Tag Archives: SEO

August 15, 2012 · 12:07 pm

Writing Content | Adding Value


Four Keys For Creating Great Posts

Getting chosen to be on the first two or three pages of anyone of the Big Three SE’s , is becoming a lot like trying to make it onto one of the Olympic teams; you may look good  with all your fancy theme’s, widgets, share buttons and Twitter feeds;  but if you’re not posting quality content on a regular basis, you might as well pack up your gym bag and go home.

It wasn’t that long ago that all it took to find our posts on the first one or two pages of Google’s infamous SEO,  was stuffing it with mystical codes, popular tags and cleverly placed  hyperlinks.  Given enough fairy dust , elf runes and magical wands, even the worst blogger could make themselves appear on the first page of at least one of the Big Three.

But those days of technical wizardry  and sleight of hand are pretty much over. According to guest author, Rich Gorman  in his article,  “How to Write Online Content that Appeals to (Almost) Everybody“,  Google  has now made it nearly impossible for posers to get away with luring unsuspecting readers to their sites by using misleading information.

Now, with the help of nano-sized spiders, programs like Panda and Penguin are able to crawl over our web sites, read our mail, digest  our content and return  to their masters loaded down with all the information needed  for the powers on high to determine where  our sites and their posts get ranked.

So what is it that the Big Three are looking for? How do the powers that be determine which sites get chosen and which  get left in outfield? And even more important, what can you and I do to give ourselves a fighting chance so that we’re consistently  hit home runs?

“…write as if you’re sitting in the same room as those who read you, keep them entertained, 

and don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s you they’ve drop by to see.”

In reality, search engines are looking for the same things as readers; quality content, consistency in posting and eye catching presentation. In Heidi Cohen’s post on creating compelling content, she gives a lists of some of the key ingredients that can help us do that;  strong headlines,  strategically structured paragraphs, and well placed bold font.

But what are some of the things that will attract new readership as well as keep the ones we already have?  What will peak their attention, bully their thoughts and provoke their interest time and time again?

I started thinking about what it was that drew me to add someone to my own reader board. What was it about their content that made them interesting enough for me to copy that URL and drop it into my Google Reader board?

Here are the four keys I use to judge content.

  • Write posts that add value: If people are following our posts, then we owe it to them to write about things that gives our niche readership something  that add to who they are, and can be tucked away in a folder for their own articles or future posts.
  • Speak the language: Every niche has a language all its own. Techno geeks speak Techneez; journalists speak Journaleez and emerging authors ….well we’re still trying to learn how to speak Authoreez. Don’t waste the reader’s time speaking a language that has nothing to do with them. Whatever your niche audience is, write to that.
  • Know what’s hot and what’s not: Look for topics that are either filling Twitter feeds and Face Book, or ones that are just now breaking on the scene. Several months ago I came across a little blurb on the horizon about Amanda Havard and a new Ebook technology called  Immersedition.  At the time of my original posting, little to nothing was being said about the author, her book or the company her father founded.  Now she’s getting ready to publish her third book in the Survivor’s Series and she’s headline news.
  • Write for your audience: With all the information available at the click of a mouse or the push of a finger, it’ s totally unrealistic for any of us to try to write for everyone. So write as if you’re sitting in the same room as those who read you, keep them entertained,  and don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s you they’ve drop by to see.

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June 22, 2012 · 6:00 am

Tag | You’re It


Do you remember as a kid playing a game called Tag-Your It, where there were no balls, bats, batons or objects of any kind involved.  Just a group of children  running around, touching each other and passing an imaginary tag of your ‘It’ on to someone else.  There wasn’t anything other than our own imaginations to signify what we were doing or who we were trying to reach.  

Unlike the imaginary tag we played as children the tags we use today on our web and blog sites are far more visible, but as with our childhood game, may not play as vital a role in where we find our web-blog sites, articles and press releases on a search engines list page as we are so often led to believe.  In the bigger picture of site mapping and  SEO rankings, what search engines like  Google, Yahoo and Bing are looking for may have more to do with  what they find in your profile, the title of your page or article, it’s opening paragraphs and overall style-content than with any particular tag or key word attributes.  

