How To Give Your Blog SEO Super Powers

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Jesse Luna

You don’t have to buy a book and take a seminar or ever buy a fancy blog theme to crank up your blog’s SEO Super Powers.

These top tips will help you zoom up the organic search rankings without breaking a sweat.

1. Use friendly post and page URLs for your new blog.

Quick Note: This tip works best for new blogs. See the BIG NOTE at the end of this item.

When you set up your blog, you will have the option to configure the way your page and blog post URLs are formatted. Search engines love URLs that contain meaningful and related keywords.

Good: http://< mydomain >/awesome-blog-post-title-with-keywords

Bad: http://< mydomain >/?p=45

The standard WordPress.org custom install defaults to the “Bad” URL structure. If you want to drive search traffic to your blog, switch the structure to one that includes the post’s title. In WordPress, you can change the settings from Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks.

In Tumblr, Go to Customize > Advanced, then scroll down and check on the “Use Descriptive URLs” checkbox.

Posterous has an SEO-friendly URL structure by default. This is an example of a Posterous URL: http://jesseluna.posterous.com/curating-tweets-on-flipboard-by-using-twitter. The URL is friendly to read and search engines like that.

Big Note: If you’ve had your blog for any length of time, changing your URL structure can have a huge negative traffic impact. Search engines will have already combed through your blog pages, indexed things and added them to search results. If you’ve had your blog for a while but don’t really care about past “traction” on search engines, go ahead and change the structure.

2. Use targeted keyword terms in your blog post titles.

Try to use one or two target keywords per blog post title. If you have a blog focused on non-profits then “How to talk to small nonprofits: A guide for vendors” is a great title. The title hits on two key terms, “nonprofits” and “vendors.” A Web search over those two terms would likely position that blog post on page one of search results.

An additional tip is adding a combination of not necessarily related keywords together. For example, I did a post on a Tweetdeck’s ability to post to Tumblr and now that post shows up in the number 3 spot for the search term “Tweetdeck Tumblr“, which ranks higher than tumblr.com, second only to Tweetdeck.com.

3. Use “Alt” tags on images.

Every time you use an image on your blog, add meaningful text to the “ALT” tag.

This is the structure of an image tag in HTML:

< img src="my-awesome-image.jpg" alt=”My-awesome-alt-tag-description” />

[Note: in this and other HTML samples in this post, I'm inserting extra spaces at the beginning and end of the text to keep WordPress from rendering the code. Just a warning in case you do any cutting and pasting.]

When search engines parse through your web site, they index image Alt tags. When more of your site is indexed, that means there’s more of a chance your site will show up for related searches.

Alt tags are also very important for accessibility reasons. Meaningful tags give blind and visually challenged readers a description of the picture which can help with context.

In WordPress, you can set the image Alt tag when you select an image:

In Tumblr, the “Caption” field in the Photo Upload tool will be the image’s Alt tag.

Posterous – As far as I can see, there is no way to set the Alt tag on a Posterous blog post image. Bummer.

4. Set “keywords” and “description” meta tags

Meta tags are bits of information that may be added to Web pages to help describe the contents of the page. The contents of the tags aren’t displayed on the page but search engines use the information in the tags to help rank pages and to help display them properly in search results.

I never meta tag I didn’t like. -Old webmaster’s joke

The two main meta tags are the “description” and the “keywords” tags.

Description meta tag
The HTML for the meta tag will look something like:

< meta name="description" content="This is my awesome two to three sentence, keyword-rich, description of this page. This is my second awesome sentence." />

If you want to get crazy with the description, you can use Google’s Webmaster Tools to get feedback on whether you tried to jam too much information into your description meta tag.

Keywords meta tag
Here’s the HTML for the keywords meta tag:

< meta name="keywords" content="Awesome-keyword-one, Awesome-targeted-keyword-two, Awesome-descriptive-keyword, Awesome4,Awesome5,Awesome6" / >

You will add highly relevant keywords instead of my “awesome” ones above. The keywords should be highly related to that specific web page and to the site. You don’t want to put too many keywords there. I usually keep the list to under 20 unless there are 25 products on the page or something like that in which case I list them all.

