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SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make

SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make. By Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts. 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.

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SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make

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  1. SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make By Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts

  2. Blog SEO • So easy a child could do it • 16-year old blogger • Passive income: ~$1000/monthfrom Google AdSense • Effort required: 1 hr/month • Thank you, Google! My daughter, SEO-in-training

  3. #5 for “neopets” #3 for “neopets cheats” #6 for “neo pets” etc.

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. What Are We Waiting For??Let’s Fix Your Blog!

  7. 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)

  8. Tags pointto Technoratitag pages Tags point tointernal tagpages

  9. A tag page

  10. 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)

  11. “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/

  12. “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

  13. Thin slicingtitle tags

  14. Great namefor the blog!

  15. Optimize URLs • URL affectssearcherclickthroughrates • Short URLsget clicked on2X long URLs(Source: MarketingSherpa, used with permission)

  16. 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

  17. 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)

  18. 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-tag-plugin)

  19. Thin slicingURLs

  20. 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!

  21. Post title is anchor text. “Permalink” is yucky anchor text!

  22. “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!)

  23. 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

  24. 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

  25. Sticky post

  26. 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

  27. 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 seo@netconcepts.com • To contact me: stephan@netconcepts.com • Download... • PPT: http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/seo-mistakes.ppt • Article: http://searchengineland.com/070823-082758.php

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