All Entries Tagged With: "Blog Optimization"

Keyword Management: How Should A Blog Be Written?

I manage a handful of bloggers and have managed more than 100 blogs in the last couple of years. I also read a great deal about blogging and copywriting from other bloggers in the industry. I’ve noticed that there are two general views regarding how to write a blog. Those views can be summarized below:

• Valuable Content View – This is the view that your content should be written with your readers in mind, not the search engines. The idea is that keywords are necessary, but not so important that you forget about the needs of your readers. You aren’t writing keyword fluff. You’re writing content that will be deemed valuable by human readers and not just words on a page driven by keyword usage
• Keyword-Rich View – The keyword-rich view is just the opposite. This view presupposes that SEO is everything. Without the right mix of keywords and the correct density patterns and so on you might as well not even blog. If you don’t optimize every single blog post to the utmost then you aren’t really blogging, according to this view. The weakness of this view is that optimization may get you good rankings, though often you can end up hurting yourself by over optimizing, it won’t endure you to your readers and what good is a blog if it has no readers?

Here at Blog Content Provider, we believe in SEO content. We are an SEO company. But we also believe in reaching readers at a gut level. That’s why I like to stress valuable content first and SEO as an additional benefit. Because if you do it right, your blog will attract readers and when it does it will increase in SEO power by sheer authoritativeness.

Why You Want Your Categories To Be Keyword Driven

You know you should have categories in your blog’s sidebar. But did you know those categories should be a list of your important keywords? There are multiple reasons why, but the long and the short of it is that they help you optimize your blog. Every instance of keyword usage on your blog is one step closer to high rankings. Plus, those category names are not just keywords, they are also links, which makes them even more valuable.

Here’s a case study of how a category name can assist you with search engine benefits. Type “blog content ghostwriting” into Google’s search box (without the quotation marks). Now click on the link at the top of the page, just above the search results, that says “Show options”. Select Recent Results and sort by date. Now scroll down to position No. 8 in the results. Here’s what you should see.

At the time of my writing this blog post, this post on quality content was in the position No. 8 position 58 minutes after posting.

Examining the contents of that blog post, there is nothing in that post that discusses blogging or ghostwriting. Those words are not even mentioned in the post anywhere. So how did the post rank on Page 1 of the SERPs for the parameters we gave it? By the blog’s categories.

Take a look at those categories and you’ll see that there is one called “Blog Marketing”, another one called “Content/Website Development” and one titled “Copywriting & Ghostwriting”. All three of the search phrases used are category names on this blog, giving the latest blog post – serendepitously all about content – an added boost.

This is just one example out of millions. Keyword-focused categories are an optimization essential and can often help individual blog posts rank for key terms they might not otherwise rank for.

WordPress Blog Optimization

We talk a lot about blog post optimization, but what you very seldom see, here or elsewhere, are tips on how to optimize your actual blog software. WordPress is an open source blogging platform, the most popular on the market. You should begin your blog optimization efforts by ensuring that the settings in WordPress are set to maximize your search engine optimization. Here are a few tips to help you do that:

• Start with your theme. Your first step in blog optimization in choosing a suitable theme. WordPress has thousands of free themes available for download, but not all of them are good themes. You are better off sticking with themes that are proven. Don’t use a theme that is from a first-time developer. They tend to have the most problems. Also, make sure your theme has developer contact information just in case you need it. And don’t choose a theme that has a lot of extemporaneous code. Otherwise, most of your themes should be good. But if you choose a theme and after about three or four weeks you don’t see any blog posts getting indexed at the search engines and you know you have good inbound links then test another theme to see if you get better results.
• Move to settings. After picking a theme, click on Settings on the back up administration area of WordPress. Make sure Blog Title and Tagline have eye-catching attention-getting content and that you use your primary keyword in both fields.
• Add a ping list. Under Settings again, click on Writing. Scroll down to the bottom and in the Update Services box add as many ping services as you can. Don’t just pick the top ones, but do include Pingomatic, Technorati, Coreblog, Blogstreet, Google Blogsearch, and Blogflux at a minimum. There are other ping services, particularly some foreign ping services, that I’d recommend as well. The reason you want to include foreign language ping services is because some of them will get you indexed through the back door of the search engines more quickly than places like Pingomatic and Technorati. One mistake that many new bloggers make is to stick to Technorati or Pingomatic and that’s it, but by limiting yourself to the larger ping lists you are cutting yourself short.
• Use Summary for feeds. Under the Reading tab below Settings, select Summary for your feeds rather than full post. This will force your RSS subscribers to visit your blog in order to read your entire post. Most subscribers will not have a problem doing this if they want to read your blog and getting your readers to your blog will register more traffic with your analytics software, which is measured by the search engines for quality and user experience, factors that may influence your future rankings. This is particularly true if your blog has a low bounce rate.
• Permalinks. Click Permalinks under Settings. This is very important. The structure of your blog post URLs, called permalinks, is very important for SEO purposes. You want your primary keyword to appear in your permalink. To make sure that happens, ensure that you write each blog post title to include your keyword, but also set your WordPress setting to Custom, Day and name, or Month and name. I prefer Custom because it allows me to move the date to the very end of the Permalink and put my keyword closer to the beginning.

