First Step SEO Tips for Bloggers

Much has been written on the topic of search engine optimization for bloggers - but let me give you a few basic first steps:

1. Content is King
The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog. I suspect others will argue differently but as I look at my own blogs success in the search engines I’d say that this has been the number one factor.

Quality content that helps people will quite often draw a reader to want to share what they’ve written - of course they do this by passing on the link to your post and often they’ll do it in a way that helps your search rankings (on their own blog for example).

2. Anticipate What People Will be Searching For
Every time you write a post you should be automatically be considering what words people might be putting into search engines to find that type of information. Once you know what kinds of words they’re using you’re in a great position to position yourself for that search.

3. Titles Titles Titles
There are a number of things to keep in mind when it comes to titles. Google pays particular attention to titles - so make sure you get them right:

first make sure that the way you set your blog up puts the title of your post in the ‘title tags’ on the back end of your blog. This is really important.
if you’re just looking from an SEO perspective don’t include your blog name in the title tags of single posts. This dilutes your keywords. Of course if you’re looking more at branding including your blog’s name in the title tags might be worth doing.
next - include the keywords that you identified in point #2 in your post title
also, keep in mind that the words you use at the start of a title tend to carry more weight than words you use later in your title.

4. Keywords in other parts of your post
Use the keywords you identified in point #2 within your post also. If you want Google to rank you for a term or phrase you need to use that term or phrase. Use it in sub headings in your post (use h tags where you can), use it in the content itself, use the words in the alt tags of images etc. Don’t go over the topic but do use the words where you can naturally in the post.

5. Link to Your Own Posts
Don’t over do this one but while links from other sites are a great way to increase your blog’s rankings so are links from your blog. Interlink your posts to share where readers can find more information on your topic (where relevant) but also consider linking to key posts on your blog from other places on the blog (sidebar, front page etc).

6. Links from Outside Your Blog
Links from other sites to yours are key in SEO but they can be hard to get. Start to linking to your blog from other sites that you have or are active on. Some (like on Twitter) won’t count for anything much as they have no-follow tags but they are all potential ways for people to access your site and some will help with SEO.

Don’t become obsessed with getting links - rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time. However if you’ve written a great post that you think will be relevant to another blog don’t be afraid to let that blogger or website owner know about it - they could just link up.

Also - take note of the type of posts that you write that do well at getting other sites to link to you. You can learn a lot about generating linkable content by doing so and might just develop a technique that will work again and again.

7. Plugins
I don’t tend to do much to the back end of my blog to alter things like meta tags - but there are some good plugins around if you’re using WordPress that can help with some of this and that may give you a small edge. Check out 9 SEO plugins that every WordPress Blog Should have for some suggestions on this.

8. Readers Begat Readers
This isn’t an SEO technique as such but it plays a part. The more readers you have the more likely your blog is to be found by other readers. There’s a certain ’snowballing’ thing that happens on a site over time - as you get readers quite often momentum grows as those readers pass on your site to others in their network. They link to you, they bookmark you, they tweet about you, they email friends about you, they blog about you, they suggest your site in recommendation engines….

Not all of this counts with SEO but some does and the accumulation of it over time all certainly helps to grow both organic and search traffic. I guess what I’m saying is to get readers any way you can - don’t just focus upon ‘SEO’ as such. It all counts.

Google's New Wonder Wheel For Keyword Research

Posted by Will Blears in Google Articles, SEO Tutorials - June 10, 2009

Google’s new tool belt as they like to call it offers all sorts of functions as I discussed here however one function that I want to talk about in a little more depth is the ability to see keywords related to your initial search word and the ability to click through to other relevant keywords and have the search results appear for these too.

Take a look at the Wonder Wheel in action here: Google Wonder Wheel

The search option allows you to search for related keywords and delve in as deep as you can do to find other keywords which are generally smaller, less competitive keywords ideal for those who are performing keyword research looking for that golden keyword.

Now of course I don’t think this is going to revolutionise the keyword research process however it does have an appeal. The simple yet effective spider diagram aesthetics and the automatic search function when clicking on a relevant keyword does make things much easier.

