter, here are the 10 must-use social media tools that can not only help you make sense of your social media efforts but make them more effective.

1. EditFlow
EditFlow is a plugin from open source content management system WordPress that allows you to manage your editorial team seamlessly.

With it, you can get a snapshot of your month-to-month content with the calendar feature. It also offers improved content status beyond WordPress’ default draft and pending review. And user groups can help you keep your team of writers organized by department or function.

Who should use it and why: Any business owner who manages a multi-author website should give EditFlow a look. This tool can keep all of the things that are important to a multi-author blog in one spot so management is easy, clean and documented.

2. TweetReach

This tool allows you to see how far your tweets travel. For example, with TweetReach I can search my blog and come up with these results. It breaks down how many people your messages reach and how many tweets it took to reach them. For instance, TweetReach can tell you how many times your tweets have been shared by retweets, replies and other standard tweets.

Who should use it and why: From a social media manager to a small-business owner, basically anybody who is interested in finding out how effective his or her tweets are based upon the number of people they touch should consider using TweetReach. It can also useful from a metric standpoint in terms of justifying the results of your social media campaigns with senior management or partners.

3. ArgyleSocial
This Durham, N.C.-based startup is a social media platform that aims to help marketers connect the business dots with the social media dots. ArgyleSocial offers a single dashboard to monitor Facebook and Twitter that allows you to delegate tasks to your team. It also offers easy reporting on the ROI of your social media efforts.

If you’d like to be an affiliate, you can use ArgyleSocial’s white label brand and resell the social media platform to your clients. All of your accounts can be wrapped up into one bill and sent to you to distribute or absorb as an included service.

Who should use it and why: From the social media manager to the one-person business that needs to prove to management, clients or themselves that their social media campaign is paying off.

4. HootSuite for iPad
HootSuite users should be happy with this iPad application. It includes a stationary column in the sidebar that keeps track of all streams being tracked.

Among the other things HootSuite says you can do with this iPad app include checking in using a Foursquare account, scheduling messages to send at a later time, examine click-through statistics, add geo-location coordinates to messages and shorten URLs with a built-in Ow.ly tool.

Who should use it and why: HootSuite for iPad is for heavy iPad users who want to manage their social media content and engagement.

5. TweetLevel
You might be thinking you don’t need another Tweet metric tool, but TweetLevel, allows you to specifically search for hashtags, which can lead you to insights on who to follow based upon conversation versus person.

Once you’ve found someone you’d like to follow, you can use TweetLevel to help measure his or her social influence. You can also evaluate the buzz around a certain topic to determine if it’s a trend worth paying attention to. Then take a peek at related phrases around your topic to gauge the true scope of the trending idea.

Who should use it and why: Public relations managers and social media marketing professionals who want to analyze a campaign should give TweetLevel a try. This tool can help you identify the Twitter conversation, where it’s going wrong and how to correct that mistake.

6. ReFollow
When it comes to Twitter, numbers might not be as important as the people you follow and who follows you. ReFollow is an application that allows you to lock in those followers that you’ve connected with and make sure they continue to follow you.

Other features include filtering a search on Twitter to uncover insights, such as what you have in common with certain followers. This can lead you to connecting with someone who maybe you’re Twitter conversation has been close to zero, but with a simple direct message to that person you can make a connection and build a business relationship.

Who should use it and why: This can be the perfect tool for the person who wants to grow a list of highly-qualified, like-minded people. Consider using ReFollow if your concern is quality over quantity, which it should be.

7. TwitterSearch
You’ve probably heard of TwitterSearch but, more than likely, you aren’t using it correctly.

New media expert Thomas Baekdal offers a number of little-known tips for using TwitterSearch. For instance, to see what people are saying about your competitors, search with to:competitor or from:competitor. Replace “Competitor” with that company’s Twitter handle.

To uncover top trending topics search that topic plus –rt filter:links. For example, “digital marketing-rt filter:links”. That code will remove all of the retweets from the search.

Who should use it and why: Anyone who wants to use and search Twitter more effectively should brush up on his or her TwitterSearch skills. And knowing what’s trending on Twitter can be a useful way to generate ideas for your business blog. When you see trending topics, you can create a blog post with content relevant to that discussion.

