Anyway, my brother was very smart by initiating a web-based marketing plan. He asked me for help, so this was a perfect opportunity to exercise some of my Search Engine optimization (SEO) skills! Besides setting up a professional blog, I also suggested these things in order to help traffic to his dental office web site:

• Tweak keywords in Meta data, page titles, etc.
• Create a dental blog entry (consistently) once a week, and on the same day.
• Publish press releases once in a while.
• Submit his site to search engines once every 6 months.
• Change his Twitter account name from personal to professional, and balance tweets about both sides of life.
• Create LinkedIn and Yelp profiles (actually his great idea!).
• Put Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Blog links on his office web site.
• And of course, ensure accessible, semantic HTML markup with web standards!

So far in only a couple weeks, his position on Google search has risen considerably!

Digg this article!

• It’s a mini blog; can serve as a type of diary.
• You can keep up with what your friends are doing.
• Make new personal friends and professional contacts.
• See another side of your current friends and family.
• Follow your favorite bands, celebs, political figures, etc.
• You can Twitter from many different applications and devices (such as your mobile phone).
• Twitter can quickly become an impromptu info-sharing point (used during San Diego fires).
• It can be used for news, marketing, and customer service.
• Can connect with Facebook, blogs, etc.
• It will make you a better writer.
• Faster than texting numerous people at once.
• Minimal effort to start (unlike a blog).
• It’s fun and it’s a good source of entertainment!

If you listen to Web Axe and like it (or even if you don’t!), you can vote for Web Axe on the Best of the Web site.

Here’s a quote from .net magazine about the contest:

The .net Awards celebrate the best in web design and development. The 14 categories for 2008 range from Design Agency of the Year and Podcast of the Year through to the Infamy Award – a chance to name and shame those ruining your web experience.

The stats are for Thursday, July 10, 2008 and shows one of Web Axe’s highest subscriber rates of 746 (an approximation of how many times your feed has been requested in a 24-hour period). What I find most interesting is the different types of feed readers being used and how popular they are.  Google and iTunes top the list. Google feed readers (Google Reader or iGoogle) count for 32%, and iTunes for 30% (17% Mac and 13% Windows). Netvibes, my favorite RSS reader, was next at 10%.

• Most People Are DJs – music and entertainment podcast
• Blaugh – comic of the blogosphere
• Word of the Day – from Dictionary.com
• I don’t like you in that way – celebrity dirt
• My photos on Flickr!

By the way, I use NetVibes, an awesome personalized “home page” which can not only read and organize RSS feeds, but also blogs, email accounts, social networks, search engines, instant messengers, photos, videos, podcasts, and game widgets!