If you’re not sure which words best describe your page, you can use an offbeat tool like Wordle.net to visualize the page’s top keywords.

The image below is a Wordle.net keyword visualization of the YouTube Adds New iPad-Friendly HTML5 Video Player blog post. I copied the post’s text, went to the Create tab on Wordle.net then pasted the text into the “Paste in a bunch of text” field and ran it.

The diagram points out that the main page keywords were “player”, “html5″, “YouTube”, “Video”,”iPad”, and “Embed” because they were used the most in the post. Of course, if you have special target keywords that should be associated with the page, you’d want to list those as well in your keywords meta tag.

WordPress.org custom install blogs
In WordPress, to add meta tags you need to add a plugin that allows you to either set the meta tags or “builds” them dynamically based on some criteria. The most popular plugin is the All in One SEO Pack. This plugin is available from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Once you install and activate the plugin, you can set it to build meta tags for each post based on the post’s tags. There are also a ton of other knobs and do-hickeys that you can set but describing them all is beyond the scope of this post.

Tumblr
If you are using a Custom Theme setup, you can set the meta tags but only on a global scale. In other words, you can’t set them on a per post basis. You can set the meta tags by going to Customize > Theme then setting the meta tag somewhere between the opening “< head >” tag and the closing “” tag.

Posterous
Posterous allows for custom meta tags but, like Tumblr, the tags can only be set on a global scale, not per post. You can set the meta tags by going to Settings > Look and Feel > Edit Theme > Advanced. Expand the area and you’ll see a couple of other meta tags. You can add your keywords and description meta tags immediately below those.

Review

We just learned how to use four key SEO tips and tricks to boost your search engine rankings and attract more site visitors. These techniques work with the content, not the other way around. You should never compromise your writing to make things more SEO friendly.

I will be adding more SEO tips in the comments over time (I didn’t want to overload you with this initial post). Feel free to comment and to leave your own tips and questions.

This post was made to be shared with the world. If you like it, set it free and share it.

Additional Resources: Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF, 560KB)

Photo: Purchased via iStockPhoto

10 Ways to Create Your Blogging Persona

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Susan Young

By: Susan Young, President, Get in Front Communications, Inc.

Too many bloggers are suffering from an identity crisis. It’s like those dreaded high school years when you awkwardly try to find your way and be comfortable in your own skin. It’s not much fun.

In business, it’s critical to develop your identity, brand, voice and persona for one reason. Revenue. If you don’t have a clear and crisp voice (through your blog), how can you expect anyone to pay attention to it? Would you give your hard-earned money to someone who is unsure of themselves? Of course not.

The key is to connect with your readers and build rapport with them—through your writing. Your goal is to use your blog to develop your own personality and style. There’s no time for an identity crisis. Be clear in your own mind so you can create your unique online voice.

Here are 10 tips:

Get real! Be genuine and be yourself. Don’t write to impress, write to express.
Weave in your personality. Sure this is business but give people a peek into your own life. Include a quick story, example or anecdote that reveals a challenge you may have overcome. It could involve your partner, child, neighbor or mechanic. It’s called humanity.
Speak directly to your reader. Each person reading your post should feel as though you wrote exclusively for them. Make them feel special. Use words like “you” and “we”.
Write the way you speak. Use words and phrases that are genuine and “sound like you.” By doing this and expressing yourself in a congenial and engaging style, you will in essence be inviting people into your world.
Avoid stuffy business jargon. Write in short, punchy and easy-to-understand sentences.
Understand charisma. People with charisma have a special style and allure that draws others to them, like a magnet. They are engaging and light. This applies to writing and blogging too.
Make every word count. Forget about word count and “too long or too short.” Convey your message in a clear and compelling way and be done. Your readers are busy. They’ll appreciate your succinct communication.
Go for distinct. Consider your brand, expertise and ideal clients. Why do people hire you and enjoy working with you? What makes you different from your competition? What have people written about you in testimonials and reference letters? Separate yourself from others.
Be bold. Don’t be afraid to take a position. Use your voice. Readers will come to respect you.
Stick with what you know. When you write about topics and issues that you’re passionate about, it will be evident to your audience. Find your niche and dig deep.

