Posts Tagged ‘seo’
3 Best SEO Training Courses for Bloggers
If you are blogger, you love traffic. The more traffic you get to your site, the better chance you have of making it as a full-time blogger. Besides, it’s always nice to get recognition for your work. That wouldn’t be possible if only 2 people are visiting your website per week. One of the best ways to take your blog to the next level and drive more traffic to it is by optimizing it for the search engines. Climbing up the rankings may not be easy (especially if you are in a hyper-competitive market). At the same time, if you take your time to optimize each and every post on your blog for the search engines, you’d be surprised how much traffic you can drive to your site for free.
Not a lot of bloggers spend enough time learning the art and science of SEO. Some only think about outsourcing the process. I can tell you from experience that knowing some SEO can always help when you are writing your posts or planning for ways to add more content to your blog. There are plenty of SEO books that teach you the basics of search engine optimization. But if you want to go beyond the basics and get a firm understanding of search engine optimization, here are 3 SEO training resources you should look at:
SEOBook: the best search engine training program on the web. It goes deep into topics not covered by other books or courses on the market. These guys have been at it for years, and the content keeps getting better. Read more »
5 Ways To Handle Search Engine Rankings Drops
Are you a Google junkie? I know I was a few years ago when one of my first blogs was doing so great on Google. It’s quite addictive when you think about it. If you are pulling in 3000+ visitors a day just from Google, you know your content is getting some decent exposure without it costing you any money. Of course, nobody’s satisfied with any level of traffic. The more of it you have, the more of it you want. But those who live by Google, die by Google. In 2004, my top blog was pulling in 90K visitors a month just from Google. Sure. It wasn’t as popular as a super blog, but the blog was paying for itself, and it was making me a good amount of change for my efforts. Then came Google algorithm changes. The site suddenly disappeared from the SERPs without me making any changes to the code or the content on my blog. It took me months to get my blog back up to where it was. But I learned my lesson. You should never rely on one traffic source to drive traffic to a blog, especially one as volatile as Google.
A lot of people can’t handle the thought of losing their search engine rankings overnight, but it could happen. A lot of blogs get flagged for duplicate content and some even become victims of hack attacks or serve downtime. It doesn’t take much to lose your position in the search engine results pages. You can handle a drop in your search engine rankings two ways. You can panic and start going berserk, changing your code, web host, and even your domain, or you can think logically about it. While there are no guarantees that you can get back your original search engine rankings, there are things you should and shouldn’t do when faced with such a dilemma. Read more »
Search Engine Optimize Your Blog with All-in-One SEO Plugin
Whether you are a professional blogger or just getting started with blogging, you are going to need a tangible amount of traffic if you want to make it in this business. Getting more traffic to your blog not only gets your more exposure and more opportunities, it will also give you a better chance of building a more solid community around your blog and monetize it in the long run. Blogging superstars that have made big in this business all possess a solid, dynamic community around their blogs. But that would not be possible if only ten people know about your blog.
One of the best ways to drive traffic to your blog is by optimizing it for the search engines. Getting free traffic from Google, Bing, and other top search engine sites enables you to spend money on growth and more premium advertising opportunities. There is no simple way to dominate the SERPs on Google and other engines. But you got to start somewhere, so you might as well start with the most important SEO factor that you can control on your blog — your title tags. Your title tags can make a big difference in the amount of traffic you get for free through the organic search. Choosing the right keywords and using them through your content gives search engines the indication that your page should probably get ranked for those keywords. I admit there are a lot of moving parts here. But without optimized titles, you are not maximizing your blog’s traffic.
All-in-One SEO is a cool free plugin for Wordpress bloggers that allows you to optimize the title tags on all your pages without doing too much. If you happen to have a blog that has never been optimized for search engines, you can use the plugin to mass update your title tags in a flash.
