By Brendan Egan

Well, blogging has become the new pink in the internet world. Almost everyone has their own blogs and websites however some are more well known than others. Maybe the popular blogs have more flare, maybe they are more creative or maybe they are just easier to find. And that is exactly what you need to earn more viewers for your page, to create an SEO (that’s Search Engine Optimization) friendly blog. And here are five great tips to get you started.

1. SEO Plug-ins

The first step you need to do is to create a Uniform Resource Locater so others can find your blog easily. This is a very important thing because having plug-ins allows you to manage title, address, and other vital parts of a message. It is important that you make all information as clear as you can so they can fit with the keywords on your blog.

2. Write a quality content

Don’t be lazy! Write a witty and relevant post that can attract more viewers. When you write a post that is as short as: “we’re having a sale come to our store.” then you might as well be sending a text message to your friend. But no, you’re not just randomly sending a message to someone you’re writing about something important so you have to make it seem important for your readers as well. Take the previous sentence and use it as a header after your title. Then with that in mind expand the topic into a post 200 to 500 words long. Remember be creative and funny without leaving out the important details.

3. Never copy/paste

Plagiarism is an unforgivable crime for us writers. It is never a good idea to just go and copy the works of other people and paste it on your blog claiming it as your own. Not only is it rude to the person you stole the work from but it is also bad for your blog’s reputation. So keep in mind that you are hurting yourself just as much as you are hurting the real writer. If by chance you saw something that inspired you and you want to share it on your blog then you have to credit the person who really wrote it by putting a link to their website in your post. That way you’re telling your readers that you are not taking claim of the contents you posted.

4. Categorize or tag your messages

For other people to find your blog faster, you need to arrange all categories properly and you can do this if you add tags on your posts. You would need a blog tagging software to make tags in your message and then link them to a page that have a similar content . This makes it more convenient for your visitors.

5. Find other blogs and write quality feedback

First of all comment spamming and writing a good feedback are two very different things. You won’t be helping the blogger to improve their posts by telling them their post was “good or awesome”. A comment should be serious and formal at the same time with a hint of warmth that can earn you a connection with the blogger. But most importantly: your comment has to be relevant to the blogger’s post.

While following these steps won’t get you to the first page of search results for a competitive keyword like “Stock Market”, it will get you to the first page for long tail keywords, for example “Learn How To Trade Options In The Stock Market”. I’ve seen dozens of posts on our blog and our client’s blogs get ranked on the top page of search results just by following these simple tips, and chances are following these suggestions will only take you an extra 10-15 minutes per blog post, but will help drive much more traffic to your blog.

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Five Ways to Create an SEO Friendly Blog is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Charles Mburugu

No serious website can dare to ignore the significance of search engine rankings. Search engines provide more than 70% of the traffic for most websites. Therefore, if you rank high in search engines, you will receive more traffic.

However, getting and sustaining high rankings is not easy. It usually takes much hard word and effort to attain good search engine rankings. The following are three things you need to always keep in mind for better search engine rankings.

Content is king
Search engines love content. Without good and valuable content, you have little chance of success, no matter how great your website is or how much effort you have put into search engine optimization. It is important to have a lot of keyword rich content all through your site. Another great tip is to visit websites which are similar to yours. Read their articles and get ideas which you can make use of in your own site.

There are several reasons why content is vital for high search engine rankings. High search engine ranking will bring you a lot of traffic. However, to sustain the high traffic and retain a good number of return visitors, you need to have useful and well written content in your site. This volume of targeted traffic will be helpful in keeping your reciprocal links growing.

Effective web content also involves having catchy headlines which will encourage readers to visit pages on your site. Many site owners and webmasters usually forget the significance of good, captivating headlines.

Another helpful tip is to have some of your content published in other high traffic websites. This strategy has been effective in creating many links back to my blog which features webhostingpad coupons and register.com discounts.

Your website URL
If your website URL contains relevant keywords, it can have a great impact on your search engine rankings. However, this is not an easy task. It depends on several factors, such as the competitiveness of your main keyword. Less competitive keywords will have a greater impact on your rankings.