Back in the early to late 1990′s the use of tags and keywords played a vital role in how SE’s rated-ranked you on their list page of websites. But as more and more unscrupulous webmaster’s found ways to use this information as a means to nefariously woo reader’s  into their own sites, all the SE’s (except for Inforseek and AltaVista)  moved away from using this model. 

 In an effort to separate the wheat from the tares they began to spread the criteria net of ranking wider and wider by taking into consideration things like; overall appearance of your sites structure, ease of navigation, text anchoring, style and content.  And of course there was still the all powerful HTML, Meta tags, URL structure, sitemaps, schema tagging, rich data snippets, web crawling and indexing. 

On Google’s  Webmaster Tools site they clarified this even further by saying, Focusing too hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site’s best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines, but your ultimate consumers are your users, not search engines”. 

Now this may all sound really great to someone who see’s the world through code and syntax, but to the average writer such as myself, once you get past the part where we’re talking about content, style and anchored text, you have pretty much lost me. 

Oh I get the ‘tag’ part simply because it’s not that difficult to understand the need for words, phrases or ideas that help a reader connect the dots from one page to the next.  And if I really want to stretch myself, I’ll force my brain to try to partially wrapped  itself around the codes written into my site’s name (and even then it will take at least two cups of really strong coffee). But as soon as we start talking about ‘meta-data’, HTML, improved URL’s and creepy crawler robot’s rummaging through my web-blog site, you’ve completely lost me. 

So what is the solution? How does an emerging author or writer like myself get their web-blog site or article on the first one or two pages of SE’s such as Google, Yahoo or Bing where it can be seen and used? 

Do we go back to school and learn how to write code, design websites and use software such as Adobe Dreamweaver, HTML Editor or Web Studio 5.0? Or if that doesn’t float our boat, maybe we could hire someone to design our sites for us so that we not only dazzle our reader’s but meet all the criteria popular SE’s are looking for. 

What will it take to move our site or prose from obscurity to front page news? 

I don’t know about the rest of you, but if I had wanted to be a web designer I would not have taken all those creative writing classes, and if I had the money to pay someone to design the site for me, I’d be working on the edit to my book as well as strategizing on the best way to publish and promote it instead of researching this blog.  

So what’s the answer? We know that it’s important to be socially visible on the net. We also know that there are only so many hours in a day and being a writer of any kind will use up most of them.  And with the added responsibility of having to do the majority of the promoting and marketing of our literary wares,  how do we balance the need to do all we can to make our sites attractive enough to draw reader’s and SE,  without abandoning the central reason for having the site in the first place? 

In the process of digging out the answer for myself I’ve come across some great advice, and not surprisingly some of the best came from Google’s Webmaster Tool site itself. 

In Google’s help manual,  Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (originally written for Google’s own web teams),  Google not only cover’s the technical aspects for optimizing a websites best chance for getting on the first one or two pages of their list site, but they also give some really helpful advice on things that you and I (the author and finisher of our web-blog sites) can do that will not only improve the overall look and feel of it, but will actually (in this humble writer’s opinion) improve our credibility as writer’s as well. 

And the best part is, it won’t’ take us hours and hours of pouring over other sites to get what we need (though  it was the hours I personally spent doing just that, that finally rooted out an article where they gave me a link to one of Google’s site ranking tools ) In the guide they have a section on creating unique page titles, improving site structure,  making site navigation easier, incorporating images, optimizing content and using analysis tools so that you’ll  know where you are as far as real-time site viewing and link use etc. 

And for the geekier minded, there is still plenty of techie stuff to keep the blood pressure going. 

