What Are Dirty URLs?
While websurfing, I have noticed some dirty urls that should be avoided.

Here are a few examples:
http://mywebiste.com/?p=46
or http://mywebsite.com/pl?id=4&view=basic

“Dirty url” is known to confuse the heck out of the search spiders. If you have a look at the above url, would you ever recall the link off the top of your head and/or determine the keywords pertaining to the post? Probably, not!
Spiders, also known as crawlers, follow and crawls links throughout the internet, seeking contents and adding them into the search engine indexes.  The more confusing links to your site, the less likely the search spider will crawl and index all of your pages.

Making a Dirty URL Clean and SEO Friendly
Fortunately, Word press provides options to customize your website url structure to improve search engine ranking and sharing compatibility.

Here’s is quick solution:

• Login your WP Dashboard

• Click on Permalink under the Setting Tab

• Under Common Setting, UnCheck Default

• Click on Custom Structure and add the following code: /%category%/%postname%/ - (displays category and post name) or /%postname% – (displays post name )(Categories and post name should be keywords rich)

• Click on Save Changes

Here’s an example of a “Clean and SEO Friendly URL”

http://mywebsite.com/postname

A clean url helps your visitors recall your website pages, helps the search engine determine what your pages are about and optimize your website for your keywords. For any social media tips or dirty url problems, please contact me.

Here are a few of the questions we covered:

1. How many keyword phrases should I include in my blog?
2. How many times a day should I promote my blog on multiple social media platforms?
3. How many words should my blog post contain?
4. In your opinion is blogging an effective way of promoting one’s business or a way to highlight industry trends?
5. Is adding pictures and graphics effective in a blog?

To hear the show with Reggie Juzang, please visit Blogging Basic Q&A Discussion.

1. What is your goal? Social media will only work for your business if you can decide what you can get out of it. Are you trying to:
• Build a brand and gain online visibility.
• Build a community of fans and loyalty.
• Seek business partnerships and/or collaborate with others in your industry.
• Change your career.
• Increase website and/or store traffic.

2. Who is your target market? It is not possible to market your business to everyone, you will need to find quality connections and define a target market. Social networking sites allow you to search for connections by age, gender, geographic locations and interests. Defining a target market can:
• Differentiate your business from your competition.
• Allow you to speak the language your group will understand and fulfill their needs.
• Give you the most value and share a part of the market.

3. What platforms and tools will you use? Decide what tools you will use to create your target market and what platforms you will use to communicate. Is it with a blog, video, audio, Facebook, Twitter or Diggs? For example, if you dread writing but love to talk, then audio podcasting may be your tools to create content and Blog Talk Radio will be your platform to communicate your creativity. Alternately, if you love to be in front of the camera, then YouTube may be your best friend. Remember not all platforms are appropriate for all businesses.
Just as a word of advice, regardless if you use any audio or video platform to spread your ideas, you must have some written content to describe the content in details. For example, use a blog to post audio show notes or video description. Why? The search engines will have a hard time reading .mp3, .mp4, .wav files.

4. What listening or monitoring tools will you use? Media is moving online. Consumers are going online to research product and services. They base their purchase decisions on reviews and feedback from perfectly good strangers. Ignoring what been said about your brand will not make it go away. Consumers will be quick to tweet on Twitter and post on Face Book about their bad experience with a brand even before they say anything to you. I see this happening every day. Please read my previous post on the Five Tools to Monitor Your Brand. As a savvy entrepreneur the quicker you resolve any issues the longer you keep your brand image strong.

5. What is your social media schedule? I know this may be tough. However, keep it organized and manage your time wisely. Social media can be addictive and time consuming. Designate a few times a week on a specific day for all social media duties. Do not neglect other administrative duties and family interaction. Schedule time to:
• Develop content.
• Post and/or upload content.
• Participate and build relationship on multiple social networking sites.
• Research industry news.
• Monitor your brand online.

6. How will you market your brand?
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) designing and writing of codes for your website will help improve the quality of traffic resulting in high page ranking.
• Press Release.
• Creating or participating in social events (online and offline).
• Joining community and helping in others success.
• Word of mouth.
• Email signature.
• Business cards and other printed materials.

Outlining your social media strategy plans is the beginning step of creativity, applying the steps in action is innovation. Allow two to six months to work your plan aggressively, so you can see the results that you are aiming for. Once you have decided to seriously establish and generate activity for your brand then you can utilize the social networking markets wisely, where your online visibility can be of optimum effect. Be patient, stay consistent and have fun!