BlogWorld: SEO Tips For Bloggers

Vanessa Fox, formerly of Google, now with Zillow.com discussed what SEO really is. Vanessa said "From a search engine perspective the goal that they have is that they just want to get people off the search page as fast as possible and get to the answer." If bloggers can make their blog the most relevant and useful as possible from a search engine perspective their blog will rank.

Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts spoke about incorporating tags. He said," Optimizing your title tag is extremely important and one of the most important on page factors. It really sets the keyword focus for the page." By optimizing the title tag independently of the post title your blog will be in a better position. You can incorporate synonyms and keep your post title at about seven or eight words.

Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim said he uses title tags to get RSS readers and later changes them for search engines.  Beal said, "Basically you have two audiences for post titles. The first audience is the clickthrough audience the people who are going to look at this through an RSS reader. These people are the people I want to entice to come to my site." Make the title enticing to attract readers.

Quick SEO Tips

Make your blog relevant and     useful so it will rank in search     engines Optimize your title tag     independently from your blog     title After a couple of days     change your title tag and     post title to optimize it for     search engines Have a good site design that     is well formatted and an easy     to read "About Page"

After a day or two he said he would focus on the secondary audience and position his title for Google readers or people who will go to his site via a search engine. Beal said he changes his title tag and post title as well to optimize it for the search engines.

WebProNews spoke with Aaron Wall about how your blog can gain traction. Wall said, "Make it easy to be trustworthy by having a good sight design, having a site that is well formatted, have an about page that is easy to read and easy for the press to contact you." Also your blog should display past press exposure. Those things are signs of trust and will help your blog receive more exposure.

In fairness to Schwarzenegger, it would have been hard for him not to sign the bill outlawing mandatory implants – the PR consequences of such a move might have been disastrous.  So much of the blame lies with Senator Joe Simitian, who authored the piece of legislation, and apparently feels that RFID implants pose some sort of clear and present danger in modern-day America.

“RFID technology is not, in and of itself, the issue. RFID is a minor miracle, with all sorts of good uses,” Simitian stated about a year ago.  “But we cannot and should not condone forced ‘tagging’ of humans.  It’s the ultimate invasion of privacy.”

And a certain senator is a master of the obvious.  Also, now seems like a good time to point out that someone (whether it was Simitian or another supporter of the bill, I can’t say) misspelled “governor” in the relevant press release’s title.  Brilliant.

At least Simitian’s bill-turned-law won’t do any harm.  It just doesn’t seem like a necessary piece of legislation.

Google Seeks Edge In Voice Traffic Talks

Job postings that appeared on MediaBistro at the end of July for Google indicate they are taking more aggressive stances in making deals for network services. Of particular interest: Google has tagged one of the two Strategic Negotiator positions as ‘Voice Focus – Global Infrastructure.’

Though Google has received attention recently for its proposed ‘white-label’ mobile phone hardware, we’ve always believed Google has much more in mind for wireless communications. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said several times the growth and revenue available through mobile has been part of the company’s strategy.

Even though the job title for one position has been labeled as Voice Focus, the job description reads far more generically when it comes to networking services. This is part of the description:

Negotiation and purchasing of IP transit services in North America, Europe, Asia, and/or Latin America; negotiation of partnerships with Internet exchanges, regional peering providers, and paid peering arrangements with major carriers.

Pretty common stuff, yet Google hints at deeper desires in the job title. We’re going to count this as another piece of speculative evidence that Google plans a challenge on the wireless industry. Imagine being able to pick up an iPhone-like mobile device that has its web and VoIP service supported by Google advertising, running on a Google-branded network.

Who could resist the price of free for service, along with a range of hardware delivered by Google’s partners in the wireless device industry? Google could become a global utility provider of wireless service, while selling mobile ads that Schmidt called “twice as profitable” as their non-mobile counterparts.

The submarine networking position doesn’t look as sexy as the voice focused one, but it’s just as important. Getting Internet traffic from continent to continent means sending it underwater. A truly global voice/VoIP solution means Google needs some favorable deals here as well.

With my experience in title tag optimization I feel that by placing the keyword I truly want to rank for OR the most difficult keyword I am optimizing for on a given page should be the first or close to the begining of the title tag and NOT the end. When I optimized lunarpages for the term “web hosting” I did change the title tag and moved web hosting closer to the front of the title tag and along with many other alterations we where able to get to the home page for “web hosting”.