The bottom line? For just a few hours investment, people like you and me can create a pretty decent web or blog-site by combing an aesthetically pleasing site, great content and easy navigation. Through engaging content,  a site structure easy enough for my Granny Melba to use (and don’t think Granny can’t shuttle her way around a blog site)  and thoughtfully chosen words we can turn strangers into visitors, visitors into friends and friends into a community of followers that will help keep our names on the first two pages of search engines. 

So what steps have you taken to raise your list ratings? Are there any tricks of the trade that you’ve found that helped move your article from obscurity to visibility? Share the ride and post your comments here.

 From the laptop of an uncensored dreamer

SSpjut

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May 28, 2012 · 2:01 am

In Search of the Perfect News Reader


In Search of ……..

In my last Intelligent Blogging post, “Where Did That Blog Go?”  I began investigating the RSS Reader board tool, its use and why you and I, as writers, need to be found on someone’s other than our mother’s. 

But between my last post and this,  I’ve discovered that my current iGoogle Reader  tool is outdated and looks like it’s on a slippery slide out the back door of discarded technology, as Google once again morph’s into its newer version  Google+ in an attempt to make themselves more appealing and user-friendly (Ouch! I hate it when I get comfy with something just about the time the techno boys and girls start changing it out for something better.). 

Yet I am discovering that not all change is bad. 

Take this switch up from the old iGoogle Reader to the newer Google+ for example.  I may not be crazy about the way the dashboard looks (too many features on Home Page that gives it a cluttered feeling), but I have to say that they’ve made subscribing to RSS feeds, creating subject folders and moving subscriptions back and forth between folders 100% better and easier than iGoogle Reader does. 

 For starters, if I want to add a new RSS feed to my Reader board in iGoogle, I have to leave my Reader, find their Widget page and create a new Widget for each feed I want to follow.  And if I forget to create an initial file folder prior to adding the feed, I have to go through the very tedious process of creating the file, going back to each subscription, opening>copying the URL  and re-adding it to my new folder all over again. 

In the great big world of drag and drop, why they’ve created such a drawn out process I couldn’t tell you. For those of us who have allowed ourselves the maximum amount of one cup of coffee per new learning curve, it is highly unlikely I will get around to cleaning up the Reader Page any time soon.

So you can imagine my utter delight to have discovered that the Google+ Reader (you can access via your iGoogle tool bars More tab) is everything I could hope for. With this new and improved version I can add new feeds by simply copying thier URL, clicking on the file I want to put it in, open the Subscribe tab, paste  and it’s done. A new feed in my sidebar.

And  if I subscribe to a feed before I’ve created a file, no problem. I mosey on over  go to the  ‘Feed Settings‘ tab, choose ‘New Folder‘, name it whatever I want, then skip on down to  the left sidebar and drag my new subscription into my new folder.  If I want to rename either my feed or Folder>Tag, I can do that to0 by simply  going to the upper right hand quadrant of my Reader Page, click the Gear drop down Widget, go to Reader Settings then click on Subscriptions or the Rename cannister to the right.  

With just a few clicks, a couple of drag and drops, and presto change-o, I’ve subscribed to my favorite feeds, created folders to put them in and had a change of mind all within the time it takes to drink that second cup of joe.

 Matter of fact, it’s so perfect I may have a donut to celebrate.

Now before I leave off, I did promise that I’d let you know how my comparison RSS feed choice Blogline, measured against iGoogle and (now of course Google+).

Not good.  I like that it offers me several options as to how I can view my Reader Tabs (or Widgets), and unlike iGoogle and Google+, the Home page is clean and neat. Also the Blogline Reader board  offers a fabulous assortment of SM Widgets that puts sites like Twitter, FB, Digg, Delicious etcetera at your fingertips (another one stop shopping experience).

But that’s where cool ended.  After copying the RSS feed URL, I then had to import it onto a separate board and look at it before I could  add it to my folder (instead of importing the subscription directly to the sidebar) .

And if I accidentally put it in the wrong folder, well I never did figure out how to delete or move it, so there are still subscriptions filed under wrong folders. 