8. Traackr
One simple way to find and follow people who are influential in your space is to use Traackr. It allows you to identify the “authorities” in your industry who can mean the most to your business or your client’s.

What’s also useful about Traackr is that you can watch how social media leaders are responding and contributing to content you are sharing. An ad agency, for example, can see who it should target to help social media campaigns get off the ground, build its engagement strategies based upon Traackr’s unique intelligence and then see results of those campaigns.

Who should use it and why: Traackr can be a useful tool for either advertising agencies or brands that want to build social media campaigns that improve over time and show how they pay off in the end.

9. SocMetrics
The Topical Influencer platform by SocMetrics is a web-based tool that allows you to identify influencers, understand who these people are, interact with them and then monitor your campaign.

The “Competitive Influence” feature allows you to specify brands and drill down for detailed influencers. What’s slick about this tool is that you can narrow your search to a long-tail keyword, seeing who is truly influential.

Who should use it and why: Any marketing professional who wants to build an effective social media campaign based upon influencers in a specific industry should give this a look. SocMetrics can help you harness the power of thought leaders, which in turn can help you build your brand and sell more.

10. Social Scope
For BlackBerry users who’ve longed for an app that combines Twitter and Facebook on one screen, such as TweetDeck for your desktop, consider trying Social Scope.

And on that same screen you’ll see a thumbnail image if someone shares something from TwitPic. It also has a built in retweeting feature, hash tag search and will also let you see the entire URL to know where a truncated URL is pointing.

Who should use it and why: Anyone who owns a BlackBerry and has a Facebook and Twitter account is a prime target for this app. It’s probably the closest you can get to a desktop-type app on a BlackBerry.

Less Attention From Companies

Increased emphasis on Facebook Pages means less emphasis on traditional websites. It’s trend that’s still on an upward swing as more and more companies realize the advantages of a strong social media presence.

Ford was one of the earliest companies to promote their Facebook Page. In advertisements, both online and in traditional media, they directed customers to checkout Ford on Facebook, not on Ford.com. At the time, it was an unheard of practice. Fast forward several years and most major companies have established their own Facebook presence and reaped the benefits. As the remaining companies play catch-up, there will be even more emphasis placed on Facebook Pages, and less on websites.

Users Are Looking For Social Interaction

People love being able to make online tasks that would otherwise be solitary, social. That’s why so many people are visiting businesses on Facebook, instead of at their old URLs. A snowboarder looking for new bindings can browse different manufacturer’s websites, but his options are pretty limited. He can look at the specs, choose a model, and make a purchase. But on Facebook, he can get opinions from his friends on the model he’s chosen. Their good or bad reviews of the product help him make an informed purchase. If there’s a problem with shipping or a defect in the product, the snowboard company’s Page is his access point to a company representative, and the first step toward getting the problem rectified. His process of purchasing a snowboard went from being simple and solitary to thorough and social.

Facebook and Website Synergy

Facebook Pages and traditional websites are being designed to better compliment each other. Each platform has it’s distinct strengths – there’s interaction on Facebook, and robust functionality on websites. Bigger companies have the convenience of hiring both community managers and web designers who are especially adept at recognizing the strengths of Facebook and websites, capitalizing on them the both. They design the two platforms to work together to give their users the content they expect on the platform they’re visiting. The resulting Facebook Page is engaging and social with an available company representative, while the website is highly functional with straightforward operation. The Facebook Page contains links to the website, and the website links visitors to the Facebook Page.

Websites Forced Into Social Media

In some cases, companies try to recreate their websites on Facebook. There’s heavy emphasis on static content, lots of information, and straightforward action, but since that’s not the content Facebook users are after, these pages largely go ignored. Meanwhile, the traditional website is reduced to a placeholder with nothing more than a couple links to the Facebook Page.

Facebook Pages Have Replaced Traditional Websites For Many Small Operations

For family businesses and artists and musicians, it’s easier – and cheaper – to focus their online efforts solely on Facebook. Custom tab applications are a great way for small business owners and artists to design tabs with a professional look and feel at a fraction of the cost of professional design services. Facebook – and a custom tab app – actually has a way of bridging the gap between the presence of big-budget corporations and local shops, putting businesses big and small side-by-side in the same arena.

