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SEO 101: Are You Writing For Humans?

April 2, 2011 by 10 Comments

I have seen the most illogical keywords that people come up with, and mainly because they are trying to put in everything they can think of that hopefully ranks their site higher in the search engines. This is pure folly to do as it is over-optimizing. Another thing is actually search engine optimizing with keywords that people will actually search for, rather than just putting a bunch of garbage.

In the case of targeting local SEO, it becomes apparent that “Deck Coating Irvine, California” may help, but unfortunately, using it exactly like that in your page or blog post title, and within your article to humans is just illogical. Even if a person were to put in their title “Deck Coating in Irvine, California”, you would still do pretty good in the search, especially if you are going out there and promoting it on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. Of course, you can put in your meta and your tags the “deck coating irvine california” and that might help too.

However, it is important to sound logical to your readers and to even potential readers stumbling upon your article in the search engines. They may believe your command of the English language is sub par.

If you really are carefully optimizing your site, regardless whether it is for a business, a blog site, or both, you have to think like a human and not the search engine when optimizing. Most people have used a search engine at some point to find something out there. This is not like in the 1980s when you might be putting in a command for DOS and get an error syntax for putting the wrong words in.

In the case you are not sure on what you should be optimizing for, but have a clue who your competition is, look at their site and seek out their Alexa rank, just as a quick look. On their Alexa rank page, there is a section for keywords people look for and land on their site. Optimize with articles that would compete with theirs, and yet sound logical to your readers.

How have you been optimizing your website?

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With:

What Is Your Blog’s Pitch?

January 27, 2011 by 8 Comments

If you have a blog, you are pitching. How often have you heard that (even at conferences)? It is a very true statement. When you put up a website, you are most likely not hording it all to your lonesome. You are telling people about it.

Some of you might not understand this and be saying – ‘I have a personal site, so how can I be selling.’

You are selling your words.

Every time you share that blog post out on Twitter, Facebook, and all the social network sites out there, you are basically advertising- ‘Here is my post. Please come read it.’

There is no shame in that, but make sure your pitch is a clear one. If it takes a long novel to describe what your site is about, people will not be interested. Keep your pitch simple and between 3 to 20 words. This pitch is something you can use at your site’s description so when Google picks up your site, that will include exactly what you want people to know about your site.

For example- I use: “Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar” for Blondish.net

You will know I help people with their websites and that I hope to make sure their websites turn out awesome.

Try your pitch here. Tell me it and how you came up with it? If you do not have a definite one, do you need help?

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , ,

User-relevant content is the key to success

September 10, 2010 by 5 Comments

If you want your website to simultaneously draw in customers and sit proudly atop search engine rankings, there is no escaping the fact that fresh content is the key.

You have probably heard this statement so many times that is had lost some of its impact. But it is worth reminding yourself of it from time to time, because the moment you start to overlook the importance of well-written, freshly-produced copy is the moment you start to lose customers and slide inexorably down search rankings.

Image Courtesy: djheights.com

Most companies now recognise the vital importance of content generation and how it can increase success, which is why SEO is currently such a thriving industry. However, in focusing solely on their own potential glory, many companies tend to forget one important fact. Namely, that without their loyal, paying customers, their business is nothing.

In the global marketplace, a big reputation alone simply isn’t enough to bring in new clients and sustain a company’s operations. New customers need to be drawn to your business, engaged by the services you provide and encouraged to keep coming back for more. For this to happen, you need to ensure that your site is regularly updated, and that the content you produce is 100% relevant to your potential and existing customers

Churning out pages of new content just to please the search engines is not enough. While it may keep the likes of Google happy for a while, your website will ultimately be used by living, breathing visitors who care very little for keywords. What users want is original, well-written and authoritative content that tells them what they need to know with the minimum of fuss.