There are other ways that you can optimize WordPress for better search engine results. Some plugins can be of great assistance here. But you can also tweak some of the code in your templates to ensure better results. That is more advanced than what this blog post needs. For now, as a bare minimum, use these strategies to optimize your WordPress blog before you start writing.

Blog Optimization: Template Or Original Design?

Should you use a blog template or have an original design for your blog? That’s an important question. There are pros and cons to both approaches.

If you use a blog template you run the risk of your template not being optimized properly. You might also find yourself using a template that thousands of other bloggers are using as well. That lack of originality might work against you in some industries. But pulling a template off the shelf can be easier and much less costly than having an original design done.

To be sure, there is no substitute for originality. Original designs tell your readers that you take pride in your business. But if you go with an original blog design be prepared to pay for it. Templates are free. Original designs, unless you do them yourself, are not. And another thing you have to be sure of with an original design is that your designer is familiar enough with SEO to optimize your design properly. If you hire a designer whose knowledge of SEO is not adequate you have no recourse. You are stuck with a non-optimized blog. With a template you can change it out for another one at no cost.

If you have the money to pay for an original blog design then by all means, go ahead and put forth the expense. But in today’s economy that’s a challenge for many businesses. That’s why you might be better off with a blog template. But who’s going to select one for you? Make sure your blog consultant knows how to tell the difference.

3 For 3 With Chris Brogan

I have not read the rest of this series nor did I read the blog post by Chris Brogan upon which it is based. I do like Chris Brogan and read his blog when I can. All three of these suggestions are suggestions that we here at Blog Content Provider also recommend. In fact, whenever we optimize a client blog, this is precisely how we do it. Great article, but read it for yourself.

The 9 Days of Chris Brogan Blogging Secrets – Permalinks, Ways to Connect, and Technorati

By Stephanie Valentine

This article is about my experiences with day 4 of the 9 day experiment, where I implement each and every one of Chris Brogan’s blogging secrets on my home business blog (these secrets are from his “27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community” article). The three I tried for this article, numbers 11, 12, and 13, were all techie-type secrets, and while I’m not a total slouch in this department these secrets took a little longer than I thought. I will tell you exactly what went right and wrong with each secret, how long it took, and if any money was spent in the process.

Secret #13: Change Permalinks

Chris suggests changing the permalinks on your blog (a permalink is the link that goes with each specific blog post) so that they reflect the title of the post. Mine had been generic before I made the change and the permalinks tended to look like this: domain/blog/post=182. The good thing about these generic permalinks is that they are short. The bad thing is that they are not descriptive. Chris says changing the permalinks is a strictly personal preference thing and I think it probably also gives you a keyword advantage. I gave it try on my home business blog. It was as easy as going into the Settings menu in WordPress and clicking a button. The permalinks now look like this: domain/blog/ claiming-technorati-blog. This secret was simple to implement but it adds an extra step if I want to shorten the permalink for Twitter or other social media services.

Time Spent: 5 minutes (plus 1 minute every time I have to shorten a permalink)
Dinero Spent: $0

Secret #11: Ways to Connect

Chris takes a proactive approach when it comes to connecting with people in his community. In the upper right corner of his blog you will find four ways to connect with him. You can subscribe to his newsletter, get his rRSS feed, follow him on Twitter, or get the blog delivered to your inbox. It looked great. I don’t have a newsletter on my site or home business blog so I skipped that step, but I did add an RSS feed link, a Twitter follow link, and an email subscription form for the blog. This secret took the longest to implement and was the most difficult of the three. Chris freely admits that he has someone putting many of his techie improvements on his blog, but I do my own so sometimes it means slogging through technical issues.

Adding the link to the RSS feed was the simplest. I just created an icon and linked it to my Feedburner link. I created another simple icon for the Twitter follow link. The most difficult was creating a form so people could receive my home business blog posts via email. Although Feedburner has a “101″ help section, I could not find instructions on how to install this feature so I actually Googled for help. I found several instruction guides on blogs and, using these instructions, was able to go back into Feedburner and get the email subscription code from the Publicize tab. I then had to create a text widget in the sidebar of my Thesis theme and paste the html code. It all worked fine. All in all, unless you are pretty savvy on blog technology, this secret can prove a little difficult to implement. I spent more time than I anticipated giving people extra ways to connect with my home business blog, and at the same time I really like the end result. Let’s see if my readers do, too.

