SEO: Strategic Primer for a No.1 Rated Blog
For a popular blog, you must understand the process — important basics in search engine optimization (SEO). If you’ve been blogging for awhile, you know success doesn’t keep come automatically. SEO is arduous work.
You must have a strategic blogging goal. Is it to promote your business or e-commerce? A consultancy? Is it an advertising business model?
Whatever you decide, there are certain SEO tips to keep in mind.
They include:
Keywords. Decide your keyword niche, and in what categories you want to be found. Pay special attention to key words, as they are the first step in determining whether you are successful. If properly implemented in search engine optimization, they will help determine when your site appears when users are looking for content. Insert them throughout your text, but don’t go overboard. Use 10 or fewer key words for each topic.
Page headers and titles. The words you use in page headers and titles will be the first read by the spiders and users of your site. So, first impressions are important in describing the value of your pages. Short action verbs should be included.
Bots and spiders. Spiders are important to your success because they crawl your site to view your content and collect data. The spiders determine what pages appear on search engines when users are surfing for a topic.
Ostensibly, the most-sophisticated is Googlebot, which looks for your new and updated pages. Google uses an algorithmic process.
It’s helpful to understand Google’s reasoning for best Web site rankings and how to be optimized for Bing (in some ways, my sense is that bing is more logical). If time constraints prevent you from mastering both, focus on Google because of its 66-percent market-share dominance. If you’re successful on Google, chances are you rank well on Bing and Yahoo. Above all, quality of content rules – Google speaks out about frequency vs. value.
Sitemap. You can improve your odds for success with a Sitemap, which is a list of pages on your site. That’s to insure Googlebot and other spiders can detect your links on pages.
Google says Sitemaps support your cause, if:
- Your site has dynamic content.
- Your site has pages that aren’t easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process—for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or images.
- Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn’t well linked, it may be hard for us to discover it.)
- Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.
Images. Many people believe images are helpful to make a site interesting to users. That’s true. But they can’t also hurt you, if they’re not inserted properly. You see, spiders can’t detect images. Spiders can read a text description on your images, if you insert an ALT tag.
Flash pages are hip and attract users, but they serve no purpose in maximizing the impact of crawling spiders.
Videos are good. As you might expect, videos continue to surge in popularity.
Format. Keep your site’s format simple. Make sure it downloads fast, keep in mind Google’s continuing quest to increase page speeds because in SEO, your site’s download speed matters to Google. Update content frequently. But don’t insert multiple topics on a page; instead insert links to other pages. Links from one page to others helps your time-spent-viewing. The longer you keep a user on your site, the better off you’ll be.
It’s preferable to make the blog part of your Web site – don’t separate the two. Otherwise, you’ll have to work twice as hard to make sure both rank well. Further, search engines don’t like even the appearance of duplication.
Links. With one caveat, encourage other sites to link to yours. However, make certain the inbound links have a higher Google page rank than your site. If you can persuade a bonafide reporter to insert a link to your site from an authoritative media site – congratulations. If you need tips, here’s how to leverage the news media.
Another strategy is to submit press releases to online press release firms. Some are free, but again check their Google page rank. Quality of links is paramount. Always avoid weak links to you.
Minimize the number of your outbound links. Your site will be penalized.
Social Media. If you want a strong business brand, leverage these social mediums: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
Bear in mind these tips aren’t all-inclusive. But if you put them to use, you’re on your way. Good luck.
From the Coach’s Corner, note achieving strong results on Google is now easier with social networking. Here are 25 best practices for better business writing.
“…the time has come to ask yourselves does your blog suck … and what are you doing to change it?”
- Michael Gray
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Columnist Terry Corbell is also a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services (many are available online). For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?
Internet Marketing Lessons Via Rick Santorum’s Campaign
Jan. 5, 2012
Unintentionally, Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign — with inadequate branding — is providing business with Internet marketing lessons.
Perhaps you’ve noticed the inflammatory results in searching the Web for him. When you search for “Santorum,” the deprecating site of “spreadingsantorum.com” is first on Google, Bing and Yahoo. For curious voters interested in the campaign, it’s an especially disappointing search.
The derogatory site was created in 2003 by a part owner of The Stranger publication in Seattle, who was annoyed by then-Sen. Santorum’s comment about a U.S. Supreme court ruling that was favored by the gay community.
