Only My Mom Loves My Blog”: A Case Study
Part 1
No matter which way you’re generating passive income, you need to be seen as someone with the answers, who genuinely cares about your readers or followers. We’ve talked about natural, organic SEO. This is primarily the heart of your market position –
Here’s a fact:
You can manipulate the search engine results far less than you used to be able to, even three years ago – and that applies to both “black hat” techniques, or white
For example, a recent post on Problogger, “Why Nobody Cares About Your Blog”, unleashed a storm of comments (164 comments). The author, David Risley, was speaking of the importance of speaking to people, not at them. In page after page of answers, 3 common refrains repeated over and over again.
1. An overwhelming number admitted they had low to no traffic – many of them after genuinely diligent keyword research, original content, and several months’ (even years’) work invested
2. Another noticeable, if smaller, segment of this group had noticeably poor communication skills. It was no surprise they had a dismal lack of readership.
3. We can disregard this one, for our purposes: (Each commenter was writing a personal blog just for himself and wrote to say that he or she didn’t care if there was any traffic.)
Checking out several of these blogs, and found some total gems. Of these gems, however, 2 “themes” common to self-admitted “unsuccessful” bloggers emerged:
1. The blogger seems to have made no attempt other than SEO to position themselves to their target market – he or she was not linking to social media, did not have high Twitter or Facebook profiles – and were talking about things relating to their own needs and experiences, hoping to connect
2. Even though the blogger‟s content was superb, the niche he or she had chosen was far too broad. The chances of people finding them organically, as a result, were microscopically small.
Part 2 coming soon
Always Progressing…
p.s. Save Time and money and grab your copy of 7 Proven and Innovative Ways to Earn Passive Income.
Videos and Search Engines
Tips for Optimizing Your Video Content for the Search Engines
Do you use video on your site? As I sit here my eyes are telling me close give us a rest. Between keeping up with Twitter and Facebook writing articles reading articles video is a welcome relief. Sometimes it’s a way for you to brand your business and connect with your audience. While many website owners are skilled at creating valuable video content, they sometimes forget to optimize this content for the search engines. This is a mistake as search engine spiders can index video content, if you know how to show them the way.
#1 Video Tagging
Most video-sharing sites allow you to create “tags.” Tags are simply keywords that describe video contents. This tagging makes it easier for people to find your content and it makes your content easier for spiders to index. Make sure to use all the tags you can.
#2 Video Titles
Give your video a title. Titles serve two purposes, like an attention grabbing headline they capture the attention of your prospect and when you use keywords, they can enhance your search engine rankings.
#3 Categorize your videos
Video sharing sites typically require you to place your video in a specific category. The more specific you can categorize your video, the better.
#4 Create a relevant file name.
If you are hosting a video on your own site, take your SEO one-step further by creating a relevant file name for your video with keywords.
#5 Only publish one video per web page.
Experts recommend only publishing one video per webpage with a simple text title and description. Optimize the page where you publish your video for both video search engines and content search engines by using meta tags for the
content of the page. They also recommend creating separate video site maps, which can be submitted to video and content search engines alike.
#6 Use keyword optimized anchor text if you link to the video from other pages of your Web site.
#7 Consider Using YouTube Suggest to Generate Keywords
At this point you’re probably familiar with many of the content keyword tools, however for video optimizing, many experts recommend using YouTube’s Suggest tool. Because Google owns YouTube, it works much like the Google Suggest tool. Per the YouTube Blog, “A query suggestions option is now available for search. To opt in, click the “advanced” link next to the search button, then choose “Display query suggestions as I type” from the search settings. As you type in your search terms a menu will appear with suggested results to choose from to help you more quickly find the videos you’re looking for. On the search results page you’ll also get an additional list of recommended searches by clicking on any of the terms listed next to the new “Also try” menu.
Optimizing video for the search engines just makes sense. Utilize these seven steps to make sure your video content is indexed by the search engines.
Tell me do you use video’s? Do you create video’s? Are they on your website or just your YouTube page? Any other suggestions?
SEO a Little Unnatural?