The cool Widgets I mentioned earlier? I was only ever able to get one (Twitter) to open up on the Home Page  but it said the connection was corrupt. The rest remain a mystery.

All in all,  Blogline Reader was a disappointing experience.

 At the end of the afternoon, both iGoogle and Google+ still had my vote for Most User Friendly RSS Reader’s.  Sure I’d like to have SM Widgets available on my Home Page, and yes it would be nice to have an uncluttered look. But if I have to choose between neat and ease of use, I’m going with ease of use every time.

Like everyone else working to hone their skills and talents as a writer, I have more to do in a day than I have hours to do it in, and if I have to waste my time finding something or struggle to add it to my box of blogging tools, then it’s time to let that bad boy go and move on.

 From the laptop of an uncensored dreamer

SSpjut

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May 23, 2012 · 3:07 am

Morphing at the Speed of Light


 

 

Writer’s Stardate: 5-23-2012

Writers, Blogger’s and Wannabe’s: 

Recently I have had to put a temporary hiatus to the re-write on my novel while I invest in the more pressing socialistic needs of finding a way to pay the bills. This necessary pause has been both painful as wells as enlightening.  

 In my last post In Search of SEO’s I mentioned that I had been given the opportunity to do some free-lance writing for friends of mine who are in the birthing stages of a new company, and are themselves in the midst of the flux capacitor of change that is causing all of us involved to morph (whether we like it or not) at the speed of light. 

And as with all cosmic forces of change, this current one is causing the left part of my brain (the A-Type > analytical > cathectic > card-carrying > post-it-note personality) to wake up on three out of ten mornings on the cusp of yet another panic attack muttering, “My God girl, you are so far over your head right now that drowning you would be an act of mercy.” 

Yet it’s those other seven days of right brain > free-falling bliss (the other two-thirds of me that  loves jumping off cliffs, developing wings on my way down and screaming, “What’s the worst that can happen?”),  that comes fully awake asking the Lord, “So where to now Kemosabe?” 

 Even if my right brain hasn’t figured it out yet, at least the left side knows that once again we’re on a great adventure and the possibilities for treasure are endless. 

But just so my faithful follower’s don’t think I’ve abandoned myself entirely to the ‘crass-ism of socialism’, I have delegated three days a week to blog on my own site, work on my SM platform and edit my non-fiction book (which I hope to have finished by the end of this summer). I also have plans to begin a second non-fiction book that follows along the same lines as the first (I already have a title, theme as well as a loose outline). Throw into that mix the work I’m doing to help my new employers get their own business and books up and running, and you’d have to admit that my cup doth runneth over. 

There are tons of opportunities in this new season of my life to soak up some really great information. If someone had come up a year and a half ago and asked me what I was doing to develop my SM platform, build an internet relationships and get my name and work out where other’s could read and give me feedback, I’d have stared at them for thirty seconds, tried to swallow past the terror of ignorance and made up something that I hoped would have been misleading enough that most people wouldn’t know just how clueless I really was. 

Yet now when I read terms like content, tag, categories, ping, SM, SEO, SMM, Ezine etc I not only feel all warm and fuzzy, but I can nod in all the right places, swallow with relative ease and actually add to the conversation. And I don’t feel the least bit stupid stopping someone and asking them to explain some new technology, writing tool or networking term I have neither seen nor heard before. 

So the fictional work may have to simmer on the creative back burner of my right brain for a little while longer, but I am convinced, that by the time I am able to go back and once again make writing my novel a priority, I will not only have become a much more skillfully honed writer,  but will have a social media platform that will make even the left side of my brain lean back, pull on its long-handled mustache and say, “Well I’ll be darned. She figured it out after all.” 

And for those of you that are sharing similar unmapped experiences, you’ll be able to appreciate what that means. 

From the laptop of an uncensored dreamer

SSpjut

 

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May 21, 2012 · 2:40 am

Where Did That Blog Go?