Blogging and branding take time. The best way to get better is to practice and not worry about the number of readers or RSS subscribers you have. That will come—in time.

Susan Young works with businesses who want to increase their publicity, credibility and revenues with public relations and social media. She’s a news and communication expert and President of Get in Front Communications, Inc. Susan also works with professionals who want to improve their communication, leadership and self-confidence.

Sign up for her free 21-day video series, “Speaking of Communication” at www.getinfrontblogging.com.

Why You Should Care About Backlinks

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Jesse Luna

I ran into a cool backlink checker Web tool (or see the tool below) and thought I’d share it. Every time a web site has a link to your site, that is called a backlink (also referred to as an inbound link). Search engines love backlinks because that tells them that someone cares enough about your site to have a link.

I was blown away when I saw the over 1,200 links coming into jesseluna.com!

Why Check Backlinks?

To keep track of the number of inbound links. As your site grows and you reach out to Web communities and comment on sites, this number will grow. But you won’t know that unless you measure.
Because using the old “Link:< domain-name >” trick in Google doesn’t really work to show you all the Web pages that are linking back to you.
Because backlinks are a key factor in deciding how much “Google Juice” your site has. If you are being linked to from a site with high authority (think NY Times) then Google and other search engines will reward you with a better search results position.
So you can compare your backlink numbers to other similar but larger sites. This helps you keep concrete numbers in mind as you ask “how is my site doing?”
Mostly importantly, now you can work backlink data into conversations with Web geeks at cocktail parties.

How Do I Increase My Backlinks Number?

The best ways to improve the number of people linking to your site are:

Write awesome content that is link-worthy.
Build relationships with other sites/blogs and leave thoughtful comments, making sure to add your Web site address in the “Enter URL” comment text boxes. If the Comment form doesn’t have a space for your site URL then you should check the site’s commenting policy to see if it’s OK to leave a Web address in the Comment text.
Once you have a relationship with a blog site, suggest doing reciprocal links. In the early Web 1.0 days, linking to a site was a key way to reach out to new sites owners and was very common. Today, linking to other sites is much more strategic, especially for business sites.

Important Note: Not all inbound links carry weight.

Important Note Part Deaux: Google’s Webmaster Tools also include a Backlink checker tool. The feature is called “Links To Your Site” on the Tools site. However, I found that the iWebtool.com tool found many more backlinks.

How NOT To Create Backlinks

* DO NOT buy into spammy backlink sites or products.

* DO NOT leave comments on blogs for the sheer purpose of getting backlinks.

The Web is a beautiful place, don’t litter it with meaningless links.

Ready to Check Your Backlinks?

Here’s the tool. Enter your domain and a window will pop up and go to iWebtool.com.

Was this post useful? Do you have any other thoughts on site backlinks? I appreciate your taking the time to visit this blog and to contribute to the conversation.

Remember, every time you leave a thoughtful Comment you get a backlink to your site!

Photo Credit: Nicocrisafulli on Flickr - license

[Interview] Newhall Coffee Blends Social Media Marketing With A Cause

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Jesse Luna

Mom and pop coffee shops are being crushed by behemoth companies like Starbucks. Add on the worst recession since the Great Depression and you have a recipe for disaster. It takes extreme measures to compete in this business landscape.

Newhall Coffee Roasting Company is using social media marketing Jujitsu to take on the challenge. It’s staying nimble, competing where it can win, and still staying true to its mission.

Background

Newhall Coffee Roasting Company started off as a couple of coffeehouses in the Santa Clarita Valley of California. The owners weren’t satisfied with the coffee they were buying from other roasters so they started roasting their own. Newhall Coffee is now one of the premier roasting companies in California.

The company sets aside a portion of its profits for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America in memory of the passing of the founder’s brother, Corey. Newhall has also recently launched a new program called Newhall Coffee For A Cause that helps qualified non-profits with fund raising efforts.

Social media is such an important part of the company marketing formula that, Ryan Barton, Newhall Coffee’s marketing manager, suggested we conduct the interview “social media style” via Twitter using a hashtagged (#CoffeeCause) conversation.