However because I did much more with the site besides altering the title tag we can not use this as a real life example of the power of keyword placement within your title tag.

Currently I rank 32 in google for SEO consulting. My current title tag reads “Joe Whyte – Seo Consulting – rockyfied”.

Below is a photo of the current rankings within google for the term “seo consulting”.

Adversely I also rank #3 on the first page of google for “Joe Whyte”. See below for image.

I will attempt to change my title tag and Repost my findings. I am curious to know what other people will think about doing this change and the importance of keyword placement within your title tag.

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]]> http://www.webpronews.com/keyword-placement-in-title-tag-case-study-2007-07/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/ask-morphs-into-ask3d-2007-06 http://www.webpronews.com/ask-morphs-into-ask3d-2007-06#comments Tue, 05 Jun 2007 12:12:29 +0000 WebProNews Staff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=38181 If anyone was wondering why IAC put up a $100 million marketing budget behind Ask.com, the relaunch of the search engine as Ask3D should answer that question.

Ask Morphs Into Ask3D

Gary Price, Ask’s director of online information resources, took us through a lengthy tour of the new Ask, which they have dubbed Ask3D. It uses the company’s new Morph technology, which means each search result page will be different depending on the query a user submits.

If you think this sounds a little like Google’s universal search approach, dismiss the comparison from your mind. Compared to what Ask is doing today, Google’s universal results look like the algorithm vomited data all over the SERPs.

Gary said the new Ask brings a lot to the end users without a lot of effort. The Ask home page offers visual cues to visitors, with icons for various searches displayed above the search box. You’ll see those icons again after doing a search.

As you type in a query, the search box lists suggestions; this was prototyped with AskX. A suggestion can be clicked to kick off the search. That brings back the three-columned search results page, for what Gary called a lot of information on simple results.

The left column contains the options to narrow or expand a search as desired. In the center, sponsored and organic search results are on display. If a relevant Smart Answer is available for a query, it will show up at the top of the column.

Over on the right column we see where Ask’s Morph technology comes into play. Depending on the query, those results could contain images, videos, news, even music tracks if you search for musicians.

Ask can deliver those results by tapping various databases of information. Such content from specialty databases are a particular passion for Gary, a self-described search geek. He said the Morph algorithm finds what it thinks will be of the most value for a query from among the databases it can tap.

There are actually two algorithms in play for a query. The Teoma technology that Ask has owned for some time drives the organic results, while the Morph algorithm comes into play for the right-column ones.

The icons that appear on the main Ask page show up alongside their related Morph results. The visual cue helps reinforce the idea that people can find particular results as desired. In each box of additional results on the right side, a magnifying glass icon can be clicked to allow people to search for more of that type of result (news, video, etc) directly from the page.

Another icon, the binoculars that show up next to regular search results, used to allow people to mouseover them and see a small image of the destination websites from that link. That feature has been updated to what Gary called ‘Binoculars 2.0′.

In addition to the snapshot of the destination site, the binoculars show the load time for the site at 56k, if the site uses Flash, and if it has popups.

Ask created a new feature that shows up when their Smart RSS technology finds a feed associated with the result appearing in the Smart Answer area atop the results page. People can subscribe to the feed right from those results; this feature has been a regular request from Ask users.

The efforts Ask has put forth with Ask3D should save users time, effort, and aggravation, as Gary said. Much of that effort took place with the tuning of metadata associated with content. Even more tweaking took place with the video results Ask can deliver.

When searching for videos, people will see what Ask calls “videos from select sources” first. These are results that reside on more authoritative sites. Doing a mouseover of a video thumbnail causes it to animate. Searchers can expand their search to find videos from all sources by clicking a link.

Ask has been a much more compelling search option for the past couple of years. The Ask3D update has made it even more of one now.

The Search Marketing Expo opened in Seattle with a Q&A session with Google’s Matt Cutts; it seems Matt came back from his vacation with mischief on his mind.

WebProNews will have stories and videos from Danny’s inaugural Search Marketing Expo titled "SMX Advanced" in Seattle this week. Stop by our site or sign up for our free newsletter and follow the search marketing news.

"Sorry Mr Burns, but I don't go in for these backdoor shenanigans. Sure I'm flattered, maybe even a little curious, but the answer is no!" - - Homer really misunderstands where Springfield's richest man is going with the labor negotiations.

