I need some blogging advice please!
-
My name is Matthew and I am a new PRO member and founder of my own Internet marketing company in KS. So far I love the interaction and tools and functionality of seomoz. I am a true student of seo and love the subject.
My dilemma is I know a blog is an important piece of any good seo campaign but I know very little about HOW to blog well......this is my new site and blog page. I only have a couple articles so far but many more planned. http://sawwebmarketing.com/seo-blog/
-
When I read an article that would be particuarly beneficial for my visitors can i post or share that on MY blog (giving the author the credit of course) without google thinking its duplicate content?
-
is there anything specific I need to do with my blog for google to "see" the new, fresh content that is being added to the site?
-
I have seen "tagged" items at the bottom of some blogs. Is this important?
-
Some blogs will have a word or string of 2-3 words that are a link to a specific website. Does this help me or just them or just people reading the blog?
**All I know is articles I write need to be relevant to my site and interesting and ORIGINAL and of benefit to my site visitors. **
Any advice that would help insure my blog articles get me all the juice they can would be GREATLY appreciated!
Thank you in advance!
Matthew
ps - my site only went live a couple days ago so I am still working on a few onpage items but ANY feedback about the site itself would be spectacular!
Have a GREAT weekend!
-
-
Hi Matthew
I thought I would share some advice about some of the existing blog posts on your site.
http://sawwebmarketing.com/web-equity-owning-local-web-presence
This blog post doesn't have any textual content for Google and other search engines to make use of, so I would suggest adding a paragraph or two describing what the image is about, making sure to bold any relevant keywords you wish to use in the article.
This article is better in terms of there being more text to work with, but there are no headings at all within the article. Google will expect to see the page or post title in a
tag, so within the article I would suggest you use
and
tags where appropriate and bold keywords such as "SEO" or "Web Marketing"
http://sawwebmarketing.com/good-advice-reserve-your-name-and-childrens-names-as-domain-names-today
This article is good and I can see you've tried to add headings using strong/bold tags for things like, "Why is this is a good idea?" but for this I would suggest using a heading like
Is buying a domain using your children's names a good idea?
- This allows you to have "domain" and "buying" as 2 potential keywords that Google will attribute to the blog post when indexing the post.
It might be a good idea to also create a blogger or wordpress.com domain and post content on there as well. If nothing else this would allow you to have a backlink to your main site from a more authoritative site. I know that wordpress.com blogs allow you to auto post a tweet and facebook post when you add an article.
For self-hosted WordPress blogs this functionality isn't available natively but there are plugins that will post a tweet or facebook post when you add new content.
I hope I've been of some help or given you a few ideas for you to try.
Ben
-
thank you for the good info and taking the time to respond!!
-
Hey mrupp44,
Good luck with the blog. Nice choice using wordpress.
* When I read an article that would be particuarly beneficial for my visitors can i post or share that on MY blog (giving the author the credit of course) without google thinking its duplicate content?
Yes, you can but, why not create your own unique article, adding your thoughts and personal insights and link back the article you like? Obviously you don't want to plagiarize any other content but, there is no topic that hasn't been written about before.
_* is there anything specific I need to do with my blog for google to "see" the new, fresh content that is being added to the site? _
Yes, use a good SEO Plugin that creates and submits sitemaps, which it appears as though you are. Wordpress SEO is a great plugin but, you need to set all your titles correctly.
You also want to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap. Using Yoast WP SEO your sitemap would be: /sitemap_index.xml
* I have seen "tagged" items at the bottom of some blogs. Is this important?
I would LOVE for someone to come back and give me a good reason why Tags are important at all. I used them for a long time and recently I completely dumped them on most of the blogs I run. Far less concern about duplicate content and crawl issues. Life is just easier now and rankings improve dramatically on the sites where I lost them. I am going to completely eliminate all tags shortly.
The beauty of wordpress is you can go back later when your site is very deep in terms of content and add them, just for navigation purposes. The other beauty is you can Perm 301 Redirect any "tag pages" with the best redirect plugin available: Pretty Links Lite
As opposed to tags at the bottom of a page try YARPP Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. Very handy plugin.
_* Some blogs will have a word or string of 2-3 words that are a link to a specific website. Does this help me or just them or just people reading the blog? _
If you are referring to the anchor text with a link that leads off your site to another site? Then they help both but they help the recipient a little more (usually).
Writing a very optimized and well worded article (written for readers not Search Engines) with a few resource links to VERY WELL RESPECTED pages in your niche will help your own optimization efforts and your readers will appreciate it too.
However, you do not want to write an article targeting Local Search and link outwards to another resource using the targeted keyword Local Search in the anchor text. That is cannibalization and it will not help you.