Websites Remain King Of Functionality

Facebook has cornered the social media market, but websites are more useful for functions outside of social media ideology, and they’re still the platform used for performing straightforward tasks. Furthermore, there are websites like WebMD.com that could never be replicated on Facebook. There is so much information, so much functionality, and it’s such a big name, that WebMD.com will continue to be the online resource for health and wellness related content.

The Future Role Of Websites

Websites will always have a place, but they’ll continue to get less attention as businesses figure out more ways to bring their content to the people, which means we’ll continue to see traffic being directed en mass to the social networking giant at the expense of traditional websites.

As an online marketing strategist, I continually come across business owners who rave about the number of visitors coming to their website. The irony is that website traffic alone doesn’t generate money.

I ask these business owners questions: Where is the website traffic coming from? What Web pages are visitors landing on the most? What percentage of visitors return to the site? How many visitors convert into customers?

Their lack of answers shows they’re concentrating on volume and not on quality, and I guarantee their sales are suffering as a result. It doesn’t matter how many people visit your website if those people are not the “right” people — the type of people who will buy something from you someday.

Good website analytics take the mystery out of wondering who’s visiting the company website and why. You don’t need to be an online marketing strategist to use them, either. There are plenty of website analytics packages for sale on the Web, but you can get started free through Google Analytics.

The Google service provides you with a line of code to plug into each of your website pages, and you can then start tracking. You can get a breakdown not only of how many visitors came to the website, but how long they stayed, what site they previously came from, what search terms they used to reach the website, and which pages they visited the most.

Here are five points to consider as you start delving into the numbers:

1. Do your website visitors already know you? The whole point of the website is to link you with potential new customers who have never heard of your business, not people who may be merely looking up your address. A well-designed website should only have a small percentage of visitors, maybe 5 percent, who have used the company’s name to find it.

2. Are you bringing in potential customers? Let’s say you’re a tennis gear provider. People who find your website searching for “tennis” probably aren’t going to help you. They likely won’t help you if they searched for “tennis racket.” You want the people who searched for “Dunlop tennis rackets,” or better yet “Dunlop Aerogel Titan.” They know what they want, and they will buy from you if you’re offering the best deal.

3. Does your social media presence work? If you spend 10 percent of your online marketing efforts on social media and 25 percent of your website visits come from Facebook or Twitter, you’re in good shape. Better yet, you can set up goal scenarios through Google Analytics. A goal might be that you want people to come from Twitter to see a post on your site that links to a promotional offer. You can then tweet the promotion and see how many people follow the path.

4. Are visitors bailing from your homepage? Google Analytics tells you your homepage’s bounce rate, the percentage of homepage visitors who never clicked on additional pages. If the bounce rate is more than 60 to 70 percent, you have a problem. The search terms your visitors are using to find the site tell you whether they’re the people you want. If they are the right type of visitors and they aren’t delving deeper into the site, then the blame goes on the homepage. It might not look professional, its content might not be compelling or the website might simply be confusing.

5. Are they looking at your product or service pages? The website is supposed to generate sales or interest in your services. If website visitors aren’t looking at the pages that allow this to happen, then your homepage is not doing its job. The homepage should be divided into decision-making paths that quickly separate visitors by their interests and lead them to the information they are looking for.

Most of all, don’t be intimidated by the analytics. Get your feet wet and decide what you really want. These numbers are the key to finding out whether your website is effectively generating business.

Twitter’s international reach is reflected in its top trending news topics for the first half of 2011. Among them: Egypt’s revolution, the fighting in Libya, the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan and the British royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The site also published a much lower-brow list of 2011′s trending topics in pop culture, such as Rebecca “Friday” Black and Charlie Sheen. Twitter did not say if its users are tweeting more often or whether the surge in tweets is simply just a reflection of more people signing up. Twitter is estimated to have more than 200 million users. In a post celebrating its fifth birthday in March, Twitter said that close to 500,000 new accounts are created every day.

Why do nicer restaurants have a no free refill policy on soft drinks? This is a question that has perplexed me for years. [I know, this is a deviation from the normal post you find on my blog, but in a way, it is business, if not web, related].