Time Spent: 1 hour
Dinero Spent: $0

Secret #12: Technorati

In this secret Chris suggests “claiming” your blog on Technorati, which just means registering your blog with Technorati. Technorati is a very popular search engine geared toward the needs of people wanting to search blogs. Once you “claim” your blog, the Technorati site will begin spidering and indexing your blog. This helps people find your blog and drive traffic there. I signed up for a Technorati account and claimed my home business blog. The process was simple but the Technorati site was busy several times and it took me about 45 minutes to finish the process. This included entering my blog address, posting a link on the front page of my blog so Technorati knew that I owned the blog, and then filling in the rest of my profile. Aside from the minor delays when Technorati was busy, this secret was easy to implement. According to Chris and other internet gurus this is worth doing!

Time Spent: 45 minutes
Dinero Spent: $0

Results Update: So far, with 12 secrets implemented, traffic to my home business blog continues to be high and to climb steadily (not always quickly, though) daily. This means that Chris’ secrets do work.

Stephanie Valentine has been a successful network marketer for over a decade. She does her MLM business online and teaches others to do the same. For tips, tricks, rants, and raves about internet network marketing, or for a free consult on MLM marketing and tax deductions, visit http://www.gomlmonline.com/blog and http://www.gomlmonline.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stephanie_Valentine

One thing we do a little differently than Chris Brogan is we create a customized permalink that also includes the date of the post. We want the keywords in the permalink to appear first so we have the domain/blog/name of blog post/date of blog post structure to blog posts. Why we do it this way? Because if you write about the same topic often then you never run the risk of two blog posts having the exact same permalink. That would create problems. Since each one is dated, that’s an issue we never deal with.

These other suggestions are also good suggestions. Claiming your blog on Technorati is one of the best ways in the world to promote your blog. And if you have a newsletter then you should put your opt-in box on your blog. You’ll get a lot more subscribers if you do.

If you are technologically challenged or don’t have the time to do your own blog optimization, hire someone to do it for you. The important thing is that your blog be optimized and ready for business.

Blog Posts: How Short Is Too Short?

When it comes to blog posts, how short is too short?

Well, the real answer is, there is no too short. You can post a one sentence blog post and that’s better than nothing. But if you want a highly optimized blog post then the longer the better. But the real way to optimize blog posts is to make them not too short and not too long.

If it’s too long then no one will read it. If it’s too short then you might not get a good ranking in the search engines. There is an optimal length, but it isn’t counted in words or paragraphs. The optimal length is how much space you need to cover your topic adequately. But if all you can do on a given day is post, “Hey, just dropping in to say Hi,” it’s not optimal, but it’s better than nothing. Just don’t do that too often or your friends will think you don’t like them any more.

Keyword Density: Do Bloggers Need It?

It is my responsibility at Blog Content Provider to ensure that bloggers are trained properly on blog optimization techniques and helping our customers achieve the results they are looking for from their blogs. One of my newest bloggers asked me recently what keyword density I want to see in my blog posts. It’s a question that one will see frequently in forums, though I admit I don’t get it as much any more. But some new bloggers still wonder about keyword density. My response is always the same.

In my view, keyword density is a poor measure of SEO success. It doesn’t really get you anywhere and the reason is because all of the search engines have a multitude of factors that they take in and consider when it comes to ranking websites for keyword positioning. You can’t rely on one factor alone and keyword density relies too heavily upon the use of keywords within your blog posts. An overly aggressive tendency to focus on keywords could lead to spammy behavior and, well, that won’t help you any – particularly when the search engines now use semantic technology to determine whether content is useful or not.

No one knows for sure what the most important ranking factors are, but through trial and error, many SEOs have discovered that some things are better than others. As a general rule, the following factors are some of the ranking factors that search engines consider when deciding where you should rank for your keywords:

• Keyword usage in your blog post title
• Keyword position within your blog post title
• Subheads with h1, h2, or h3 tags in conjunction with keyword usage
• Keyword anchor text usage
• Overall keyword usage within your blog post content
• Title attributes within your links
• Photo optimization practices like alt tags and surrounding text
• Relevant inbound links
• Quality of inbound links to your blog’s index page as well as each individual blog post
• Outbound links in your sidebar
• Dofollow vs. nofollow tags and destination pages of your blog post links, sidebar links, and comment links

In all, the search engines analyze over 200, or close to 300, ranking factors. Too much emphasis on any one or handful of these could lead to a reputation as a spammer or ineffective SEO. That’s why I try to teach my bloggers to think for themselves and to understand how their content is being read by and analyzed by the search engines for ranking purposes. Blog marketing is a long-term strategy that can result in your blog achieving high rankings for you keywords over time, but it isn’t an overnight success mission. Don’t treat it that way. Consistency, persistence, and flexibility are key characteristics to develop if you want to be a successful blogger.

