Now that you have set up your Transmitter to support your Online Marketing activities as described in an earlier article you need to think about how to maximise its range. This takes us into the murky area of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)Strategies
Image Source:www.chelseamclean.com
Purpose of this article
This article is about how to ensure that your blog transmitter is set up in a way which a) can be properly accessed (crawled and indexed) by the major search engines such as Google and b) is configured to best reach your intended audience of users who are searching for your topics over a web browser.
FIRST A WORD OF WARNING.....
This area is known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and in my view is the "Wild west of the web" with a large number of tools, websites and "experts" who commonly make outlandish claims often based on dubious and unproven practices for what they can do for the unsuspecting business person.
There are almost as many opinions on how to do effective SEO as there are different practitioners so what I will cover here are the absolute minimum things you must do - in other words the basics on which (I hope) most people agreed really add value.
I will follow quite closely the Google approach embodied in Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) and generally avoid the mountain of other third-party tools as there are simply too many for me to offer any useful and grounded opinions on.
Structure of this Article
Here are the 4 key areas I cover in this article:
- Blog Submission: The Key Places to Register Your Blog
- Blog Configuration: Sorting out your "Blog Hygiene Factors"
- Blog Tuning: Constantly improving your blog
- Blog Monitoring: how to check if your blog is achieving its goals
1. Blog Submission: The Key Places to Register Your Blog
Now that you have gone to the trouble of setting up a blog with nicely laid out strong content you need to take advantage of those other sites on the internet who already have a huge audience which can gain you exposure:
a) Technorati
Technorati is the number one established place where blogs get aggregated. You need to open and account, register your blog and confirm that you are in fact its owner. Other top blog directories you should submit too include Google Blogsearch, Blogarama and Blogpulse. Google also suggest you register with other similar sites such as Daypop, Blogdex and Popdex although I have not tried these myself.
b) Blog Directories and Search Engines
Here are 3 good lists of Blog Directories and Search Engines you should also consider submitting your blog to:
http://www.wordsinarow.com/blog-registration.html
http://www.aripaparo.com/archive/000632.html
http://middleofchina.blogspot.com/2010/01/top-10-blog-directories-to-submit-your.html
Don't waste your time submitting to all of them - pick a selection which make sense based on your blog topic and intended audience.
As at August 2010 a good number of these are no longer operational or have stopped accepting submissions or are no longer free. Here is my list of 21 sites which were definitely working and free as at August 2010:
Blogarama, Blogdigger, Icerocket( formerly Blog search engine), RDFTicker, Blogged, Blogrankings, Blogtopsites, Blogcatalog, Blogexplosion, Wikio, Dmegs, Blogsitelist, Blogwebdirectory, Blogdire, A Blogin Blog Directory, ABC Blog Directory, Britblog, Bloghints, Blogdigger, Weblogalot and Topblogarea
c) Mobile Blogging Sites
It is also worth submitting your blog to one of the free "mobilizing" sites such as:
for more on mobilizing a blog see How to deploy Your Blog or Website to mobile phone.
You can then either automatically redirect mobile browsers to these sites or have a button on your main blog where the user can decide if they wish to be redirected. (I prefer the button option to automatic redirection as using the new generation of smart phones (embodied by the iphone) the normal full web browsing experience can sometimes be better than the mobile-specific version - its really a matter of user taste.
Each time you submit your blog you will be asked to enter the same information over and over again. To make this easier for you I recommend you create a Blog Summary Sheet for your blog which captures all the information shown in the figure below in a single place which you can use to copy and paste into all your submissions:
2. Blog Configuration: Sorting out "Blog Hygiene Factors"
a) Google Analytics
To enable you to track visit activity on your blog you should set-up an account for Google Analytics and create an entry for each blog site you wish to track. You do this by embedding the appropriate HTML code (for more on Google Analytics see earlier in my article The Blog Transmitter).
b) Google WebMaster Tools (GWMT)
According to wikipedia Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) is a no-charge web service by Google for webmasters which allows them to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. GWMT includes tools that let webmasters:
- Submit and check a sitemap
- Check and set the crawl rate, and view statistics about how Googlebot accesses a particular site
- List internal and external pages that link to the site
- See what keyword searches on Google led to the site being listed in the Search engine results page and the click through rates of such listings
- View statistics about how Google indexes the site, and if it found any errors while doing it
c) Sitemaps
GWMT also allows you to submit a "Sitemap" to Google (note that Blogger blogs are supposed to do this automatically although there is some debate about whether this always works correctly). Sitemaps are just a list of the pages on your website and to help make sure that Google and other search engines know about all the pages on the site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by the normal crawling process.