There are plenty of talented search marketing pros and noteworthy Googlers out there who attend and participate in shows like Search Marketing Expo. Matt is a little different, having his own groupies ("Cuttlets") and drawing a crowd that follows him and chatters away during his walks around the conference center.

He sat still, occasionally, for the SMX Advanced audience during his question and answer session. During some playful banter with Danny, who thinks Matt deserves a better title than ‘software engineer’ ("What a joke," Danny said of that generic moniker), the talk turned to workplace apparel.

Matt described Google’s code as "basically, you have to wear clothes." He then challenged the nattily attired Danny to go casual, with the audience supporting the request. Danny obliged, but no Full Monty from him, instead just tossing enough laundry aside to end up in a t-shirt and shorts.

Ah the madcap conference life.

Being a question and answer session with Matt providing the answers, the audience tore its attention away from their host to pepper Google’s unlikely rock star with questions.

He cleared up an issue with supplemental listings, a place where webmasters hate to have their pages reside in Google. Matt said that with more links to those pages will come a move to the main index: "It’s that simple."

"It’s true that we do parse pages differently and index pages differently in the supplemental index," said Matt. "You can still absolutely be found for popular words but the phrase handling is somewhat different in the supplemental index."

When asked about geotargeting, and how much confidence Google has in knowing where someone is, Matt estimated Google would have a "pretty good guess" more than 90 percent of the time.

Another questioner wanted some clarity from Matt about Google’s guidelines, in asking why they are so nondescript. Matt answered that Google wanted to start with a concept of the minimal principles people needed to follow.

"I’m thinking it’s about time to have those guidelines updated," he said.

Someone had to ask about paid links of course, and that hot button topic came up with someone asking if paid links would be the death of the algorithm.

While Google isn’t averse to manual intervention to manage the situation, they do consider link buying as being beyond their guidelines. "If people want to do that, more power to them, but at Google we are going to act to preserve the best results," said Matt.

Some people have noticed search result pages turning up in Google’s SERPs, which seems to be a no-no. Google will trim them out, but it’s more of a rule of thumb than a hard and fast policy governing that activity, according to Matt.

Wikipedia’s near-omnipresence in Google’s SERPs also came up in a question, as someone asked why Google might be ‘breaking up’ with them. Danny wryly commented, "I think Matt wanted to tell them privately first."

Matt cited Wikipedia as a source that regular users like a lot, but it isn’t always the best result for a query. "We are aware of that," he said, "and the algorithm is always evolving to try to reflect that fact."

Master of the ..

The problem starts with that word master. In this context, it usually means someone who looks after the well-being of some resource. Indeed it’s often applied to someone who looks after something with a cultural content. Just think Concertmaster, Master of the Queen’s Music or Master of the Royal Mint. It’s also often a word that dates back to a former time. How could it possibly have come to be used to apply to such modern innovations as websites?

It is of course a word that is often used in gaming. Perhaps that’s the explanation. Geeks are often heavily into gaming. Just think Gamemaster or Dungeon Master. Since geeks are often also the persons looking after websites, then perhaps webmaster is a very comforting descriptor. It may have been an easy word to accept in the first instant, but it can lead to all sorts of problems.

Big companies

The problems are most often seen in big companies. Websites are complex and can often run into problems, some of them being difficult to correct. Given this, many companies decide that the website is best handled within the IT group. The marketing group, with enough of its own problems, is often happy to leave this potential tar baby to another group. Since the IT group usually does not understand marketing and the marketing group does not understand the working concepts of the IT group, this is a recipe for disaster. Over the years, I have spoken to many situated either side of this divide, who are constantly frustrated by the working difficulties of this arrangement.

Marketing and Sales

The webmaster dysfunction pales into insignificance in some companies, given the dysfunction they have between the marketing and sales groups. Sometimes the two groups have somewhat independent existences. The company operates in a similar way to the way wars used to be waged. The artillery (marketing) shell the territory to be taken. Afterwards the infantry (sales) go in and secure the territory street by street. That is no longer the way wars are waged nor is it the way that marketing and sales should be cooperating. Strong team action is needed between marketing and sales to ensure the most effective sales operation.