Learn more about blog optimization from the blog optimization experts.

Ranking Highly Is Not An Exact Science

Many good bloggers focus too heavily on keywords. While keywords are important, you can emphasize them too much. What is more important is quality content. Here are some rebuttals to the arguments made in this article.

Getting Your Blog to Rank Highly In Search Engines

There is little point in writing a blog if no one comes to read it. Blogs are automatically search engine friendly because of their fresh content and clean formatting, but there are a few easy techniques you can use to improve your rankings.

A few words about keywords:

1. Choose your Keywords wisely.

You can choose to write on a topic, or for a key word or phrase, that is immensely popular and has a ton of competition, and never stand a chance of getting in the top page or two of rankings. Or you can choose similar but more targeted keyword or phrase with less competition be in the top 10 listings.

Actually, you should choose popular keywords or phrases. Don’t waste a lot of time looking for all the “long tail” keywords so you can rank for them. Keep a list of important keywords for your business and run through all of them – long tail and broad search. You don’t have to rank on page 1 of Google for every single keyword or phrase. Some of your best traffic will come from your pings.

2. Key Word or Phrase? That is the next question.

Most people do not use a single word for a search engine query. The often search a phrase or even type an entire question. This is not necessarily the most efficient way to search, but it is the most natural. So do not think you need to limit yourself to single key word. A key phrase of three – five words is entirely appropriate.

It is difficult to optimize a blog post for keyword phrases longer than three words. When you optimize a blog post, your three keywords or phrase do not even have to be contiguous – one right after another. You can split up the phrase several times in your blog post and still rank for the phrase because most search engines these days are using semantic language algorithms. Your phrase does not have to remain in tact for every usage.

3. Choose your URL wisely.

Once you have chosen your keyword, it is time to choose your URL wisely. Whether your blog is hosted by your blogging software, on your own domain or subdomain. You want your primary keyword to be in your domain name (URL).

If you use WordPress, which I highly recommend, all you have to do is include your specific keyword or phrase in the title of your post and WordPress will automatically include that in your URL. It’s called a permalink. Of course, you have to change the default settings in WordPress to format your permalink properly. That isn’t hard to do if you know how. A one-hour tutorial can help you get your permalink set right, or a professional WordPress expert can do it for you.

4. Keyword Placement

Besides having your primary key word in your URL, you also want it to appear the header tags and titles of your posts.

Yes, I recommend adding a title and description tag at the very least to your header.php file. Again, a one-hour tutorial can help you do that, or a WordPress expert can do it for you.

5. Keyword usage in the body of your post

When writing each post you of course want to use your primary keyword(s) in the text, but don’t over do it or you’ll sound like spam. Always write in a natural, reader friendly manner. This is also the place put a few secondary keywords as well.

This is where a lot of bloggers go wrong. Don’t overdo it. Blog spam is easily detected by the search engines and if you litter your blog posts with your keyword over and over again then it won’t rank the way you want it to. The search engines will discount it as spam. Use your keyword phrase, but use it sparingly.

6. Keywords in Links

Keywords that appear in links are more important than those in plain text. So where appropriate, when linking to another blog or website, use your keywords in the text of links.

Do it once or twice. I’ve seen bloggers use six or eight links in a 300-word blog post. That’s spam. It doesn’t help you. Search engines will only count the first instance of your anchor text. After that, strategically place your links for driving traffic where you want it to go. Otherwise, you’ll be guilty of overkill, aka “spam”.

7. Keyword Categories

Another natural place to put your keywords in your Category names.

Yep. I agree. And be sure to include tags with each post. The latest edition of WordPress has a field for you to enter your tags.

Keywords are not the only thing search engines consider when ranking your blog. Here are few other areas to consider:

Links

Links that point to your blog and posts are very important to building pagerank.

1. Search Engines and Directories

Being listed in search engines and directories provide great single direction links. So make sure you submit your blog, first of all to dmoz.org. This is end all, be all to internet directories and is a place that most search engines pull from to find websites to spider. After than submit directly to the major search engines, that way they know you exist. Finally, submit to the blog search engines and various free directories.

