SEO huh?

BusyMomma · Posted: January 22, 2010, 11:34 am Post subject: SEO huh?

Hey, I'm not afraid to say it. I'm an SEO ignorant biz owner and I hate it.

Hi, my name is Val and I'm SEO ignorant. Laughing

I have actually taken an SEO class twice so I have the basics. BUT I'm still an idiot when it comes to many aspects of SEO.

Lets take keyword research for example. Umm, how the heck to I do that? Sure I go to adwords and I have gone and researched. I actually did this yesterday and found a couple of good keyword phrases I wanted to hit that would be really easy for one of my sites.

But then I get stuck. So I understand that I should add them in my metatags and I should add them in article/blog post a few times. But what else do I need to do with keywords? Oh, they should be in my title in wordpress or in my URL on a html page right?

Ok, I'm seriously not kidding. I hate SEO and I'll try to come up with more posts from those that help here. OR please feel free to start some other posts with your expertise so it brings my questions. Laughing

_________________
Val

Once A Week Cooking ~ Busy Momma Wellness ~ Mom Chats ~ Working WAHM ~ Easy WAHM Websites

Anita · Posted: January 22, 2010, 9:23 pm Post subject:

(FYI: I say "Val" a lot in this post but of course this is for anyone who's reading along and wants to know more about SEO.)

The first and foremost one thing I'm going to say to you specifically Val, is about your wordpress websites. I haven't taken notice in a while now but I did notice before ... If you don't already have it, get the All in One SEO Pack plugin on your wordpress websites. Once its installed, go into your options and edit your settings.

One thing this plugin does is changes your url's from something like:
http://www.2wahms.com/?id=1235

to something like:
http://www.2wahms.com/my-post-title

Then of course you want your post title to have your keywords in it.

If you cannot find a way to make your keywords sound right as your post title, you can always edit the permalink to be your keywords instead of the name of your post.

(Okay, I just looked at a couple of your sites Val and I see that it looks as though you do have this plugin running now Wink

So for anyone else who does not ... go get it!)

This plugin covers the SEO basics and lets you set page titles, meta tags, keywords, and descriptions automatically.

Here are just some of the features and functions:

- META tags are generated automatically.

- You can override any META description, any META keywords and any titles you want (should you feel the need to do so).

- This plugin actually works out-of-the-box. So beginners don't really have to change the option settings.

- Advanced users can fine-tune and tweak everything (*love this*).

- This plugin automatically optimizes your titles for search engines.

And for those who I might have "scared" with some of the terms I just used ... no worries. Like I said, it can be simply used right out-of-the-box and if you do want to take a little more control over your blog, there's lots of help with every option so you can make the best choice for you.

Now with that out of the way ... let's move onto some other things ...

Val - you said you went to "adwords" for your keyword research. Is that what you really do or did you mean to say Wordtracker? I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page here. I personally always use Wordtracker for my keyword research. Majority of the time the free version is more than enough for me. However, if you wanted to get a little more serious with your keyword research, they also have a paid version. (Wordtracker also has all kinds of help to walk you through keyword research.)

Yes, your keywords should be used as much as you can (within reason). Yes, your keywords should be used in your metatags, in your articles, blog post, website content, etc. etc. Yes, they should also be your wordpress page/post title, website page titles and url links. (This is one thing the SEO plugin does for you. It uses the title of your post/page to create the page link (aka: url or permalink).

If you do this for every single page of your site, your website will be optimized.

Keep in mind ... when you're working with adding keywords to your content ... write for human readers first! What good is it for you to optimize a site or page only to have the visitor leave right away and never come back because it sounds like something a first grader wrote. Don't overstuff your content so much that it doesn't read smoothly.

This is how I do my keyword research / optimize a page:
(This is what works for me and meets my needs ... take it for whatever it's worth to you ...)

Very fittingly for this particular post, I want to show you my first keyword phrase I optimized. This was done quite some time ago and I haven't done much with it since.

What I do when I'm using wordtracker for keyword research is type in my original keyword or keyword phrase I want to start with. I can't remember my exact original search but it had to do with online traffic to your website. Now I also already knew that this was a particularly hard topic to rank in. Simply because everybody and their brother searches for it and in turn everybody and their brother is trying to rank well for that traffic.

I personally don't recommend going after those words or phrases that are getting thousands of searches a day/month or whatnot. Those are often your hardest ones to rank well for - again because everyone else is trying too. Instead, I move somewhere down in the middle that are getting enough searches to make it worth my while but not too many that it's next to impossible to rank for.

