Many people believe a catchy blog post title is the way to go, some think a search engine friendly article title is – which is best? I think it’s a combination of both. (note that I repeated the blog title in the previous sentence – you should do the same and use it naturally in a sentence at the start of the post). For sake of this discussion, let’s hypothesize there are two types of bloggers: Those who know how search engines work and those who do not.
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Archive for category seo
Content is not King
I hear it all the time, “Content is King”. Wouldn’t that be nice if it were? We would like to think it’s king, but unfortunately it is isn’t. Maybe it’s good it isn’t. What exactly determines if content is good? What is the criteria by which you judge “good content”?
The truth is, there are many variables that determine whether content is good or not. If you are a money blogger, you may think personal blogs aren’t worth linking to or reading. If you are a real writer (story author, deep introspective expressions, progressive philosophies, etc.) you may think money blogs are a disease. Maybe you don’t care one way or another, you are here for friendship and fun!
Search Engines Don’t Care About Content
That’s right, search engines could care less about website content. There is only one factor that determines good content to a search engine, that is money! Do you think I’m wrong?
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SEO Keywords For Beginners
Sep 19
We have all heard about keywords. We have all heard about seo. So what about these seo keywords? Many bloggers may see this article and say, “Another article about keywords?”
The truth is, most bloggers don’t know anything about keywords, they’ve just heard about them. Today, we will learn a little about them by looking at how this post is written. The way I chose the seo keywords for this post was by using Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
This tool is for adwords but it is great for choosing keywords too! Keywords can be a single word or a phrase. I typed in the word “keyword” and found the phrase “seo keywords”. Check the advertiser competition for the phrase before you choose it! If the competition is too high, the word or phrase you choose will not benefit you. The phrase “seo keywords” was middle of the road for both competition and popularity, so it was a pretty good choice for this post.
I chose the phrase, seo keywords, and actually used it as the central motif from which to build this post. Look at the title of my post. It contains the keyword phrase, seo keywords. This is important to do. I could have named it something else and used the phrase, seo keywords, in my title tags. If you use blogger with an xml template (new blogger), you will simply need to make sure you title your post so it contains the keyword phrase.
Notice how many times I use the phrase, seo keywords, in this post! A lot huh? You want the chosen word or phrase in the title, and you want it mentioned in the post itself at least once! This is good seo practice. If you are a self-hosted wordpress blog, you have the wonderful plug in, The all-in-one SEO Pack to use. You can use it to tweak your title tags! In other words, your posts can have 2 titles. The post can have a different title tag than the name of the post itself if you like.
Another powerful technique is to make sure any links to this post (from within this blog or external) use the anchor text, seo keywords. I recently wrote a post entitled “Optimizing Your Site By Decreasing It’s Size”. The keyword phrase for that post is: search engine optimization tips. The keyword phrase is the anchor text which is linked to that post! I linked to my own post using the keyword phrase. Click the link, look at the post and you’ll see all these concepts at work.
In the future, if I reference this post (the one you’re reading) I will use the anchor text “seo keywords”. It’s important to link to your own posts using carefully selected keywords if you are interested in building your site to grow.
WHY THIS POST IS VALUABLE: This post is for the rest of us. I have provided you with easy to understand information woven into the post itself. Most other posts like this are hard to understand and don’t explain things for normal bloggers like you and I. If I show you something, I explain it and show you how to use it. Let’s summarize:
- Select a keyword or keyword phrase with the adwords tool.
- Use the word or phrase in the post title or title tags.
- Use the word or phrase in the post text.
- Link to the post from other sites and your posts using the word or phrase.
The Latest Rage: Blogrush
Sep 16
I received an e-mail from Yaro Starak from Blog Mastermind the other day about the new Blogrush widget. The widget itself is from Internet marketing mega-star, John Reese. This widget all by itself will increase web site traffic.
I was apprehensive at first thinking I would be taken to a page asking me to fork out some big dollars for it! I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that it is free, at least for now. The idea that a simple widget can boost traffic sounds great to me! Anything I can do to boost traffic without extra work will always be cool in my book.
Look in my sidebar and you can see the new Blogrush widget. It looks nice and if this thing can boost my traffic I will be a happy camper. I invited some people already and at least one I know of has joined. That is my good friend Rolando from R Playground (thanks Rolando, and thanks Morgan)!
If you would like to join in on this thing while it is BRAND NEW and hasn’t yet saturated the blogosphere, now is the time to act! Don’t wait for three weeks and then decide, do it now. If you do join, write a post also, like this one. To join in on this latest rage and increase web site traffic:
Click here: GET THE BLOGRUSH WIDGET
You could also get it from Rolando or Morgan! Anyone who joins within our group will get a nice link to both your site and blogrush post!
Beaman from Beaman’s World has a post up BlogRush.
Please, if you do link to this post, use the anchor text: increase web site traffic.
We all want a successful blog or website, but we may not be experts in the area. Decisions on what will make a site more search engine friendly never come if we don’t know the basics. Here are some search engine optimization tips that are easy to implement. Perhaps for some of you, your first seo lesson!
Many of us love to display tons of awards, pretty widgets and all kinds of fun things in our sidebars. The problem is, they are terrible for optimization and can make search-engines not like your site. The answer is, reducing the clutter on your site! Now don’t get mad at me for calling your beautiful set of awards “clutter”!
In wordpress, you can move them to a page in the tabs at the top of your site. On blogspot, you can do something similar if you are familiar with template modification and know html fairly well. If you aren’t confident in html, perhaps just moving some of them to a post will do quite well.