This information is so outdated. First, DMOZ is not the end-all be-all of directories. It could take as long as a year to get listed there AFTER you submit your blog. By that time you could 365 blog posts, or more, and already have top 10 listings with single blog posts. Sure, submit to DMOZ, but even if you don’t, do other things right and you’ll have a blog that you can be proud of.

You don’t have to submit your blog to search engines any more. That’s why they have spiders. The most important thing to do to get your blog crawled by the search engines within 72 hours is to get at least one inbound link. Find a local directory and submit your blog to it. Open an account at Google Webmaster Central and verify your blog. Also, verify it with Yahoo! and MSN. Once you do that, you’ll be crawled.

Here is a well respected list of Blog Directories by Robin Good.
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

2. Articles

Turn some of your blog posts into articles and submit them to the article directories. This will get you more linkbacks.

Yes, this is a good long-term strategy.

3. Comment

Leave appropriate comments on forums and other blogs with a link to your site in the comment.

This is a great way to get quick back links to your blog. Find two or three forums and blogs in your niche and leave a comment. Don’t spam them. Find an appropriate topic and join the conversation. Make it seem natural and people will love you.

Updates

1. Update your blog.

The more fresh content you have, the happier the spiders are. Some blogging software will even let you write posts in advance and schedule them to be posted on certain days.

You can timestamp your blog posts, but I don’t recommend it. We found out that WordPress pings your blog posts when you publish them, not when they go live. That means that if you timestamp a blog at 5 p.m. to go live the next morning at 10 a.m. then it will notify all the ping directories at 5 p.m. on the day that you publish, a full 17 hours before you want the post to go live. You’ll likely get visitors to that blog posts too soon and if it contains information that you don’t want to go public before 10 a.m. the next day, you’ve breached your own security.

Blog directories like Technorati index blog posts by listing the latest one at the top and the oldest ones below it. If you want your post to go live at 10 a.m. the next day then when 10 a.m. comes around, because you pinged when you published, that blog post will be at the bottom of the heap. The people you want to read it when you want them to read it will not get that chance. I don’t recommend timestamping. A better solution is to write the post ahead of time and save it as a draft. Then when it comes time to publish it, you can login and publish it in a few seconds.

2. Ping

After you update your blog, you’ll want to “ping” the search engines to let them know you have new content. That will get your site spidered more often. You can us the Ping-O-Matic Tool (http://pingomatic.com/) to ping a lot of search engines all at once. Alternately, if you use Feedburner, for your RSS distribution, they have a tool that will automatically ping the search engines when you update your blog.

Yes, Feedburner does have a ping tool. So does WordPress. I recommend getting a list of ping directories and insert that list into the ping field of WordPress. Alternatively, you can use Feedburner’s distribution model. One or the other is fine.

Other words on Feedburner, even if you use WordPress to ping the directories, I still recommend Feedburner for RSS distribution.

Follow these few easy guidelines and see your blog listed in the search engines in no time.

Cheryl Hartzman is a successful work at home mom who specializes in providing advice and opportunities to others who want to earn a living working at home. For more information about working at home, visit her blog at http://wahcenter.blogspot.com.

Copyright © 2008 Cheryl Hartzman. All Rights Reserved (Article may be reprinted if all text and links remain intact and unchanged.)

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Cheryl Harzman has some good advice for you here, but some of it is outdated and incomplete, or inaccurate.

Find out more about professional blog management at BCP.

How To Optimize Your Blog Without Plugins

When it comes to blog optimization some people’s first line of defense is to add a plugin, but that may not necessarily be the best solution. There are ways to optimize your blog without adding a plugin, which could increase your code for each page you publish. The more code you have in your pages the less optimized your posts will be. So you can see the dilemma in adding plugins. Too many can be as bad, or worse, than not enough.

Here are some ways to increase your blog’s optimization without adding a plugin:

• Add links to your sidebar that use your important keywords as anchor text
• Include title attributes in your hyperlinks
• Make sure all of your photos and images have alt tags
• Write your posts directly into your WordPress (or other software) rather than write in Word and copy/paste; word processors add code of their own
• As an alternative, you can write your posts in Notepad and cut/paste
• In your header file, move the title of your post to before the title of your blog – this will optimize each post
• Add a description tag to your header file
• Add categories that use your important keywords
• Upgrade to the latest edition of WordPress (or other blogging software)
• Use tags in addition to categories
• Make sure you put keywords in your post titles and body content

There are plenty of ways to optimize your blog posts without resorting to adding new plugins. That not to say that some plugins aren’t good or shouldn’t be added. But you don’t have to use every plugin that promises you the moon.