For the past couple of posts, we have been taking a look at some factors that may be hindering your SEO efforts from bearing fruit. Just to recap, we discussed the use of appropriate keywords and the frequency of your updates. These apply to both blogs and web sites in general. Today, let us take a look at inbound links.

We have had several discussions on this topics, especially when we had that series on increasing one’s Google PageRank. More than just simply focusing on what Google thinks, though, why don’t you think about the core idea of having other sites link to your own site or blog. What is the implication of having people link to your site? I would say that this is a measure of your blog’s relevance to those people. They link to your site because they think your site holds information that can be useful to them and their readers as well.

Going back to search engines – which is the focus of SEO – you really need inbound links to increase your visibility online. The idea is, again, simple. The more external sites that you have linking to your site, the higher your chances of getting up in the SERPs. That translates to better chances of being discovered by people who conduct searches.

The bottom line is that you have to continue building links that point to your site. This is part and parcel of SEO and if you have overlooked this point, then it may be the reason your SEO campaign is not working as you would like it to be.

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So have you checked your keywords yet? Are you targeting the appropriate keywords for your web site or blog? If you are and you are still not getting the results that you are aiming for, then maybe you are still missing out on something.

Why don’t you check how regularly and how often you update your blog? E. Branter also talks about this point:

Infrequent Updates- Search engines have a passion for fresh content. They crave fresh content because it keeps their results relevant. For this reason, it’s crucial that you give the search engines the new content they desire. Updating your website regularly shows both the search engines and your website visitors that your company is active and worth their trust.

It is as simple as that. You need to always offer something new. For blogs, I suppose that this would be a bit easier. You can post every day, every other day, or even twice a week. The format of the blog is easier to update and by its very nature, you really should provide fresh content a lot. For web sites, you can create a page or a section where you can update the content regularly. Perhaps you can have a section for articles and you can provide fresh content weekly. You can provide a section for news and do the same, maybe on a more frequent schedule. You can even create a blog and use that to provide fresh content!

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Are you in a situation wherein you feel that you have been doing everything that you can for your SEO campaign and yet you are not seeing the fruits of your labor? Perhaps you may be missing out on some things. I read an article by E. Branter talking about reasons that your SEO campaign may be failing. Let us take a look at these possible reasons.

Wrong Keywords- One reason your SEO efforts might be falling short is the keywords you’re targeting aren’t the right ones. Keyword selection is a difficult process that requires a deep knowledge of SEO. If you choose a keyword that is too popular, you’ll be unable to compete with the others targeting the same phrase. On the other hand, if you target a keyword too obscure, no one will ever search for it. The key is to find long tail keywords with little competition but decent search volume.

We have many articles on keywords in this blog. If you are not sure about your keyword campaign, try re-evaluating what you are doing. You may not be using “wrong” keywords but you may be missing out on the better ones. Remember, there are many tools available today that can help you figure out the best keywords for your blog or web site. All you need to do is define clearly what you want to target and then find the appropriate keywords for it.

(to be continued)

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Engaging in SEO practices is something that does not take only an overnight effort.  More so, you might have to keep coming back to points that you have gone through before just to make sure that you are not missing anything.  So what are these things that you might overlook?

One would be your site map.  In fact, not everyone has a site map.  It would be good to have one, though.  This is because of the fact that site maps are one major way of telling the search bots what your web site is all about.  The site map will tell the search bots which pages to index.  Over time, you are sure to create other pages in your web site.  You have to make sure that you update your site map regularly as well.  Check for broken links and templates, if any.

Speaking of broken links, you also have to check the links within your web site.  It is inevitable that a broken link or two comes up from time to time.  You can check all your links to see if everything is working fine by using Google Webmaster.  You can either repair the link or remove it.

These are simple things that you might overlook if you do not really pay particular attention to them.  In fact, there might be other simple items that I have not been able to note in this post.  Do you have any suggestions or tips?

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If you want to stay on top of things when it comes to technology, you certainly have to keep abreast of the developments in this field. SEO is not an exemption. Currently ongoing over in San Jose is the Search Engine Strategies convention. It started yesterday and will continue until the 22nd of this month.

What is this all about? SES provides the following information:

Join us for our 10th Annual SES event this August in San Jose, California, home to the largest concentration of successful internet and high-tech companies in the world.
SES San Jose affords delegates the largest learning and networking opportunity of the year, as the 70+ sessions (80% of which are new to the agenda) will cover everything that is search-related, and the numerous networking parties are back, including the famed Google Dance and Search Bash.

Fellow marketers, webmasters, executive decision makers, including first timers and SES Alumni, will converge to learn how to maximize their business’s Search Engine Marketing (SEM) opportunities, including Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search advertising, in addition to staying informed of the latest industry, tools, and algorithm developments and solutions.

More so, they guarantee that participants will learn:

• How search engines list Web sites for free and through paid placements;
• How to get free “organic” traffic by building a site that pleases search engines and your visitors;
• How to efficiently purchase listings guaranteed to rank your company at the top of search engine results;
• How to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts by tracking your visitors from the time they hit your site until they buy—and get tips on improving conversion if they don’t!
• How to build links that generate traffic to your Web site, and how to avoid the penalties of “spamming” the search engines;
• What’s coming next in the constantly evolving world of Web search, and how you can profit from it.

Interesting, to say the least. I don’t know if you can still make it as the conference has started but they are set to have other similar events in other parts of the US in the ensuing months. If I were you, I’d take a look at their web site and see if there is one near your area.

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The beauty of the Internet is that you can publish most anything you want, the way you want to. While many people tend to use text to convey their message, there is no rule against the use of photos and pictures. That is why we have such things as photo blogs or photo web sites. These are the sites which showcase the work of a photographer, whether he is an amateur or a pro – it doesn’t matter.

So if you want to start a photo blog – or if you have one already – how do you go about ensuring that you will still get good rankings in the search engines? After all, if your blog is mostly composed of photos, how can they be indexed? Here are some tips to get you going.

First of all, determine whether you are going to stay focused on one particular subject for your photos. For example, is your blog going to have photos of animals only? Is your blog going to focus on a certain type of photography? Are you going to use only a specific kind of camera? If you are going to narrow down the topic of your blog, it will be like creating a niche blog. That means that you have to check the necessary keywords that you would need to score high in the rankings.

Talking about keywords, it would be good to add content to your photo blog – content other than the visuals. I know, pictures say more than words. However, in order to get high up in the SERPs, you need to add text here and there. Devote a post to a specific picture and describe it in words. Write a post every now and then about your technique, how you got the picture, and so on.

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This post is for bloggers out there who are using Wordpress. You would all know that there is a proliferation of plugins available for this blogging platform. Some of them are quite useful and fun while others may not be necessary. Here is one plugin that you would surely be interested in – the new Disqus comments feature.

What is it all about and what does it have to offer Wordpress users? The Download Squad has a pretty good write up:

Disqus offers web publishers the ability to spruce up their comments sections with advanced features including threaded comments, avatars, and ratings. Perhaps the most significant advantage Disqus offers over the default Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad or Moveable Type comments features is the fact that users can sign up for one Disqus account and leave comments on thousands of blogs and web sites.

There’s just one problem (for web publishers): Up until now, user comments were stored on Disqus servers, not on your web page. That means search engines didn’t notice any information left in comments on your site, which could hurt your page rank. Today, Disqus took the first step to address this shortcoming with a new Wordpress plugin.

The second paragraph is the key to it all – what the plugin does is allow the comments to be seen by Google and all the other search engines out there. This is all good news for bloggers who pay close attention to SEO. The original plugin also works for Blogger but I don’t know if the updated one does. Anyone know?

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If you have been focusing on SEO for quite some time now, you would know that most experts emphasize the need to work on your HTML content rather than Flash content. This is because Google and other search engines are unable to index content of the former kind. Well, that is until now.

I found an interesting article on dBusinessNews which talks about this specific issue:

Google announced recently that they have been working with Adobe to improve upon the indexing of Adobe’s Flash technology. Google now has the ability to index flash components and self-contained flash sites. Google can gather all kinds of information from flash files.

“All of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. If your website contains Flash, the textual content in your Flash files can be used when Google generates a snippet for your website. Also, the words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.”
- Google Webmaster Central Blog

This is definitely good news to people who want to have more “flash” in their web sites. Though HTML is good enough for content and basic formatting, Flash allows for additional interactivity and visual effects. It is about time that Google actually makes use of the content coded in Flash for searching as well.

The question remains for some people though – is it still better to use HTML for SEO purposes? What do you think?

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Trust Google to come up with something new and useful for countless users all around the world. We have talked about the Google Keyword Tool and Google Alerts in previous posts. This time, they launched a new tool called Google Insights.

So what is new about this tool? Computer World reports:

Google Inc. yesterday rolled out a new tool that it said can help marketing and advertising users better analyze Internet search patterns, while also adding new tools such as a “heat map” for graphically displaying search volumes and other data.

Google Insights for Search is an extension of the updated Google Trends tool that the company launched in June. Like Google Trends, the Insights software lets users type in search terms and then see search volume patterns over time as well as the top related and rising searches, Google said in a blog post. But it added that with the new tool, users also can compare volume trends across multiple search terms, vertical industry categories, geographic regions and time ranges.

Insights for Search is designed to be used by advertisers, small business owners, academics and others, Google said, noting that it provides added “flexibility and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior.”

So basically, if you are looking for more specific information on what people are searching for online, you can make use of Google Insights. The added details that users can input make this tool very useful. In addition to this, the graphical user interface can also make the tool easier for those who are more visually inclined.

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We have talked about blogs that spam anchor text links and blogs that have fake links (that is, links that point to ads and trick users into clicking on them).  Are there any other kinds of blogs out there that you would want to avoid if you want to make a good name for yourself in the blogosphere?  I am sure that there are several more but for now, I shall feature one more and then move on to another topic in the next posts.

The last type of blog that I want to focus on is the “I am a blogger not a writer blog.”  I know a LOT of bloggers who do not want to admit or acknowledge the fact that writing IS blogging.  When you blog, you use written words.  There is no going around this fact.  When you blog, you write.  As such, it follows that you have to be at least a decent writer if you want to be a good blogger.

You might be thinking that what is important is that you have good ideas to present.  That it does not matter if you do not write well.  Think again.  Think of those blogs which present the most interesting topics.  Then use your imagination and pretend that the posts are rife with misspellings, grammar mistakes, and incoherent paragraphs.  Punctuation marks are not present, capitalization is non-existent, and sentences are all run on.  How much do you think you would enjoy reading the posts?

The bottom line is that to have a good blog, you must at least know the basics of writing.  This is learned in school and honed through practice.  Do not use the excuse that you are not a “professional” writer.  Everyone can write decently if they tried.

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