Hi Bloggers and eStore web managers and any one else who wants to promote their business. You are here because you blog and/or have a eStore to sell stuff on or you help people with their search engine optimization. We all know that to SEO our eStores we have to blog about our products with the right keywords. We recently also talked about blogging about the right content on the high Google PR sites such as eBay and MyTypes.com. Here is an article that our previous blogging coach had written enjoy!

SEO for Bloggers: Getting Started with SEO (Part 1 of 6)

Posted by: Bc in SEO for Bloggers, Blogging Techniques, Getting Started, StickinessYou’ve probably heard the term search engine optimization , or SEO, being used before, but you might not have realized how simple it is to apply some of the techniques to your blog. By choosing the right platform, much of the nitty-gritty design work will be done for you, but it’s up to you, the blogger, to create quality content that uses SEO to target new readers and promote your brand.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site via search engines and search results. The goal is to achieve a high ranking, or to show up early (ideally in the top five) in the listings for relevant search terms, or keywords. Many SEO techniques can integrated in your blogging to ensure that your blog ranks highly in the search engine results for the keywords that are most important to you and your business.

Although SEO isn’t the only thing to consider when setting up your blog, it’s important to keep it in mind from the very beginning. First of all, you need to make a comprehensive list of all the potential search terms, or keywords that people could use when searching for your business, product, or service. Pay particular attention to synonyms, alternative phrases, and even misspellings (www.thesaurus.com is your friend here).

Next, you want to place your most important keywords in title and tagline. For instance, if you’re a real estate agent based in Chicago, use those words in your title – a possible title and tagline would be “A Chicago Real Estate Blog: From Lakeshore Drive to Wicker Park”. Not only is the title the first thing your visitors notice when they come to your blog, it’s what the search engines display in their results listings. Be sure to place your text before your logo or any other images in order to maximize your site’s findability.

Once you’ve started actually blogging, be sure to use your chosen keywords liberally in your posts, categories, and tags. A high keyword density is key to search engine optimization. To continue with the Chicago real estate agent example, some obvious keywords for that blogger would be Chicago Real Estate, Chicago Condos, Wicker Park Real Estate, South Loop Condominiums, and other related terms.

If you’re blogging about your business, it’s fairly easy to place keywords within the content naturally, because you’d probably use the phrases while discussing those topics anyways. Aim for organic, natural usage instead of just repeating keywords for the sake of placing keywords amongst other keywords in your content (see how annoying that is to read?). You don’t want to counteract your SEO skills with unhelpful content.

Combining SEO techniques with compelling content will make your blog a powerful component of your brand. The simplest way to do this is to put yourself in your readers’ place – you want to make your blog easy to find (the SEO aspect) and beneficial for your readers (the compelling content). Quality content will also inspire other bloggers and site owners to link to you, and link building – getting others to links to your site – is absolutely vital for SEO success.

Organic keyword use in the context of interesting, informative posts is especially important in regard to link building, the next aspect of search engine optimization that I’ll be covering as part of my SEO for bloggers series, so be sure to check back soon!

**As mentioned before this blog is sponsored by our friends at Comfortzone Infrared heaters, which are better than Eden Pure Heaters. Also, by Cross Silver Jewelry by Jill Brahms & LoveRelic.com. Thanks for supporting our sponsors.

A few days ago, I wrote about eBay blogs and how blogging on eBay is surprisingly the secret I want you to keep secret for SEOing your blogs. 

We don’t want everyone to over use this tool and Google than to downgrade it’s page rank value. It’s still shocking me how long and high our blogs on eBay are getting ranked higher on Google than most any many sites with many incoming links. So where you blog is as important as what you blog about. You already know that you have to get links to your blogs and websites for them to get ranked in the top ten in Google. So what is the #1 secret to SEO your blogs?

I don’t know how it ended up as the #1 Secret to your blogging success or to SEO your blogs, but without it, your blogging and eSuccess might miss the mark. So here it is: You must use your target keywords in the title, in the post, and in the tags of your blogs. But the most important of these is to use the Keywords in the title of your blog, and use those keywords in the title of your posts as everytime you blog, if you can. Why? On WordPress and many other blogging platforms, the blog post title actually creates a separate URL AND PAGE. We all know that the title Meta tag are the most important meta tags, so each post creates the target keyword based Meta tag too. Wowsa, all that with just the title of the blog name?

