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Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

Essential Wordpress Plugins: Google XML Sitemaps

Written by Brandon on February 3, 2008 – 7:15 am -

One of the first key items that builds traffic to your Wordpress blog is to have the major search engines index your web pages. It may seem as simple as writing pages and the search engines will find you, but there is so much more to the nuances of search engine visibility. Google, for instance, allows you to build a sitemap that reports the title and location of each web page of your site directly to Google on a daily basis. Fortunately for Wordpress users, there is a powerful Google sitemap plugin that you can install that will almost immediately increase your traffic by drastic amounts. This plugin is aptly called: Google XML sitemaps. The XML in the name refers to the data format which is the standard for all Google sitemaps. But fortunately for less technical people, you don’t need to know what XML is or how this data format works. You simply have to install the Wordpress plugin and report the plugin to Google. Here’s a more detailed explanation of the process:

First, download the Google XML Sitemaps.
Then, upload the plugin into your plugins folder on your site as you normally would. More detailed instructions can be found HERE.
Configure the plugin and generate the sitemap. There are tons of options on the sitemap. Most of the sitemap options you don’t need to touch, but I’d read through the options anyway.
Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools. These tools allow you to point your sitemap directly at Google which assures they will index new content. Webmaster tools also does so much more such as tell you what the most popular search terms for your site are, which in turn help you decide what type of content to focus on. You will need to prove to Google that the site you are adding a sitemap to is actually yours by adding a line of code to your template, but the setup is relatively painless.

Admittedly, these steps can be complicated for someone who is completely non-technical, but the traffic increas you will experience is going to be great which will hopefully build your revenue.

Tags: Google, search engine optimization, SEO, sitemaps, webmaster
Posted in Building Web Traffic, SEO, wordpress | No Comments »

Blog Titles and Meta Data: What Benefit’s Do You Get from Optimization?

Written by Brandon on December 30, 2007 – 5:48 pm -

Back when I started my very first blog in 2004, I was not terribly happy with the amount of traffic I was getting from Google. I had set up my sitemap and done all of the things that I thought I should do. Then one day, I realized that I had never created meta data in the head of my blog template. After I changed this data to properly describe my site, I got double the amount of traffic from Google the very next day. Recently though, I’ve wondered how much optimizing meta data really matters on a site that is already popular. The answer I’ve come up with is it does not matter one bit. But before I tell you why it doesn’t matter, let’s get back to basics.

library card: An Early Form of Metadata

The Library Card: An Early Form of Metadata

If you don’t know what meta data is, then read this awesome article on searchenginewatch.com to get an understanding. In its simplest form, meta data is just data that quickly describes what is on a particular web page. This meta data can describe a number of things on your site, but for the purposes of this article, let’s focus on three tags found within the head of every web page: <meta name=”keywords” content=”some,keywords,here” /> , <meta name=”description” content=”some description here” />, and <title>The title of the page</title>.

What each tag does is pretty self explanitory. Good Search Engine Optimization practice tell us that:

<title>The title of the page</title> = You would write a short title that might be the blog name and a less than one sentence description.

If you have small amounts of traffic, and you have not done what I’ve subscribed above, then you will double your traffic pretty quickly once you’ve done this.

Optimizing blog titles and meta data in Wordpress, for instance, becomes more tricky. You should consider getting one of the SEO plugins for wordpress that I list at the end of the article or visiting the Wordpress.org web page on SEO. Also, check out this link on Meta Tags in Wordpress. Remember that in a wordpress blog you have 4 types of pages that you have to optimize: the homepage, the archive, the single post, and the page. Rather than going on about this, let’s just say the end goal: Every page in your site should have different meta data tailored to that page. Most sites that have been lazy about meta data use the same meta data throughout the site and only change the titles. This is not what you want. You want to use Wordpress’ flexible Template Tags to build just the right data. (If you want more specifics, you’ll have to hire me).

If you remember at the beginning of the article, though, I said meta data does not matter one bit for very popular sites. Then why did I spend so much time on this subject? We’ll most sites aren’t really popular, so I think you’ll benefit from considering meta data on your site. But, how do I know that meta data isn’t all that important for popular sites? From an experiment I conducted in my blog sector. I write a design blog, so I took ten of the most popular design blogs as defined by Alexa, and I viewed their source to see what their meta data looked like. I thought I would find some meta data oracle that would show me the way to instant popularity, but I found the exact opposite. And, here is what I found:

None of the five blogs had any consistency with keywords or descriptions between them. They were all completely different even though the subject matter was quite similar.
A couple of the blogs did not have meta data at all. There was nothing to speak of to describe their data, and yet they remain amazingly popular.
Most of the blogs had no consistency between the home page meta data and the single post meta data.
One site even did not have meta data related to their subject and it seemed that it was a placeholder that was meant to be changed.