The website should not be seen as a fine piece of art that has been created to support the marketing and selling activity. The webmaster concept might support this inappropriate view. A selling effective website is an integral part of the marketing/sales activity. Like any other part of the marketing/selling activity, there should be objectives and metrics to establish performance. Activities should be modified in the light of results. The Google Webmaster Central website can provide some useful data in this approach, but other parts of the marketing/sales group will have their own selling activities and their own metrics to add to the review process.

What’s a better job title?

To emphasize this marketing/selling role for the website, some title such as Internet Marketing Manager is much more appropriate. The exact title will depend on the size of the organization. Whatever the title, the responsibility for a selling-effective website must clearly rest within the marketing group. Some activities may be subcontracted to the IT group. But the buck stops with the marketing group.

Related: What’s in a name – Web mastery?

When it comes to measurements and numbers, there is one figure Nielsen won’t discuss about its final pickup of the remaining BuzzMetrics pieces: the price, which was not disclosed.

Jonathan Carson, BuzzMetrics’ CEO, said in an email the company will combine with NetRatings, the Internet audience measurement service run by Nielsen. The two will form a new unit that will track consumer behavior online.

The deal will give Nielsen an even greater grasp on what people see online, and throughout all kinds of media. Nielsen chairman and CEO David Calhoun described in a statement just how much of this will be within the Nielsen ecosystem now:

More broadly, we can provide our clients with even more insightful information when Internet/Online consumer usage is combined with what products and services consumers buy (ACNielsen), what consumers watch on television (Nielsen Media Research), and what books, films, audio and video usages consumers interact with across multiple platforms.

Nielsen is going to know a lot about people no matter what they do, online or off. Carson views the development as a positive one, as it validates the importance of consumer-generated media, i.e., blogs, videos, podcasts, and social media.

Marketers should like this comprehensive tie-in of information, and likely will come to expect that of other firms. It should be interesting to see what other deals take place as marketers and measurement companies try to pry as much information as they can out of the public’s media consumption habits.

The user-friendliness of blogging software has made it easy for anyone who would like to communicate with the world to do so. That explains a large part of the millions and millions of blogs that now populate the blogosphere. Others who see the moneymaking potential of blogging by adding advertisements to their blogs add to the flood. Given this cacophony, how does anyone with a serious view to express ensure that it stands above the crowd?

This post will suggest a way of doing this. You may not wish to go through the full process for every blog post you write, but when the topic is important to you, then it will be effort well spent.

Search Visible Titles

Of course a large part of being visible on the Internet now means that the blog must be search visible. In other words it should appear early in the keyword search engine report pages (SERPs) that the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live or Ask serve up when a searcher looks for particular keywords. That is what is achieved by the process of Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Part of this is involved with the content of the blog post. Steven Johnson had a good article on this in the New York Times called Own Your Own Words. A critical element here is the Title of the post. There are some differences of opinion on how best to create the Title. However a good introduction to the issues can be found in an article by Jill Whalen entitled All About Title Tags.

Online Newspaper Headlines

Traditional newspapers as they develop their online versions have had to grapple with this same challenge. For the print version of a newspaper the headline attached to an item was rarely written by the journalist who wrote the item. An editor would write an eye-catching headline that would often present the subject in a provocative and sometimes humorous fashion. Such headlines would draw the eye as the reader scanned that physical page.

Things don’t work the same way online. Many viewers will rely on a search engine such as Google or Yahoo! to find items of possible interest. Such search engines do not appreciate or understand witticisms or clever plays on words. The don’t care about grammar. It’s only the words that count. In consequence, journalists are now learning to write headlines or titles for their pieces that will help them stand out to the search engines.

Memorable Content

Being search visible does not mean that a newspaper item or a blog post will turn out to be a memorable read. Filling newspapers or churning out blog posts can produce turgid prose that satisfies no one. As Darren Rowse suggests, memorable blog posts should add value to the blogosphere dialogue rather than merely echoing what others have said. The author should be bringing his or her own take on the subject. That isn’t to say you will work hard on every blog post to make it memorable. However when you have something important to write, how do you turn it into a memorable blog post that will also be search visible.

The Golden Rule

It is important to realize that the Internet is different. There’s a great deal of information already out there on any topic you care to name. This memorable blog post you’re trying to create has to compete with all that pre-existing stuff. How should you start? Established practice is to think of a catchy (or even search visible) title when you have completed the article. The Golden Rule turns this on its head:

Start With The Title

You may not get the title right immediately but in this Internet age, that is where you should start.

