Lots of the questions I get on Twitter and Facebook relate to blogging and SEO, and as I was typing up a quick and dirty guide to SEO Blogging for a client, I mentioned it to someone else and they asked for a copy. Then I mentioned it on Twitter and others asked. So I tidied it up a (little) bit, put it in PDF format and here it is

It covers:

• Thinking of what to write
• What not to blog
• How much should I write?
• How do I get people to comment?
• Should I tweet and facebook my blogs?
• Blogging for SEO – a quick and dirty guide
• Making sure Google knows about your blogs

It's not an advanced guide, it's not rocket science and hopefully it's not full of jargon.

I'm offering it free – no sign up, no cash, nothing – all I ask is that if you like it, you drop me a line in one of the many places you can find me, and then direct someone else to this page by either Tweeting about it, Facebooking it, mentioning it on Linked in, writing a blog post about it, or shouting on the High Street with a megaphone (special kudos to those of you who do the latter!).

Anyway, please click on the link to get 67 SEO Pointer for Blogging Beginners – a free guide

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photo credit: lumaxart

I get asked this question a lot. “If I want to be on the front page of Google for ‘widgets in Barnet’ then I need to buy www.widgetsinbarnet.com , don’t I?”

Now, there’s a lot of disagreement on the truths and lies about domain weighting – does Google give a higher position to someone with the right domain name? Will you be penalised if you don’t have keywords in your domain name?

All I can tell you is that in my experience:

1) If 2 sites are exactly the same in every way looks wise, same optimisation, same links in etc, and one of them has a keyword rich domain name, then yes, the chances are that Google will prefer them over the site with no keyword rich domain name.

2) If 2 sites looked exactly the same, but only one was optimised, and the other one had the keyword rich domain, 9 times out of 10 in my experience, the properly optimised site would get higher listings.

3) Having a keyword rich domain is only one part of the SEO ‘jigsaw’ – if you don’t have one, don’t worry about it – work on the optimisation of the site that is on the domain name that you DO have, and capitalise on the fact that your domain has been around a while.

I'd love to hear your thoughts below!

It’s not always easy knowing which keywords and phrases to target when optimising your website – and as I say in my latest blog over on Birds on the Blog, it’s all too easy to fail to see beyond high traffic and high competition phrases.

So why not try asking other people what THEY would use to search for you? This great tool from Seed Keywords allows you to set up a scenario (eg “If you were searching for a website that sells XXXXX, what would you type in to Google?”) and then invite people to contribute, anonymously.

If you can get enough people to contribute, you can get a great overall picture of the type of things that current and potential customers could be typing in to find you – and I bet there’ll be a few surprises!

Set up your ’scenario’ then promote it via:

• Email to current customers
• Your Facebook fan page
• Twitter
• On your blog
• In your email signature
• On LinkedIn
• Everywhere!

In fact, why not post a link to your scenario below and I’ll promise to drop and make some suggestions on each and every one.

I like to think I’m a fair person. I don’t believe in slagging off my competition, and always try to be even handed if someone asks for my advice on work done by someone else.

But every so often someone sends me something that makes my blood boil. Well yesterday I had 2 emails from 2 separate people, who I’d given some advice to on public forums.

I won’t name them here, but I will cover the downright lies they’ve been told, and the bad service they’ve received from their SEO consultants.

To clarify: SEO Consultant 1 is a web designer specialising in SEO & Social media, SEO Consultant 2 is a company using dubious telesales tactics and mentioned in several places elsewhere for ripping customers off.

SEO Consultant 1 told his client that:

• Google no longer uses title tags
• The META description isn’t important
• Link exchange is the way to good listings
• No-one searches for your search phrase anyway

This was blatantly to cover up the fact that he’d done no work on the site and achieved nothing.

Well, let’s put those lies to bed:

• Google DOES use the title tag – in fact it’s one of the most important parts of onsite SEO. Granted, it’s not the be all and end all of SEO, but it is a major part, and without it, you may as well not bother. If every page of your website simply has your company name as it’s title tag, then you’re not going to be found for anything else. And don’t get me started on the dreaded “Home Page” title tag. The simple fact was, the SEO had done no title tag work and was claiming that they’re not used any more by Google in order to dupe his client. That’s wrong.
• The META description IS important – it’s the description that Google shows when your site shows up in the results, and can be the difference between someone clicking on your listing or not. Of course, if you don’t have any listings anyway because your SEO hasn’t done the work they’re supposed to, then I guess the description tag doesn’t really matter after all…
• Link exchange CAN be a good way to help your listings if everything else is in place, but the link exchange page that this client was given was a FFA (Free For All) links page where anyone could sign up and no checks were made. This meant that the site could be linking to unrelated sites, and there was no check in place to ensure that reciprocal links were given. I’m not a big fan of reciprocal links, and it’s been proven that one way links from well respected sites work far better to enhance your SEO, so although this cold be said to help, I think the client was misled.
• “No-one searches for your search phrase anyway” – well, I’m sorry, but this makes me REALLY angry! In the first instance, why wasn’t proper keyword research done to find out whether the phrase chosen was a) suitable, b) achievable and c) worth optimising for in the first place. If hardly anyone is searching for it (which, as it happens, was a blatant lie – it’s one o the most competitive searches on the web), why on earth bother optimising for it in the first place?

The client involved had paid for a year’s SEO up front and from what I could tell, received very little. The site had 9 backlinks showing in Google, of which 6 were internal links from the site itself, there was no Webmaster Tools account, and in 5 months there had been no reporting, no help and advice, no status checks – nothing.

SEO Consultant 2 promised his client:

• Full website optimisation
• In 6 languages
• Keyword research
• Ongoing reporting

For just £295 up front and then £50 a month.