If you can provide them with what they are looking for, your company will be seen as a trustworthy source and your chances of converting that visitor into a long-term customer will increase dramatically. That newly-converted customer will then spread the word within his or her industry, and within no time a wave of new visitors will surge towards your site.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , ,

How To Optimize Your Online Video Content

July 27, 2010 by 2 Comments

Online video is one of the biggest phenomena to hit the web in recent years. For every person who claims it’s the best thing since sliced bread you’ll come across someone else who believes it’s just a passing fad. The people who do believe it won’t have any validity are normally the same people who claimed email would never catch on and no one would want to use the mobile phone. Online video is not a passing trend it’s simply the internet evolving to the next step.

Although online video itself has been around a few years now, the process of actually optimizing it is still relatively new. It’s only been within the last year that Google have been making so much noise about making video sitemaps and YouTube has grown at a faster pace in the last six months than it’s ever done. Because of this constantly evolving landscape coupled with the fact video is one of the few aspects of your site that hasn’t been designed with the algorithm in mind, optimizing it can be very hit and miss.

As with any optimization one of the most important factors is still going to be your keyword research and this is still the best place to start. Like any online content your video will need a title which will normally be the same title as the page it sits on. If you sell curling tongs for hair, naming your video ‘about our product’ isn’t likely to win you any positions in the search engines. Titles like ‘how to use curling tongs’ or ‘top tips for curly hair’ would probably be more productive both for your site’s visitors and your chance of appearing in the results pages. You also want to make sure the file containing your video and any code underneath it also contains your chosen keywords. Remember when the search engine spiders crawl your site they can’t read the video; they can just read the code. Because the search engine spiders can only read text, a transcription of your video is a great way to not only legitimately bring your keywords to their attention but it will also be beneficial to your sites visitors too.

As I’ve mentioned the spiders that crawl your site can’t read video and if they can’t read it they won’t know to index it. You need to specifically tell the search engines your video is there. Google have been putting a lot of effort into indexing video content over the past few months and in the last couple of week’s they’ve made a renewed attempt to revamp their video sitemap process. A video site map can be submitted to Google in the same way you would a regular site map through your Webmaster Tools console. The parameters in a video site map will tell Google exactly what your video is called along with a brief description as well as other important factors like the length of the video, any ratings your video has and the number of times its been played among many others.

Once you’ve got your video sorted on your site and you’ve told the search engines it’s there you need to think about syndicating it round the web. Unsurprisingly there are hundreds of thousands of sites that will accept video content. Ranging from the generic to the industry specific with the most obvious being YouTube. YouTube is a search engine in its own right and is the second most popular search engine in the world and has over 80% of all online video views. The only difference is you have to take your content to YouTube, it won’t find you. Like any search engine it even has its own algorithm taking into account things like video title, description, tags, views, play list additions, shares comments etc.

The overriding principle of video is, in theory, the same as any other content online, produce good quality content and you’ll be rewarded. Informative, quality videos are more likely to get thumbs up and shares on YouTube and they’re more likely to acquire natural links for your site. Of course this may be a somewhat naive attitude so a little bit of good old fashion SEO would probably help too.

Do you have video content? What tips do you have for people wanting to optimize their online videos?

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , ,

SEO: Your Article And Keyword Density

July 20, 2010 by 9 Comments

I have heard quite a few people ask about keyword density. It spurs from either not exactly understanding the term or how they can apply the concept to their site. However, what does that mean for you and what you want to write about?

According to Wikipedia:

Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page.

When you write an article, you have a topic. Usually that is what your keywords pertain to, but some people write articles and put a relevant keyword. For example, if I was writing about designing a site and decided instead of using web design as a keyword and linking it to another site, I want to do that to web hosting. I could and that would be a keyword.

It does not have to do with tagging your posts. Tagging is something like categories, they are both used for organizing your site – categories for general topics, and tagging is more specific topics.

For anyone who has professionally written for article companies that focus on keyword density, a lot of them ask that a keyword not be used more than 1.6%, but at the least .6%. This could mean you could use that keyword any where from 1 to 5 times depending on how short or long your article is. After that, search engines like Google may believe you are trying to keyword stuff your article which is a big frown face no-no.