What should all this mean to you? There are other much more major areas where you should spend your time increasing traffic for your site. At the very least, you should definitely go to all the major search engines to see what your page results look like. If they quickly describe the results well, then you’re done. If they don’t describe what the page is about then go back to the boards immediately because either your title or your meta data needs work. Now, for a list of SEO Plugins:

Tags: head, metadata, optimization, SEO, tags, titles, wordpress
Posted in Blogs, Building Blog Revenue, Building Web Traffic, Fundamentals, SEO, wordpress | 1 Comment »

Blog Interviews: A Surprisingly Traditional Way to Build Massive Blog Traffic

Written by Brandon on December 22, 2007 – 10:36 pm -

Probably one of the biggest boosts that you can create for your blog is by conducting interviews with people in your field. You are probably thinking, “That’s so traditional, how could this such a successful method to build traffic?” In the next few paragraphs I hope to prove to you that interviews may potentially be the best way to build traffic. (Just as a quick example, interviews I’ve done in the past have usually grown my audience by a bump of fifty sustained visitors to the blog which adds up over the course of twenty interviews.) And after I’ve convinced you of its benefits I hope to give you a road map of how to conduct and leverage your interview into a continuous moneymaker. But now, for why this method is so powerful:

Blog Interviews- A Powerful Blog Traffic Building Tool

photo by laffy4k

People want to read about real world case studies because it inspires them.

I know when I hear an interview with an entrepreneur in my field that has made a successful and established business of what he or she created I am listening intently. This information is gold not only because the interview can give me new tips and ideas, but also because I learn what the interview subject went through emotionally to get where he or she got.

Your interviewee will enjoy the PR boost that they get from your interview, and in turn, let all of their friends, customers and potential customers know about.

In basic terms, doing interviews is also about trading audiences. You give the interviewee your audience, and the interview subject gives you her audience when she sends out an email to all of her contacts telling her audience to listen to or read the interview. It’s really a beautiful marriage.

An interview creates a more intimate relationship which you may be able to leverage in the future.

Speaking of beautiful marriage, if the interview is well received and generates business for the both of you, then you will feel like you’ve both given and received something valuable which is a great way to establish a strong relationship. This relationship may in the future lead to sponsorship of the blog or other favors.

An interview is a solid piece of data that you can incorporate and repackage into several forms.

Interviews can be used to make a podcast and a blog post, but of utmost importance is it can make multiple podcasts and blog posts. Interviews can often be extended into four or five parts with each new part gaining greater and greater anticipation by the audience. Give the audience a taste with the first podcast, and keep them wanting more by telling them what they’ll miss in the next podcast. Beyond this, interviews are great material for case studies in books or ebooks.

An interview helps create a legitimate brand.

If your brand is not established, an interview with someone whose brand is established will start to legitimize your blog. For instance, if I ran a small political blog, and I somehow landed an audio interview with Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House in the U.S., then I would surely be on my way to creating a legitimate brand, and seen as someone who has access to important people. If your niche is very narrow like sock knitting, then legitimizing your brand would include interviews with famous yarn manufacturers whose brands your audience would be familiar with.

Pocast Interview

photo by Matt Forsythe

Now you know why you’d want to do an interview, what about how to perform an interview? I’ve create a list of five short points that will get you on the road to making an interview with an eye for creating maximum traffic for your site. I don’t tell you how to improve your interview skills or how to record an interview, but at the end of the article I will list a number of resources to help improve your interviewing skills and techniques.

First, identify your interviewee. You should speak with her at least once to evaluate her a two main criteria: authority and personality. You want to evaluate does she know what she’s talking about and can answer in an engaging manner. Now, Let’s say you’ve identified your first interview and she has agreed to the interview. What next?
Second, prepare a list of questions. These questions should, in my opinion, be biased towards the subject, focused on the interviewee’s area of expertise, and be framed from the perspective of your audiences interests. I would start with a list of ten questions, but if you’re familiar with the interviewee then you can develop more detailed questions as well. Definitely email these questions well in advance of your interview to give the interviewee time to prepare. As well, I suggest you ask the subject to create any of her own questions that she might find pertinent to the conversation. Make sure, as well, that the subject know who your audience is and that she should frame her answers specifically for your audience.
Third, conduct the interview. There are two styles of interviews I like and only two: The recorded interview and the email interview. I do not prefer the face to face interview where I take notes because of the amount of work and the accuracy which I can record. The recorded interview is the best type of interview because you can distribute this content in several media types, and it’s really the simplest method for the interviewee to participate in. All they have to do is show up and talk. The email interview, however, takes much more writing commitment on the part of the subject, but it is much less work for you. This is a great type of interview, though, if you just want a quick, short bit of information. I list a bunch of resources at the end of the post.
Fourth (this is crucial), urge your interview subject to email all of her contacts to be sure that they read your interview. You may even want to craft a letter for them as a go by. Also, ask the interviewee to please do a press release announcing their interview as well as publishing it on their own company newsletter. What you are aiming for is to get maximum exposure to an audience that is completely familiar with the interview subject but may have never heard of your blog or podcast.
Fifth, keep in contact with the interview subject. I would ask her if you could put her on your email mailing list. If you maintain the relationship then you may want even ask her to become a sponsor of the blog at some point. At this level in your relationship, the interview subject may even be a booster for your website and could be much more easily convinced to become your sponsor.

If you are able to follow these five steps, then I think you will really be able to maximize the interview to its fullest revenue potential. To recap, I’ve broadly covered why interviews are important and how to maximize interviews for your podcast or blog, the next step would be to look at some of the skills needed to create a good interview. The resources listed below should be a great start: