ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse lists 20 (plus a few extra, in the update) static pages that every blogger should have in their blog. In addition to the traditional About page and FAQ, there are quite a few you probably haven’t thought of before, such as a Press Page, Affiliate Presell pages and special event landing pages.
This is Part 4 of my field test of the Blogger’s Guide to SEO. During this series, I’ll be starting at the beginning of this guide and working my way down, trying out the advice (or noting why I’m not going to). In the end, my hope is to wind up with a more optimized blog while demonstrating the why’s and how’s of blog SEO.
The primary issue this chapter seeks to resolve is a problem known as duplicate content. (Click here for a concise but detailed overview of duplicate content and some basic how-not-to advice from the Googlplex itself.) Basically, duplicate content is when you have the same content on several different pages, and it can seriously affect your Google ratings and how your pages are indexed by said web overlords. Why? Because Google ranks unique, original content higher than stuff that’s repeated all over the place.
The problems is, Google hasn’t really managed to adjust their algorithm to account for the nature of blogging platforms. Why is blogging an issue? Because every time you post, you’re creating several pages of duplicate content - each post that shows up on your main blog index page is duplicated in the individual post’s permalink page and any category page the post falls into, as well as tag pages, archives and so on. Use a lot of tags and categories, and that can add up to dozens of pages of the same content.
And unless you know the steps to take to prevent this from being an issue, it can result in your posts being dunned as duplicate content and getting locked away forever as supplemental results.
Advice: The BGTSEO offers several options for protecting your blog from suffering from duplicate content issues and winding up in supplemental results hell, along with other ways to structure your site to improve visitor usability.
First of all, they suggest grouping your best content together where it’s easy for your audience to find. These posts are often referred to as “flagship content” or “best-of content.” Secondly, they offer a video on the dangers of duplicate content and some tips for avoiding it. Next up are some tips on how to create SEO-friendly category headings and tags, a quick section on such reader-friendly tweaks as “Related Posts” plugins and the “Next/Previous” links that many templates create and a note about the importance of proper blog headline displays and a few links to plugins that can help with this.
Monkey Status: As I noted last Monday, this is a big chapter, at least in terms of actually doing things to my site rather than just tweaking some habits. As a matter of fact, I just checked my supplemental results on this Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator and found that out of 212 pages available here on the OGM, a whopping 184 of them are listed as being in supplemental results purgatory. Not good. But not unusual either, given that a basic, un-SEO-tweaked blog is basically a duplicate content, and thus supplemental results, generator.
So I spent the last week putting some duplicate content SEO mojo into the backend of this blog, like a robots.txt file that will block indexing of major duplicate content trouble spots, a few plug-ins to help tweak out things like page titles and meta descriptions, and am considering some other, more visible options as well.
Comments: Getting your blog structured and tweaked to improve reader usability and to avoid being penalized for duplicate content is a big deal. Without such hacks, you’re losing page rank and search engine visibility with every post. But the reverse is also true - with a few simple tricks, you can reverse sliding page rank, boost your search engine results and rescue your precious content from the clutches of the supplemental results bin .Specifics, how-to’s and resource links are available after the jump.
This is Part 4 of my field test of the Blogger’s Guide to SEO. During this series, I’ll be starting at the beginning of this guide and working my way down, trying out the advice (or noting why I’m not going to). In the end, my hope is to wind up with a more optimized blog while demonstrating the why’s and how’s of blog SEO.
In this short, but very important, section, BGTSEO covers the importance of writing really good headlines.
Advice: This section consists almost entirely of an embedded YouTube video of an interview, in which uber-blogger Cory Doctorow’s is quoted as saying, “Write headlines as though you are a wire service writer.” They also include a link to Copyblogger’s Magnetic Headlines blog series.
(Note: the embedded video link they have is broken, so I’ve embedded the video below so you can get to it without having to comb YouTube looking for it.)
The bottom line? In people terms, writing concise, descriptive headlines that are front-loaded with keywords increases readership. In SEO terms, search engines give greater weight to title text, headlines (as demarcated by various < h > tags) and other emphasized copy than to the main content.
Creating keyword-rich, descriptive headlines means that people are more likely to click through on your blog and in the feeds. And when someone is searching the sort of stuff you’re writing about, your postings will turn up more often and higher in the search results and your clear headlines will make it easier for searchers to see at a glance that your post has the information they need.
Monkey Status: This one is hard for me. I have a writer’s love for the “creative” headlines. Sticking to journalistically strong, straight-to-the-point, keyword-focussed headlines feels boring, clinical and, basically, no fun. Like a gift-giver who likes to get creative with giftwrap and presentation, I want to entice, tease or even puzzle the reader (but in a fun, mysterious way, not a bad, “wtf” way) before pulling back the curtain and revealing the main event.
However, for a commercial or business blog, this is a poor way to build SEO brownie points, nor is it particularly conducive to attracting and retaining readers. People are too busy to futz around with cutesy or vague headlines. They want to be able to scan your blog, their RSS reader’s feed or their search results and pick out the stuff that will be interesting to them - without having to play “guess the content.” Artistic, mysterious or misleading headlines create more work for your reader and causes search bots to overlook or mis-categorize your content, therefore decreasing your traffic, readership and search engine ranking.
This is a habit I’m trying very hard to break. So far, I’ve managed to keep my “artistic” tendencies more or less in check, mostly by promising myself that I can be as creative, mysterious and silly as I want on my personal blog. And I’ve been trying out a few different ways to format headlines so that they work best for me, so if you’ve seen any weird headline changes or inconsistencies, that’s probably what’s going on.
But it’s worth fighting my personal leanings on, because I know this advice is so completely dead-on.
Comments: Take Cory’s advice. The man knows what he’s talking about - BoingBoing hasn’t gotten to be one of the world’s most read blogs by being coy and hiding it’s light under a bushel of fuzzy headlines. Hear what he has to say on the subject in the video below - he says it all far better than I can.
This is Part 3 of my field test of the Blogger’s Guide to SEO. During this series, I’ll be starting at the beginning of this guide and working my way down, trying out the advice (or noting why I’m not going to). In the end, my hope is to wind up with a more optimized blog while demonstrating the why’s and how’s of blog SEO.
Todays tip is all about keeping your ear to the ground, your eyes on the horizon and your radar pinging. In short, it’s about how to keep tabs on what’s happening in the world and your competition are up to.
Advice: Use sites such as TailRank, Digg, YouTube’s top videos listings to keep on top of what’s happening in the world (so you can write about it, of course).
They also recommend using Bloglines, Technorati and Google Blog Search to find, subscribe to and keep track of what your competition are up to, as well as what’s being said about you. Sneaky, sneaky.
Monkey Status: Not as plugged in as I should be, but making progress. To get up to speed on this tip, I need to get busy cleaning out and keeping up with my Google Reader inbox. It also wouldn’t hurt for me to set up a few more Google Alerts (just to make sure I’m not missing out on any juicy gossip about myself or my blogs), and maybe make an effort to be a little more proactive when it comes to keeping up with bloggers in related topics.
Comments: It’s lame being the last person on the bus to realize that something is happening. It’s even lamer being the last blogger on earth to be pointing to something. Keeping up with popular meme-tracking sites helps you stay on top of what’s hot, what’s not and what’s going down when you’re not around.
This is a short section, so I’ll make this message short: If you’re going to be blogging, you have to keep up with what’s going on in the blogosphere and the world at large. Otherwise, you’re just typing up yesterday’s news.
But there’s so much out there - so many ways to keep in touch and on top of things - where do you start and how do you know which one to get started with? Allow me to share a few of my own favorites - maybe you’ll find some useful ideas there.
Since I can’t think of anything brilliant to say tonight, here’s a buffet o’ biz and marketing genius from around the web for you to snack on until my smarty-pants come back from the cleaners.
And finally, proof that the global, virtual market is one of the most powerful forces on Earth for putting economic opportunity within reach of everyone, regardless of age, nationality or geographic location: A fourteen year old blogger from the Philippines who blogs better than you, makes more money than you do and ranks higher on Google.
This is Part 2 of my field test of the Blogger’s Guide to SEO. During this series, I’ll be starting at the beginning of this guide and working my way down, trying out the advice (or noting why I’m not going to). In the end, my hope is to wind up with a more optimized blog while demonstrating the why’s and how’s of blog SEO.
Today’s topic is all about keywords. Keywords are terms used by people when they search for information on the web. Keywords are a hot topic in SEO, because the whole point of putting up a website is to get people to visit. But no one will visit a site they can’t find, i.e. your site doesn’t show up (or doesn’t show up early) in the search results that are returned for commonly used keywords.
Advice: The Blogger’s Guide to SEO advises using tools like Wordtracker and Quintura to look at the keywords you are using and see how they stack up in terms of how many people are searching for those terms and what related terms are being searched that might be useful to add to your list.
They suggest salting SEO-vital areas of your blog, such as titles and headlines, with keywords to increase your search engine ranking for those terms.
They also recommend checking out your keywords on sites like Technorati and Google Trends in order to see what’s happening out in the world that relates to you and your keywords, presumably so that you can blog about it and keep your content from going stale.
Monkey Status: I’m still in the process of defining my keywords. At the moment, I’m focusing on broad terms like marketing, business, internet marketing, etc., while I get this blog up and running. In the near future, however, I’ll need to add some far narrower and more tightly targeted terms to these, and start writing to appeal to a more tightly-targeted audience, or I’ll risk getting lost in the ravening din of gazillion different marketing blogs that exist on the net.
Comments: This is an easy way to amp the firepower of your blog without a major overhaul. You just start targeting better, stronger and more effective keywords and watch your traffic climb.
It can be a tricky process, though; it’s easy to go too broad (and get run over by the competition), too narrow (and wind up all by yourself in an empty little corner of the internet) or too corporate-ese (and be forced to acknowledge that your proactive implementation of audience-specific terminology strategies has achieved a success-negative position.)