I look for keywords / keyword phrases that are being searched somewhere between 50 - 150 (depending on how much I want those words or phrases). Think about it this way ... if you find a keyword phrase that is getting 50 searches a day, that means a lot of the "big hitters" probably aren't wasting their time on it and it might be easier for you to rank better. If you optimize one page that is getting 50 searches a day well, that means you could be getting 50 visitors a day to that one page of your site. Then let's say you optimize 20 other pages following this same formula, you're looking at a possibility of 1,000 visitors a day ... 30,000 a month! Not too shabby - especially when you're not having to work quite as hard to rank high with highly searched phrases that everyone else is trying to rank for too. Wink

So, back to my example ... (again please keep in mind I haven't done anything more with this for quite some time).

I'm looking for a phrase that's getting at least 50 searches a day but doesn't have a ton of others trying to rank for the same thing. I'm also looking into a topic that I KNOW is highly searched and people are fighting to rank well for: Online Traffic

I managed to find a keyword phrase that was getting at least 50 searches a day that also didn't have a ton of others trying to rank for it. It was "increase online traffic". (I'm going through wordtracker right now so I can give better "step by step" directions here and I see now that those phrases have since gone up from 50 searches to around 87.) So I went for it.

First I wrote two articles and put them on my website:
Increase Online Traffic
Increase Online Traffic - What NOT to Do

Note the article titles and the urls. Both have "Increase Online Traffic" in the titles and both have "increase online traffic" in the urls.

http://mommyshelperonline.com/increase-online-traffic.html
http://mommyshelperonline.com/increase-online-traffic-donts.html

For a bit more advanced users:
(For the title of your article right on the webpage - NOT - your page title.)
Another thing that helps is the size of your header code. This might get a little more detailed for someone who doesn't know HTML coding or uses wordpress. For mine, I always use H1 and H2. If I remember correctly, H3 also works. Another little detailed point here is I personally do not like HUGE titles on my article pages so I always set it up that my H1 and H2 codes show up as a little larger font than the article text.

I also took those articles and submitted them to a few of the bigger article directories. No, I did not submit them to a ton of article directories. If you hit a few of the bigger ones ... you'll be fine.

Some other little things I did was ...
If I had the opportunity to link to my site on something about online traffic ...
I did NOT link to the home page. Everyone seems to give out the link to their home page and let the person go searching for what you're talking about. Don't do this. Link directly to the page you're talking about.

If I had complete control over the links I was posting (for example a blog post) ... my links would look like this:
(Change { and } to <and>. This is the only way I could get it to work so you could see the whole code.)

Anita · Posted: January 22, 2010, 10:50 pm Post subject:

I forgot to mention something else above ...

When I spoke of submitting those articles to directories, there was one thing I didn't do then that I would change with what I know now. Now I will re-write each article that is submitted to directories.

I would at the very least re-write it one time so the article I'm submitting to the directories is not exactly the same as the one on my site.

To re-write the articles, again at the very least ... re-write the introduction paragraph, re-order the tips within the main content of the article and re-write the conclusion paragraph.

This brings up a whole other topic all together ... duplicate content ...

Is it a bad thing? Can it get you banned?

Like I said, this is an entirely different topic but my thoughts are this ... why test it? Besides, I don't want 20 other sites having the exact same thing my site has anyway. Ya know?

It doesn't take long to re-write / re-order an article. It's better to be safe than sorry.

Take care,
Anita Razz

_________________

P.S. You have to check this out:
Click here to give your online biz the boost it needs!

Anita · Posted: January 22, 2010, 10:56 pm Post subject:

These lists might help some ...

Things Search Bots & Spiders Love & Hate

Search Bots & Spiders Love

Search Bots & Spiders Hate

Take care,
Anita Razz

_________________

P.S. You have to check this out:
Click here to give your online biz the boost it needs!

Anita · Posted: January 22, 2010, 11:01 pm Post subject:

Oh hey Val ... this might help with your "what to do with the keywords" question ...

Be Creative With Your Keywords
Search Engine bots don’t recognize punctuation. This is good if you have an awkward and unnatural-sounding keyword phrase you want to use on a page.

For example:

If your keyword phrase was “French cuisine tricks”, you could entitle that particular webpage “French Cuisine Tricks”. This would also go in your <TITLE> tag and you’d be wise to call the page HTML file: “french-cuisine-tricks.html”

However, if you wanted to make it feel more natural when putting your keyphrase in the body of the article, you could use it in your first paragraph like this:

BusyMomma · Posted: January 23, 2010, 2:28 am Post subject:

Yep, have the plug in installed on all my wordpress I believe. BUT, in your general settings of WP you set how the posts and pages will look Wink

Should always be the page or post title. Also, can edit the link on the post or page editor in WP.

