I don’t presume to teach you:
• The last word about:
• SEO
• Online strategy
• Copywriting
• Webmastering
A particular view of Google
• Tries to make the Net a better quality place
• Tries to stop SEOs and Webmasters from cheating
• Tries to penalise junk sites
• Panda and Penguin updates
• Continuous algorithm tweaks
Used properly, your blog helps you keep Google happy
• Google has always liked lots of good quality content
• It lurves it now
You’re stumbling around
• How easily will you get to your destination without a map?
• Isn’t that just what you’re doing by creating content aimlessly?
Content isn’t King
• Content, alone, is an indulgence
• Content needs to be a team player
• It needs some support
If Content is a team player, Strategy is the coach
• Content needs a purpose
• Content needs a vision
• Content needs to work for you
• And, to work for you, it needs to work for your readers
I came up with these answers for Writing For SEO
• To attract new clients
• To act as a platform to develop and deliver products
• To share my expertise with more people (sorry if that sounds a bit yucky, but there it is)
Yours may be
• To attract more natural/organic search traffic
• To interact more closely with your customers and prospects, your community
• Supporting a local, hobby or sporting group - it doesn’t have to be to make a profit, or even work within a business context
• Another way of putting this is to define your niche. You shouldn’t try to be everything to everybody
Find out what your audience is searching on
• Google Key Word Tool (http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/) tells you a lot
• Key phrases you haven’t thought about
• How popular a key phrase is (how many searches are being made on it)
• There are loads of other tools out there, too - free and paid
What’s the competition?
• Not ‘Who’s the competition?’
• On the Web, I don’t care who my competitors are, I want to know what I need to do push them off the first page of Google
Take a look at the competition for the key phrases you need
• Try:
• Web SEO Analytics (www.webseoanalytics.com)
• SEOmoz (www.seomoz.org)
Put your key phrases into a spreadsheet
• Sort on search numbers
• Sort or filter on difficulty
• Filter on particular words
• Explore to see what themes there are for your content
Put a content strategy in place
• Theme key phrases for Pages on your blog
• Do the themes suggest Categories for your blog?
• Use the key phrases you’ve discovered to suggest blog posts
• You’re ensuring what you produce will appeal to people and presented in an easy-to-digest way
Use an EMD as a WMD
• Exact Match Domains
• A domain that reflects an important key phrase - like WritingForSEO.org
• A favourite tool for spammy affiliate sites
• Google said it was outlawing them
• But it hasn’t
Choose your EMD
• Find a high-traffic key phrase that applies to your site
• Search for available domains
• If you have a UK customer base, a .co.uk domain is a good thing
• So you’ll end up with agoodkeyphraseformyblog.co.uk
Choose a blog platform
• If you want a personal blog, choose Blogger or WordPress.com
• If you want to do business, make money or put a blog on an existing site, use your own WordPress install
• Flexibility
• Ownership of data
• Use your own domain (you can with Blogger, too)
Using a blog to help a site’s performance
• Don’t put the blog on a different domain - www.yourdomain.wordpress won’t help the site at www.yourdomain.com
• Don’t put your blog on a separate subdomain - Google treats blog.yourdomain.com as completely separate from www.yourdomain.com
• Do put your blog at www.yourdomain.com/blog/
Writing your content
• Go for substance rather than frequency
• Post every day if you can, but don’t worry about it if you can’t
• Include at least one image, because it makes your post look less daunting
• Put together a schedule, and try to stick to it
• Monitor page popularity, social mentions and links
Give your content leverage
• Use your key phrases in headings, title tag and keyword tag
• Don’t go mad with key phrases
• Make sure you’re writing for your audience and Google in mind, not just Google
Build some links
• Social bookmarking sites:
• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• Guest blogging
• Forum and blog comments
Social media
• Don’t spend all your time on social media
• Content production is more important
• I suggest a presence on Twitter and Google+
• Plus either Facebook or LinkedIn
Measure your results
• You can find where you’ve got with Analytics - Google Analytics is free and very powerful
• Also install Google Webmaster Tools
• Link to Google Analytics
• Keep on measuring
Do all these things as best you can
• Online success is about doing as many things as possible well, rather than one or two perfectly
• Don’t cheat or automate
• Give your readers what they want
You can fill many of the gaps by looking on my website
www.writingforseo.org
David Rosam• Web www.writingforseo.org
• Twitter @writingforseo
• Google+ www.writingforseo.org/googleplus
• Telephone +44 (0)1273 906607
• E-mail [email protected]
• LinkedIn www.writingforseo/linkedin
• Facebook www.facebook.com/writingforseo
• Also www.webpositioningcentre.co.uk
• Please see Writing For SEO for image acknowledgements