So the #1 Secret for SEOing your blog is to have your targeted keywords in your blog title and use those keywords in your blog posts title. While amazing tagline’s and title’s might get you a visitor or two, over timing SEO value is best maximized with the proper keywords in title of your blog posts. Does this make sense? I feel like I am explaining a very simple concept and writing on and on about a simple task. BUT I CAN’T STRESS THE POINT enough, you must use them as often as you can. Now a bonus secret for your SEO Blogs, the close #2 is where you blog. 

Blogging on a platform that is indexed often and ranks high on Google is key. Before we get to the list of Google below, why does Google index some sites more than others. Well it’s simple, quality sites get indexed more often. So not all Free blog sites are considered equal. A lot of people think blogging on a free blog like MyTypes.com is fine, and you should go get blogs on those and create incoming links and you will be fine. Not exactly folks. A quality free blogging site, watches out for spammers and helps you create better content and increase community. Ebay is #1 on our list for that, Blogger.com is #2, Google is going to Index it’s own property more than ours:-), and MyTypes.com is #3–how come we are higher than WordPress? Well, we are #1 for “Create a blog” keyword. WordPress.com is #4 for your SEO blogs and to promote your blog. You certainly should blog often and use the most appropriate keywords too.

I hope you don’t mind, but from now on we will be placing a notice at the end of our blogs. I think this kind of disclosure is ok with focus, and it helps our sponsors who help us pay our bills.

This blog sponsored by Comfortzone Heaters better than Edenpure Heaters and LoveRelic.com, a special designer silver cross jewelry.

Doing some keyword searches this morning to SEO our new online community @ MyTypes, I saw this resource page by Inc. magazine.  All of you SEO experts, consultants, and SEO bloggers know that we have to build an online community to maximize our SEO efforts.  But how do we build an Online Community?  Believe it or not, the following link has more resources than I could ever blog about.  So check it out, and it’s from a credible source, Inc. Magazine.  Blog your way to the Top!

online community

The proper use of keywords in your content and blogs is not enough.  You need to understand the technicalities, well enough of it to use it.  But as we say on MyTypes.com we built in SEO in our blogs, so you don’t have to do anything but keep blogging.  Here are some basics on how to Optimize your content:

7. Optimizing Your page content/copy Optimize Each Page One of the most important things to understand is that each page is its own unit and has its own ranking potential and its own relevant keywords. Usually a home page has more value than the other pages since it is typically the easiest place to build links to. Home pages should generally be optimized for the most relevant competitive keyword phrases in your market that you feel you would be able to rank for. Interior pages should be optimized for other relevant phrases that relate to the content of each page.

Home Page Optimization Target your most competitive keyword phrase with the home page. Link to the major theme pages from your home page. Link to your home page from every page of your site. Include your site name and/or home page’s primary keyword phrase in the text links pointing to it.

Use your keywords in your page title. Place the most important keyword phrase close to the beginning of the page title. Do not put your site title on every page of your site unless you are really trying to brand that name. In that scenario, it still is usually best to place the site name at the end of the page titles. Shorter site titles are usually better than really long ones. Sometimes I overlap related keyword phrases in the page title. Overlapping, keyword phrases in the page title can help you pick up multiple search phrases. Meta tags are not extremely important, but they can help some. The Meta description should be a sentence to a paragraph describing the page contents. The Meta description tag can be seen in some search results, so you want to write it for human eyes. The Meta keywords tag is probably not worth the time to make, but if you do, it should contain your primary keyword and its common misspellings and synonyms. Each keyword phrase in the keywords tag should be comma separated.

Use a single, keyword-rich H1 header on your page containing the same the primary keyword phrases. This helps reinforce the page title. Use keyword-rich sub headers (H2 or H3) before every paragraph or every few paragraphs. This improves usability and helps define what the page is about to search engines without making the page look like it was written for a search engine. Use bulleted lists and bolding to make content easier to read. Write your content for human consumption. If you write all your sentences for search engines, the pages will read bad and nobody will read them.

I want to be lazy and take things out of the iSEO book and make a SEO blog post, just to keep blogging.  Some of you know that Keith and I are exhausted working 10+ hour days almost 7 days a week for the last 22 months.  So working hard is in our bones, but if you don’t work smart, don’t work at all.  Same goes with SEO, and the Key to your eSuccess on SEO is always about the proper keywords. And, there is no more important Place for keywords usage than Meta Tags. I am shocked by how many companies just have their company name, and no keywords describing their business. What is wrong people, do you Not care about being found?

So here is an excerpt from the iSEO blog book. Enjoy the chapters or paragraphs:

4. A word about Keyword Placement It is very important that you place some of your best “keyword text” on your web page before your images as viewed in linear order from the source code. That’s because search engines page content via the source code in linear order and they don’t give a hoot about actual images. Instead, they look only at the text on the page as revealed by the source code. Although images may look nice at the top of your page, they do nothing to help your site’s findability on the SE’s.

Therefore, by placing meaningful small font keyword text at the top of your page – before your image – you can still place your logo near the top of your web site while favorably appealing to the SE’s that are looking for relevant keywords at the top of your page. Therefore, be sure to “Headline” your page with text that the search engines can recognize as relevant to what you are offering – AND place the text early in your page’s source code prior to where the images appear whenever possible. Remember, it is these keywords and keyphrases through which people will find you on the Internet. Keyword Selection Use a keyword tool to find the most targeted keywords for your site. Develop grouped themes of keywords that reflect the different sections of
your site. Keep an eye out for keywords longer than one word (phrases). Keeping within a grouped theme, choose different keywords to target each page.

5. Meta Tags For the novice it must be explained that Meta Tags are non-displayed text written into your HTML document intended to describe your page to the SE for the purpose of cataloging the content of your page. Although there is some debate as to whether or not Meta Tags should be included in your HTML document, let’s put the debate to rest. The answer is a resounding YES – the Meta description tag absolutely should be included in your document. Here’s why: many engines use The Meta description tag as the summary for your site when listed in the search results. It’s what tells a real person whether or not your site is relevant to their search. You should view it as a sales presentation for your link.

If the Meta description tag entices the searcher they will, theoretically, click your link and visit your site. Obviously that’s the purpose for being listed in the search engine in the first place. If you omit the Meta description tag then the search engine is likely to fabricate a description for your site based on arbitrary text gleaned from somewhere on your page. Here’s an example of a real-life “bad” description we found when searching for Hawaii scuba diving… Link Title: Hawaii scuba diving Summary Description: Click here to go …now, we’re pretty sure that company didn’t really want “click to go home” used as their site description but that’s what they got because they failed to use a meta description tag.

Another possibility is that the SE will omit the summary description entirely if it fails to find something useful within your page to use as a summary. In either case, a potential site visitor is less motivated to click your link if you fail to properly utilize the meta description tag. Meta Tag Character Limits Most search engines place a limit on the number of characters contains. Once the limit is reached they typically ignore In general, 250 characters – including spaces and commas thumb that falls within the guidelines of most engines. However, in case a search engine uses less than, say, wise to place the most important part of your description beginning in the event the engine truncates the tag. Meta Keywords Tag The META Keywords Tag is where you list keywords and keyword phrases that you’ve targeted for that specific page.

6. Turn Images From Liabilities To Assets – ALT Tag The problem with images in your web page is that the search engines do not index them at all. Therefore, your company logo may say what you are, who you are, and even state a benefit but the engines can’t index your images and therefore will not reflect their message in a keyword search results. In fact, if your image loads higher on your page (when viewing the source code) than your text, then your page starts out handicapped in a BIG way! This is a mistake. Whenever possible, avoid placing images higher on your page than keyword text. Regardless, when you do put images in your page, make them work for you, not against you by including the < ALT = here are some appropriate Keywords”> in your <IMG SRC = “image”> tags. The reason for doing this is because engines have been known to index the <IMG ALT = “Keywords”> tag.

By placing strategic keywords within the <IMG ALT = “Keywords”> tag, you’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose. When a search engine’s algorithm is programmed to give credit for keywords within this tag, you win. If not, nothing lost – since none of the engines are known to penalize for using it.

Go blog your way to the Top, some of you noticed our post in the Blogging coach on Saturday about the Google Page Rank update, did you see that this page got a PR 4, just to start off with. Wow, thanks Google!

From our SEO Overview Chapter 6, here is an Overview the full chapter has it’s on Page above.  Search Engine optimization – Cracking The technical Nut shell:

If we don’t cover the technical aspects of Search Engine Optimization, I feel like we are not doing justice to the topic. The hard balance is what to cover technically and what to leave out. This is not a book for techies, programmers, or Internet Technorats as I call them. This book is targeted at individuals, entrepreneurs, self-help types, marketing consultants, and business people who want a primer on the sound and ethical search marketing strategies.

Having said that, and explaining this complex world of technical W3C standards, website structures, site maps, CSS, etc. is not covered here. We do recommend two book one is technical SEO for Developers via PHP. And, we also recommend Search Engine Optimization for Dummies by Peter Kent, written back in 2004, but it’s still a great primer, and if you want to be a SEO Pro, you have to buy the SEOBook by Aaron Wall. It’s $79 and a complete guide on SEO.

So below is the net net on the SEO Nut, it was written originally for MyTypes, Inc. by our SEO Expert Mishra, Saroj Kumar.

What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is the Organic results segment of Search Engine Marketing, and it does not include any pay per click advertisement. It is considered the Organic and pure search results, and is considered by many to be much more powerful in traffic than Pay Per Click results. Getting Organic results is the science and art of Search Engine Optimization, and from now on we will write about it in terms of SEO. The word SEO is so common now days, and I think it will only grow, the key distinction between SEO and other Internet Marketing segments is that it does not involve any paid advertisements.

The science of SEO helps blogs and websites gets top results on Internet search engines under targeted keywords and phrases. It’s as important to know what to do, as well as what not to do. In this brief overview, we cannot cover all the rules and technicalities of What not to do. All we can say is, if you are trying to trick the search engines, DON’T, It will cost you way too much in the long term. We recommend only timeless strategies such as provide the best content to end-users. Make your website or blog fast, use images, videos, and build community with your site. The spectrum of SEO ranges from Black Hat, as the trickery side or White hat as the purest way. We think from a scale of 1-10 if 10 is black hat, and 5 or more would be considered black. So we recommend strategies of top 1-4. The penalties that search engines may inflict on your website is not worth the short term gain. Here are the Basics of SEO:

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Domain Names, Titles and Keywords
2. Getting Your Web Page Titles Right 3. Keyword Selection Strategies 4. A word about Keyword Placement
5. Meta Tags 6. Turn Images From Liabilities To Assets – ALT Tag 7. Optimizing Your page content/copy
8. Use Keywords in Headings
9. Site structure: Naming File Paths
10. Be Fast: Using CSS to Minimize Page Load Time
11. Submission Strategies and Guidelines
12. Where to Get Links ?
13. Link Popularity, Page Reputation, and Page Importance
14. Six Major Rules to remember

Click On Link or iSEO Book Page Tab

I am posting on all 4 of my blogs today, working at Tullys Coffee with my buddy Keith and business partner.  Why?  Today folks is Blog Action Day, and we all need to blog today and maybe eat Vegetarian.  What, did I just say?  I know, It’s a touchy subject, but just today eat vegetarian.  It supposedly takes 10x the energy to consume a meat based diet, and I would say that It certainly takes signficantly more.  What does this has to do with Blogging and SEO?

Everything, do you see the success of the Blog Action Day campaign?  You need to develop a campaign like that, that people will rally behind and support for a good cause.  The cause for today is for the environment.  So click on the Graphic below and read the top 50 things you can do for the environment.  Than, go submit a comment there, and you will get a high PR and powerful link and traffic to  your website.  Now that is SEO, did I not tell you that blogs are the #1 SEO Tool?

To Download our WordPress SEO Blog Templates, Scroll down to the Side Bar and start downloading now!

Click on the Icon for a FREE DownLoad our Blogs & Marketing Book!

We chose the WordPress blogging platform over the others like Movable Type, Blogger and Text Pattern. Because it has a great template system, it’s easy to use, and great for SEO. We’ve taken WordPress from okay for SEO to super for SEO. Most WordPress Free Blog templates were not fully optimized, therefore we decided to do it our self.  Follow us on http://twitter.com/enthos

We also wrote a complete guide on how to fully optimize your copy of WordPress including optimizing the templates, robots, click on the Menu Above, the simple SEO book, or click on the Orange Graphic to download an eCOPY for FREE  Blogs & Internet Marketing Book MARKETING is a CONTACT Sport by V.K. Singh and MyTypes.com.

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