SEO Tip : Set up a sitemap for your site

One of the best ways to improve SEO is to make sure that your website gets fully indexed. You can accomplish this by setting up a sitemap that the search engines can use to quickly, and easily find all the content that should be indexed in the search results.

A sitemap is a separate HTML page that you can use to form a directory for your website. Since each page is listed as a hyperlink on the sitemap, it allows the search engines to quickly locate each of your internal pages. This is not only a great way to increase your SEO, but it also can serve as a way to help your visitor find the content that is most relevant to them.

For all you wordpress users out there, you can find a great wordpress plugin to set up your google sitemap on arnebrachhold’s page > GO GET THE PLUGIN. You can see how the plugin is being implemented on this blog by checking out my sitemap that i created with the plugin.

Here is another resource for non wordpress users on building a sitemap.

Once you have built your sitemap, be sure to go to google webmaster tools and inform google of where they can find your sitemap. If you dont have a google webmaster tools account yet, you can set one up here.

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Great free wordpress themes

If you like to blog, and you use wordpress, then I found a great site today that has a bunch of amazing free wordpress themes that you may or may not have seen before!

If you are at all like me, then you have probably spent (wasted) more hours of your life than you care to admit looking for high quality free wordpress themes. It’s ok though.. you are not alone, all you really have to do is run a google search for “free wordpress themes” and you will see how there are enough sites out there to confuse just about anyone that is looking for good blog themes.

Well, on smashingmagazine they have a nice article that lists 83 free wordpress themes that they consider to be worth checking out. I went down the list rather quickly and saw several that I had seen before, but also ran into a couple of really nice wordpress themes that I had not seen before. Later I will do a more in depth look at what themes they have to offer… but if you are looking to upgrade your wordpress blog with a new theme, then be sure to head over to smashingmagazine and see what you can find… you may find exactly the wordpress theme that you were looking for!

If you do, be sure to come back here and let us know which theme you selected and post a comment linking to your blog so we can all check out you new theme

Enjoy

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SEO Tip : Place keywords in your title

One of the best ways to start to improve your search engine rankings is by making sure that you always include keywords in your blog title. Search engines just love it when you let them know what you are writing about!

Google in particular really seems to pay a lot of attention to the titles of your blog entries, so if SEO is a concern for you, then make sure that you give the google bot what it is looking to see. A lot of bloggers try to come up with cute, or overly clever titles to their entries, but you would be well advised to avoid this, and just get straight to the point. If you are writing an entry, for example, about using keywords to boost your SEO, then make sure you state that clearly in your title.

Think about your habits when you go searching for something. What are you usually typing into the search engines? Names and things. You are not alone, and research shows that this is pretty universal for internet users, so make sure that you pay attention to this when you are writing your blog posts.

Don’t waste your time writing about George Bush and his politics, and then title your post “One man against the world“. Maybe the title more refelects your thoughts on George Bush, but its not really something that a user will look for. Make sure you are clear about what you going to blog about in your posts.

Make sure you don’t go crazy though and try to stuff 10 or 15 keywords into your title. Keep it simple, and keep it clean, and you will start to see more hits from the search engines.

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Pirate Bay launches uncensored blogging network

The guys over at The Pirate Bay, arguably the net’s largest torrent site, have announced the launch of their own blogging network, Baywords.

Many blog networks out there highly censor their user blogs, and often shut them down for what they deem to be offensive or inappropriate material. Well, the boys of Pirate Bay have never been prone to bowing down to the man, and they promise to give their users the same chance… with completely uncensored blogs. The only exception being that it will remove any blog that violates Sweedish laws, those seem to be the only laws that Baywords will not allow its users to violate.

Right now, don’t expect to see too many bells and whistles on the site. It is run by a pretty minimalistic wordpress multiuser blog platform. There are a couple of your expected wordpress plugins, such as the “all in one seo pack”, but don’t look for too much else at this time. The themes also leave a little to be desired.

I signed up to see what they had going on, and they had around 15 themes, none of which really jumped out at me as anything special. But don’t take that to mean that big things are not coming, after all, it did just launch this week, so you can’t expect a great blog network to be born overnight!

If you are looking to start a blog, or even if you currently have your own blog but want somewhere to write more sensitive type material, then check it out, just don’t expect too much just yet.

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SEO Tip : Build traffic by using your tags

A great way to help boost your sites SEO is through the use of tags on your blogs. Tags are often viewed as just another form of using categories, but they can definitely add value to your site.

I found a great article on dailyseo.org that discusses all the benefits from using tags on your blogs.

Here are a couple of the benefits that your blog will get from using tags on your posts that I picked up from dailyseo website:

1. Increase number of pages. This is because everytime you put a tag on a post, your blog will automatically create a page for that tag. For example you can see my tag page for blogging. This way you can limit the number of categories that you apply a post you, and just add your keywords into your tags and create the same effect
2. Improve your users experience on your page. Users like to see tag, so feed them what they want

But when you start to use tags… make sure that you are getting the most from your usage. Remember, by using your tags, you are able to keep your category list small. Tags should be used to compliment your category list, not serve as a duplicate (although sometimes I do duplicate mine).

For example… on this post you are reading now:

here are the categories = blogging and SEO Tip of the day
here are my tags:  blogging,tags,seo,tips,traffic,webmasters,blogs,marketing,wordpress

Blogging gets duplicated, but the others are merely compliments to the categories.

Use them wisely, and they will dramatically improve your web presence. You can find more ways to successfully use tags on the problogger.net blog.

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