I just started using the software very recently. I’m involved in business social networking in the form of LinkedIn, Forums, Twitter and Blogging.

Where does IGOpeople fit?

What does it offer that other products don’t? (That can be either socially or in feature offering.)

In their own words;

“IGOpeople is a network for the real world, one place online where you can stay connected with the people, groups and organisations who matter to you.

Once you’re connected, you can use the network to start and join in conversations. You can have conversations with friends, groups, organisations you deal with or the wider IGOpeople network.”

I’m very impressed with the way the product is laid out and how “conversations” work. I signed up a few days ago and I have already been involved in a good few discussions. Right now the Irish tech scene has taken to it the way they have Twitter. IGOpeoples big challenge is to bridge that gap between the earlier adopters and “the real world” as they put it.

I think from the outset its a very ambitious project to take on with so many established players on all sides of what they offer but I have to say what they have done so far is as good an attempt at it as could have been expected. The foundations are great, I just think they now need to move forward and understand where there nichè is and really focus on it.

This project has the potential to really put Ireland on the map in Social Networking.

Check it out for yourself.

http://www.igopeople.com

You can connect with me here:
http://www.igopeople.com/i/1026-Derek-Organ

Very interesting statistics were published on the World Internet Usage Statistics and Population. From this table it shows that only 15%! of the world uses the internet which is surprisingly low. When you consider Asia alone has over 50% of world’s population it starts to make more sense given their low adoption rate. This combined with Africa which has an expected low adoption rate of less than 3% really lowers the world average.

Taken from Read/Write Web -Worldwide Internet Penetration is just 15%

From a business perspective I can see a lot of business plans referencing to the strong growth in Asia and companies expanding their services and language versions to accommodate these countries. There appears to be an opportunity to focus on this market with a long term view to grab the huge population yet to embrace the internet the way we have in the west. Surely the likes of China and India will eventually have internet adoption closer to 50% of the population. Japan for example has a very good internet adoption to match the US and some countries in Europe.

I didn’t spot any exact figures for Ireland but maybe someone can point me to another resource so we can compare and contrast with the rest of the world. From a personal point of view I wonder how closely those percentage adoption rates correlate with business internet adoption rates in those countries.

A great thread has been started on sitepoint giving you a guide optimizing your website for search engines.

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=361403

Before you write one line of code:

• Do keyword research to determine what keywords you want to target

While constructing your website you should do the following:

• Use markup to indicate the content of your site

• Optimize your ‘title’ tags on each page to contain 1 - 3 keywords
• Create unique Meta Tags for each page
• Use header tags appropriately (H1 - H2 - H3)
• Use ’strong’ and ‘em’ tags if appropriate

Optimize your URLs

• Use Search Engine Friendly URLs (for dynamic sites)
• Use keywords in your domain (http://www.keyword1.com/)
• Use keywords in your URL
  (http://www.example.com/keyword2/keyword3.html)

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• Use dashes instead of underscores to separate words in your URLs (keyword2-keyword3.html)

Optimize your content

• Use keywords liberally yet appropriately throughout each page
• Have unique content
• Have quality content

Use search engine friendly design

• Create a human sitemap
• Do not use inaccessible site navigation (JavaScript menus)
• Minimized outbound links
• Kept your pages under 100K in size

Design the navigational structure of the site to channel PR to main pages (especially the homepage)

Create a page that encourages webmasters to link to your site

• Provide them the relevant HTML to create their link to you
• Provide them with any images you may want them to use (although text links are better)

Make sure your website is complete before launching it

Immediately after launching your site you should do the following:

Submit your site to all major search engines

• Google (Use a Google SiteMap)
• Yahoo (Use the page list option)
• MSN (Finds your site via incomming links)
• Ask (Finds your site via incomming links)

Submit your site to all free directories

• DMOZ (also powers Google Directory)
• JoeAnt

Submit your site to relevant directories

• Find more at ISEDB

Begin a link building campaign (attempting to get keywords in the link anchor text)

• Put a link to your website in your forum signatures
• Reply to relevant blog posts (Don’t spam please)
• Submit articles to relevant websites

If you will pay to promote your website:

Submit your site to pay directories

• Yahoo
• GoGuides

Purchase text links from high PR (Pagerank) sites related to your site

Finally, as part of an ongoing strategy:

Continually update your website will quality, unique content

Continually seek free links preferably from sites in your genre

Do NOT do the following:

Make an all Flash website (without an HTML alternative)

Use JavaScript for navigation

Spam other websites for incomming links

Launch your site before it is done

Use duplicate content

• Point several domains to one site without using a 301 redirect

Use markup inappropiately

• Style ‘h’eader tags to look like regular text
• Hide content using ‘display: hidden’ (for the sake of hiding text)

Use other “black hat” techniques (unless you accept the risk - Banning)

• Doorway/Landing pages
• Cloaking
• Hidden text
• Keyword stuffing

Additional Tips:

Usable and accessible sites tend to be search engine friendly by their very nature

Be patient! High rankings don’t happen overnight

Don’t obsess with any one search engine. They are all worth your attention.

Also mentioned is this very useful tool: http://www.nichebot.com/