So next time you are performing keyword research why not take a look at Google’s new tool belt and have a fiddle around with the wonder wheel.

Good Website Design

One of the elements of good web design is a lack of the elements that make bad web design. Keep these concepts in mind when designing a wesbite:

Text
Background does not interrupt the text
Text is big enough to read, but not too big
The hierarchy of information is perfectly clear
Columns of text are narrower than in a book to make reading easier on the screen

Navigation
Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
Navigation is consistent throughout web site
Navigation buttons and bars provide the visitor with a clue as to where they are, what page of the site they are currently on
Frames, if used, are not obtrusive
A large site has an index or site map

Links
Link colors coordinate with page colors
Links are underlined so they are instantly clear to the visitor

Graphics
Buttons are not overly big
Every graphic has an alt label
Every graphic link has a matching text link
Graphics and backgrounds use browser-safe colors
Animated graphics turn off by themselves

General Design
Pages download quickly
First page and home page fit into 1024x768 pixel space
Good use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text
Every web page in the site looks like it belongs to the same site; there are repetitive elements that carry throughout the pages

10 SEO Copywriting Hints

1. Make sure your page content matches your Title descriptions and Meta data. The titles and Meta data should be as accurate as possible to describe the content.

2. Make your H2 and H3 tags contain other important keywords that perhaps you could receive long tailed traffic from (must be relevant to industry).

3. Look at your source code, see what content the spiders will see first and add value to this content, for example; if it’s a link – add a keyword / phrase, if its copy – add keyword or phrase to sentence.

4. Add keywords to your link descriptions within text copy, avoid “click here” and “read more” descriptions, but again make it relevant to the destination.

5. A sales page will not help you rank for a keyword, be informative and provide good detail on a page, include a click to action to your sales page if necessary.

6. Ensure your H1 tag contain your most desired keyword.

7. Highlight occasional keywords and phrases in bold to add emphasis for visitors.

8. If you use any references to external websites also provide a link pointing to the source, this adds credibility to the content.

9. Research your keywords – use online tools to check search volumes and competition. The higher the search volumes the harder it will be to rank well, but the more traffic you will get if you rank well!

10. Do not over use keywords in your individual page content. I have seen pages include a 3 keyword phrase more than 30 times on a single page and be placed 3 pages behind websites with 10-15 keywords on.

What the Major Search Engines Look for On A Website

Google: Incoming Links, On-page SEO, Site Design Spiderability, User analytics, Outgoing links, Inclusion in other Google indexes, Document Histories

Yahoo: On-page SEO, Links and Link Patterns, Site Design, User analytics, Inclusion in other Yahoo indexes, Document Footprints

MSN: On-page SEO, Site Design and Structure and Sipderability

Ask: On-page SEO, Site Design, Site Structure and Spiderability

The Importance of Content for SEO

Often times we get so caught up in marketing our site and making it aesthetically pleasing, we forget one of, if not THE most important part of SEO. Content. The search engines can not see pictures, so the only way to tell them what your site is all about is to provide that information to them via text. But why is it so difficult to put text on our sites?

During the creation of a site, we often care more about how it looks than how it functions. Flash, in my opinion, can be used to create some of the most beautiful sites out there. We get so drawn into making nice layouts with neat animations, we completely neglect the fact that we are building a site for the world, not just us. The content on your site should actually be the first thing you think of when optimizing it. You need to convey to the search engines that your site is worthy of ranking, and that you are here to offer something to the masses. I often give this advice to customers, and get a great deal of fearful feedback. I hear a lot of "I don't even know what to write." Well, your site is an extension of your business/service/whatever, and as such you are likely to be well versed in that area. But I think people get caught up in the idea that the text is going to be placed on the site, promoting the attention to variables such as what font to use, what color, how it will look, etc.

