Optimizing a blog is one of the absolute best ways to capture Google’s most coveted top spots very quickly. You can hit number 1 on Google in a matter of days. Here’s how you do it…
a.) First, find a good blogging tool. There are plenty out there. I use WordPress. I originally picked it because it was so quick and easy to setup. And I soon realized the platform does 50% of SEO by its very nature. It’s free and you can get thousands of themes, to fit any style you wish, also for free.
b.) Next, make sure your hosting provider can support your blog. I’ve never seen one that can’t. If you are starting fresh, do a Google search for “WordPress blog hosting” and you’ll find great packages that only cost $25 for a whole year. Just avoid the freebie hosts since you are almost guaranteed to be sharing server space (and likely an IP range) with sites banned by Google, which can cost you your ranking.
c.) Once your blog app is installed, turn on the “permalink” option from the control panel. This ensures each posting you enter will also get its own URL. And finally, start entering postings of 200 words or more, focusing on only one or two keywords per post. Try to begin each post title with the primary keyword for that topic.
d.) To best optimize your keywords and content follow the steps outlined in SEO cbt’s release “Google Domination”. This is a free computer based training module for SEO do it yourselfers that works extremely well. It was not written specifically for blogs but all the information is perfectly suited to them.
Inside Tip: Register your domain name for a five year period or longer. Just extend it if needed. Google has been known to check “whois” records and assumes the longer the domain is registered in advance, the more “real” the site is.
May 24th, 2008
Here, I am making an attempt to discuss and clear the top 10 organic SEO myths:
Organic SEO Myth 1: You must submit your website URL to search engines. Once upon a time, this could have been the “in” thing. But since the past 5-6 years it has become unnecessary.
Organic SEO Myth 2: In order to get better ranking, you absolutely need a Google Sitemap. It’s partially correct. However, if you have built your site properly (ensured its crawler-friendly) you don’t require a Google Sitemap. That being said, having one won’t hurt you and you can even use other Webmaster Central tools offered by Google, but this doesn’t guarantee higher ranking.
Organic SEO Myth 3: For higher rankings, update your website regularly. Regular updating of your content pages may certainly increase the crawl rate for search engines, but not your website rankings. Only update your website content if it is necessary and not because search engines will like it any better. As a matter of fact, the highest ranked websites on Google are those that haven’t been updated in years!
Organic SEO Myth 4: PPC (pay per click) ads can help or hurt rankings. What amuses me most is that many people believe that participating in Google AdWords campaigns will hurt their organic SEO ranking, while many others believe that PPC will spike the traffic and up the ranking. All I can say is that neither of this is true!
Organic SEO Myth 5: Not following guidelines on Google will ban your website. Google’s guidelines are common sense but not mandatory. It’s advisable to read them, however just don’t do anything purely for search engines and you’ll be fine.
Organic SEO Myth 6: Buying links can lead to banning of your website. It is partially true again. Google doesn’t like to count paid links as votes for a website page. Mostly Google is unable to find out if the links are paid for, but even if it does, it won’t count the links. Google won’t ban your website in any case. A quick update - Google has made it easier to report paid links in sites that are unrelated to your site. Though the reasoning is yet unclear and best practice should tell you don’t buy links in unrelated sites to your theme.
Organic SEO Myth 7: Header tags or H1 should be used to ensure high ranking. There is no evidence to prove this. However, this is one of the most common myths. You can reach top Google positioning without H1 but they certainly don’t hurt so use H tags correctly.
Organic SEO Myth 8: Meta keywords tag need to be used on your page. The fact is that a Meta keyword tag was introduced to use keywords that are NOT on the site page already! However, this tag is ignored by Google in any case.
Organic SEO Myth 9: The SEO copy should be 250 words in length. 250 words is not really an optimal number nor is it specific for SEO rankings. Easily, 250 words allows one to write good marketing copy and
Organic SEO Myth 10: Your pages should be optimized for the long tail keywords. This is not true. Nowadays, long-tail keyword phrases are no longer effective as not many pages use them and not many people search using long tails. You can include these keywords in blogs or even an article, but that is not really optimization.
Remember don’t go spreading any SEO myths that you believe may be true. Test it yourself several times on different websites before reaching any conclusion as there are other factors involved as well.
April 11th, 2008
No Longer Part Of Yahoo! 360
The Yahoo Answers Blog is no longer a part of Yahoo 360.
Yahoo says it has “always dreamed of a home for the blog that was more a part of the Yahoo! Answers community.” The new address is www.yanswersblog.com. Yahoo says its Answers blog is a little cleaner and has useful features to improve the connection with Yahoo Answers.
The blog team describes some of the changes that users will notice. “On the upper right of the page, you’ll see a link to Yahoo! Answers as well as tools for finding information. The Search box gives you three places to look in: Blog, Web, or Answers.”
“If you still don’t find what you need, you can post a question directly to Answers from the box below Search. You’ll also find subscription links for My Yahoo! and RSS feeds, blogs we like, and recent readers from the MyBlogLog community.”
The Yahoo Answers Blog also has a tab at the top of the page where users can find all the posts from Ask Mike. There is a feedback tab that allows users to contact the blog team to report bugs, abuse or, make suggestions.
Under each post user can comment and add the post to del.icio.us, or go directly to Yahoo Answers.
By Mike Sachoff
February 1st, 2008