I often order a soft drink when I go out to eat, sometimes tea, but more often just Coke. And it has been my experience, having lived all over the United States, that I will have free refills. Seriously, how often do you order a Coke and ask, “Are the refills free?” I was eating dinner this evening with my wife, at what I would consider “a nice restaurant” called Libby Montana, located in Mequon/Thiensville, Wisconsin. Mequon is considered to be a  nicer or up-scale suburb of Milwaukee with a lot of nice and higher-end restaurants and shops.

We have eaten at several restaurants in Mequon recently and over my lifetime I have eaten at dozens of “nice” or “fancy” restaurants and the one thing that I have noticed is, in many cases, they typically have a no free refills on soft drinks policy.

Growing up, my parents were business owners, and I have been in management in the food service/restaurants a few times.  I understand business and the cost/price markup profit factor of what goes into the price of the food you order and why it costs what it costs.  Restaurants, as in any business, are there to make money. I realize this.

Typically, you get less food at a nicer restaurant than you do at other restaurants. But it’s the ambiance, the quality of the food and the expertise of the chef that all factor in to the higher price you pay.  Having graduated with a minor in business, I have also learned when it comes to business and marketing: That a higher price gives the illusion of value.  In tests, when given the option of three similar things to buy, consumers feel they have a better product simply based on the higher cost. The higher cost gives the product a higher perceived worth, even though the 3 items themselves may be similar or even exactly the same. So the price you see on the menu matters, its not just profit, it’s for appearance and perception as well, believe that.

But we all know what a soft drink is worth. Do we really think we are getting a better Coke or a better Sprite if the cost is $4.00 or they charge for refills?

So now comes my question:  Why then do nicer or fancier restaurants not offer free soft drink refills like their lower cost restaurant cousins?

Thinking back to my managerial days in restaurants, I know what it costs a restaurant to serve a soft drink from a fountain.  Usually, it costs the restaurant more for the cup, lid, straw, pressurized soda water and ice than it does for the syrup in the soft drink.  And with all of that added up, it still only costs the restaurant pennies per drink. And with a restaurant contracting with a particular beverage company and brand, the company will give the restaurant the syrup and other logoed supplies for free if they order a certain amount.  And for restaurants that use plastic or glass cups that can be washed (recycled and used by many customers), the cost is often free to the restaurant for serving that soft drink that ends up costing the consumer $2.00-$3.00.

This evening, I paid $2.50 for a Mountain Dew at Libby Montana.  It was served in a large plastic Pepsi logoed cup (something often given to the restaurant by the soft drink brand for free just for promoting their brand).  During the middle of our dinner, I asked for a refill and was abruptly told, “We charge for refills on soft drinks, is that ok?”  I declined and told her I was fine with water for the rest of the meal.

So why does this bother me? I don’t know. I am not a socialist and I am not suggesting it should be mandatory for restaurants to offer me free refills every where I eat. They can charge whatever they want. But the thing is, after going to one of these restaurants that don’t offer free soft drink refills, I won’t go back, regardless of the food (which was great, by the way). It just irks me for some reason. It cheapens the restaurant somehow for me. And if I ever did go back, I would only order water.  But I guess enough people do pay and that is the reason they keep the policy I guess.  They justify it some way, and that is fine with me.  But it is perplexing to me. Why do they do it? They give free coffee refills, free tea refills (both of which cost the restaurant more than soft drinks and produce less profit).

Can it be mere economics? Do they need to charge for each refill to make a certain profit margin? Is the customer traffic at a higher-end restaurant less than that of a lower-end restaurant? Is the rent higher? Thus the need to find a profit wherever they can? But if it’s only economics, the profit on a soft drink is upwards of a 1000% even with multiple free refills.

The thing is, when I go to restaurants I assume that soft drinks have free refills, just like water, coffee or tea (in most regards). I just wonder, what’s their point? Why do they do it? Is it appearances, is it economics? What?

Am I cheap? I don’t think so. I mean its only a few dollars. But I think of it this way: I would venture that 95%-99% of sit down restaurants offer free refills for soft drinks.  When the server asks you for drink order and you order a soft drink, you assume refills are free.  I feel like it’s false advertising. It seems to cheapen the restaurant for me. I look at the menu, and they don’t go out of their way to advertise this fact that they charge. Does it really make it seem like a nicer restaurant that they charge me for it? I don’t know.