It may be that I’m a woman or that I simply do not want to know the details, but if I’m going to use a site consistently, then it needs to be easy on the eye as well as on the brain. If the new do-dad or widget or what have you requires that I spend more than thirty minutes clicking, dragging and dropping, then it better have a greater  than 80% success ratio or I’m not going to waste any more time than it takes to click and move on. 

Call it short attention span, call it small IQ, call it whatever you like,  but the reality is there are so many sites out there that even my one year old niece can figure out, that to expect the average user to be more than that, is in my opinion, completely insane. The general public uses the internet as a means of instant gratification because we no longer have the inclination or the time to spend hours, days, weeks or months plowing through old news files, reference books or day timers. We want our news, gadgets and blogging tools within easy reach of fuzzy slippers, sweats and fresh coffee.

So with that in mind I thought we’d take a look at RSS feeders; what they are, how to use one and why your name needs to be on one.  

What is a RSS feed? 

An RSS feed  (Real Simple Syndication) is a simple software program that allows you, the reader,  to organize your online news from as many sources as you like, as well as giving you a one page dashboard where you can bookmark your favorite bloggers, writer’s, commentators ,quotes and  recipes (for that multi tasked individual who is able to write full-time and still present the family with four to five gourmet meals a week) as well as have your Twitter right  in front of you (which let’s face it, makes one less tab you need to have  open on your browser [and  if your laptop is as old as mine,  that means one less thing that will slow it down]).  

So what does this have to do with tools for Bloggers? 

 One of the keys to developing our skills as writer’s, bloggers and platform builders is ‘reading’. We read when we watch TV (be honest, we all keep a book open on our laps in order to avoid listening to commercials that are longer than the program is), ride a bus, sit in the doctor’s office and at two in the morning because we refused to listen to our better half when they suggested decaf might be a wiser choice following the six thirty news.  It’s like oxygen for deep sea diver’s; without it we’d go into respiratory bends and find ourselves painting ceramics instead (I personally I like ceramics, it’s just that I like writing better.).

 And though we won’t be loading our newest Goodread on a RSS board, we would put information that is pertinent to improving and honing our craft. Such our subscription to Publisher’s Weekly,  Digital Book World or Jane Freidman’s Writing on the Ether. 

 Using a RSS reader board gives us one click access to all those sites we use for research, encouragement and that twelve o’clock donut break. It keeps us up to date on current posts as well as helps us to keep the back tracking down to below a .5 on the frustration scale (degree varies, depending on amount of caffeinated product consumed before noon).

 How to use your RSS feed. 

Since I like simple and easy with a better than 80% guaranteed chance of success, I’ve chosen iGoogle as my reader board. Not that there aren’t other’s such as; Attensa, Blogline, Feed Demon, Net Newswire, Sharp Reader or News Gator. But as I’ve not had time to try these out (except for Blogline , which I am currently in the process of timing the drag and drop factors on) I can’t comment.  But if you want my advice (and I’m assuming since your reading this blog you do), find the one that works for you, gives you the easiest access and takes little or no time to add new feeds to. 

When I first clicked onto iGoogle, I have to admit I came very close to slipping below the half way demarcation point of degree of frustration ,  as their Add Feed gadget wasn’t easy to find (and then of course when I went back the second time I couldn’t remember where I’d found it the first time and had to start all over again). But once I wrote it on a post-it (thank God for post-its) and tacked that puppy to the top of my lap top, one or two more excursions into the back pages of my dashboard and I was good to go.

 Plus they have a nice selection of dashboard themes (mine is of mountains that change every time I log in) which believe it or not, makes it easy on the eye to read.

And as an added treat, some reader’s such as iGoole, let you create files so that you can arrange your reading by subject, giving  your inner A-Type personality  that sense of control and efficiency it needs to get through the day.