Understandably, Mr. Santorum complained to Google about the rankings – after all there are precedents. Indeed, it can be argued that Google could do something about it.
You might recall Google penalized the derogatory monkey-face depictions of Michelle Obama. There are countless security examples from when Google and the other search engines have issued a warning about a Web site when it believes a site is a security risk to users.
Until and unless Google and the other search engines take corrective measures, the Santorum campaign must focus on what it can control.
However, the campaign fails to use best practices in Internet marketing.
Its salient shortcomings:
- Failure to use SEO techniques
- A call to action without giving the right incentives – branding and value propositions
- Poor organization – lack of preparedness
Failure to use SEO
As a result of his strong showing from largely grass roots efforts, Mr. Santorum’s campaign is attracting an unprecedented number of voters who are now curious about him. They can find the right site easier when they search using the key words, “Rick Santorum.” But if they search using “Santorum,” they get the derogatory site.
In effect, however, the campaign has allowed Mr. Santorum to become a victim of political sabotage sans common SEO procedures.
Yes, the Santorum campaign has options to effectively to eliminate the adverse impact of the sarcastic site. Curiously, “spreadingsantorum.com” only has a Google page rank of 5. That’s not insurmountable for the Santorum campaign, if it employs proper SEO techniques, and understands how to win on Google.
Hint: If you can win on Google, you will on the other search engines, too. So start with how Google details its new reasoning for best Web site rankings, and successfully understand the 23 key questions Google has about your Web site.
As for the Santorum campaign, it needs to develop and focus on one site – just one site dedicated to the candidate. But it mistakenly directs Internet users to a donation form – one of two duplicate content sites (supportricksantorum.com and ricksantorum.com).
Premature call to action
The Santorum donation site sets a poor example. It only asks for money. There are no stellar branding and value propositions. Visitors aren’t readily able to learn anything about him – neither his policy positions nor his background.
All of this means the right sites show up twice – but they’re below the fold on Google.
Moreover, duplicate content hurts the cause. Two different domain names containing similar content defeat the purpose. The two sites effectively insure his Web presence is diluted – the search engines don’t know which is paramount for users.
Poor organization – lack of preparedness
With such a confusing marketing approach, the campaign inadvertently sends two unintended signals.
Firstly, it shows poor organization and lack of preparedness — note the verbiage in this Santorum tweet:
“Your great support has caused some unexpected downtime on our website! You can still support us at our temp page: ricksantorum.com”
Because the campaign instituted some redirects – the tweet sent people to the donation site. That’s a violation of best practices in marketing – never assume the voter has enough incentives before you ask for a vote or beg for donations.
Secondly, such strategies — unbranded donation page and desperate-looking tweets — leave users with the impression that he’ll fail because he’s desperate for donations.
Further, as an example of over-reaching, the campaign constantly changes the tag line that appears on the search engines. The candidate needs to be consistently repetitive with his branding and Web presence. Aside from the duplication issue and failure to imbed the donation page in one site, he needs to attract thousands of new links from good Web sites.
Whether he realizes or not, failure to take such precautions adversely impacts his credibility as a viable candidate. After all, even if he could win his party’s nomination, he’d be facing a Democrat who long ago demonstrated extraordinary Internet expertise.
Good Internet marketing lessons for business from Mr. Santorum.
From the Coach’s Corner, here’s a checklist: 14 strategies to rock on Google.
Additionally, for more resources see this portal’s marketing and tech archives, which are packed with solutions.
“Don’t blame the marketing department. The buck stops with the chief executive.”
-John D. Rockefeller
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Columnist Terry Corbell is also a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services (many are available online). For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?
Checklist: 14 Strategies to Rock on Google
Updated Feb. 2, 2012
Periodic changes in Google’s search criteria and algorithms have indeed hurt many Web sites. But it’s possible to bullet-proof your site’s prominence on Google by taking 14 precautions, which is worth your time and energy.
Google has perennially owned about a 66 percent search-market share in the U.S. and a 90 percent share worldwide. Combined, Bing and Yahoo have about 30 percent in the U.S. Most of the other search engines are also powered by Google.
Now, there’s talk that Google might bid for Yahoo, which would mean another double-digit increase in market share. (True, such a merger would be impacted by the Yahoo-Microsoft search partnership. The implication: Google would then have to buy out Microsoft for the remainder of the 10-year Yahoo-Microsoft partnership.)