Another important factor to remember is that your website URL should be easy to remember. If you are about to register a new domain name or change an existing one, you need to think critically about your name.

Page title
Many webmasters and site owners choose their page titles very carelessly and casually. Your page title is very important for search engine ranking. Each of your pages should have a specific title which includes the keywords. Being specific reduces competition and enhances the chances of your page being found in search engines.

The more high ranking pages your website has, the better since it will generate much more traffic. It is a fact that websites with more pages usually receive more traffic than websites with fewer pages.

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

How to Enhance Search Engine Rankings is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Charles Mburugu

Tracking traffic will usually make the difference in an online marketing campaign. With the many free tracking tools available nowadays, there is no excuse for anyone not to track their hits to discover the source of their traffic.

For those tracking traffic, what should they look out for in the tracking data?

How did your visitors find you?

Many site owners are excited when they receive traffic from new sources. However, many will not bother to follow up and establish how their link got to the referring site. You need to take time to write an email and find out as much information as you can. How your visitors located you is a vital question that needs to be answered. The answer will be vital in helping you improve your marketing efforts.

What are the trends in your hits?

What are the common trends regarding hits on your website? Is traffic heavy on specific months, weeks or days? If so, why? Such questions need to be answered. Quite often, particular trends have enabled businesses to develop new products and find new market segments for their existing services and products. It is important to verify answers that appear to be obvious.

Are your findings used to test something?

Constant testing is the secret behind the very successful online entrepreneurs. Successful businesses are always improving by introducing small changes continuously that enables the business to grow significantly. Leading marketers test everything from headlines to designs and colors. Most of the tests conducted are drawn from the data of the traffic coming to their website.

The tracking information generated from tracking traffic will only help you if you use it for constant testing and enhancing your business.

What content is the most popular in your website?

This factor is missed many times. Why do you need to know the most popular content regularly? Content is the main thing in your site. Visitors come to your website because of content. Knowing the popular content will tell you what interests your visitors most. This will help you adjust your website content to ensure your visitors get more of what they want, and less of what they don’t want.

In brief, a successful website is one that is always changing in response to visitor’s needs and requirements. Evaluating and responding to web traffic data is vital for a successful website. This is a task that cannot be avoided and one that will yield great rewards for your website, if done properly.

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Tips for Tracking Your Hits is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Michael Cash

Are you ready for your business to join the 21st Century? Before you answer this question, let me ask you another one: Are you ready to start a blog for your business? For many, the prospect of learning how to properly start, maintain, and optimize a blog for search engines is a monumental task that simply never gets done. But don’t let the enormity of the task stop you from doing it! You could be missing out on thousands of customers simply because your business has not joined the blogosphere. Setting up your business’s blog for search engine optimization (SEO) is the topic of this writing. The benefits of SEO far outweigh the labor it takes to set it up for your blog.

Basically, SEO is the foundation your blog needs to be ranked highly by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. It contains two parts: On-Page and Off-Page SEO. On-Page SEO are the things that you control about your blog, such as content, domain name, and plug-ins. Off-Page SEO are things outside of your control, such as links to your site from other blogs. Since On-Page SEO is directly affected by what you do, we will focus on that here.

Here are the things you can do to optimize your blog for search engines:

1. Domain Name - The first part of establishing your blog is choosing a domain name for it. Your domain name should contain the following:
   • Keyword(s) that relate to your blog
   • Be short and catchy if possible
   • Have the name of the blog in it

While sometimes it is not possible to fulfill these criteria, hitting 2 of the 3 will help optimize your blog for search engines.