 Is ease of accessibility and pleasant ascetics important? Only if you expect people like me to actually use it.  As I said before, if I have to spend too much time hunting around the site, I won’t.  But now that I’ve figured out how to use my iGoogle reader board, I love it. It’s like one-stop-shopping. All my favorite reads in one place so if I’m looking for an article I want to use in this blog post or am simply taking a well-earned five-minute break and want something to read while I relax and sip my third cup of joe for the morning, I know that instant gratification is only a click away.

 Why should your name be on one?

For the same reason Jane Freidman, Nina Amir, Hubspot and Books & Such Literary Agency are on mine: its part of creating our social media platform.  We get up on someone’s reader board when what we have to say is interesting enough that someone other than our mother’s want to follow us.

 Next time we’ll look at how to use the RSS feature on our blog site to our advantage as well as some tips (I hope without post-it notes) on how to navigate through  the reader board and make it your own. And before I forget, I need to give credit to where credit is due by saying that it was an article written by Rachelle Gardner   for Books & Such Literary Agency titled, How to Read More Blogs In Less Time that got me inspired to check out iGoogle.

 From the laptop of an uncensored dreamer

SSpjut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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May 2, 2012 · 2:01 am

In Pursuit of SEO’s


Intellegent Blogging

 I recently took a hiatus from working on my novel in order to do some free lance writing for a startup company that needed someone to be their SEO/SM marketing person, while they worked on the more technical aspects of the biz such as; Web building, product research and the tangible promotion of services. Since my passion for writing is only second to my passion for good coffee, I jumped on the chance (the fact that they were willing to pay wasn’t a bad incentive either), and almost hurt myself when I hit the proverbial brick wall of stupidity (mine, not theirs).

For some reason I thought that blogging on my own website, working on a novel, prompting with a local writing group, combined with a voracious hunger for reading qualified me to boast that I knew anything about what it took to create a credible looking online media platform.

Within forty eight hours of taking the job I knew I was in trouble. After another twenty six I was ready to change out the venti size cup of joe for an equally large glass of Pinot Noir and tell my new employer’s that I’d just been diagnosed with a terminal case of writer’s block and  didn’t have more than a week to live.

Seriously! The first marketing video they gave me to watch was about what to do within the first 21 days  and when I was finished I found I had  a quarter size bald patch on the back of my head (I tend to twist my hair when I’m nervous and the rotations have been known to increase from zero to 6o mpr in just a little under thirty seconds) and  a sharp decline in available Costco Ant-Acid’s left in the last of my two pack.  

Fortunately for all concerned, my new employer’s are also long time close friends and after giving me email to email CPR (don’t ask how that worked), instructing me in the much needed disciple of taking numerous deep – even –  breaths (as well as reminding me of the dangers of mixing alcohol with keyboards), reassured me that everyone involved was on a huge learning curve and if I’d just remember that the God Lord is for me and not out to get me, I’d soon realize that it wasn’t as bad as I had worked myself into believing.

And they were right.

Not only wasn’t it as bad as I’d originally thought, but when all the hysteria was cleared away I found that I had scored educationally in a way that only recipients of large life altering grants did.

 It seems that the marketing company they’d hired to help them launch this new endeavor also supplied my friends with some pretty amazing training webinar’s from; how to tag and link your blogs/articles effectively, developing html/URL’s that get you first up on SEO’s, writing for recognition to the difference between a SEO, SEM and SMM.

Thankfully it didn’t take me long (after the initial break down) to realize, that not only had I been given this wonderful opportunity to earn some much needed cash, but I had inadvertently been handed the keys to veins of information that would have quite possibly taken me months, if not years to acquire (and then only if someone had been kind enough to have handed me a list of Everything You Need Go And Research In Order To Build Yourself A Credible Online Platform).  

So for those of you that have taken a leap of faith by following me, I’m giving you fair warning; the next couple of months of blogging will in all likelihood be full of everything from Promoting Yourself Through Intelligent Blogging to Marketing Yourself via Forum’s, Comments and Ezines. As long as you’re willing to share the journey, I’m willing share the information.

From the laptop of an uncensored dreamer

SSpjut

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