As the £50 was due to come out of his bank acount, the client asked what had been done so far. He was presented with a 3 page word document telling him what to change the title and META tags on 3 pages of his site to read. As he said to me:

It can’t have taken them more than 30 minutes to produce, and I could have done it myself!

So, far from the ‘full website optimisation’ of his 100+ pages, he got given (bad) advice on how to change 3 of his pages. No content advice. No Webmaster Tools account. No offsite optimisation advice. No page structure advice. Nothing. Just 3 badly formatted pages of a Word document that to be honest my 9 year old stepdaughter couldprobably have written better, and her first language is French!

No mention of the 6 languages optimisation he was promised (which is impossible anyway as the site was only in English), or keyword research.

When he queried this, he was told that he can’t have been promised what he was, and all calls are recorded. He asked to hear his recording and this was rapidly altered to ’some calls are recorded’.

Now, I’m going to put the ‘you get what you pay for’ argument to one side – the guy involved feels a bit stupid, but he was promised a lot, and most of it was blatant lies.

Is it any wonder that this industry has such a bad rep?

I will hold my hands up and say i’m not perfect. I’m not the best SEO in the world (there’s always something to learn from someone). And do you know what, I’m scatty as hell! But because of that I’ve put systems in place that mean that every site we optimise goes through a number of checks, and a whole process from start to finish. Once a site is ‘finished’ it goes into another process line that makes sure that ongoing recommendations and reports are sent. I like to think we keep in touch with our clients, and that goes some way towards the many people who come to us because they’re been recommended to by current clients.

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Everyone forgets, misplaces something, or has software / hardware issues that mean things don’t go quite to plan. But to blatantly lie to your clients, tell them things that are clearly untrue and provide them with substandard work? That’s scumbaggery of the highest standard.

When I speak with people like the two companies being ripped off above (and no, I didn’t pitch them for work) I feel ashamed to be in the industry I’m in.

No, I’m not implying that you need emergency help (although you might!), but want to point out how powerful the suffix ‘er’ is.

When people search for products and services, they frequently use the ‘er; suffix without realising it, yet as business owners, we tend not to.

Examples?

I say I run ‘an internet marketing company’ – my potential clients search for ‘internet marketer’

Client 1 is a commercial cleaning company in Northampton – his best converting traffic? ‘commercial cleaners Northampton’

Client 2 runs a financial advice consultancy – his clients search for ‘financial adviser’ (yeah, ok, or or)

So think about what you provide and think how people will search for that.

If you’re spending money to get visitors, look at the phrases you’re using.

Being at the top of the search engines for “Christmas gifts” is not only going to cost a lot of money, it’s also pretty useless if you only sell one or a few things.

“Christmas gift baskets” is more targeted and will help raise your conversion rate.

Other fairly useless phrases I’ve come across people using recently (and I use the word useless to mean that although they generate a lot of traffic, they don’t generate targeted traffic).

• Web design (on a site that was very focused locally, so “web design Northampton” would provide more qualified traffic)

• Graphics (on a printing site where ‘exhibition graphics’ would have been more targeted)

• Coaching (on a business coaching site – ‘business coaching’ would have been better)

• Sales jobs (again on a geographically focused site – “sales jobs Milton Keynes” would have been more suited)

Think differently – search engines aren’t the be all and end all of website traffic generation;

* The Northampton based web design company would be better off targeting local search phrases, and putting their link on localised websites. Most towns and/or counties have local directories. They could also try a targeted email campaign to Northampton based businesses.
* The exhibition graphics company could advertise on sites that promote exhibitions, as well as finding better targeted phrases for search engine promotion.

* The business coaching company could advertise on sites devoted to new and growing businesses, as well as a targeted email campaign to businesses of a certain size.

* The sales recruitment company could again advertise on local sites, as well as free recruitment sites, and job seeking newsgroups and forums.

Lots of traffic is good – lots of targeted traffic is even better.

So you’ve done the optimisation and you’re sure you’ve done the right things to your website to ensure that the search engines know exactly which keyphrases you’re targeting, right?

This little gadget will tell you if you’ve got it right by generating a ‘cloud’ based upon the phrases and words it thinks you are targeting.

The larger the text, the more you are targeting that word or phrase.

Keyword Cloud Tool © SEO Chat™ URL Valid URL Enter Captcha To Continue To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below Report Problem with Tool.

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-cloud/

Most people know that it is important to use their keyphrases in the s of their web pages:

www.yoursite.com/keyphrase.html for example.

But did you know that there is more SEO weight given to a page name with a hyphen in it than one without, or with an underscore?

So:

Internet-marketing-expert.html not internetmarketingexpert.html

Appointment-setting-uk.html not appointment_setting_uk.html

It allows the search engines to see the different words that make up the phrase, and relate them to one another and is just another piece of the SEO jigsaw.

‘Keyword density’ is a phrase that is often bandied about as if it is the Holy Grail of high search engine listings.

Basically it means the percentage of the text on a page that is your keyphrases.

Most experts recommend that you aim for a keyword density of between 2 and 8%.

I’ve tested this quite extensively over the last 13 years and have ranked on the front page of Google for some very competitive phrases with keyword densities ranging from 1% to 18%.

I’m not saying density doesn’t matter, but I am saying that if everything else is done correctly, then it’s not something to spend time worrying about.

If you’re stuck for pages to optimise, it’s better to use the longer versions of your keyphrase than the shorter.

So for example instead of using ‘gift hamper’ use ‘gift hampers’, instead of ‘clean carpets’ use ‘cleaning carpets’ etc.

If someone searches for the shorter version (gift hamper or clean carpets) they have a good chance of finding you.

If, on the other hand, you optimised for the shorter version, then people searching for the longer version would have no chance of finding you at all.