The beauty of language is that there are many words that are similar and you can avoid keyword over usage by consulting a Thesaurus.

If you are concerning about keyword density, you can use the keyword density analyzer, which is free for anyone to try out.

If you are using WordPress, you might want to try out Keyword Statistics.

What other tools might make monitoring your sites keyword density more convenient?

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , , ,

The DoFollow List At Blondish.net

June 1, 2010 by 7 Comments

Alright, so after some inspiration and needing to revamp my link exchange buddies, I wanted to put together a dofollow list here at Blondish.net. Since it is new, pretty much there are no links.

The problem with regular link exchanges is that you end up linking with people who may not have relevance to your own site. I have made it a personal challenge to put together a DoFollow list of sites that are relevant my topics Blondish.net and list them in their specific niches.

Kind of a re-focus on link juice. I want to also be able to use this as a substitute of my own blogroll.

In order to be on the dofollow list, your site must be a dofollow site. Your site must also fall under one of the following categories:

  • Social Media
  • Blogging – (blog tips or a blog about blogging)
  • Social Networking
  • Tech
  • Internet
  • SEO
  • WordPress
  • Web Design

If your site does fall in those categories and you want to join in on the dofollow, fill out the form on The DoFollow List.

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , ,

Are You Up-to-Date With SEO?

May 22, 2010 by 8 Comments

I probably should not be shocked, but as more and more people are becoming more confident about having their own sites, as a web designer and developer, the questions the things they say are a bit alarming. I fear they are not getting the information they need.

Often I refer them to Joost de Valk’s site Yoast because he is extremely knowledgeable about SEO as well as WordPress. Of course, I also refer clients and potential clients to SEO niche blogs like SEOmoz blog an SearchEngineJournal.

The problem is a lot of people get into a lot of hype on things like buying themes that are supposedly optimized for SEO, like Thesis. In the end, they waste either a developer’s fee or a single license fee when they can have a dynamic site and install recommended plugins by people that are top in their niche. Thesis is nice and allows a lot of things to be done, but design-wise, it does not really offer the flexibility that people need to brand themselves properly.

Of course, there are people who can write awesome content and get away with slinking by and not having a fantastically designed site to help with branding, but even people who are not as savvy in SEO should be taking the time to read up or watch videos. These days, people really do not have the time, but this is important.

As a site owner, it is important to try to be up-to-date in a lot of internet techniques. It is what leaves one site in the dust while its competition succeeds because they were open to keeping up. It is kind of like when I went to college for web design. The text books, even though they were informative, they were well behind for the time. Typically, by the time most internet related technology books are behind in information when it is put to print.

What sites do you think are huge resources for webmasters needing more information on search engine optimization?

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: ,

What Is The Best Way To Display Posts On Your Front Page For SEO?

May 17, 2010 by 13 Comments

I recently submitted my blog to BlogDistributor to try them out. After waiting for the site to be reviewed, I got back a noticed saying to resubmit when I fix the issue of the fact my articles do not all display full posts and only display excerpts from the front page. The reasoning behind the decision is because it was not good for search engines. (I was also suggested to use themes from known unsafe free WordPress theme sites to download in the case that I was not able to code.)

WHAT?!?!

Where is that little piece of information on the net? Seems fine and dandy to me to display excerpts. Some of the top blogs on SEO use excerpts to display posts and it is not hurting them one bit. Search Engine Journal does it, Joost de Valk does it at Yoast, and even the SEOmoz blog does it.

The whole work is within the site layout, and the content itself to build SEO. It does not really matter if your site displays full posts or excerpts because it is ALL read by the search engine. And because of social networking, and RSS, it makes it easy for people to bypass your layout and go straight to he content itself.

However, I have never had an issue with this with Pay Per Post or SocialSpark, so why is this a reason? I am not changing my site, so I am not sure why this is even an issue because I know it really does not matter.

So, I am wondering if people are not being given the right information or are we all still wrong?

What is the correct way to display your posts on your front page?

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , ,