Search Engine Optimization and the Blogs that Love It

Google. (n.d.). Google Images. Retrieved on May 23, 2011 from http://techsharing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/seo-blog.png

SEO, Blogging, and the money that follows
As you may know, the world of search engine optimization is often changing. Therefore, your opportunities to increase revenue are also changing. Since we love to stay on top of our profits, we should also love to stay on top of SEO. Unfortunately, many marketers/businesses aren’t as on top of search as they should be. That being said, I decided to speak a little on the current state of organic search.

Below are some factors/details of the way the search engines are being optimized by those who try very hard to stay on top. The below observations/suggestions are merely a basic list of today’s SEO world. Hopefully, I can get your mouth watering, and motivate you to look deeper into my thoughts.

What is today’s SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing publishable/marketable information (content) for the purpose of getting listed high in organic search results. The goal for doing so is to get consumers to notice and choose your site over your competitors, for the purpose of eventually exercising a call to action. This is done by conducting several main steps such as market research, keyword research, on-page optimization, site structure, link building, brand building, viral marketing, adjusting, and staying up to date on the latest developments in you niche.

Why is it important?
SEO is one of the most influential forms of online marketing today. It’s the reason why we’re conveniently able to find true quality information, products, services, etc. in the first place. Without SEO, there would be no way of weeding out all the bad, poor quality, irrelevant Web pages that would surely overwhelm the probability of finding the sites with the most to offer consumers.

Google. (n.d.). Google Images. Retrieved on May 23, 2011 from http://blog.enrii.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/enrii-blog-structure.jpg

Things you as a blogger should do to optimize the structure of your blog
As you might imagine, there’s a time and a place for everything. This certainly holds true in the blogging world, as well. For instance, you may have seen many blogs (heck, most of them) displaying their newest posts on the homepage. Guess what—that actually may not be the best way to structure your blog pages. Sure, that helps to highlight the newest posts, but it might actually be off-putting to readers who are new to your industry. Instead, you should use your homepage to guide those who are new in your field through your blog. While doing so, be sure to highlight your best content so that your site visitors are just one click away from your best stuff.

Wait, there’s more. Did you know that hosting your blog as a subdomain of your site, off of blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger is actually a no-no? That’s right; these platforms often offer limited sets of features and may even prohibit placing ads on your blog. Here’s another doozy; using these outside platforms can actually rob your site of the page ranking that comes from receiving quality links. In other words, the juice that your blog gets may not actually pass link juice to your main site.

Things you as a blogger should do to optimize the text content of your blog
First and foremost, it’s important to understand that SEO for blogging, compared to regular Web sites, is more focused on giving people something to talk about and creating something worthy of their attention. That being said, some of the best ways to optimize written content would be of course, keyword research. Without relevant search terms to create content around, you really have nothing. Keyword research tools like Wordtracker, Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, etc. are all good places to start. Just keep in mind that these tools are best used in conjunction with each other rather than by themselves. Also remember, the keyword phrases that were relevant in the past may not be so important today. SEO is a constant effort—make sure you’re continuously searching for the most current search terms of today.

Great. Now you’ve found the search terms relevant to your audiences’ interests and it’s time to start writing content. Let’s start with the title. Be sure to use keywords in your article title—near the beginning is best. A good rule of thumb is to use the keywords that best sum up the purpose or details of the article. Next, be sure to include the most relevant, attention-getting keywords in the body of your article as well. Just remember—it’s extremely important to write in a natural manner—one that a human can understand. Your page should be crawled just fine if you add important keywords (predominantly enough, without stuffing) to your content, but your readers also have to understand what you’re saying.

That being said, here’s the final suggestion under the topic of text content optimization. Express an enticing voice while you write. (Please keep in mind that there are numerous other ways to optimize for text content on blogs, but for simplicity purposes, we’ll just cover these today.)

Anyway, be yourself when you write your articles. As mentioned above, people have to be able to understand what you write. More so, though, people have to be enticed by what you write. You have to be charismatic, funny, compassionate, and educational. You have to have a voice that comes out when reading. People like honesty and authority. If you have quality information about a topic, let them know in a way that entices them, and also let’s them know that they should be listening up and gaining something from you. Heck, let them know (without actually saying) that you’re the man (or women) that has the answers they need. Trust me, they’ll come back for more.