So, obviously, it will behoove you to take full advantage of strategies to maximize your presence on Google.
Here’s a checklist:
- Make frequent changes on your home page. But be sure it’s all about quality and relevance to Internet users.
- For content marketing, regularly blog about relevant topics (see Google Speaks Out About Frequency vs. Value).
- Interact with your target audience using the salient social mediums: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+. Here are 8 Tips to Optimize Sales with Social Media, But Beware of a Red Flag.
- Be very careful about what you post – keep it professional and on business. Don’t assume that your professional profile can be separate from your personal life. Did I say be careful?
- Be aware that Google is influenced by links from the news media, quality online press releases distributed by authoritative firms, and other sites with a strong Google page rank (PR).
- Be careful about your other links. Do not allow weak Google PR pages to link to you. Minimize your links to other sites, as Google will perceive you as being manipulative.
- Make certain your profile or bio is professional and consistent throughout. Use the same picture.
- Insert relevant videos.
- Check your Internet reputation on a frequent business. Here are Best Practices to Optimize Your Brand, Manage Your Web Reputation.
- If you have employees, develop and implement a social media policy regarding your business reputation.
- Change your passwords frequently – make sure they’re strong. 6. Separate business and your personal life. Avoid posting compromising photos, text or videos.
- Accelerate your site’s download speed, which is important. See Google’s Continuing Quest to Increase Page Speeds and In SEO, Your Site’s Download Speed Matters to Google.
- Understand what matters to Google – see Google Insights – 23 Key Questions about Your Web Site.
- Despite what you might read, pay close attention to your use of meta tags and key words. They will influence Google and the other search engines.
By the way, don’t be fooled by the incessant hype about Facebook. Your Web site and prominence on Google will always be more important than what you do on Facebook. (See Winners and Losers in Facebook’s Invasion of Google’s Turf.)
My only regret about Google: That it hasn’t found a way to restart its real-time feature with Twitter. If you use the 14 recommended strategies, and if Google and Twitter get back together for real-time results, you’ll really rock.
Oh, here’s more good news — surprise — these strategies work on Yahoo and Bing, too.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are two more resource links:
10 Tips to Optimize Your Web Site for Higher Sales
Startup Toolkit – How to Make a Hit on the Internet
“The only thing Google has failed to do, so far, is fail.”
-John Battelle
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Columnist Terry Corbell is also a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services (many are available online). For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?
In SEO, Your Site’s Download Speed Matters to Google
April 12, 2010
How fast does your Web site download? Google recently announced that it determines site rankings, in part, by download speed.
“We mentioned site speed as early as last year, and you can watch this video from February where I pointed out that we still put much more weight on factors like relevance, topicality, reputation, value-add, etc. — all the factors that you probably think about all the time,” wrote Google software engineer Matt Cutts in a recent blog.
“Compared to those signals, site speed will carry much less weight,” he added.
But another blog, Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, also mentioned site speed: “But faster sites don’t just improve user experience, recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.”
Personally, I wonder if being fast qualifies as a green initiative.
The official Google also makes these suggestions:
- Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
- YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
- WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
- In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below. We’ve also blogged about site performance.
Mr. Cutts also wrote that Google’s official blog provides even more tools.
“…Google’s webmaster console provides information very close to the information that we’re actually using in our ranking,” he added. “In addition, various free-to-use tools offer things like in-depth analysis of individual pages. Google also provides an entire speed-related mini-site with tons of resources and videos about speeding up websites.”
He also says “big sites” will not get a competitive advantage in the added factor of site speed.
“Often even a little bit of work can make big differences for site speed,” explained Mr. Cutts. “So I think the average smaller web site can really benefit from this change, because a smaller website can often implement the best practices that speed up a site more easily than a larger organization that might move slower or be hindered by bureaucracy.”
In addition to downplaying load speed, he emphasized Internet users would appreciate the fastest-possible user experience.
“…this change highlights that there are very constructive things that can directly improve your website’s user experience,” he concluded.” Instead of wasting time on keyword meta tags, you can focus on some very easy, straightforward, small steps that can really improve how users perceive your site.”
My sense is that site speed does indeed play a vital role in search engine optimization. If you haven’t already, you might want to make certain that your site downloads fast as possible.
From the Coach’s Corner, for more tips on ranking well on Google, here’s another Biz Coach column: “Achieving Strong Results on Google Now Easier with Social Networking.”
