I began researching keywords for my introduction to my blog. Not quite as easy as I had hoped, I think because the of my topic. SEO techniques as a keyword is already quite popular with about a million web pages dedicated to it. I guess SEO is too broad, and according to the long-tail theory I need something more niche’. I have my doubts about how to achieve this. The research tools I used for keyword research was Yahoo Search Marketing. This gave the number of times that it has been searched for over the last month. I also tried WordTracker because they have a free 2 hour trial. The results of most everything I tried related to the blog came back as a bad choice for targeting. WordTracker couldn’t find anything on “SEO to-do list”. So I started investigating by Googling the term. There are a couple of pages with this term and as I was pleasantly surprised to find my own website within the top 10!
March 9, 2007
Building Website Popularity
I’ve come to realize that building popularity of your website is similar to how you cultivate your friends. There are some relationships you enjoy and there are some that you avoid. Relationships you enjoy you put forth more effort in maintaining them; you call more often, visit, or email. If you want significant traffic to your website, you have to do the same. First order is to provide quality content that people can use or enjoy. Next is to put yourself out there and be available on some social networks like Technorati; this is much like dating, isn’t it? When you find worthy websites, start linking to them, then put forth the effort to monitor those sites for reciprocal links. When you start spreading the link love, it will find it’s way back to you.
I really like this website for SEO topics.
March 2, 2007
Dreamweaver Microformats Extension
I’m working on a list of resources for the resources page. I tried out the Dreamweaver microformats extension. The first thing I tried to do in Dreamweaver was select some text and click the XFN button. I “encountered a problem” and the application was immediately shut down. No matter that I was trying to write one of these posts; luckily, I hadn’t written a whole sentance before trying out my new toolbar. I opened it and tried it two more times with the same results. Being an old-time Windows gal, I figured the solution (to everything Windows related) is to reboot. I did, and tried it again with the same result. I was totally disgusted at the whole episode, and now I try the hCard button. I was happy to receive a pop-up dialoge box to help me fill out the hCard. Seems the problem was only with the XFN feature. I didn’t proceed to publish the hCard though; I’m discovering it’s not always appropriate to use this. I was referring to Chris Pearson in my previous post, so I simply linked to his bio. I don’t see where an hCard would be beneficial at that point. The only thing I know about him is his website I stumbled upon.
SEO
I was reading Manny’s Blog and found a nice website about SEO by Chris Pearson. Pearson explains a couple of things you can do to increase traffic to your website. I really like his idea about providing Google images. He shows that in his webstats, about 50% of his traffic lately is due to people searching Google images. The keyword arena is fiercely competitive and difficult to obtain traffic; however, the Google images searches are less competitive. If you can provide images that people want, they will come to your site for the image, and there’s automatic traffic.
Some other ideas are to utilize dynamic title pages. Word Press is already doing that for us. I like his reason for using two site maps instead of one. One is XHTML and the other is XML (Google). The XML site map is supplied for the search engines to crawl your site. The XHTML site map is for making sure your pages are interlinked, and to help users find information.
February 23, 2007
Long-Tail Theory
So now you’ve carefully chosen your keywords and you have placed them in your content. Keywords appear in your titles and also in your URLs. Expect to see a rise to the top? Not so fast. There are lots of web pages ahead of you.
Now lets explore the long-tail theory. You may have chosen keywords that are too broad or over used by the web population. For keywords to be effective, they have to be more specific and more tailored than the other websites. Example: your site is about boats, and you have used the keyword boat. Boat is too broad a keyword; zero in on a niche’ market. Change “boat†to a type of boat, like “Super Air Nautiqueâ€. This will get you out of the flood of “boat†words, into a more narrow stream.
What are Keywords?
Keywords are words that describe your site.
Keywords have to be carefully chosen to represent your site. No longer can web designers depend on metadata to describe the site. Search Engines have become sophisticated enough to go beyond metadata, but no one really knows exactly what the algorithms are for searches.
It’s believed that linking is favored by search engines more than anything else. If other people like your site enough to directly reference it using a hyperlink, that has credibility, and you move up in the search result rankings.
Besides inbound links, the search engines “crawl†through the website looking for what the site is about so it knows how to index it. If you choose your keywords carefully, you can attract your desired readers. Just make sure that the titles you use (page or otherwise) contain the keywords you desire. Same goes for URLs, so think twice before you name your next HTML page.
February 21, 2007
Trackbacks
I am testing a trackback. If I understand it correctly, I refer to Susan’s blog here, and her blog recognizes that I have talked about her post, and refers back to my blog (?).
She wrote an article I really like while she was looking for general answers.
February 16, 2007
Technorati and Microformats
I claimed my blog at Technorati then I had a look around to see what the heck it really is. Spiders! Everywhere! It’s an index of blogs that get crawled by spiders for content, and makes that content findable through searches. I can immediately see why this is important. While I don’t really care about most of the CRAP people blog about, what if I wanted to know what people thought about a particular product before I buy? I can’t trust the seller, so I turn to other buyers opinions. The average Joe’s blog can be lost in the big sea of Google and Yahoo, but Technorati makes it findable. It has the pulse of American (worldly?) culture right now, and is an indication of what general, public opinion is today. It’s easy to use and even has a cute sidekick, the mini. It’s a window that stays open on the desktop with a refresh every 60 seconds for up-to-the-minute hot topics. When the blogging society starts using Microformats, I’ll be able to zero in on product & movie reviews. No more listening to the paid TV critics, whom I often suspect are endorsed by the parent companies of the movie makers. I will trust the OVERALL thoughts and blogs of the every-day average Joes collectively, before I trust a seller.
SEO To-Do List
I have learned much about how to create findable websites from my professor Aarron Walter at the Art Institute of Atlanta. There is so much content on the subject of SEO, that I decided to create myself a to do list and share it with you here in an abbreviated version:
- Define keywords and insert them into H tags, metatags, filenames, and link titles
- Link to my classmates blogs, and hope that they reciprocate
- Use microformats and XFN to identify my professor and classmates
- Create a sitemap; Google Sitemap Generator has WordPress plugins
- Change WordPress permalinks to display date and name
- Modify header.php file to display the title of the post instead of just “blog archiveâ€
- Validate pages for XHTML strict
- Claim blog at Technorati
- Register site with search engines
This is just a summation of SEO white hat tactics. More detailed information may be obtained directly from Aarron Walter’s site.
February 9, 2007
Have a Mint
I decided to install Mint; my first analytics package. After passing the compatibility testing, I paid my $30 to get an activation key emailed to me. I retrieved the key and went back to Mint. It thanked me for purchasing Mint. Then I didn’t know what to do. I expected some instructions, or at least a “download†button on that same screen. It took me several minutes to find the download area.; it’s labeled “stay up to date†which lead me to believe that was for upgraders. The readme text for the install is 3 printed pages, which I thought “you’ve got to be kiddingâ€, but the actual instructions for a new install was only a couple lines, and the rest of the reading was for upgrading. Other than being annoyed that I couldn’t find the download button, the install was fairly painless. I think I’ll like it better tomorrow, or at least when I can see some hits. It’s pretty depressing to see all zeros in all categories. I feel a new motivation to get my newly learned findability techniques implemented.