The title is likely what many readers will pick on in a keyword search to decide that your article is what they would prefer to read first. So think what keywords a potential reader might have used to find the article. Then think of a title that features those key words and will pique the interest of the reader. Here are some examples of that:

• Google Supplemental Results Index – A Word To The Wise
• What Do You Call An 800 Lb. Gorilla?
• Riding The Internet Tidal Wave
• Academic Search From A Greater Height
• US Patent Search – How To Eat An Elephant

Your first attempt may well not be the final version since this title is used to achieve the two goals we have for this article: it should be memorable and it should be search visible.

Researching The Title

In order to better understand the competition for this article, you should first do a Google Blog Search on the title. This will show you whether others are writing on the same topic and how they are handling the topic. Perhaps if there are too many or you do not have something new to say you may immediately abandon the topic. Otherwise keep notes on the more interesting competitive articles you find.

If the topic still seems to have the capability of being memorable, then you should do a regular keyword search with your favourite search engine of that same title. The Google search is convenient since the Google Blog Search includes an additional button for the regular search. Again the results will show you whether your topic can be memorable and whether you have something new to offer. In some cases it may also be useful to do a News search if it is something the traditional media might cover. Again keep notes on the more interesting items you find.

Tuning The Topic

The research you have done will help you write a much better blog post. Good blog posts can be a launch pad for the reader in offering further ways of finding more information about the topic. If the post is sufficiently well written, it may even become an ‘authority’ web page because of the quality of its hyperlinks to other relevant and related items.

Knowing what has been written already, helps in determining how you can bring a new view on the topic. Again this all helps in making this a memorable blog post for the reader. It will also be clearer what keywords seem to come up in the field. For a sufficiently important blog post, you may even decide to do some keyword research to see how often people click on the various keywords that are used.

Writing The Blog Post

With all this research you are now well placed to write the post. You have the title, you have some important keywords that are used in the field and you have some links to other important references. It now comes down to applying your good writing skills so that you present your ideas in the most compelling and attractive way.

It’s always good to have an introductory paragraph that suggests what the item will cover, and also a closing paragraph that summarises what has been said. Both of these should feature the important keywords. These keywords should also appear at an appropriate frequency throughout the article. Google and the other major search engines do take into account synonyms of these keywords so these alternate words can be used. The total effect should mean that the reader is unaware that there has been a subtle reinforcement of the keywords.

If you analyse the quality of most blog posts, you will find that they are not very good at applying the rules we have set out above. If you do, then there is a good chance that your memorable blog post will rank well with the search engines and will be selected by that human searcher as their preferred read.

If you have any comments on, or modifications to, this approach, please add them so that we can all benefit.

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1. Increase Your [Blank] within [short time period]

This headline promises the reader that they will see an increase in something within a short period of time. People are impatient; they want to see results within a certain time period.

* Increase Your Blog Traffic within 30 Days

* Increase Your Wealth within 1 Week

2. How-to Improve Your [Blank] through [number] Easy Steps

People love how-to guides and lists so why not combine them? This headline shows people how-to do something in a list format.

* How-to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings through 7 Easy Steps

* How-to Improve Your Health through 5 Easy Steps

3. [Blank] Goes to an All Time Low by [some sort of incident]

By making a strong statement readers will be tempted to click through and find out more.

* Comcast Goes to an All Time Low by Ripping Off a Senior Citizen

* Yahoo Goes to an All Time Low by Copying Digg

4. How-to [Blank] – The Ultimate Guide

By using the phrase "ultimate guide" and "how-to" in the same sentence people feel they are going to learn something and never have to learn it again. Why learn something when you can learn it once by reading the ultimate guide.

* How-to Install Linux – The Ultimate Guide

* How-to Create a Power Point Presentation – The Ultimate Guide

5. The [Name of an expert] Approach to [What the expert is good at]

People love to learn from experts, so why not teach them.

* The Guy Kawasaki Approach to Writing

* The Adaptive Path Approach to Design

There are tons of other title styles you can use when submitting a story to socially driven websites, but these are some of the ones I use on a regular basis. If you are looking for more headline templates I recommend checking out Copyblogger.

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About the Author

Neil Patel is an Internet marketing consultant for ACS where he has lead Internet marketing strategies for companies such as Hewlett Packard and Samsung. Currently Neil blogs about his marketing experiences at Pronet Advertising.