Search Engine Marketing
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Transcript Search Engine Marketing
SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make
By Stephan Spencer,
Founder & President, Netconcepts
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Blog SEO
So easy a child could do it
16-year old blogger
Passive income: ~$1000/month
from Google AdSense
Effort required: 1 hr/month
Thank you, Google!
My daughter,
SEO-in-training
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
#5 for “neopets”
#3 for “neopets cheats”
#6 for “neo pets”
etc.
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Biggest SEO Mistakes
Leaving title tags to be auto-generated (from the post
name, category name, etc.)
Squandering your “crawl equity” by letting pages get
indexed that don’t deserve to be (“Email this page” etc.)
Having multiple “homes” for your blog
Not using unique “Optional Excerpt” to minimize
duplicate content
Not using rel=nofollow to direct PageRank flow
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Biggest SEO Mistakes
Over-reliance on date-based archives
No stability in keyword focus on category & tag pages
Suboptimal URLs (too long, too many words, too many
directories)
Only one RSS feed, and it’s un-optimized
Hosting blog/feed URLs on a domain you don’t own
Using suboptimal anchor text when linking internally
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
What Are We Waiting For??
Let’s Fix Your Blog!
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Rejig Internal Linking Structure
Tag clouds & tag pages & tag conjunction pages (e.g.
“UTW Theme Compatibility Thing” WordPress plugin)
Related Posts (e.g. “Yet Another Related Posts” plugin)
Top 10 posts (e.g. “Popularity Contest” plugin)
Next & Previous / pagination (e.g. “WP-PageNavi”
plugin)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Tags point
to Technorati
tag pages
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Tags point to
internal tag
pages
A tag page
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimize Title Tags
Blog name at the end of the title, not at the beginning
Tag name should go in title on a tag page
Customize with additional keywords for display only on
your home page
Override title tags w/ custom one ( “SEO Title Tag”
WordPress plugin)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
“SEO Title Tag” plugin for WordPress
Allows you to override the title tag with a custom one on any
post, static page, tag page, category page, etc.
Now updated to work with WordPress 2.6
Can even define a custom title on ANY url
Reverses the order of the blog name and the title, or drop the
blog name altogether, or replace it with a shorter nickname
Can use category’s description as the title on category pages
Has a Mass Edit admin and an Options page to change settings
Download at www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
“Thin Slicing”
Make quick decisions. Don’t overthink.
Only really works if you’re an expert
E.g. hand-optimize title tags across hundreds of pages quickly
(prioritized)
Focus on your title tags, H1s and URLs
Don't obsess, doesn’t have to be perfect. Instead, iterate.
If you don’t have an admin interface, use a spreadsheet and do a
database import
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Thin slicing
title tags
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Great name
for the blog!
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimize URLs
URL affects
searcher
clickthrough
rates
Short URLs
get clicked on
2X long URLs
(Source: MarketingSherpa,
used with permission)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimize URLs
Further, long URLs appear to act as a deterrent to
clicking, drawing attention away from its listing and
instead directing it to the listing below it, which then gets
clicked 2.5x more frequently.
– http://searchengineland.com/080515-084124.php
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimize URLs
Subdomain? Subdirectory? New domain? Domain of
your blog host?
– www.metlife.com/blog vs. StayingFitBlog.com
– Got a blogspot.com or wordpress.com URL? You benefit
from their domain authority, but you’re forever wedded to
them!
Rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores
Maintain legacy URLs even after switching platforms
Keep post slugs relatively short (e.g. “Slug Trimmer” or
“Clean Trunks” plugin)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimize URLs
Test and optimize URLs, but don’t lose link juice to previous
URLs. 301 previous URLs to latest. No chains of 301s.
WordPress handles 301s automatically when renaming post slugs
Mass edit admin for URLs (post slugs) in WordPress – via the
“SEO Title Tag” plugin (www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tagplugin)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Thin slicing
URLs
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimize Anchor Text
Make the post’s title a link to the permalink page
Use SEOMoz Backlink Anchor Text Analysis tool or
BLA (tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer) to look for
opportunities to request revisions to anchor text on
inbound links
Internally link back to old, relevant posts within the body
of a blog post. Don’t use “here” or “previously” etc. as
the anchor text!
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Post title is anchor text.
“Permalink” is yucky anchor text!
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
“Sculpt” Your PageRank
My preference is to have rel=nofollow...
– On links in trackbacks, comments (by default on most
platforms)
– Where the link would be reciprocal
– On links to date-based archives, assuming you have
category and tag hierarchy (noindexing/disallowing is not
enough!)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Minimize Duplicate Content
Code your Main Index Template to display “Optional
Excerpts” on everything but permalink page
For each post, write unique content (i.e. paraphrase),
don’t just use the first couple paragraphs (i.e. Don’t use
the <!--more--> tag!)
Meta robots noindex & rel=nofollow are your friends
– Date-based archives
– “OR” Tag conjunction pages (e.g.
netconcepts.com/tag/seo|articles)
– Printer-friendly versions
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Improve the Keyword Focus
Heading tags
– category name on category page
– Yes for post titles, no for dates!
Emphasis tags within posts (bold, strong, etc.)
“Sticky” posts
– Always appear at the top of the page
– A way to add keyword-rich intro copy to a category page or
tag page
– e.g. “WP-Sticky” or “Adhesive” plugin
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Sticky post
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimize Your RSS Feeds
Full text, not summaries
20 or MORE items (not just 10)
Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post)
Keyword-rich item <title>
Your brand name in the item <title>
Your most important keyword in the site <title> container
Compelling site <description>
Don’t put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss)
An RSS feed that contains enclosures (i.e. podcasts) can get into
additional RSS directories & engines
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Thank You!
For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO
checklists & worksheets, and audio recording, executive
summary & transcript of thought leaders
teleconferences on SEO & blogging, drop me your
business card or e-mail your request to
[email protected]
To contact me: [email protected]
Download...
– PPT: http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/seo-mistakes.ppt
– Article: http://searchengineland.com/070823-082758.php
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]