With that in mind, I’m going to take the remainder of this post and dive deeply into the sometimes murky realm of keywords and SEO, for the benefit of those who aren’t sure how to best use this powerful SEO tool.
After I posted this originally, I realize what had started out as a hefty blog bitch on its own had wound up as an egregiously long post made up of two smaller posts mushed together. So, I’ve cut out some of the original post and reposted it here.
I woke up one mo’nin…da daaah da dah
My blog it was gone…da daaah da dah
A glitch in the system…da daaah da dah
The servers were p@wnnd…da daaah da dah
Like Roanoke Island…da daaah da dah
There was only one clue:…da daaah da dah
“DOMAIN UNDER CONSTRUCTION”…da daaah da dah
A cryptic adieu…da daaah da dah
I searched and I sweated…da daaah da dah
But the site, it was gone…da daaah da dah
Along with my blogging…da daaah da dah
Now I’m singing this song…da daaah da dah
I’ve got those blog erasing, site misplacing, hosted blog blues…whoaaaa yeah….
Mama’s Don’t Let Your Blogs Grow Up To Be Hosted
Luckily, this song actually had a happy ending. Sort of. [Read more →]
Actually, there a quite a few less than that now, but that’s the name of the blogging challenge hosted by my friend and colleague Dina Giolitto. The goal is to post one blog post a day until Christmas, and Gina will be offering up daily tips and support from her blog to help us all along.
For those of you with a blog, joining in these sorts of challenges are a great way to get exposure (Dina is putting all of us “24′ers” on a special blogroll), increase up readership, build up your archive and have some fun. It gets you off your bum and writing, forces you to commit to a daily schedule, and teaches discipline. Plus, anything you can do for a month (24 days is close enough), you can do forever.
And if you’re in a position to host your own challenge, go for it! Not only does it encourage reader engagement and let you meet all sorts of cool people, it’s a great way to establish yourself as a leader in your field and get lots of exposure and new traffic - especially if you manage to think up something that goes viral.
And it doesn’t have to be all about blogging, either. Businesses with a regular web site could sponsor daily “scavenger hunts” - visitors come daily for a clue that leads to a special icon or graphic or puzzle piece that ads up to a discount or prize. Another idea would be to put up some sort of charity fund-raising opportunity and challenge visitors to contribute, with all contributors names going into a hat for a prize drawing.
Not on the web? No worries. The basic concept works well for brick and mortar businesses as well, with a little tweaking. The concept is simple - get people to come in every day for a period of time and do something. (Or, alternately, to find a way to put yourself in front of them every day.) The more often they visit your store or have their attention drawn to your product, the more likely it is they’ll buy something.
For example, a store could host an Advent Giveaway, during which visitors could come to the store every day to claim a small trinket or tree decoration (and get that day punched off on their Advent card, which can be redeemed for a discount when it’s all punched out). Or they could send out a series of daily holiday postcards that include two, one-day-only discount codes - one for the recipient, and one for a friend.
A restaurant could host a 12 Days of Feasting promotion, during which diners who rack up twelve meal punches on a special card throughout December would get a free holiday dessert in a special take-home holiday bowl.
Or how about a special new-holiday-desert-a-day promotion for a bakery, featuring a different collectible trinket or ornament as part of each item’s decoration? Or a week of special, invitation-only tastings after hours at a local wine or coffee shop, complete with “Invite a Friend” cards and free samples to take home?
Promotions like these are great fun, and with a little creativity there’s no limit on how many ways you can think of to spread a little joy…and a lot of marketing goodness…while keeping that holiday traffic humming as a result.
This is Part 1 of my field test of the Blogger’s Guide to SEO. During this series, I’ll be starting at the beginning of this guide and working my way down, trying out the advice (or noting why I’m not going to). In the end, my hope is to wind up with a more optimized blog while demonstrating the why’s and how’s of blog SEO.
After a brief overview on the power of Google and other search engines (i.e. why search engine optimization is so important) and why blogs are different from static sites (it’s less about using SEO voodoo to attract attention to static content and more about doing something that gets and holds people attention), the BGSEO starts it’s tips and advice with a note about domain names and hosted vs self-hosted blogs.
Advice: You should have your own domain name and your own hosting, installed with a copy of the blogging platform (such as Wordpress or Movable Type) you’ll be using.
Monkey Status: Done, done and done.
Comments: I didn’t have to do anything about this advice, because I already knew to start out standing on my own two feet. But if you’re just starting out, setting all this up can be a daunting process, especially for the not-so-tech-savvy. However, the benefits far outweigh the pain. If you’re going to be in business and mean it, there are a lot of areas where you just have to buck up and either learn how to do it or hire someone to do it (or do IT) for you. This is one of them. [Read more →]
Great post chock full of resources and tools for anyone who’s running a blog, website or other online presence. A veritable Swiss Army Knife of copywriting goodness.