2. Use keywords in your titles – This is important for SEO, as users who are searching for certain blogs or blog content will be directed to your site from a search engine if you have searchable keywords in your blog titles. That being said, don’t put too many keywords into one title, as this may make the title sound unnatural.
3. Optimize the body – The body of your blog posts is often overlooked when it comes to SEO, but the first and last paragraphs of your article are very important. Whatever your chosen keyword is for that post, use it two times in the first paragraph and once in the last paragraph. In addition, try and place it within the middle paragraphs a couple of times to grab greater search engine attention. However, DO NOT repeat your keyword too many times in the article, or search engines (specifically Google) will label it as keyword spam and this will ruin any SEO the blog could have had.
4. Use links in your posts – Using links in your posts to link important words to previous blog posts will assist in SEO. Search engines consider blogs that utilize links more authoritative than those that don’t, and will rank your blog higher than others. But once again, don’t overdue the links, as readers find them distracting and search engines dislike an overabundance of them.
5. Always have unique, interesting content – Search engines like interesting, original content to give to their users. Simply copying and pasting articles from other sources will be recognized by a search engine and will not optimize your article at all. Moreover, your content should be informative and fresh to enable SEO for your blog.

Now that you have the tools to utilize the benefits of SEO, it’s time to start that blog!

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Blogging with Google in Mind is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Wayne Barker

What will the new year bring for your SEO?

So what is going to be big for SEO in 2011? In my opinion two of the biggest changes that have occurred this year were the changes to Google Places and the Google Page Previews. If you are unaware of what these are then I suggest you continue to read. If you are already familiar with the changes you need to make sure you are one step ahead of the crowd and get your thinking caps on.

The changes to Google Places

One day it was all fine and the next…Google made a massive change to the way they return the search results for location specific queries. It was a massive change and if you haven’t already it is time to start thinking about how you carry out your local SEO.

There were three major way in which the search results changed:

• The map for the old 7 or 10 pack jumped over to the right and started to scroll down the screen as you did (most of the time anyway – it looks like this may be dependent on screen resolution)
• If you had good organic SEO (and if it was locally good organic SEO that was a plus) we started to see blended results in the search engine results
• We started to see extra information in these blended results, this included addresses, photos, reviews and a link to your Google Places page

This was a huge leap for Google (and as normal panicky SEOs, well, panicked) but there are some steps that you should take if you have any localised search queries for your site. So for 2011 it is time to get local:

1. If you haven’t yet (if not, why not?) claim your Google Place page listing and get it verified via a quick phone call.
2. Optimise your Google Place page – you need to make sure it is 100% complete (include photo, video and the oft missed extra services section at the bottom)
3. Make sure your Places page has both a localised telephone number and address – you are not going to rank without them.
4. Make sure you have local signals in your organic SEO (the usual places – Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Alt Tags, Headings, Copy)
5. Get your address and LOCAL telephone number in the footer of every page. If you have freephone or toll free numbers hide them in an image.
6. Make sure your Google Places pages have relevant categories – i.e. make sure that you choose two that Google recognises.
7. If you aren’t already get featured in local directories, try and get mentioned on the site of the local newspaper or government (and a link would be nice)
8. Actively seek out reviews from customer and point them towards the big review sites like yelp, tripadvisor or the ones that are relevant to your business.
9. Get on the sites that provide local data to Google.

Exhausted with the local stuff? It isn’t over yet! A lesser change that recently happened in Google that I feel is worthy of mention is the recent addition of the Google Page Preview. It could turn out to be another game changer for 2011.

Google Pages Preview

You may have noticed a little magnifying glass appearing next to the search results, you guys in the US saw this before us in old blighty (you always do!) Well hovering over the little magnifying glass will give you a nice big preview of the page before you even visit the site – which is great, or is it.

Screen shot of the new Google Page Preview feature.

If you think about it from an SEO point of view, now the searcher has an extra factor to consider before visiting your site. Before if you had your content right and the SEO right you could get onto the first page (maybe!). If you had a compelling Meta Description that backed up the content and the SEO then maybe you could further encourage people to click.

Now they get to see what the site looks like before they choose to click through to your site. We all love to say that beauty and aesthetics don’t influence our decisions that much but who are we kidding Design should not be a strong part of your SEO plan. Simple colours, appealing design – the box isn’t that big so you need to keep it simple to attract and pull searchers in. At the end of the day if a searcher isn’t convinced by the title and description of the search results the design could be a massive deal breaker.

It’s worth thinking hard about.

This article is an original post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

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