To set-up a sitemap you can use any number of free Sitemap Generators and then submit it to Google using GWMT.
d) Decide and set-up your initial description and keywords
You need to set-up your blog description and a list of keywords - this involves inserting some simple HTML into your blog. These should reflect your content and the phrases you believe visitors will be keying into search engines to try and find you. These keywords will change (see later in this article) but it is worth setting up your initial versions by entering the appropriate HTML code in the header section of your blog between the "head" and "close head" statements.
e) Twiddle your thumbs and wait for GWMT to find you!
The good news is that GWMT provides an excellent summary of the shape your blog is in with respect to SEO. The bad news is that this can sometimes take a few weeks to become active depending on the backlog. So you need to keep coming back to the page to check which can be frustrating when you are trying to get things moving fast!
3. Blog Tuning: Constantly improving your blog
Here is an example of the GWMT dashboard for my blog at www.bioteams.com which has been running for a number of years:
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| Google WebMaster Tools - Screenshot for www.bioteams.com |
- Search Queries
- Links
- Crawler Errors
- Keywords
a) Crawler Errors
You should look at these first as they indicate that search engines are finding problems and encountering missing links inside your blog which will cause you problems during searches.
b) Search Queries and Keywords
These are used together to optimize your blog using an iterative process along the following lines:
1. What keywords do I think people will search on for my site and content
2. How popular are these keywords (using "Keyword Research" Tools like Google Adwords)
3. Are there more popular keywords that suit my blog
4. Do I need to change the keywords in my blog.
5. What about my article titles and tags?
This is an area where you need to apply common sense. For example if you pick your keywords based purely on their popularity and they are not consistent with the actual context of your site then you will be penalised heavily by the search engines. Google Adsense is an excellent free tool you can use here for Keyword Research (along with many others both free and paid).
c) Links
Link building is a key aspect of promoting your blog - in simple terms you need to try and make sure your blog is referenced by high-traffic blogs (see section 4 under Google Page Rank) in the same broad topic areas. There is little value in developing links with sites which are low in popularity or sites which are high in popularity but in totally different areas from your blog.
4. Blog Monitoring: how to check if your blog is achieving its goals
Now that you have developed your blog transmitter you need to monitor that it is growing and reach your intended audience
You should track its performance on Google Analytics - initially on a weekly basis but once the visitor activity grows you will probably check it more frequently. Bear in mind that Google Analytics is not real-time (you will need a paid analytics tool if you want this) - it operates a day late so you can't post a great blog article in the morning and then check how its doing in the afternoon.
And on a monthly/quarterly basis should also be checking other key indicators such as:
a) Google Page Rank
Google describes PageRank as "reflecting our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.
Google PageRank Runs from 0 (very low) to 10 (very high) and a great target for a business blog is 4 or 5.
b) Alexa Rankings
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and website. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behaviour which is transmitted to the website where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's web traffic reporting.
The Alexa Traffic Rank is an indication of how popular your site is in the form or an international and a national league table. It also provides a host of other useful statistics as highlighted in the image below of an Alexa page for www.bioteams.com showing site info, visitor demographics and search queries:
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| Alexa Screenshot for www.bioteams.com |
Technologies mentioned in this article:
SEO Tools
Google WebMaster Tools
Google Adsense
Blog Directories
Technorati etc
Mobile Blogging
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Great article, Ken! It will bring a excellent result for the site. Again, great job!
ReplyDeleteYou really need to update your blog more often with unique and interesting content if you want to build an atmosphere that encourages return visits.
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