If it is so common for soft drinks to have free refills at most sit-down restaurants you visit, it makes me wonder why nicer restaurants don’t.

Libby Montana Website

This article reviews some important and necessary checks that web-sites should be checked against before the official launch — little details are often forgotten or ignored, but – if done in time – may sum up to an overall greater user experience and avoid unnecessary costs after the official site release.

Favicon

A favicon brands the tab or window in which your website is open in the user’s browser. It is also saved with the bookmark so that users can easily identify pages from your website. Some browsers pick up the favicon if you save it in your root directory as favicon.ico, but to be sure it’s picked up all the time, include the following in your head.

And if you have an iPhone favicon:

Titles And Meta Data

Your page title is the most important element for SEO and is also important so that users know what’s on the page. Make sure it changes on every page and relates to that page’s content.

Meta description and keyword tags aren’t as important for SEO (at least for the major search engines anyway), but it’s still a good idea to include them. Change the description on each page to make it relate to that page’s content, because this is often what Google displays in its search result description.

Cross-Browser Checks

Just when you think your design looks great, pixel perfect, you check it in IE and see that everything is broken. It’s important that your website works across browsers. It doesn’t have to be pixel perfect, but everything should work, and the user shouldn’t see any problems. The most popular browsers to check are Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Chrome, Opera and the iPhone.

Proofread

Read everything. Even if you’ve already read it, read it again. Get someone else to read it. There’s always something you’ll pick up on and have to change. See if you can reduce the amount of text by keeping it specific. Break up large text blocks into shorter paragraphs. Add clear headings throughout, and use lists so that users can scan easily. Don’t forget about dynamic text too, such as alert boxes.

Links

Don’t just assume all your links work. Click on them. You may often forget to add “http://” to links to external websites. Make sure your logo links to the home page, a common convention.

Also, think about how your links work. Is it obvious to new users that they are links? They should stand out from the other text on the page. Don’t underline text that isn’t a link because it will confuse users. And what happens to visited links?

Functionality Check

Test everything thoroughly. If you have a contact form, test it and copy yourself so that you can see what comes through. Get others to test your website, and not just family and friends but the website’s target market. Sit back and watch how a user uses the website. It’s amazing what you’ll pick up on when others use your website differently than how you assume they’d use it. Common things to check for are contact forms, search functions, shopping baskets and log-in areas.

Graceful Degradation

Your website should work with JavaScript turned off. Users often have JavaScript turned off for security, so you should be prepared for this. You can easily turn off JavaScript in Firefox. Test your forms to make sure they still perform server-side validation checks, and test any cool AJAX stuff you have going on.

Validation

You should aim for a 100% valid website. That said, it isn’t the end of the world if your website doesn’t validate, but it’s important to know the reasons why it doesn’t so that you can fix any nasty errors. Common gotchas include no “alt” tags, no closing tags and using “&” instead of “&” for ampersands.

RSS Link

If your website has a blog or newsreel, you should have an RSS feed that users can subscribe to. Users should be able to easily find your RSS feed: the common convention is to put a small RSS icon in the browser’s address bar.

Put this code between your <head> tags.

Analytics

Installing some sort of analytics tool is important for measuring statistics to see how your website performs and how successful your conversion rates are. Track daily unique hits, monthly page views and browser statistics, all useful data to start tracking from day 1. Google Analytics is a free favorite among website owners. Others to consider are Clicky, Kissmetrics, Mint and StatCounter.

Sitemap

Adding a sitemap.xml file to your root directory allows the major search engines to easily index your website. The file points crawlers to all the pages on your website. XML-Sitemaps automatically creates a sitemap.xml file for you. After creating the file, upload it to your root directory so that its location is www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml.

If you use WordPress, install the Google XML Sitemaps plug-in, which automatically updates the sitemap when you write new posts. Also, add your website and sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. This tells Google that you have a sitemap, and the service provides useful statistics on how and when your website was last indexed.