You can see the actual Twittter conversation by searching over the “#CoffeeCause hashtag.”

Interview with Newhall Coffee Roasting Company

Jesse (@jesseluna): Hi, I’m Jesse Luna. Thanks for agreeing to the interview. Can you tell us your name & role at NC please?

Newhall Coffee (@NewhallCoffee): Hey Jesse, I’m Ryan Barton, and I manage the integrated marketing campaigns here at Newhall Coffee.

J: Hi Ryan. There are 2 areas that I’d like to cover – NC’s use of social media & @CoffeeForACause. Q1: How did Newhall Coffee first jump into social media?

NC: It arose from the desire to make our online marketplace our online “big box retailer.” We started as a local coffee house. and we wanted to regain that sense of community — throughout the nation.

J: Interesting. Has NC used social media instead of pursuing some traditional distribution & branding methods?

NC: We allocate our resources to a variety of social media platforms rather than broad stroke marketing. We’d rather pursue targeted marketing efforts with higher yields than an imaginary market of “everyone.” You won’t find us buying ad space, but you will find us enjoying hand-to-hand grassroots efforts. We enjoy the interaction with customers at Costco and Sam’s Club road shows. Same goes for online conversations.

J: Q2: When first introduced to your brand, one thing that really stood out was the packaging. The packaging prominently displays social network logos. How did that decision come about?

NC: Adding social network logos and a URL (newhallcoffee.com/connect) was our way of inviting current customers to our online communities. We want to hear from you. You’re buying our coffee, now what else can we give you? On SM platforms, we’re offering loyalty discounts, we’re having events, etc. And we want to engage. Simply, it’s taking existing advocates, and hosting a community to find friends who share the same enthusiasm.

J: Thx. Topic #2: Tell me about @CoffeeForACause and what inspired it.

NC: Sure! @CoffeeForACause reflects a cause very close to our hearts. Our founder, @mitchmcmullen’s, brother passed due to leukemia. Due to his advocacy, Mitch was named Man of the Year by LLS twice. Corey’s blend was probably NCFaC in infancy – where blend sales were donated to LLS. Similarly, our Patriot Blend is a way for us to give back to our troops overseas. For every bag sold, we donate a cup of ‘american morale’ overseas.

So NCFaC was our way of helping charitable organizations raise funds through something more than magazines. We’re finding it’s easier to do when it’s a win/win — people want to support an org, and they love coffee. We know our community gave us our start (not big $ from Wall St.) so we’re dedicated to give back to our roots.

J: If people are interested in @CoffeeForACause, what’s the best way to get more information?

NC: They can visit www.NewhallCoffeeForACause.com for an overview and a 3-step sign-up form. It’s completely free to the organization and they get 40% back from every bag sold, so they can sign-up today, and start tomorrow. Or, they’re welcome to DM me at @NewhallCoffee and we can speak there freely.

J: Ryan, thanks for the interview. This will be written up as a blog post. Happy Roasting!

NC: My pleasure! And please feel free to share discount code “CoffeeCause” for 20% off at NewhallCoffee.com.

[End of Interview]
–
Let’s keep the conversation going. Was there anything in the interview that stood out in your mind? Have you seen other successful social media efforts by coffee shops?

Feel free to share via the Comments or “@” or DM me on Twitter.

Visualizing Job Search Keywords

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Jesse Luna

This video shows you how to better visualize the key aspects of job by focusing on important keywords.

When is this technique useful?

There are two main circumstances when this tip is useful:

Let’s say you’ve identified ten good job opportunities and you have the full job descriptions, but only want to focus on one or two of the jobs. This method of highlighting keywords, using Wordle.net as a visualization tool, will help you see the keywords better. Once the main keywords are more apparent, you can use them to select the top two jobs and create your cover letters and shape your resume to focus on what’s important.

Remember, the hiring manager created the job description so it is likely she will be looking for those keywords in cover letters to help her filter her stack of applications.
Yay! You received an interview and now you need to prepare for it. By using this technique, you can zoom in on the most important job aspects and skills. I used this technique before an interview and it highlighted a key technical skill. I reviewed the technical skill before the interview (I wish I had prepared more) and was asked about it and was tested on it.