Achieving Strong Results on Google Now Easier with Social Networking
As a business-coaching columnist, I enjoy doing a lot of reading. My email is filled with tons of material every day on topics ranging from finance to technology. Sometimes, it’s hard to stay abreast of it, but it’s enjoyable.
One of my favorites to at least scan is Website Magazine. They are up-to-date on their information.
An article on how to succeed on Google by Dante Monteverde, known as the SEO Corner Columnist, is really informative and reassuring to Web site entrepreneurs.
Most Web site owners have had to work hard at mastering Google in organic search or search engine optimization (SEO). That’s true for me. Compared to Bing, Google has been quirky to say the least.
But with social media optimization (SMO), it’s getting a lot easier on Google. It’s easier on Bing and the others because of SMO.
If you’re a little late to the party, this means Google’s blended search process includes social content with the organic elements, such as images, news and videos. That’s a much easier process for most of us.
Here’s the link to the article: SEO for Google Social Search.
From the Coach’s Corner, are you or anybody you know thinking about entrepreneurship?
If so, the long road to becoming a good entrepreneur is a difficult undertaking.
To see if you’re cut out to be your own boss, take an aptitude-entrepreneurial test.
P.S. If you’re a regular use of this Web site, you might have noticed this column is much shorter than usual…I’m taking a partial day off. We’ll chat with you soon.
Of Interest to Web Publishers, Videos Continue Surge in Popularity
Updated June 30, 2010
Including advertisements, here are the results of studies regarding online video viewing and usage:
Short-form Videos – Website Magazine reports Metacafe commissioned a study by Frank N. Magid Associates, which shows 80 percent of consumers prefer short-form videos. That includes movie previews, music videos and television shows.
But it represents bad news for video producers. Twenty-five percent of respondents enjoy short videos more than the actual TV shows.
Fifty-five percent of Web viewers enjoy video advertisements as much or more than on TV. That’s a 3 percent increase over 2009 results.
In demographics, online videos are most-popular with 18 to 24 year-olds. Eighty-five percent of males watch Internet videos each week – a 15 percent increase over 2009. Sixty-eight percent of females count it as a weekly routine – 27 percent higher than last year.
Conclusions about short-form videos: Keep them short and break up long videos into short segments. Make them professional. Ads, before or after your videos, are OK.
Display Ads by Format – Probably most interesting to publishers is that comScore released its study, also according to Website Magazine. comScore’s May 2010 report, shows online ad-format preferences in the United States. The No. 1 preference is JPEG display ads – 42.4 percent of impressions. Flash and rich-media ads total 40.3 percent of impressions.
Display Ads by Size – comScore also reports Leaderboard ads (728 x 90) were No. 1, preferred by 23.1 percent of respondents.
Rectangles were most-enjoyed by 23.1 percent, which were followed by medium rectangles (300 x 250) at 18.3 percent, and buttons (120 x 90) at 14.7 percent.
Note: Popup and popup under ads had less than 1 percent of the impressions.
So, if you’re a Web publisher, videos are an increasingly important indicator of your relevance to Internet users.
Videos continue to be the online rage as 33.2 billion were viewed online by 178 million in America in December, 2009, according to research firm, comScore.
comScore says the Google sites were the most popular with 13.2 billion videos for a 39.8 percent market share, thanks to YouTube. It garnered 99 percent of Google’s viewers.
Here are the other rankings of viewed videos:
· No. 2 Hulu -1 billion – 3 percent
· No.3 Microsoft – 561 million – 1.7 percent
· No. 4 Fox Interactive Media – 550.5 million – 1.7 percent
· No. 5 Yahoo – 539.4 million – 1.6 percent
· No. 6 Viacom Digital – 372.6 million – 1.1 percent
· No.7 Turner Network – 366.9 million – 1.1 percent
· No. 8 CBS Interactive – 297.2 million – .9 percent
· No. 9 Megavideo.com – 210.2 million – .6 percent
· No. 10 AOL – 209.9 million – .6 percent
This also means the 178 million viewers each saw an average of 187 videos.
In view of these numbers, it isn’t surprising that Google had the most unique viewers with 135.8 million. That’s 97.5 videos per person.
From the Coach’s Corner, here’s a valuable source of information in search engine optimization:
Thanks to a tip from Web Pro News, a video featuring Google’s Matt Cutts explains the problems/solutions of stale links on your site, Watch Video Here.
