Blog SEO

On the fly…

A few quick and easy blog tips to remember for 2009! 

1. Post items to your blog at least three times a week. Scheduling a specific time of day to blog (like at 9 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) will keep you focused.
   
2. Find content for your blog by setting up one or more Google Alerts. You can do that here… http://www.Google.com/alerts. Set up the alerts for topics you want to write about or are a part of your niche. Google will email you when it finds content online that is of interest to you and it will serve as a continued source of inspiration.
3. Commenting at other blogs is a great way to pull traffic back to your own blog. This is an awesome thing to do but how can you possibly keep up with reading the gazillion blogs that you are interested in where your particular brand of expertise (your comments) are needed? Those Google Alerts will include many blog posts that are just ripe for your comments!

I’m sharing a mistake I made.

For all you beginning bloggers out there here’s an important tip that you need to remember for ranking purposes.

I get traffic for all sorts of keywords and search phrases. But the biggest traffic generator in the search engines comes from a little post I wrote when I first started blogging. The post was on the growing MySpace Demographic. The post is here…http://trulytwistedmarketing.com/?p=27.

Now, hind site is always 20-20. And, if you are a seasoned blogger, you’ll notice right off what the problem is just by looking at the url I listed above.

But seasoned blogger or newbie, there are a couple of things I want to point out about this post. First, this little post quadrupled the traffic to my blog and still continues to bring a steady amount of traffic today as it ranks number 4 on the first page of Google. Go ahead, navigate on over to Google and type in myspace demographic. Check it out. Nice.

It was picked up in buzzfeed which gave me yet another boost.  I talked about how that impacted my blog over here. And about how important it is to offer up really excellent valid informative blog articles.

Here’s the problem…the mistake. Actually, there are several but the one I want to point out has to do with the url. Look at this url - http://trulytwistedmarketing.com/?p=27.

Notice my blog name is in there. Good.

Now, take a look at the page it’s going to…/?p=27. Not so good.

If you were looking at the straight url, you’d have no idea WHERE THAT PAGE WAS GOING. 

What we want to see is something like this… http://trulytwistedmarketing.com/myspace-user-demographic-older-users.

So what is that /?p=27?

The url extension /?p=27 is what wordpress software generates as a name for that particular post. It was post number 27. But that doesn’t mean anything to anyone, really, and isn’t helping my search rank in the least.

Luckily there’s a fix. In wordpress you use the “/%postname%” minus the quotes in your permalinks under custom structure. In essence, it’s telling wordpress to automatically generate the name of the post as the url extension.

Now THAT would help my search rank. Might even boost me up to the number one or number two spot.

There’s a catch, though. If you’ve used the default permalink structure (not knowing any better, like I did) made a few posts and then switch it to the custom permalink structure – the previous page might already be cached in google (like mine is) and be linked to by other sources (like my link coming from buzzfeed). So, in essence, I’m stuck with that unattractive url extension hanging out there dangling around.

Here’s the page that’s enjoying the links – the unattractive url http://trulytwistedmarketing.com/?p=27.

Here’s the page I’d like to see enjoying the links – the more attractive url http://trulytwistedmarketing.com/myspace-user-demographic-older-users.

Here’s what’s creepy – they are the same page!

Yes, I know. I had the same reaction. Crazy! Ridiculus! How could that be! Well, it is all those things and more. But in essence, both are legitimate but only one url is being linked to and cached in the search engines.

So, my point? Make sure you set up your blogging software to be completely optimized from the start. In wordpress there are tons of SEO tools you can use to customize and set up your posts and pages for easy indexing in the search engines.

Here’s a tool called the wpSEO-plugin. It’s a little glitchy (no support is written for it in English) but you can find more information on it over at Smashing Magazine. Be sure to check out the complete list of best SEO tools while you are there.

Here’s the all in one SEO Pack from wordpress. And, here’s one of my personal favorite resources jam-packed with seo information for your blog and web site…I mean, JAM PACKED. Cool stuff. Check it out.

Oh, and one more for you…videos from the SEO Book guys. There you go! Enjoy! 

The TrulyTwistedMarketing traffic stats are off the hook. Somehow, (as a marketer, I'd dearly love to take full credit for this but can't) a little post I created got picked up by Buzzfeed. 

Check the number two article. Yep, that one right below Techcrunch. ;) 

(okay, when I first posted this the article WAS in the #2 spot. Now, it seems, we are located in the #1 spot and Techcrunch is waaaaaay down at #7) 

That wee little article that was more about random thoughts running through my head on a day I needed something to write about than anything else has quadrupled my traffic since last Thursday.

Wait. WHAT?

Yes. It's true. And, hilarious, considering the circumstances but still interesting because I just did a post on leveraging social media outlets like Digg and Furl and Del.icio.us for your marketing endeavors to generate both traffic and links. You can read it here.

There are some things I want to point out besides my post, though.

1. You never know what's going to happen in the blogosphere. (that was actually pointed out by someone else in an email to me but I thought it applied to this situation)
2. It was a lousy article. Not really an article at all. In fact, there was very little thinking that went into it which doesn't give a person any good indication of what's going to get picked up and when so you want to make it your best effort each and every time.
3. The traffic to this illustrious blog that came from the buzzfeed article was very un-targeted. Because I'm not a myspace user, don't sell myspace paraphanalia and have no myspace advice, the traffic coming into that page really didn't travel any further than that page. Bummer.
4. The links generated by the traffic were minimal. However, those links were good ones. Whoppers, in fact. Which certainly gives a little push to the TrulyTwistedMarketing SEO efforts.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I'll take extra traffic any day of the week. Besides, the whole basis  of this blog is to share what works and what doesn't and what just happens haphazardly. 

This was a haphazard moment. 

However, it does prove a viable point. Social media is increasingly important in the online marketing arena. And marketers who can take those haphazard moments and turn them into tangible results will most definitely be ahead of the curve.