The key phrase is:
**All I know is articles I write need to be relevant to my site and interesting and ORIGINAL and of benefit to my site visitors. **
YOU GOT IT!!!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Please provide solution for my website? Duplicate content Problem
I have 2 Domains with the same name with same content. How to solve that problem? Do I need to change the content from my main website. My Hosting is having different plans, but with the same features. So many pages were having the same content, and it is not possible to change the content, what is the solution for that? Please let me know how to solve that issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexa.Hill0 -
Should i get witty with folder name of Blog?
I understand the importance of keywords, but I also worry about the usability factor. Curious - anyone ever study about the impact of calling your WP folder "blog" vs "long-primarykeyword" Im thinking of something generic /blog
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inmn
/community
/articles
/info Vs long keyword /long-keyword/ ANyone have any input? Every time I search, i see things about Folders vs Subdomains, etc. Thanks everyone for your feedback!1 -
Just found a wordpress blog duplicating main website blog - what to do?
Hello Mozzers, I am working on a website and found the social media agency, employed by the website owner, was running a parallel wordpress blog which duplicates the content on the main website's blog (200 odd pages of this duplicating wordpress blog are indexed - the duplication is exact other than for non-blog content pages - around 60 category, date pages, homepage, etc. I am planning to 301 redirect the wordpress blog pages to equivalent pages on website blog, and then 301 redirect the homepage, category and date pages, etc. to the website blog homepage, so all the blog pages redirect to somewhere on main website. _Does this make sense, or should I only worry about redirecting the blog content pages? _ Also, the main website is new and there are redirects coming in to pages from old website already. _Is there anything to be cautious about when redirecting to a main website from multiple old websites? _ Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Site rankings steadily decreasing - do I need to remove links?
Since mid-April, our ranking have been steadily declining. Our two main keywords are 'nuts and bolts' and 'bolts and nuts'. 'nuts and bolts' dropped from 7th to 46th in May and has recovered slightly to 28th, and 'bolts and nuts' moved from 7th to 16th, and is today 24th. Ranking on keywords we specialise in have fared better, but they're fairly niche. 'bsw bolts' has moved from 2nd to 4th, and 'imperial bolts' has moved from 1st to 4th. I think my link profile is the issue. I don't think we've been penalised by Penguin directly (I may be wrong, I don't think we'd be page 2 on such a competitive term as 'bolts and nuts' after Penguin if we had been penalised.), but I think what's happened is that sites that link to us have been penalised, resulting in a knock on effect. Does that sound right? Here's my link profile: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com</a> I've been slowly building relevant links with prospective customers and kept up a very basic social media profile - just the odd blog post and sharing on Facebook and Twitter. Do I need to delete all the directory links? We do have links from directories that don't look fantastic, more are shown in Webmaster Tools than are listed here. Some of the directories no longer seem to exist, I take it I don't need to do anything and Google will catch up in those cases. Should I attempt to remove (or disavow) all links with names like best-directory etc? Or should I just concentrate on building better links? I'm not sure where to start! Any advice is greatly appreciated. Best Regards, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stephenshone0 -
Redirect advice
My website has two versions of the homepage: http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/index.cfmI wondered if I could set up a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file so that only the http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk page was returned as the homepage?Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises0 -
Is my Company Blog Causing issues?
We have a company blog. IE companydomain.com/blog/. Much of the content is unrelated to what we do. So why do we do it? Cover local topics that our customers may be interested in and searching for. Get them in the back door so to speak. Link bait, social sharing etc Develop a marketing culture that's engaged always learning. Customers get to know the people behind the company. Here's my Pickle If i sub domain or separate the site entirely, i won't benefit from all the juice we're generating. If i keep the status quo, since much of the content isn't directly related to my "category", logic tells me that i could be diluting my website in Googles prying eyes. Feedback PLEASE.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | schmeetz0 -
Advice on further SEO
I am frustrated by a lack of progress for a major keyword I want to rank for. I have made several pages, optimized with Onpage and even a whole site but I can't seem to get my ratings up. I am hoping somone can take a look at my pages and efforts and offer me some advice... Keyword is "National Currency" One site is devoted to this keyword: NationalCurrencyValues This site is ranked 30th and is down 9... and this page on another site is devoted to the same keyword ranked 26th is: http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/National-Currency.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Banknotes0 -
Does rel canonical need to be absolute?
Hi guys and gals, Our CMS has just been updated to its latest version which finally adds support for rel=canonical. HUZZAH!!! However, it doesn't add the absolute URL of the page. There is a base ref tag which looks like <base <="" span="">href="http://shop.confetti.co.uk/" /> On a page such as http://shop.confetti.co.uk/branch/wedding-favours the canonical tag looks like rel="canonical" href="/branch/wedding-favours" /> Does Google recognise this as a legitimate canonical tag? The SEOmoz On-Page Report Card doesn't recognise it as such. Any help would be great, Thanks in advance, Brendan.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Confetti_Wedding0