JesCady» Search Engine Optimization Tips

The most important element of SEO

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:26:49 +0000

There are many elements involved in search engine optimization. SEO is like tiny pieces of a puzzle. When you have one piece, you don’t really see anything and it doesn’t really do anyone any good. If you have a couple of pieces you can start to make out what the puzzle is going to be. Once you get them all together, you have a pretty awesome picture of spring flowers. Or , in terms of SEO, people that conduct a search for a topic that you blog about are able to find not only your blog, but they are able to find content that is pretty gosh darn close, if not exactly, to what they were looking for. Isn’t that a wonderful thought. It’s like digital matchmaking or something.

But no matter how many pieces of the SEO puzzle you have, none are really quite as effective as providing QUALITY CONTENT (the one I need to work on most, yikes!). For example, someone might find you blog easily on a search but if you haven’t added a post in 6 months they may be unlikely to come back. Or if they find your blog and the content stinks, again, the are not going to link to your content (a.k.a. recommend your site to friend).

I don’t know about you guys, but for me, the content is often times the hardest piece of the puzzle. To try to overcome that I follow several blogs that are about improving content.

Copyblogger – Copywriting tips for online marketing success

Seth Godin – He is a marketing guru

ProBlogger – blogging tips to help you make money blogging

Chris Brogan – Focuses mainly on community and social media

Digital Photography School – Tips to improve the photography of your blog

If all else fails, I look for inspiration in my daily Google Alerts, which are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. They are pretty handy at helping you to stay current on a particular topic or industry.

The point of the story is, if you write good content, they will come. But if you couple good content with Search Engine Optimization and marketing, the right readers will show up faster.

I have decided to create a new weekly series of posts covering the topic of Search Engine Optimization for bloggers. I will post a new tip every Monday for the next several weeks. Some of the tips you may already be familiar with but I’m hoping that with each tip you get a better understanding of how Google robots crawl your site. Ultimately using that knowledge to apply those principles to other areas of your web site.

Now I’m not claiming to have hidden secrets that will send you to the top of a Google search. Also, there are no guarantees on how this will all work for your site. Anyone that promises these things isn’t telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But the principles I will discuss will not only help visitors to your site but will also help search engines index your site. So in my opinion it’s a win-win.

What is SEO?

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:28:02 +0000

So okay, I may have gotten a little ahead of myself since for the past four weeks I have been diving straight into ways to tackle SEO on your blog. So how about I back up about 10 ft and start at the beginning. What the heck is SEO?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. The way I like to explain it is that SEO is a bunch of concepts you can get in the habit of using to organize content and information on your site that makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site. But SEO only influences ORGANIC search results

The higher your site shows up on a search result, the more likely it is that you will have more visitors to your site. However, if you want to show up in the paid results area all you have to do is visit Google AdWords. But keep in mind you “PAY” for those results.

What I’m concerned with, as I’m sure many other bloggers are, is how can I affect the organic search results for FREE by doing it myself. And actually it’s pretty easy. There are some key areas of your blog that you can focus your SEO attention on to get started I’ve listed them below:

Page Titles
Meta Descriptions
URL Structures
Navigation
Links
Images
Quality Content

Don’t worry I’ll go into more detail on these later. For more information check out Wikipedia’s definition of SEO.

Are You Missing Out On One of The Best Free SEO Tools?

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:44:08 +0000

HubSpot is the maker of some pretty amazing inbound marketing tools that can be pretty useful for big organizations. However, as a blogger, you probably don’t have the resources or even the need for the super strong tools they offer. However, what you do have a need for is some of the free grading tools they offer. According to Grader.com they are a family of tools that help measure all that matters in inbound marketing. And it’s true they offer a Twitter Grader, a Facebook Grader, and a Book Grader just to name a few. But for your blog you will want to use the Website Grader.

The Website Grader is really quite simple to use. You only have to know your own url and email address and they take care of the rest. After you submit your information they take less than 5 minutes to scan your site. They compile all the information they gathered into a report provides you with information about when Google last crawled your website, how many pages Google indexed, the readability level, the number of incoming links, and so much more. You can then use your received grade and feedback to improve upon your blog.

Try it out at http://websitegrader.com

Can your domain registration affect SEO?

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:18:14 +0000

The quick answer is yes. The longer answer is you should register your domain name for the longest period of time you feel comfortable registering it as a blogger. The reason for this is that spam sites typically have a domain that will expire relatively soon. Because of this Google is cautious with any domain that has an approaching expiration date. So today’s quick lesson is for you to renew your domain registration early and for an extended period of time to remain in Google’s good graces.

I have decided to create a new weekly series of posts covering the topic of Search Engine Optimization for bloggers. I will post a new tip every Monday for the next several weeks. Some of the tips you may already be familiar with but I’m hoping that with each tip you get a better understanding of how Google robots crawl your site. Ultimately then using that knowledge to apply those principles to other areas of your web site.

Does Google Know Your Site Exists? – SEO Tips

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:32:47 +0000

have decided to create a new weekly series of posts covering the topic of Search Engine Optimization for bloggers. I will post a new tip every Monday for the next several weeks. Some of the tips you may already be familiar with but I’m hoping that with each tip you get a better understanding of how Google robots crawl your site. Ultimately then using that knowledge to apply those principles to other areas of your web site.

One really easy objective in search engine optimization is to make sure Google even knows your site exists. This can be done by going to Add URL for Google. All you have to do is enter your full url, including the “http://” part, and click submit. Now, the thing to keep in mind is Google makes no promises of if or when your site will be added to their indexes. But letting them know that your website is out there is really just as simple as entering your url.

If you want to see if your site has already been added to Google’s indexes all you have to do is add “site:” before your url (see example below). If you get a list of results that includes all of the pages of your site and it looks search results, only a little different then you are good to go. If you get an error message, you are not yet indexed but fear not, they will eventually get around to you, hopefully. Hope this helps.

Check if your site has been indexed by Google

Internal Linking the Correct Way – SEO Tips

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:00:56 +0000

I have decided to create a new weekly series of posts covering the topic of Search Engine Optimization for bloggers. I will post a new tip every Monday for the next several weeks. Some of the tips you may already be familiar with but I’m hoping that with each tip you get a better understanding of how Google robots crawl your site. Ultimately then using that knowledge to apply those principles to other areas of your web site.

The first topic on Search Engine Optimization I want to share is on internal linking of your blog. This is probably one of the best/easiest ways to increase the number of page views. When visitors happen to come across your blog they may only see one post. That one post may not be your best work. I mean come on, we all write a real stinker every now and then. Like my post on how I’m a huge nerd. But if that stinker of a post has some internal links to other posts that either pertain to the topic of discussion or to a post that you feel is your better work, the visitor can easily navigate to different posts and may continue to visit your site in the future because they found a couple of posts they enjoyed.

In addition, internal linking will help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s kind of like this; the more internal links you use in your site, the more popular Google robots think your site is. It’s like you can trick Google into thinking you’re the cool kid on campus. I wish this could work in every aspect of my life, but I digress.

Here are a couple of examples to help demonstrate the best way to create links in your posts.

Example 1: Worst

If you are looking for an archive of posts, click here.

Example 2: BAD

For more information visit http://jescady.com/archives-2/

Example 3: BEST

The Archives on my site are a good place to start looking for old posts.

This example is the best option because it describes the content that can be found on the page. Now visitors to your site and Google have some idea to what they are linking.

You can now use this knowledge to go forth and be great, or whatever.