Blog Link Building 101 – Part I: Directories
I have talked about in the past about the importance of paying attention to search engine optimization if you intend to get more traffic to your blog on a daily basis. Google, Yahoo!, and Bing all are capable of driving lots of targeted traffic to your blog, but you will have to work for it if you intend to get tangible results from your search engine optimization efforts. One of the main strategies to climb up the search engine rankings is acquiring incoming links from other websites with your preferred anchor text (that is if you plan to rank for that piece of text). You can always ask other blogs to link to you. You can also participate in forums and get links through your signature. But one of the oldest strategies that still works is acquiring links from directories. It’s true that search engines are not paying as much attention as they used to as far as directories are concerned, but getting links from targeted directories can provide you with a decent push. Don’t forget that directories that have a decent amount of page views can drive you traffic by themselves, so going after directories is still worth the effort.
A lot of old school SEOs prefer going after directories manually. They pick and choose 20 or so directories, conduct deep analysis on each, and submit sites to them. But if you are not into signing up for these directories yourself and submit your listings by hand, you can always outsource the process. Services such as Directory Maximizer allow you to submit your blog to hundreds of directories over the period that you define. So you won’t get flagged for adding too many incoming links to your blog in a short period of time. You’ll be in control of your anchor text as well, so it’s a win win.
What I like about Directory Maximizer is that it allows you to customize your directory submission campaign and choose directories that have a specific PR. You can also choose the speed of submission which is a big plus as you don’t want to get flagged by search engines for submitting to too many directories. You can also define multiple titles for your listing and have the software switch among these titles on different directories. So let’s say if you have 10 titles and you submit to 100 directories, you will get 10 links per each anchor text from these directories. Read more »
Deep Blog Analytics with Woopra
Recently, I got a note from the good people behind Woopra that their beta program was coming to a close. In case you are not familiar with the service, Woopra is a deep website analytics package that helps you figure out where your visitors are coming from, where they are going, and how you can change things around on your website to increase your visitors, get them to stay more often, and even find out how to plan your future posts.
If you have used Google Analytics before, you are probably familiar with how an analytics program works. These programs show you where your visitors are coming from, and where they are going. You can easily find out which pages on your blog are performing poorly, and why that’s happening. You can also find out on which pages your visitors are spending their majority of their times on. Woopra offers you all this information and more. You can find out which country your visitors are coming your website from and what operating system and browser they are using. Read more »
Blog SEO: Research Keywords Like a Pro with SpyFu
Driving traffic to your blog should not be your only priority but should be a big part of your overall strategy. You can have the best content in the world, but people are not able to see what you have to offer, you are not going to achieve the success that you deserve. I know a lot of people want to believe in those Cinderella story when you blog for years and finally get recognized for your work. I hate to break it to you, but unless you take time to promote your blog, you are not going to get the appreciation you are hoping for.
One way to drive passive traffic to your blog is by optimizing your blog for the search engines. I am not talking about creating splogs but rather using relevant keywords that people are searching for in each post. Many bloggers choose to go after those generate keyword phrases, but there is a lot of traffic to be gotten if you target those long-tail keywords in your posts. The good thing about long-tail keywords is that you don’t have to sound like a robot to use them in your posts. The traffic per keyword may not be much, but if you use enough of them, your traffic adds up.
SpyFu is one of the best tools to dig up those long-tail keywords for your blog. It may not be as famous as WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, but it provides you with a wealth of features to help you optimize each and every post for highly-targeted keywords. For starters, SpyFu allows you to spy on other blogs and websites and find out what keywords they are using to generate traffic. You can also take a look at their ads, their PPC keywords, and even their estimate advertising budget to find out what your competitors are focusing on.
SpyFu Kombat allows you to find out which channels other bloggers are focusing on and what you can do to match or better their efforts in those channels. You can always download the keywords that other blogs are using and find out which ones you can use in your future blog posts.
If you push your blog using Google Adwords, SpyFu has you covered in that area as well. But I personally have used SpyFu to come up with blogging ideas, find out what my competitors are doing, and find keywords that people are interested in talking about. Ultimately, SpyFu is an affordable premium service that can help you write more targeted posts and get more passive traffic in the long run.
Note: SpyFu is a premium keyword research service and while you can use the free version to get some research done, to take advantage of some of the above mentioned features, you will need to become a paying member (thanks @searchguru).
