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In the Know SEO

Travel Bloggers Unite#TBU11

Don’t worry about taking notes

• Everything will be online next week• Sit back and relax

If I were a blogger…

• and I wanted to develop a site to– get me free stuff– make some money– make friends

• I’d choose SEO and here’s how I’d do it…

Did I say that…

• I used blogs to– Generate an income– That paid for my wedding in Mauritius• Me, my wife, my wee boy• Full board holiday (and all spending money) at one of

the worlds best hotels (Le Touessrok, Mauritius)• Wedding dress, rings, kilts everything

Using only SEO

My plan

• Research• Get online• Develop content• Get links• Get social• Build positions• Iterate

Find out what people search for?

• Google Keyword Tool– http://www.tinyurl.com/keywordtool

• WordTracker– http://www.wordtracker.com

From this I knew

• What were people searching for– Patterns of search behaviour– Modifier set• Cheap Vs Bargain• Sub groups of traffic for my niche

– Traffic trends through the year

Find the long tail

Now I wanted to know my competition

Who are they• Use Google

– Traditional search– Google blog search– Google alerts

What are they• Are they :

– travel agents?– other blogs?– Is it affiliates/MFA sites?– Is it Google places?– Wikipedia

Getting myself online

• Domain name– Keywords vs brand

• Hosting– Get someone good• If my site goes down Google will trust me less

– One Click Install Wordpress

Fix a small server issues

• Non-www redirect– Remove duplicate content issues– Remove lost visitors

• Did this through .htaccess

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

Configure WordPress Settings

• Permalinks– Settings -> Permalinks

• Nice keyword rich URLs• URLs that look better in the search engines• Improved click through

Configure WordPress Settings

• Make sure I’m pinging– Settings -> Writing– “update services”

• Get the strong list I can find online anywhere– Search “WordPress ping list”– Paste services into the field

Configure WordPress Settings

• Allow access from my iPhone– Settings ->Writing– Check Remote Publishing

Get myself a theme

• WordPress has some themes already– Appearance -> Themes ->Install themes

• Download and Install themes I find in search results?– Beware• Some SEO’s may have placed links in these• Some themes contain malicious code

SEO’ing my theme

• Themes may have aspects that I may need to fix– How are the HTML tags used?• <h1>…</h1>

– Is the theme widget ready?– Can I easily change my logo?

Plugins to make SEO easy

• I need plugins that : – Make my content better– Improve the “long tail”

• Find Plugins– Plugins ->Install

Plugins I always use

• WordPress SEO Plugin (Yoast)• Fuzzy SEO Plugin• UP Update Smart Pinger Plugin• Contact Form 7 Plugin• Twitter Stream Plugin• Feedburner Plugin• Web Ninja GA Plugin• Akismet

Developed great content

• Created the Post title– Included keywords in post title (Yoast Plugin)• Keywords at the start• Brand at the end

– Don’t overload the title • Developed meta descriptions!– Not going to help my rankings– But can improve my click through

Wrote post naturally

• Write without thinking about SEO (much)– Then use keywords if required– Use “~” to find related keywords

• Use headings to block out content– Headings give more relevance

• Use the <!– more --> function for long posts• Ask visitors to comment – Reply to comments where possible

Added other indexable content

• Videos– Hosted on Youtube (second biggest search engine)– Did some traffic research on YouTube• https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool

More indexable content

• Images - Used the alt attribute

Even more indexable content

• Created useful downloads if appropriate– PDFs– Word Docs– Excel– Image packs

Pushed the Button…

No rankings and no visitors

Great content gets rankings

Biggest SEO Myth

Great content gets rankings

Why?

• Great content deserves rankings– BUT

• Great content without links will fail

• So I needed to start getting links

What’s a good link?

• Website with related content• Strong HeartBeat– Regular content being published on the site– Regular tweeting– Facebook activity

• Links to other related sites already

But what types of links did I want?

Anchor text

• I use my keywords• I use my brand• I use my URL

Link Types

• I want links in content• I want a few sitewide

links (be careful)– Point to my homepage– I use my website name

• I want profiles • I want domains not links

Link metrics

• Links can be complicated– large scale development– short tail phrase optimisation

• Have you heard of PageRank?

PageRank

• Here’s the math…

“Magic Green Fairy Dust” @Google

There are lots of link variables…

• MozRank• Domain Authority• Page Authority• TrustRank• SocialRank• Cache Frequency

But I didn’t need to worry

• I’m in a niche– I’m not competing for the massive terms

• I have friends (real and virtual)– I’m going to get links from them

• I have RSS– So I can syndicate my content

• I have directories/social profiles– So I can be seen in great places for free

I make friends with people offline

• Guest post (and get a link)• Spoke to a journalist I know• Wrote for websites that love new content• Created/contributed to pages on wikipedia– Useful pages– Do not spam. Spam is the curse of the internet

Befriended people on Twitter

• I’m going to get important people on my side– Located important people– Engaged with them– Ask important to people to guest blog on my site

• Spoke to them honestly about what I liked & didn’t like– Be genuine & be yourself

I syndicated my RSS

• Every time I posted– The post got a link– My title tag is the link (keywords)– I get noise about my content in the eyes of the

search engines

I built real & useful social profiles

Tried online news sources

• I tried Digg/Reddit– I wrote great content

• Appropriate for my audience (on my blog and the news site)• Very little reward

• But– If I had wrote great content– The community had voted on these– I may have got a front page for a category

• Got thousands of visitors• Got some links

Now Google goes social & personal

If this had been available

• Twitter would be even more powerful• Social friends would always see my content• I could have got even more links (hopefully)

I now had..

• Rankings for my keywords & traffic• Friends helping me• People asking me to write for them• Bloggers ask to write on my site• Subscribers• Regular and frequent real comments

And every time I iterated

• http://analytics.google.com• http://www.hittail.com

• Things got better as I grew more long tail traffic

So how did I monetise this?

• AdSense– Not too much , these can be a sign of low quality– Not above the fold if possible

• Affiliate links– Masked links; these can be a sign of low quality

• Advertising– Banners

And here I am

• I made my money• I got married– Great wedding & honeymoon

• I got a tan• I made new friends (real and virtual)

Thank You

Questions?

Site reviews tomorrow!Stay in touch

• Email : Michael.briggs@caliberi.com• My Twitter : @michaelkebriggs• Company Twitter : @caliberi

attributation• “Hi How are you image” - http

://www.flickr.com/photos/an_agent/54106267/• Unhappy post it - http://www.shutterstock.com• PageRank Bar - http://www.clippingimages.com/blog/google-page-rank/• PageRank Formula - http://

www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/905-PageRank-What-Is-It-And-How-Do-You-Calculate-It-

• Yoda and PageRank – http://www.blaugh.com