SEO, what is it?

The acronym stands for Search Engine Optimization.  In plain English, it is a process used to improve the visibility of your blog in organic (unpaid) returns/responses to a search query by the search engines.  This strategy specifically considers how search engines work, and what people search for on the Internet.

Why is SEO important for your blog?

Simple:  if the search engines cannot understand what your blog is about, if you do not make it clear what kind of information you provide specifically on a subject or subjects, the search engines will not return your site information high enough for a given search term.  Without being found in the first two or three SERPs, you have little chance to attract like-minded readers.

Optimizing your Blog for Search:

Use your own unique URL and host it independently.  This is a major step if you are serious about blogging for your business or for monetary gain.

Hosting on a free platform does not provide a direct way to be found by the search engines and most do not permit you to monetize your blog, except in limited ways (think Google Ad Words vs. your own personalized sponsors with banner ads).

For blogs, it is very important to keep the information fresh!  Create a schedule and post regularly so your readers will know what to expect.  If you find you are not in the ‘creative mood’ to write, post a video or record a podcast!  Just be sure give those multimedia posts their own unique page and title.  Post about 250 words on the subject of the multimedia presentation and you are good to go!

One way to be sure your site is understood by the Search Engines is to optimize your site structure.  This involves editing the HTML and CMS.  Important design elements to SEO include:  menus, content management systems, shopping carts and internal links.  It also involves creating unique URLs, page titles, and XML site maps for submission to the engines, as well as human-designed site maps.

Another way to be sure your site is understood by the Search Engines is to optimize the text content of your posts. A great opportunity in blog formatting is to tag your content!  This allows you to create content that increase relevance to specific keywords you want to target for recognition, which will increase your prominence for those subjects.  Do a keyword search to see what terms or phrases rank highest for the subject you are writing about, and be sure to include a couple of those highly ranked terms or phrases in your text write up!  Just don’t overload your post with them or it will give you a bad reputation with the search engines!

Visual Elements tell the story, too.  Optimize video, photos and other media sources like mp3 and podcasts can also help your site rank high – multimedia sources are currently one of the most sought after types of information on the web!  As stated above, use alt tags and if you are able to describe in more detail, be sure to use about 150 words on the subject matter.  Just like text, be sure to do a keyword search to see what terms or phrases rank highest for the subject and be sure to include a couple of those highly ranked terms or phrases in your text write up!

The Human Factor:

In addition, Social Media optimization is critical to your success!  When you post to your blog, be sure to tweet it out on Twitter, share the post with a personal comment on Facebook and add to your LinkedIn profile.

If you post a video, be sure to optimize it where you place it (ie: YouTube), and then again in each place you distribute it to (posted to your blog, Facebook, etc) for the best results.  That is just the start!

Don’t forget that your blog is also a social venue! Write for humans and create content that is emotional (sad, funny, outrageous, angry)!  Tell a good story – because sharing stories that seem too private to tell online will get your point across and will make readers want to connect.  Give advice on how to do something.  Review a service or product.  Post guest Interviews or invite a guest blogger who resonates with your readers, then allow them to participate or comment.  This will create an interactive venue for you readers to start a conversation with you.

Be sure to have an option for the posts to be delivered via an email subscription or make an RSS feed available for readers who want to subscribe using a reader!  In turn, you will grow your readership and gain trusted inbound links – each of which cast a “vote” for your site with the Search Engines!

Monetization:  My advice is to grow your following before you try to overtly monetize your site.  While you are growing it, you can certainly write posts about related services and products, BUT, you MUST disclose any type of relationship you have with them, in accordance with FCC ethics rules, or risk a $10,000 per incident fine.

For more information on these ideas, visit:

4 Tips for Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

The Blogger’s Guide to SEO

The Professional’s Guide to Blogging

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

Ever hire an SEO Agency and when you start asking questions about their work, they respond by saying “Leave all that to us, we are the experts”, or “It’s a mix of science and art, very hard to explain, but we know exactly what we are doing!”

Yeah, well you aren’t the only one.  Many of our clients have experienced that and many paid a LOT of money and never really knew what they were paying for.  Sure, it’s a science.  After learning a decent amount of  SEO, I can tell you – very few clients will want to try this on their own – it is definitely a FULL TIME  job that most of then would not care to deal with.  Thus, why is it such a secret?!

Many of my clients simply tell me, “it appears to be working”, but when I ask them for specifics, I get a “deer in headlights” look and nothing further comes from their mouth.  I guess they are treating it like “insurance” against being invisble”,  which is crazy because if they have decent content they will be in pretty good shape – certainly not invisible.

Apparently, this must be very common, because Google just announced they will REQUIRE partner Agencies to be transparent to their customers when using Google services such as AdWords.  When this goes into effect in February 2011, the Agency MUST disclose specific elements to their clients (and the client will receive a report directly), which include:

Clicks

Impressions

Spend

This will give Google the credit for the results, whereas now the Agency does not have to disclose the information and can take full credit for their “wizardry” when things go well, and disclaim everything, or get paid for more “needed” changes when things go bad.  This WILL affect those agencies who are not transparent – probably in a negative way.  However, it will affect Google in a positive way – with hundreds of thousands of accounts under third party management, it will now shine a bright light on, and weed out, bad SEO Agencies so that the negativity does not attach to Google itself.

This has been coming – it was initiated in the API terms of service years ago, then was admended, then conversation began again and a common phrase was being echoed by Google:   “Mythbusting”, I heard it many times in various conversations about transparency.

In conclusion, despite the Agencies who are going to rail against this,  I say:   TRANSPARENCY =  GOOD.  Just as in any other buying scenario, the more educated your buyer is, the better the sale.  This is simply good business and, I still believe, that most of the buyers will not go out and try to do it themselves – but at the same time, they will finally have some input into the process and will feel like they are buying a quality service instead of snake oil!

KUDOS to Google!!