Blogging SEO 101: Get Started With SEO – Part I
Search engine optimization seems to get more popular by the hour. As the state of economy stays dire, as it has been in the past few months, many bloggers are cutting their monthly budgets and spending more time researching on free ways to drive traffic to their blogs. Search engine optimization is one of those ways. Many bloggers just assume that you have to be some technical genius to optimize your website for the search engines. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is as a blogger there are simple steps you can take to increase your traffic from the search engines and take your blog to the next level.
How to Get Started with Blogging SEO
In order to optimize your blog for search engines, you need to focus both on on-page and off-page factors. The on-page factors are those that involve you making changes on your site, to your code. Off-page pages involve incoming links and your social media efforts. With that in mind, here are a few simple steps you can take to optimize your blog for SEO:
1. Content: since you are not trying to be one of those folks who optimize splogs for SEO, you want to make sure you provide real value to your readers in your blog posts. That’s not just good practice. It’s really the only way you can sustain a high level of traffic over a long period of time.
2. Title Tag: using your core keyword phrase in your title goes a long way towards helping you getting ranked for that term. It’s one of the most important on page factors.
3. URL: having your keyword phrase in your URL also helps you get a push on the search engine results pages. It’s very simple to do if you are using a content management system such as Wordpress.
4. Special tags: using special tags such as h1 and B tags can help you even more with your rankings. These tags give engines a better indication on what’s important to you on each and every page.
5. Keywords: the most important part of your SEO strategy. There are plenty of tools that you can use to do your keyword research and find those that people are searching for. Services such as WordTracker and Wordze come in very handy. You can also use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to do some basic keyword research done.
6. Links: linking to your own content should be a big part of your strategy. Your internal links do matter and can help search engines find and index more of your pages. Don’t forget about the text you use in your links! Use the keyword you want that page to get ranked for, and you’ll be off in the long run. You should also take time to link to authority sites from your site. Being associated with top authority sites never hurts, and while you may not get a link back from them, your readers will appreciate those links.
7. Long-tail: a guerrilla marketing tactic that I have been using for a few years now. You may ask, why would I want to get ranked for a term that only 100 people are searching for per month. Those terms are less competitive, easier to rank for, and your traffic adds up as long as you optimize for enough of them.
8. Inbound Links: don’t forget to submit your blog to directories such as E-zine Articles, Isnare, and more. You should also consider blog directories such as AllTop. All these links count one way or another (though you want to focus on the Yes Follow ones).
9. Social Media: using the social media to get links back to your site is a great way to push your content and get more traffic. Make sure to take advantage of Twitter, Facebook, and other sites to increase your traffic for free. Don’t forget to ask your readers to help you out.
10. Plugins: not a SEO tip, but you are always better off using blog enhancements to get the above steps down. There are plenty of plugins for Wordpress and other systems that help you optimize your titles, create a sitemap, and modify your URLs easily. It just doesn’t make sense to spend time doing all these steps by hand.
There you have it. 10 steps to help you get started with SEO on your blog. There are plenty of other tactics you can employ to climb the search engine rankings, which is why you should come back for the second part of this post.
Track Your Blog SEO with SEO Booster Pro
As much as you want to avoid it, search engine optimization should be one of your top priorities if you want to take your blog to the next level and build a real business around it. Traffic is not everything, but it is very important if you want to become a pro blogger and quit your day job. There is a lot of science and art behind the field of search engine optimization and the industry is changing so much all the time. So it’s fairly tough to keep up with the latest development, but unless you know how you are doing with your search engine optimization efforts, it’d be tough to figure out what you need to do. If you can’t tell what keywords are bringing you traffic from what page positions, you are not going understand the opportunity available to you.
SEO Booster Pro is an innovative Wordpress plugin that helps you find out how you are doing on the SERPS, and how you can go about improving your positions. The plugin is designed to let you know where you are getting your traffic from (from which page, what position, and what keywords). It also keeps track of changes in your search engine rankings, so you can figure out whether you are making progress, and which one of your search competitors are stepping up their game.
The plugin comes with a lot of useful options. The Top 10 SERPs tab shows you the top keywords and referring URLs for your pages. The last 35 SERPs visits show you what keywords are driving traffic to your site, and what other keywords you could be taking advantage of to increase your overall traffic.