Search engines love content. It is what they analyze to determine the validity of a webpage and website and with this in mind, some have focused their writing efforts on pleasing the search engine. Is this a good ideal? No. You see search engines don’t buy your products or services, people do. Let’s say you are Jake’s home improvement store and writing an article with the goal of trying to get people to purchase their Christmas tree at your store. ”Decorating your house for the holidays” is the title you have chosen for your article. And this is how the article begins.
Trees are decoration and should be bought at Jake’s home improvement store as soon as possible. When you purchase your tree at Jake’s home improvement store we (the people here at Jake’s home improvement store) will trim your tree and bag it and put on top of your car for your drive home from Jake’s home improvement store to put up your tree.
Not horrid but not smooth by any means and I would not continue reading any further. This is why it’s essential that you write your content for your audience first and the search engines second. It is difficult to combine the two because keywords don’t always fit into an article or blog post naturally.
Here are three steps to write your SEO content and still sound natural.
1.
Research your keywords and keyword phrases. Choose one to focus on in your article and then set it aside.
2.
Time to write, think of your main keyword, but do not try to use it. For example, if your keyword phrase is, “Jake’s home improvement store” then you’ll write an article about how to decorate for the holidays, without worrying about if you’re using the keyword phrase or not. Your entire focus is on writing a quality article for your audience.
3.
Once your article or blog has been written , go back through it and see where the keywords fit naturally. Keeping in mind that there are some things that the search engines will be looking for. In an article regarding “How to decorate for the holidays the search engines will expect some relevant words such as tree , lights, decorations etc. When inserting your primary keyword or keyword phrase keep in mind the places the search engine spiders are going to look.
* Your headline
* Your subheadings
* Your first paragraph
* Your last paragraph
* In the body of the article
TIP When using your keywords aim for a density of about three to seven percent. Anymore and search engines might recognize your content as being keyword stuffed. To determine percentage simply take the number of times you use your keyword and divide it by the total words. Therefore, if you have a 450 word article and you use your keyword 18 times you have a keyword density of four percent.
So what do you think ready to get natural with your SEO?
Generate new links.. pt 2
#4 Write press releases and submit them to online press release websites. Be sure to include your website link at the end of the press release so media representatives can contact you, but also so you have an incoming link and interested visitors can find your website.
#5 Reciprocal links. Some reciprocal links are good as long as they’re coming from relevant websites. The trick is to balance reciprocal links with one-way links. Mix up your linking tactics so it looks natural to Google.
SIDENOTE link farms & link exchanges While links to your website are important for a good page ranking, search engine spiders don’t accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality website. A link farm is a Web page designed to profit from linking to web pages and Google and the other major search engines will penalize you for participating, paying, for links.
Link exchanging is essentially a link trade, “I’ll link to you if you link to me.” It’s okay to do this in small doses as long as the website you’re trading links with is relevant to your website. If your website sells dog-training products and you’re trading links with a furniture website then the search engines are going to discount the link.
#6 Add a blog to your site. It is a spectacular way to generate fresh content. Guest blogging on relevant blogs works a lot like article marketing, you generate links to your site in each blog post you write. You can also include links back to each of your web pages and allow your readers to reprint your blog posts as long as they keep the links in place.
#7 Become a tweeter. Participate in social networking. Posting tweets, and Facebook posts create incoming links to your website. In addition, when you comment on forums and other blog posts you also create incoming links via your signature.
Don’t try to do all these at once you could get overwhelmed, instead focus on one tactic at a time adding to your SEO strategy as you grow.
Generate Incoming Links
The first thing search engine spiders look for, when they are labeling and indexing web pages, is content, as you might already know. Links coming into and out of your site are the second thing that the spiders look for. The links coming into your site have more weight than the ones leaving your site, which is what makes generating incoming links a very important search engine strategy.
Here are seven ways to generate incoming links.
#1 Content is to websites what location is to real estate. People, other website owners, link to relevant content. If you write and publish tons of quality content, you’ll receive tons of incoming links.
#2 Online directories. While there are many directories that charge for a listing, there are also several that will list your company’s site for free.
- Freeonlinewebdirectory.com
- sbfx.net
- freeonlinedirectory.info
#3 Article marketing. Writing articles and publishing them on other sites including article marketing sites, is a great method for getting inbound links.
- articledirectory.com
- ezinearticles.com
- articlebase.com
- goarticles.net