Defensive Design

The most commonly overlooked defensive design element is the 404 page. If a user requests a page that doesn’t exist, your 404 page is displayed. This may happen for a variety of reasons, including another website linking to a page that doesn’t exist. Get your users back on track by providing a useful 404 page that directs them to the home page or suggests other pages they may be interested in.

Another defensive design technique is checking your forms for validation. Try submitting unusual information in your form fields (e.g. lots of characters, letters in number fields, etc.) and make sure that if there is an error, the user is provided with enough feedback to be able to fix it.

Optimize

You’ll want to configure your website for optimal performance. You should do this on an ongoing basis after launch, but you can take a few simple steps before launch, too. Reducing HTTP requests, using CSS sprites wherever possible, optimizing images for the Web, compressing JavaScript and CSS files and so on can all help load your pages more quickly and use less server resources.

Besides, depending on the publishing engine that you are using, you may need to consider taking more specific measures – for instance, if you are using WordPress, you may need to consider useful caching techniques to speed up the performance.

Back Up

If your website runs off a database, you need a back-up strategy. Or else, the day will come when you regret not having one. If you use WordPress, install WordPress Database Backup, which you can set up to automatically email you backups.

Print Style Sheet

If a user wants to print a page from your website, chances are she or he wants only the main content and not the navigation or extra design elements. That’s why it is a good idea to create a print-specific style sheet. Also, certain CSS elements, such as floats, don’t come out well when printed.

To point to a special CSS style sheet that computers automatically use when users print a page, simply include the following code between your <head> tags.

• Printing The Web: Solutions and Techniques
• A List Apart: Going to print

Download the Ultimate Website Launch Checklist!

Just recently Dan Zambonini has published a very detailed checklist that covers both the pre-launch and the post-launch phase of the web site life cycle. Among other things his Ultimate Website Launch Checklist contains checks related to content and style, standards and validation, search engine visibility, functional testing, security/risk, performance and marketing.

The pdf-version is available as well. The checklist is a very useful reference that may help you in your daily projects and will help you to prevent errors and mistake once the site is released.

You may also want to consider the Quick Usability Check List by David Leggett that highlight some of the more common problems designers should address on their own sites in a Usability checklist of sorts. Not all of these items will apply to every website, these are just suggested things to look for in your own site design.

What other checks would you list?

Make yourself a to-do list and keep it handy to check over before making any website live. Are there any other points you would add? Share them in the comments!

There certainly is! Here are the top five ways you can strengthen your site and increase your online visibility.

1. Strong Hosting

This first point is mostly important for those who don’t have their own Website yet but eagerly want to create one. After you have selected your domain name, the next step is to choose a hosting plan. There are many good, affordable alternatives, but what professionals usually recommend is specialized blog hosting. This form of Web hosting allows you to set up a professional-looking Website in no time at all. Why is this important to mention when it comes to making your site more popular? Well, without strong hosting, you won’t be able to handle a traffic to your new Website, which means you’ll have no chance at all of becoming well liked.

Of course, finding strong hosting is often easier said than done. The hosting industry has grown very popular in recent years, and this has lead to large numbers of companies offering various hosting services. But don’t be fooled by their tricky ways of making it sound as if they are the best in the industry. We would recommend you partner up with a company that has a strong reputation and experience in the business. You might start at Web Hosting Search for reviews and other information to help you find the right fit.

When it comes to hosting, you should compare the different features included with the plan. Make sure you are guaranteed at least 99.9% uptime and that customer support is easy to get hold of. You never know when you could need them. Likewise, it is also good to know exactly what kind of numbers in terms of disc space and bandwidth will you be allowed to use and manage. Some providers also forbid their clients to upload music or video files to their servers even if it is for personal use. It’s important to ask customer support to resolve such issues before purchasing a plan. Some other things you might consider asking are whether your domain name registry information will be protected and how many different e-mail accounts will you be allowed to use as part of the hosting agreement.

2. Optimize Your Website

In order to be truly successful online, you will have to get a high ranking in search engines. To succeed in this, you should learn as much as you possibly can about search engine optimization (SEO). The subject of SEO is vast and can be quite daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to see the benefits immediately and will probably wonder why you didn’t get started with it earlier. A few things you can do to get started are to make sure you’re using the proper keywords and to write for your visitors as well as for search engines. Writing for search engines is important, since you want to get high rankings, and writing for visitors is of the essence because you want them to stick around and return to your Website.