The best advice that I can give in reference to thinking of text, is to close your site, use notepad (not Word. This creates problems when deciding to copy and paste), or a pen and paper (these do exist you know), and just put your thoughts to reality. Just write. Write about your business, yourself, your products, the history of your company, whatever. Just write. Before you know it, you will have well over 800 words of cryptic information all about your industry. As I write this, I am not thinking about my blog or my site, but only what I am trying to convey to you, the reader. Once you have all that information, organize it. Make it mean something, and make sense. Given enough thought, it will not be too difficult to come up with at least 500 words, which is a good amount of text to be placed on a website.

Once the content is on the site, you can obviously tweak it here and there to make proper use of your search terms (this will most likely happen anyway. You are writing on or about the same subject as your site, right?). And once that is done, you can then figure out what the layout, spacing, font, and all the other wonderful cosmetics the online world can offer will be.

As with all things online, this is easier written than done. But try this method out and see if it helps. To me, writing is my very weakest point, and this helps a great deal. Content is so very important to search engine optimization, and should be treated as such.

Label Your Images

Image labels may seem like a minor detail to a website that no one really thinks about them. However, it is very important to label the images throughout your website.

This needs to be done because of the different speeds of internet connections. If someone has a slower connection to the internet that means that your website is going to load at a slower rate for them. Images typically tend to be the last items on a page to load. The viewer is going to see a box with a red x at first if the image is loaded incorrectly or not properly labeled. Not to mention that a red x would also been seen if your website was not properly formatted to the browser that the visitor was viewing your site in.

So now that you know they are important, how do you label them? To label the images you need to change the alt tags to be text that describes the image. Remember, the text that you write is what is going to show when an image cannot be displayed. For this reason, the text needs to be as descriptive as possible, yet concise.

Useful Website Definitions

HASH TAG
A hash tag or hashtag is a way of organizing your Tweets for Twitter search engines. Users simply prefix a message with a community driven hash tag to enable others to discover relevant posts. One commonly used hash tag on twitter is #followfriday where users network by providing the names of their favorite people to follow on Twitter.

LINKED DATA
In Semantic Web terminology, Linked Data is the term used to describe a method of exposing and connecting data on the Web from different sources. Currently, the Web uses hypertext links that allow people to move from one document to another. The idea behind Linked Data is that hyperdata links will let people or machines find related data on the Web that was not previously linked.

LINK BUILDING
A search engine optimization technique where one increases the number and quality of incoming links from external sources with the intention of increasing a Web page's link popularity, thus helping increase a Web page's position in the search engines.

Using Twitter to Promote Your Business

Twitter is a tool for "micro-blogging" or posting very short updates, comments or thoughts and it can be very power when used correctly. Twitter was designed to be very compatible with mobile phones through text messages, so each update is limited to 140 characters, forcing you to keep your "Tweets" short and to the point.

Here are a few ideas of how to use Twitter for your business successfully.

1. Keep in touch with bloggers / media. It is really easy to follow someone on Twitter and you'll be surprised how often they decide to follow you as well. In fact, lots of "famous" people in the marketing and PR worlds are out there following new people all the time. This is a way easier way to connect with influential people in the media than calling and emailing them.
   
2. Monitor your company / brand on Twitter. A while back we noticed that Guy Kawasaki mentioned Website Grader on Twitter. Well, of course someone told him bit more about Website Grader and he was asked if he would also blog about it. The result was this a blog featuring Website Grader which drove a good amount of traffic and leads.
   
3. Announce specials, deals or sales. If you are a retailer or anyone who often has special offers, you can use Twitter to announce these deals instantly to a large audience. You know those commercials from Southwest Airlines about that "Ding" application you could download and would then alert you about specials on flights? Well, Twitter can be used as a kind of free version of that. Dell and Woot have done just this type of marketing, with a lot of success.
   
4. Live updates on events or conferences. If you participate in a large trade show or run your own corporate event, you can use Twitter to announce last minute changes, cool events that are happening ("Just announced, David Meerman Scott book signing in the exhibit hall until 11am") and more. It is a great last minute marketing tool.
   
5. Promote blog articles, webinars, interesting news and more. Its really easy to post a link to something in Twitter. A good idea is to post articles on other websites that are relevant to your business, like a customer success story or other PR coverage. If you have other content that is appealing to your audience like a free webinar, post links to those too.