I hope the video is useful. Good luck on the job search!

Related Posts

[Previously posted on www.jesseluna.posterous.com]

Unleashing The Power of YouTube Captions

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Jesse Luna

A few months ago, I was talking with a good friend about new technologies and he mentioned Stanford’s video captioning services. I didn’t understand why it was that exciting a technology, at first. After visiting the site and seeing how Stanford was using captions to supercharge its videos, it all made clicked.

Captions turn video content inside out, making them searchable and accessible to the world.

You’re going to learn about three powerful reasons why your business or organization should leverage YouTube captions.

One. Accessibility

Adding closed captions to videos make video content much more accessible to deaf and hard of hearing video watchers. When captions are properly configured, the speech and actions can be mapped to the video’s timeline.

This video was created by the California School for the Deaf in Fremont and describes some of the accessibility benefits of YouTube captions.

Two. Internationalization

YouTube also allows caption files for 139 different languages. That means you can create one video and fix one caption file then have it translated into 138 languages.

YouTube’s auto translate feature works fairly well. I uploaded a video, cleaned up the captions, then turned on the Spanish auto translation version. YouTube did a good job translating the text to Spanish with 80-90% accuracy. If you want a precise translation, you can upload a language specific caption file.

Three. Search engine optimization (SEO)

YouTube and Google are both indexing text within closed caption files.

This means all your video’s voice information will be indexed and will show up on YouTube and Google search results. I couldn’t find any official YouTube mention of how (or if) it indexes videos, so I set up an experiment to test things out. See the video below.

SEO PRO-TIP: Transcripts
If you are going to embed a YouTube video on a web site, you can do some additional search engine optimization by adding the transcript to the page. The transcript is the caption text without any of the time code information. Transcripts also allow users to quikly scan content without having to view the video in real time.

Review

We just learned three powerful reasons to leverage YouTube’s Closed Captions features.

Captions open up the world to deaf and hard of hearing users
Your videos can be made accessible to the world with language translation, and
You will get a great SEO bump by having YouTube and Google indexing your content.

Can you think of any other reasons to levarage captions? As always, I value your feedback and comments.

Transcript

[Music]

Hi, this is Jesse Luna with
Jesseluna.com and today we’re going to take a

a quick look at YouTube
captions and whether or not they

show up in YouTube searches or
on Google searches

so I set up a little experiment
in this experiment , I uploaded and I

cleaned up and uploaded uh captions to match
this video. And one of the key phrases

that I put uh in there
is “handmade tesoros.”

What I had noticed was that that phrase was
not on any Google searches.

So what I did is I only put
it in the caption file but did not

put it in anywhere on the description

or in the title of the
video.

So those of the two main locations
that are usually used to index

they also don’t show up in the tags or any
of the associate keywords so if we go

up and do a search over that
phrase, I’m going to do an exact search.

[Typing]

and then do a search. We’re checking to
see if it shows up and there it

is our video shows up, even though
that keyword phrase, “handmade tesoros”

was not in the description or in
the tags or keywords

so that shows that YouTube is indexing
text that is put into their captioning files.

Well, let’s take a look at the
Google now. Now if you do a regular

Google search [typing] I didn’t get
any results other than the listing that showed

up on my uh

my directly of my blog where I
listed the entire transcript, which is one of

the reasons I put the transcript on
my blog. But it doesn’t show up in

the regular Google search. Ah,

but if you jump over to the
videos [makes jumping noise], you see there it is

Our video does show up it does index

for that special little term, the little uh test term
that is set up, “handmade tesoros.”

And it shows up in the
number one spot

So we just can’t kind of did a
little experiment to see if YouTube caption

if the text in YouTube captions
is being indexed by YouTube and Google

and we just showed that it is.
This is Jesse Luna for jesseluna.com, thanks for tuning in.

[Music]

JesseLuna.com

Moving people to action with social media

Category Archives: Strategy

Visualizing Job Search Keywords