Google. (n.d.). Google Images. Retrieved on May 23, 2011 from http://imagewire.net/images/pages/overview.jpg

How video, images or other media can help your optimization efforts
Ok, so we all know that blogs have interesting articles (hopefully), as well as images, audio, and videos, nowadays. But(!), did you know that these multi-sensory forms of media can be optimized, and more importantly, increase your position within the search engines. Well they can—big time! Oh, by the way, increased search engine positions probably means more revenue for you—just throwing it out there.

Anyway, the process is called Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) or SEO 2, as some call it. What this means to you basically is that through the use of meta tags, alt text for images, specific widget titles, optimized file names, Sitemaps, targeted keywords in your video/audio titles, etc. your non-text based files can now be optimized to increase your presence in the SERPs.

This process can be implemented to all your videos, images, podcasts, maps, social networking content, PDFs, and other non-text based files. By applying Digital Asset Optimization, you can gain:

• Multimedia indexing
• Increased page rank
• Increased traffic
• More targeted audience
• Increased customer insight
• Increased links back

Believe me when I say, as far as today’s search engines are concerned, this is definitely one of the most important processes to initiate in your SEO efforts. Just to be clear though, digital asset optimization is not separate from search engine optimization. It’s essentially just very thorough SEO.

Beyond ‘traditional’ optimization; using social media to enhance your blog SEO
Alrighty, my final topic for today is Social Media. Often referred to as Web 2.0, social media is becoming extremely influential in SEO. It is basically revolutionizing the way consumers communicate with the brands they’re looking to acquire information and goods from. More importantly, it enables consumers to communicate with each other and either comment, vote, link to, and/or share their thoughts and experiences on the news, products, and/or services they feel are worthy of mention.

Through optimizing the content of blogs, social networks, videos, images, audio, etc. for search engine indexing, the likelihood of consumers finding your brand increases greatly, therefore increasing the opportunity for more profits. Social media works because it allows consumers to not only find what they’re looking for, but also to interact with the results they find in the search engines.

When an online business optimizes their blog, social network, video, audio, etc. content to be indexed in the search engines, the likelihood of increased exposure occurs amongst a more diverse pool of media platforms. Providing more ways to be found enhances the interest in your content. The more interest your consumers have in your content means the more interest they’ll have in spending money on your sites.

…and on that note, take care.

References

Barone, L. (2009). Intersection of Search and Social Media. Retrieved on May 23, 2011 from http://outspokenmedia.com/internet-marketingconferences/
intersection-of-search-and-social-media/

Croll, R. (n.d.). SEO1 Review. Retrieved on May 23, 2011 from http://course.online.fullsail.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=lms.activitiesASSIGNMENT&activityId=358192

Fishkin, R.(2006). 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic. Retrieved on May 23, 2011 from http://www.seomoz.org/blog/21-tactics-to-increase-blog-traffic

Odden, L. (n.d.). What is Digital Asset Optimization? Retrieved on May 8, 2011 from http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/07/what-is-digital-asset-optimization/

Wall, A. (n.d.). SEO Basics. Retrieved on May 23, 2011 from http://knol.google.com/k/seo-basics#

Wall, A. & Wall, G. (n.d.). The Blogger’s Guide to SEO – by Aaron & Giovanna Wall. Retrieved on May 23, 2011 from http://www.seobook.com/bloggers

My Organic SEO Passion

SEO pic from http://contactdubai.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/seo-blocks-main_full.jpg

Hey everyone, I wanted to talk about another one of my passions—Internet marketing. I’ve been dabbling in the Internet marketing world for about 3 ½ years now and have picked up many successful techniques. Since this is my blog, and it requires continuous blog posts to keep it going, I thought I’d give a little insight on how to properly approach blog posting in the Internet marketing world.

Please note, blogging may allow a different approach, if you’re posting to a personal blog. However, if you’re either selling something on your blog, or directing consumers from your blog to a web page in which you’re selling something, a strategic approach is most likely in order.

