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Many of us actively use sites like Twitter and Facebook to promote our businesses. And those of us looking to connect with more business-related contacts may turn to sites like LinkedIn to develop relationships with people we have worked with or may want to work with. With the growing use of social networking by business professionals, there is a growing number of social networking sites focused on business users and meeting their needs. Here is a list of 20 social networking sites for entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals that are worth a look.

You typically have to create some number of social interactions to leave the trail of signals of quality to make Google want to trust a site enough to put it in front of a large traffic stream, especially if you are starting a brand new site and are trying to operate within Google's guidelines. As Bob Massa says "search engines follow people."

There are two points in this post that I want to emphasize... First off SEO is an ongoing process. There isn't a magic trick that pushes your site to the top of rankings. It takes work.. Rinse & Repeat. Analyze & Tweak. Secondly there is a great point that if you hire an SEO expert you will get your site in front of the thousand other relevant people in your niche. This is very hard and takes a lot of work. So, you should create Outposts. Creating outposts is part of a content marketing strategy where you distribute your content among various networks to build up multiple sources of traffic... Great quote from Bob Massa explains it perfect!

Learn what bounce rates are, how they affect you, and what you can do to improve your user's experience.

Bounce rates can be an important measurement for your website and web pages. They can help determine whether a certain ad campaign is successful, whether you're targeting the right keywords, or whether changes you make are improving your site. Knowing the bounce rate of your site and individual pages can give clues about what is and isn't working for your site.

You've refined your keywords, optimized your bids, and written AdWords text ads that pull in tons of targeted clicks, but after looking at your Google Analytics reports, you realize that your landing page has a bounce rate of 91%. Which means that 91% of the users coming to your site are quickly glancing around and leaving, deciding immediately that this site isn't for them. One of the easiest, low-tech ways to make users stick around and look at your products or services is to catch their attention with an engaging headline.Recent research suggests that users decide to stay or leave your site in 8 seconds or less -- in that short amount of time, headlines are the one piece of copy that users will actually read. Here are five tips for writing headlines that will draw in user attention.

Today at Searchology, Google has launched a search results enhancement called "rich snippets" that uses meta data from web pages (from microformats such as hCard, hCalendar, and RDF) to display additional details (both content and meaning) about pages in the results. This initial launch supports reviews (with sites such as Yelp) and people (with sites such as LinkedIn). They will be adding more sites and categories over time.

George's site, PR140, is a URL-shortener for public relations professionals, focused on the idea that it would only be used for PR pitches and stories, making it easier for journalists to track. As the site catches on, "[j]ournalists and other web watchers following [these tweets] will see the pitch" and recognize it as such by the pr140.com portion of the link address.

A great starter guide for SEO - if you want to start learning, this guide is a great start.

Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.

Chris Farrell has the best membership site teaching internet marketing that I know of. This is my affiliate sign-up page to get his free book and start receiving the 26 video free course he offers. The membership site is the only way anyone makes any money, though after watching his videos, it is likely you will want more! Honesty and integrity in a very pleasant package.

There's something very straight-forward about Google's branding. It doesn't complicate the experience with flowery user design or site mascots. It offers exactly the type of experience you'd expect to receive from a company that showcases its name in mostly primary colors. However, when Google announced today's additions to the "Google Services for Websites" suite, it took us a minute to remember what the company blog post was referencing. In a world where even browser names conjure images of animals or finely tuned cars, the company's simply named "Google Services for Websites" is extremely useful but often easy to forget.

There's something very straight-forward about Google's branding. It doesn't complicate the experience with flowery user design or site mascots. It offers exactly the type of experience you'd expect to receive from a company that showcases its name in mostly primary colors. However, when Google announced today's additions to the "Google Services for Websites" suite, it took us a minute to remember what the company blog post was referencing. In a world where even browser names conjure images of animals or finely tuned cars, the company's simply named "Google Services for Websites" is extremely useful but often easy to forget.

Great submission site for eBooks used to market your squeeze page.

Great submission site for eBooks used to market your squeeze page.

Palawan Realty is a site to for Palawan Real Estate, Property Listing and Brokerage House for available Palawan Lots, Palawan Islands, Palawan Agricultural Lots and Palawan Residential and Commercial lots for development.

You've got your site all set up at a nice, shiny new domain name. Chances are, though, you're losing visitors. And link authority. Why? Because typos abound, and you're not catching them. Here's how you can grab a lot of traffic that you may be missing right now, and build better link authority, too:

Great tips on how to maximize your traffic potential

Google Analytics is a very useful free tool for tracking site statistics. For most users, however, it never becomes more than just a pretty interface with intersting graphs. The resources below will help anyone, from the beginner to those who have been using Google Analytics for some time, learn how to get the most out of this great tool.

Great local SEO tip

This is a Showcase Lawn Map on the web site of WiseGrass, a small lawncare service provider in central Pennsylvania. It's an embedded Google Map with user-created content for each of the showcase lawns. Here's a list of reasons why this is great:

Great post on content strategy

I encourage clients, associates and even friends to create content-rich sites for whatever they specialize in with the purpose of building an audience and forging relationships. The type of content aside, the way to create a popular web property is to slowly grow larger over time in an organized, attractive layout with uniquely useful material focused on your niche.

Great tips on developing an organic SEO strategy - aka the BEST SEO STRATEGY

When you set out to build your site content, keyword research and educated guesses about keyword relevance are often necessary initial steps.

Barry makes two great points in this post you should look at if you are looking to develop a web strategy for your business.. He makes two great points that are very important for businesses to realize when crafting a social media or community building strategy. If you can engage an audience around your brand by providing them content where and how they want it - you will succeed online and see real conversions - whether it is leads or sales.

With more and more people flocking to social media sites, it is important that your audience can engage with your brand through as many channels as possible.

Hyperlocal search strategy is an often underlooked market for many local businesses - especially the local service industry. If you are a plumber in Des Moines, IA and you aren't in the "local listings" when you search "des moines, ia plumber" - than the people companies listed are stealing business from you... Even if you are the #1 organic search result

The top web search results are buried by three local search results. If you're a local business, and you want to get traffic, you'd better get placement in that 'three box' (or in some cases, 'ten box') that shows local results. On the bright side, this version of universal search gives you yet another way to hop, skip and jump right past all the other web search results. All you need to know is how to best position your site for a local search listing.