Search Engine Optimization

There’s an interesting discussion on the BlogSquad’s blog about how domains are handled by TypePad vs. WordPress.

A TypePad link to Denise’s blogpost “Tom Antion Reveals The Secrets of HIS Success to The Blog Squad” is http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2008/08/tom-antion-reve.html

On a WordPress blog this would be
http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2008/08/tom-antion-reveals-the-secrets-of-his-success-to-the-blog-squad.html

Now, which link has more keywords?

tom-antion-reve.html <-- this truncated post title
or
tom-antion-reveals-the-secrets-of-his-success-to-the-blog-squad.html <-- the full title

And, btw, you can edit these links, if you wish, to get rid of extra words such as "to, and, the" etc.

Another example, from my own blogsite
http://www.yourezinecoach.com/2008/how-to-make-money-with-email-marketing-send-email-promotions.html is also the permalink to this blog post.

On TypePad permalinks are in the form of: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/145459/32319900

Ask yourself this: do I want to build links to TypePad and building their Google Page Rank, or my own domain?

I don’t like dealing in absolutes, so I won’t say WP is better than TP, but in this particular area it shines.

What do you think?

P.S.
By commenting on this blogpost, I accidentally discovered another weak spot in TypePad, and it has to do with displaying long links in posts. Take a look at how long URLs are displayed here, in my post, then compare the same in TypePad.

The word “blog” itself comes from “web log”, so “blog” for short. Ever since Google acquired Blogger in 2003, this medium has been on the rise. Today even companies such as General Motors run blogs. Here are five reasons why you should have a blog for your small business or professional practice:

• Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing about your experiences on a particular topic, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts to provide useful information. This will establish you as an expert; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs.
• Search engines love blogs. Because blog pages change very frequently, are content-rich, and easy to index, search engines just love to gobble them up. For example, if you noticed that your web site search engine rankings are slipping, this is most likely because the contents of your web site hasn’t changed in a long while. Search engines love fresh, new content, and by its nature, blogs are the epitome of freshness. To make the most of this, host your blog on your own domain, and use WordPress, or a similar blog system to run it.
• Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get a presence on the web is through blogging. If you can type and click a mouse, you can blog. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, describe new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. No knowledge of HTML is necessary, but will certainly come in handy to get some of the more advanced features set up.
• Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturates our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, untainted by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience.
• Blogging costs nothing. You don’t need to have any software, buy web hosting, register a domain, like you do for your web site. Any opportunity for free web time is definitely a bonus, especially to businesses that are starting up. Most major players in this arena offer free accounts. WordPress.com is one, Weebly.com is another.

Do you have a blog? A few days ago I started playing with WordPress for my blog. For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out which technology would be best, and have settled on WordPress for two main reasons:

1. It allows me to create “static” pages, so I can have a site that looks like a regular web site, with menus such as “About,” “Products,” “Services,” and so on, and at the same time have a blog going.
   and,
2. Second, I prefer to install the WP software on my own server, rather than use the hosted version of WP (i.e. WordPress.com) or other software, such as Blogger or TypePad, because it’s better for Search Engine Optimization. All the pages are sitting on my server/domain and are being indexed here, not at some blog hosting company.

Once word of advice, from my own experience: If you’re looking to save a few bucks and opt for a free blog, I wouldn’t recommend Blogger. Although it’s a good platform and all that, and being owned by Google can’t hurt these days, what I don’t like about it is the feature they have at the top of each blog, which is a link to “Next blog”: a few times I tried clicking it I ended up on blogs that I wouldn’t want my kids to see, if you know what I mean.

If you have a web site, consider re-doing it using WordPress, then you can enjoy the best of both worlds - and Google and other search engines will just love it so much more!

Applying these simple SEO strategies will do wonders for your organic search engine results.

3. Write a meaningful description for each page

This goes under the tag. For this you have about 25 words, or 160 characters. Write this paragraph of 2-3 sentences so that it sounds like aclassified ad for the page. Each page should have its own unique meta tag description, relevant to the content of the page, using relevant keywords people are likely to use to find you.

4. Compile a list of keywords for each page

This goes under the tag. Some experts say that you should keep the keyword meta tag under 1,000 characters, some say 256. I’d suggest keep it as short as possible but make sure you cover everything you need. Make sure you pick the keywords that are relevant to the page and to the overall site content. Try to make the first 10 keywords your strongest ones. By the way, by “keywords” I mean single words and phrases, such as “ezine design” and “e-newsletter production services.”

5. Use relevant keywords when you write copy for your pages.

Don’t stuff your page with keywords, search engines will penalize you for it, and secondly, and more importantly, the humans reading your pages would most likely see through your tactic and abandon the page as quickly as you can say SEO.

One final thought: don’t fall for the idea to have your web site submitted to hundreds of search engines by some automated process. Simply go to Google, Yahoo and MSN and submit your web site’s home page only manually, it won’t take you more than a few minutes.

As a matter of fact, if you’ve done your basic SEO homework, you don’t even need to submit your site, the search engine spiders will find it and index it properly.

Please also read Basic SEO: 5 Free Do-it-yourself Strategies, part 1

Many small business web site owners make a mistake of not paying attention to basicSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) of their web pages. This usually happens because of two reasons: one, they create the web site themselves and have no idea about what SEO is and why they should pay attention to it, or two, they hired a “trusted, knowledgeable web designer” to design their site, and s/he has not included SEO in the project proposal.

For sure, you could make SEO an art, but following a few basic steps - accessible to anyone - will go a long way. By all means, if your budget allows you to pay for a professionally devised and managed SEO strategy, do it.

However, for a solo professional, small business owner or a non-profit organization on a limited budget, applying these simple SEO strategies will do wonders for your organic search engine results.

1. Each page should have a descriptive file name

In other words don’t name the files just services.html, or even worse page02.html, but try something like email-marketing-services-consulting.html. This will help the search engines index your pages more thoroughly if you use keywords that are relevant to the content of that page.

2. Give each page a unique title.

This goes under the <meta title> tag. You have about 60 characters, or about 10 words, whichever is less in your particular case. The page title is like a summary of the content. Again use the relevant keywords, or you can make it a call to action, for example a “Contact Us” page could have this title: Receive a free email marketing consultation - Call 905-844-4247 now!

Read this post for 3 more tips on basic search engine optimization for small business.