May 23rd, 2008 | Posted in SEO Tip of Day, blogging, search engines, wordpress
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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May 6th, 2008 | Posted in SEO Tip of Day, blogging
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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April 12th, 2008 | Posted in SEO Tip of Day, blogging
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:
- 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
- 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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April 10th, 2008 | Posted in SEO Tip of Day, blogging, marketing
One of the first steps in developing your web presence is to search out some pages where you can get links to your site. For many webmasters they get frustrated early with the whole “how do I get links?” question. Me too. But here is something a beginner loger may overlook.
1) Link to the blogs you read
2) Leave comments
Link to the blogs you read:
Don’t so so focussed on your own blog that you forget to visit other peoples blogs and engage in their discussions as well. Let’s not forget, that is a big part of the blog community. A sharing. Remember…. every blog loves to see people making useful comments on their page. People will notice, and be sure that the majority will come visit your site, gaining you a valuable allie and a someone that is much more likely to reference you in their blog, giving you some quality links.
In addition, many blogs have the trackback feature you can use. By referencing their post on your blog, and linking back with the trackback link you will get some good links coming back to you as well. Not all sites automatically allow trackbacks, but some do. Regardless, if you take a minute to say something original in your blog 99% of blogs will approve you and give you a link back.
Granted, I admit that earlier we discussed the problem that many blogs have rel=”nofollow” links. In this case you don’t really get the “link juice”, but you are still putting your name out there in front of people that would otherwise not even known your blog existed. And by the way, if you use wordpress, and would like to remove the nofollow, it is pretty simple, I have done it for my page, and it took 30 seconds. You can see here how to remove rel=”nofollo” from your wordpress blogs.
Leave comments:
If you stumble upon a blog you like and you enjoy what the author says… leave him a comment. You accomplish a few different things here
- Give the other blog’s author the url of your blog for him to go visit. You never know, maybe he will love what you are doing too, and mention you on his page
- Put your views in front of his audience. This way you will benefit in the future as you fellow blogger grows his site too. FREE MARKETING. Just don’t spam, no one likes spam
Really, that is the very, very basic beginning to getting your blog out there and noticed.
Sadly, as this is my first blog I’m really trying to build.. this is my current level. But I’m learning. And every night you can get a new SEO tip of the day.
Be sure to share you tips too! In case you couldn’t tell (assuming you are still here reading this) is that I love getting comments.
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April 9th, 2008 | Posted in blogging, search engines
A couple of days ago I wrote a post giving you a couple good references to use if you want to start to monetize your blog, well, today let’s take a quick look at one easy way that you can actually start to pull some extra traffic into your blog…. by using trackbacks.
Using trackbacks is something that a good friend of mine recently suggested I start to try, and I must say that I have seen some extra traffic already starting to come into my blog from the few trackbacks I have given over the past week. He also has some other nice tips for anyone using wordpress as your blogging platform. Check out his site for a nice list of useful wordpress tools that will really give your blog a boost.
Coming from a background where I have been blogging for a major site, bloggingstocks, I have never really had to think about gaining traffic, I have only had to focus on actual content, so actually trying to build traffic is challenge that I look forward to learning.
Regardless, my friend suggested that I start to cite other people’s blogs that I like using trackbacks and in return could not only boost my quality of writing, but also give my site a little extra traffic. Well, obviously, as I have learned, this is a very widespread tactic that a lot of successful bloggers use, and I found a great example of another blogger writing about his experience on balkhis.com where he showed a couple instances where using trackbacks really led to some good traffic for his blog.
Basically, when you come across a good blog article that you like, be sure to cite the post, but look for the trackback link and use that as your link to the cite to get your blog post listed in their comments. In many cases wordpress is smart enough to give you the trackback even if you use the regular url of the post, but to be safe always look for the trackback link at the end of the post and use that.
It is a good technique to help build up your blogs readership, and gives you a little more authority. Hope you found this post useful, if so, be sure to take my advice and trackback to this post
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