Yeah, I get lazy and I don't use my SEO plug in even though it's right there to fill in. lol

I use adwords. It tells you how often it's been searched and then it also tells you how difficult it would be to get those adwords if you were going to bid. It was suggested quite some time back to use.

So finding the keywords that were about 150 was what I was looking at yesterday and wrote some down. Yeah, I know where to plug them. I just didn't know which one's to try and use when I did look. So that answered my questions completely Wink

Now to just stop being lazy and work it in every post and page.
_________________
Val

Once A Week Cooking ~ Busy Momma Wellness ~ Mom Chats ~ Working WAHM ~ Easy WAHM Websites

angienewton · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 1748 Location: IL

Val,
I would be happy to walk you through the keyword research and how to get it going. Too much info made me put it off for so long and finally when I got the basics down, it has been smooth sailing and I have finally been ranking and making money so it's really cool when it all comes together.

I don't use any plugin's and only use this this free keyword tool

Keep it simple!

Let me know how I can help!
_________________
~Angie~
My Weight Loss Blog

My personal website

blue_eyes05 · Joined: 13 Apr 2007 Posts: 24 Location: New Hampshire, USA

Have you tried joining BetterNetworker.com?
There are many people over there who are working with the SEO tools that could help you.

Try this site also: http://nettrafficmachine.com/
My friend Richard is over there. He does a lot of trainings on SEO Tools, Blogging, Keywords and google stuff.

BusyMomma · Posted: January 24, 2010, 10:35 pm Post subject:

I've taken quite a few courses. The bad thing is my follow through Embarassed

So I'm just going to work on that. I put up some posts last night and worked the SEO.

The part I hate is that you are supposed to look up keywords before writing. Well I don't write that way. I write and then go see what I can do with the keywords. Or I just find the main keywords in the article/blog post that I am writing and I don't go look at if they are worth it or not.

I guess my main issue is I write for my readers and not for SEO. So here and there I have to make sure and take the time to write for SEO purposes specifically. That pretty much explains where I'm at right now.
_________________
Val

Once A Week Cooking ~ Busy Momma Wellness ~ Mom Chats ~ Working WAHM ~ Easy WAHM Websites

blue_eyes05 · Joined: 13 Apr 2007 Posts: 24 Location: New Hampshire, USA

Yeah, looking up keywords can be time consuming.
Just think of what others would be keying into the search fields.
That should help you out.

In the beginning, I was always looking up keywords in the Google Keyword Tool. Very time consuming. But now, I know what others are keying into the search field.

Use keywords in your SUBJECT and in the BODY of the message.
Here is an excellent site to go to for more on keywords:
http://nettrafficmachine.com/

I found a book that's helped me in my business that I'm in now.
Wish I found it years ago when I was in my other companies.

I'm learning the skills I'm needing to help my business grow.
The skills I need the most are follow-up, advertising and organization once in a while. There's other skills available, but those are the only ones I need for now.

Here's the book
http://tinyurl.com/ylcmx54

angienewton · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 1748 Location: IL

Val,
Just remember when you are researching keyword phrases you are going to be writing for PEOPLE because that is what they are actually searching for when they go to Google. So if you take those long tail keyword phrases and write to your audience, they will find you and exactly what they are looking for...it's not really for the search engines, it's for real people!

Don't over complicate it though...I did that for too long and wasted a lot of time. If I knew then what I know now Laughing

_________________
~Angie~
My Weight Loss Blog

My personal website

blue_eyes05 · Joined: 13 Apr 2007 Posts: 24 Location: New Hampshire, USA

That's right Val

BusyMomma · Posted: January 25, 2010, 6:55 am Post subject:

Angie, I'm sure you just nailed it. I'm sure I over-complicate it. But in my case that makes me ignore it. Laughing

So I guess I just found me main thing to work on for 2010. K, my second thing. First thing for me this year is streamlining and getting rid of sites. I've been so excited as I focus more! As I push my huge twitter and FB accounts to those focused areas.

But I will commit to working on my keywords this year.
_________________
Val

Once A Week Cooking ~ Busy Momma Wellness ~ Mom Chats ~ Working WAHM ~ Easy WAHM Websites

Anita · Posted: January 25, 2010, 10:38 pm Post subject:

Yep - Angie hit the nail on the head there ... said pretty much exactly what I was going to say ... don't over-complicate it cause it's not really that complicated.