To find out if your site needs some cleaning up, go to Sitening.com and open an account. It’s free, and it’s a nice tool to use providing some easy to understand information. Once you’ve signed in, go to tools, seo analyzer. Simply enter the url of your site and see what score you get. I got a 75 my first go around which is not good. I moved several awards to a page and that almost fixed it.
You want your main page to be under 100 KB. Next, I removed the alt text from several widgets in my side bar. You don’t really need alt text and it’s fine to remove some. In the old days when lots of people used text only browsers (no images), the alt text is what they would see instead of images. I could care less if someone doesn’t see the alt text, they need to get a modern browser! I use text only browsers for certain things, but am not worried if the alt text isn’t there.
I ran the test again and scored a 90. Much, much better! I know it can be hard not displaying every award and best buddies site widgets in your side bar, but it will be good for your site.
For Blogger blogs: Here’s a nice little code you can put in your side-bar on blogger or any where else you want a link to your awards post to be:
<a href="http://yourposturl.com/">My Awards</a>
Just change the url to the post url of your awards post. This way, your awards will be easy to get to, especially if you are proud of them like me. If your site is 280 KB, I recommend you clean some of it up. Search engines are picky and they will love you for it!
Is Your Blog Invisible?
Aug 31
No matter what your goal in blogging is, being found through people doing searches on Google and other search engines, is very beneficial. If you are not familiar with applying SEO then listen up. You’ve all surfed trying to find things by entering words and partial sentences to find what you’re looking for. Let’s say you want to learn how to alter your blogger template to add some feature, you type in “blogger template featureX” and go from there.
Ask yourself this, “What would someone searching type to find my blog?” Seriously consider this question and think about what it’s asking. With most blogs you need to know someones name to find it. So, if you want to make money and practice sound seo basics, your posts have to be titled so you can associated with whatever it is you do. If you use Wordpress you can use title tags to alter how search engines see your posts. The name of this post is, “Is Your Blog Invisible?” but search engines see it as, “How to be found through searchengines.”
Don’t freakout thinking through the nightmarish reality of how you titled your posts like I did, ha ha ha! These are just some basics of SEO. It’s something to consider when choosing a title for your next post. My blog is an seo trainwreck but hey, I’m just learning all this stuff. Lets take a look at my good friend Janice’s This is a Miracle: It’s a personal blog and she writes a lot about her two sons, Amos and Zac. She also pretty much writes about everything and is extremely good at commenting. I do mean extremely good. I see where her blog could being associated with healthy mothering or raising children. I’m not sure if she has thought about that but I believe it is definetly worth serious consideration. If you read her blog you will see what I mean. Janice, whether you know it or not, I’d say you are an expert in this area. I seriously doubt you could find a person anywhere that would dispute that fact.
My good friend Marzie’s Mariuca: Wishing on a Falling Star has been doing incredibly well and she just keeps it up, endlessly. Marzie is the most successful commenter I have seen on line. It seems that 70 comments on a single post is becoming routine for her. The success of her coffee mug contest garnered 130 comments! She gave every single one of them a charming reply too. I see her blogging future as one singular word, Mariuca. Her name will be what gains her success to make the transformation to mega-blogger. Her name should eventually become a “brand name”. I see Mariuca’s personal line of perfumes as the area where she will hit the big time.
Last, but certainly not least is my wonderful friend Jean from A Great Pleasure. Jean’s area of expertise is in food. I see her blog as a way to get a nice book deal. She could write some kind of sensual recipe and personal stories book. I think she could put together an incredible coffee table book that would be hot item for any living room! These are ideas anyone can relate to and I chose these great ladies because they are all such great examples of easy to understand, fantastic blogging. Also Jean made this for me today and I thought it was great! These three beautiful, married ladies are affectionately known as Bobby’s Angels. Thank’s jean! I just want to make money from the overflow traffic they generate when they make millions ha ha ha! Angels, get your guns ready, this is going to be a dangerous mission 
Submitting to Search Engines
Aug 23
I asked bloggers if they knew if they had actually submitted their blogs to search engines. Most didn’t know or weren’t sure. These are the most rudimentary newbie blogging tips. Here are the main ones for you to take care of:
- Submit to Microsoft live search http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
- Submit to Google http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
- Submit to Yahoo http://submit.search.yahoo.com/
- Google Webmaster Tools https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html
Number 4 is Google Webmaster tools. You can read about it and at least to be familiar with available tools anyone can use.
Where did I get this information? I recommend going to this site and reading up a little. You might consider installing their tool bar and analyze your own site and other sites to start learning what SEO is and how it works.
There are other places to submit to and you can read more at the site listed above. So many people forget the most basic of things to do and this is a reminder to do it. Maybe your site is doing well and you’ve never done this; it may help boost you a little more if you make sure you are listed!
Kassper from Make Money With Kassper is running a contest in which I write about or review his site for a load of link love! Basically my post just has to link ONCE to his blog. It’s a blog about Blogging Tips on how to Make Money Online . Finally, I have to link to one of his posts. This is my chosen pick: Improve Alexa Ranking With Alexa Toolbar For Firefox
In return you will get more than 50 backlinks to your blog! I don’t read all the money blogs, but the ones I like (like Kassper’s site) have personality and articles that both beginners and advanced alike can understand. Plus, I found no “buy me a beer” slogans, so he’s not a copycat! This is the first contest I’ve participated in, I need some backlinks to get to the top10k before September 1st. If I succeed I will have gone from a Technorati authority of 0 to around 400 in 3 months. My site started on June 1st and my authority is 344. Thanks for this contest, I hope it gets me there!
