I am reading some great books and articles on marketing and Wordpress. I have finally begun to understand why Wordpress is so popular; it does a lot of the SEO for you! There are plugins for everything and I will be exploring many of them as I revamp our Tipping Paint Artists website.
I am going to start with the blog. I have just finished reading Internet Marketing with Wordpress by David Mercer. It’s a concise, easy to read book that covers the ways that WordPress can work for you to get your message out there. There are books on SEO that go into the behind the scenes work; with WordPress you don’t have to go behind the scenes, it takes care of that! You get to concentrate on the most important part of SEO – consistently writing high quality content that is relevant to your topic, and being persistent! I know I have room for improvement in the high quality arena but my weakest area is the persistent one which is why my New Year’s resolution is again ‘to keep up with my blog’!
I want to share with you Mr. Mercer’s list of Dos and Don’ts for blogging.
Dos
- Choose a relevant domain name. Most people have purchased their domain name before getting to the blog stage, it’s hard to set up a blog without one. Is the domain name relevant to your business or what you are trying to promote or is it cute? A cute/fun name only helps if it is directly related to what you are doing. You want the domain name to contain words that would be used in a search if possible. My domain name, skjonesart.com, would have been better if Susan had been available but there are a lot of S Jones and Susan Jones out there on the internet!
- Create relevant page and post titles. This seems like a no-brainer but it is awful tempting to use creative titles that are witty. Search engines don’t understand wit and need keywords to list your blog appropriately.
- Use SEO keywords and phrases in link text. ‘Click here’ doesn’t tell Google much about the link and links are one of the best ways to get Google’s attention. So make the reference to the subject matter you are linking to the active link like I did above.
- Create interesting content that is highly relevant to your niche. First you have to determine your niche… This is very important because it is a waste of time and energy to write good content that is geared to people that won’t appreciate what you do and will not become a customer or repeat visitor. It is also important to think about what will interest your desirable reader; keep them coming back with relevant content.
- Use Alt and Title attributes for images. When you insert a picture into a WordPress blog, a pop-up gives you a lot of options and asks for a lot of information. I’m usually in a hurry and skip the Alt and Title attribute section but no more…Alt makes your site more user friendly, it allows the disabled to use a reading device and know what is on the page. It also shows while the image is loading so that the reader will know what’s coming. Outside of being nice to others, the alt also helps the search bots because they can’t ‘read’ a picture. The more you can include about the image and the way it relates to your purpose, the better for good SEO.
- Use keywords naturally and where appropriate. The previous Dos tell you to use keywords in everything but you have to be careful. Remember you are talking to people and not search bots! It would be very boring to read something that was overrun with keywords and search bots might penalize you, thinking that you are spam. It’s a fine balance!
- Encourage people to link to your site or blog. You have to tell people that you have a blog and website. The best way to do this is through social networking and becoming an active participant in other blogs and forums. You can’t be shy, you have to ask people to link to your blog and to quote your content (with attribution of course). You can interest other bloggers by commenting on their blogs and asking them to comment on yours. Set up and use a signature that contains a link back to your site or blog.
- Proofread every blog at least once. I always find mistakes that the software doesn’t pick up on. Proofreading is also good practice for your comments on other blogs and on forums; if there are too many errors, I always discount the author and wonder if it is spam generated.
Don’ts
- Create duplicate content. I thought I had keeping up with 3 blogs under control. I’d write one blog entry and then post it to the other 2. Not a good idea, search bots are pretty smart! The less obvious problem comes with duplicate content on the same site. The Robots Meta plugin helps WordPress keep search bots from searching legit duplicate content within your web site.
- Copy other people’s content. Information on the web is copy righted just like printed work and those smart search bots will recognize it as duplicate content.
- Link to too many external sites on every page.
- Stuff your content with keywords.
- Write content for search engines – remember to write for the people reading it.
- Create pages with little or no content; you’ll loose your visitor.
- Use images or other media without text or Alt information.
No comments:
Post a Comment