When you are satisfied with the keywords and content on your site, it is time to start working with link building. Search engines determine much of the value of a certain page/site by looking at the number of inbound links. Link exchange is one of the most popular and successful ways to get a good rank on search engines, and it’s really easy to do. Simply visit a Website that you like and ask the Webmaster if they are interested in a link exchange — it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

Having something interesting and distinctive on your page is a great way to attract potential link partners. For example, if you are running a Website about domain names, why not add a domain name availability checker to your homepage? It will most likely attract links from other sites related to the niche, and people will tend to come back again if they want to know whether a domain is available or not. Try to be extra creative to set yourself apart from competitors.

3. Take Advantage of Social Media Optimization

Even though SEO should be a big part of your site optimization, it shouldn’t end there. Social Media Optimization is probably just as important, since it’s one of the strongest marketing tools available today. A social media optimization campaign should include a few different things. First, make sure the content on your site or blog is relevant to your topic and not out of date. Visit similar sites and join the discussion in leaving comments on posts/articles — don’t be afraid to say what’s on your mind. Make yourself visible on Facebook and MySpace. Three other sites that can be useful for social media optimization are Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. The two latter ones are not always applicable. Make sure you only take advantage of them when the time is right — you might do more harm than good if you don’t.

Obviously, don’t forget to include outbound links to your Website on any social media site you utilize. Even if your link has a “nofollow” attribute attached to it (e.g. like in Facebook), you will still attract new visitors and potential customers to the site. Lastly, your campaign should be built on friendly platforms, such as CoffeeCup Flash™ Blogger, which make it easy to create and edit content.

4. Get Your Visitors Involved

A crucial point to make your site grow in the number of visitors is by getting them involved. Try to write in a personal style, and don’t be afraid to leave an open question. If this shouldn’t do it, why not hold a contest? This will most likely get people talking about your site. The prize doesn’t have to cost a fortune, since people like to compete regardless of what the award is — it’s human nature.

Other easy ways of getting your visitors involved is by including a forum on your site or the possibility to comment on your posts/articles. Everyone wants to express their own personal ideas and thoughts on topics, and by allowing them doing so, you also increase the chance of visitors returning to see how was their feedback appreciated. As an added bonus, if the topic is extra popular, the discussion could attract interest from other Websites as well!

5. Emphasize Usability in Your Design

Investing in a good design is more important than some people seem to think. With a beautiful design, you will grow in trust among your readers/visitors. An important fact to remember is not over-designing the Website. It doesn’t matter how many hours you’ve put into designing the site if no one understands how to use it. Let some non-Internet-savvy friends navigate through your Website before launching it at a full scale. If they find it easy, so will the rest of your visitors.

It is difficult to say exactly what makes a beautiful and functional design. What looks good to one person might seem terrible for another. However, there are basic trends in Web design, and if you follow these, you can be sure to please most of your visitors. A few popular Web design trends for 2009 are multi-column layouts, large illustrations, and lots of white space.

If you wish to stay on the safe side, then it is a good call to make the layout and design features on the page easily accessible and simple to understand. Try to use standard coding and avoid over-the-top Flash animations. Some people may have browser settings that prevent them from viewing Flash, which means you might lose valuable visitors. Try to think how the visitor thinks, and your Website will grow more popular and respected day after day.

Here are some quick tips on what you can do to your website to take advantage of the holiday shopping season:

• Update your home page or news items.
• Check your analytics for what people are searching on and blog/write about that.
• Change your logo to something more festive.
• Add new images to the site or change up the background image.
• Offer a special deal if people sign up for your e-newsletter.
• Cut pricing on items or give something extra for 1 day (i.e. Cyber Monday) (and this assumes your website already gets good traffic).
• Give away a free sample of your products or services.
• Offer a small gift with any order if people purchase during December.

It’s nice to wrap up the year with a bang. Be creative. Ask your customers what they want (put a poll on your website or e-newsletter) and then respond accordingly. It’s a great time to take advantage of and hopefully makes your website a success that will grow into the next year.