First things first, an understanding of the purpose of your blog, in regards to your marketing and business efforts is needed. If you don’t know how or what to expect from your blogging efforts you won’t be able to successfully target profitable goals. You’ll be shooting in the dark. You won’t know for sure what will or won’t work, nor will you be able to properly gauge what you’re doing correctly or incorrectly.

For the sake of conversation, I’m going to talk about how I approach blogging in regards to the business expectations I have towards my blogging efforts. For instance, when I blog, I do so with the expectations of ranking well organically within Google and attracting targeted traffic to my offers. In order to approach Google correctly, keyword research is in order.

The way to identify the best keywords to target, is to use keyword research tools such as Google’s Keyword Tool and/or Wordtracker. These tools are great for getting an idea of the types of keywords that will actually get you good rankings. For instance, if you target a keyword that’s too broad, chances are you’ll never get to see your targeted keywords make it to the #1 page in Google. If you target a keyword that’s not often searched for, you’ll most likely not get a lot of traffic from it. What you’re looking to target are keywords that have about 20,000 – 50,000 current indexed pages in Google. In addition, you’re looking for keyword specific phrases that represent an actual solution to a consumer’s needs. For instance, if you’re looking to sell your ‘music lessons’ service; you won’t target the keyword ‘music.’ Music is too broad and you’ll never rank for it—it’s too saturated. Instead you’ll target something like ‘music lessons online’ or ‘music lessons for beginners’ or something even more targeted.

Once you’ve identified possible keyword specific phrases, you’ll need to verify the amount of indexed pages that exist for your chosen keyword possibilities. The way to find this is by typing these words into Google’s search engine. You’ll have to use ‘exact search’ to get the accurate amount of current indexes. If you’re not familiar with exact search, all it means is that you place quotation marks around your words, just like you are quoting them. This will bring up just the indexed page totals displaying the exact words you quoted. If your total indexed results are between 20,000 – 50,000, then you may have found a valuable keyword phrase to follow. Please note, some may debate whether 20,000 – 50,000 indexed results are the right amount to consider. The best way to determine if this is right for you is to test it out and make your own decision. The purpose of targeting indexed results in these amounts is to get you ranked on page 1 of Google, in the shortest amount of time. The higher the amount of indexed pages, the longer it will take to rank well for them.

So by now you’ve identified some good keyword phrases using your keyword research tools and verified there aren’t too many current indexed pages in Google. Now it’s time to verify if these keywords have commercial viability. Commercial viability simply means how much evidence there is that people are actually paying money for products or services and using these specific keywords to find them. A simple way of doing so is to scan the amount of sponsored links or pay per click links (same thing) that are currently displayed on the same pages as the keywords you’ve been researching. If there’s only a few sponsored offers, than there probably isn’t enough commercial viability attached to these particular keywords. If you find a good amount of sponsored offers, 10-15 or more, than there’s good evidence that people are actually spending money in your market, and using these specific keywords to do so.

Once you’ve done the above 3 steps, it’s time to create content around these keyword phrases. This can be achieved by simply writing article posts or recording videos about the keyword subject. Either way, you want to make your content informative so people actually learn something or at least see credibility in affiliating with you. If you can solve a problem in people’s lives, they WILL spend money. Additionally, you’ll need to actually include your researched keywords in your content, so Google’s spiders can find and determine what your web page is about, if you’re writing articles.

In addition to creating quality content around the keywords you’ve researched, proper tagging of these keywords is also important, from an SEO standpoint. Make sure to tag your content with other relevant keyword phrases you’ve found using the same methods above. This way, if someone hasn’t typed in the exact keyword phrase you’ve targeted, they can still find your site, because of your additional keyword tagging.

There are some additional things to consider when using this method of SEO. First, one post or video will not get you ranked on the 1^st page of Google. You have to continuously create content for these researched terms in order to gain momentum and rank on page 1. Once you’ve verified your page 1 ranking, move on to other valuable keyword phrases and continue the above process. The plan is not to have 3, 4, or 5 page 1 rankings, but rather to have many page one rankings. This method is a great technique in securing keyword specific buying phrases, verifying people are actually spending money when searching for these phrases, and getting to page 1 in Google in the least amount of time.

That’s all for now, stay tuned for more valuable content in regards to Internet marketing.

Take care,

Dave