However, there are some Google ranking factors that most professionals agree affect site positioning on Google SERPs. However, these are opinions, find out for yourself how these apply to projects you’re working on.

Recommended Steps to Improve Google Ranking

1. Use keywords in HTML title tags. Probably the most significant factor for a site regardless of the competitive landscape, the title tag must be consistent with content in the page for best results. The more keywords in your title, the less effective this factor, be judicious.”

Read full story by Frederick Townes (March 2009)

Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin are search marketing consultants who have been working in SEO since 2000/1998, and come from project management/programming approaches respectively. They work with a large number of companies, including Fortune 500 companies.

“Back and bracing as ever, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, Second Edition offers brisk advice, bite-sized tasks, and smart tools to help you increase visibility for your website on the major search engines. In this new edition of their best-selling how-to guide, SEO consultants Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin offer surprisingly easy do-it-yourself techniques as well as the very latest SEO strategies for small, verysmall, and large businesses, as well as for bloggers and web designers.”

Buy on Amazon.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – The SEO Fundamentals Pyramid from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Google Analytics
Learn more about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site. You’ll get the information you need to write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites. Learn more about the benefits. Google Analytics is free to everyone, whether you are an advertiser, publisher, or site owner.

Keywords
A ‘keyword’ campaign needs to be selected very carefully, and form the basis of content, meta-tags and search-marketing campaigns.

Link Popularity
Search engines rank websites according to other sites which link to them, and not all sites are created equal! A number of factors come into play in this, of which the main is still quality, relevant content.

Google Alerts
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

There is also be some helpful information in the blogs I follow.

SuperFunDaysOut

In discussions with SuperFunDaysOut about taking over their blogging, Twitter and bookmarking strategies (looking forward to all that adrenaline flowing online!), I thought I’d see if there was more to learn – there always is – but was pleased to note that much of it was familiar, although I need to put more of it into practice!

Inbound/Outbound Marketing

Previously Tony had given a talk on outbound (interruption) versus inbound (permission/opt-in) marketing – with social media falling into the second category, and much the way that business now goes. How it all fits together.

Blogs, SEO, Tools

• Blogs are outdoing the web for SEO/traffic, as they are indexed quicker, therefore move up the Google, or Technorati, chain faster.
• WordPress is Tony’s recommended tool for blogs, with its own analytics software. It’s free, strong, professional (around 4,500 themes), and 6000+ plug-ins available.  He particularly recommends allinone. As WordPress also functions as a CMS, can have a consistent look to website/blog.
• Particularly recommends Ping.Fm, allowing autoupdates of all social media.

Keywords

Keywords are the key to everything, as Google is simply a database, albeit a very sophisticated one! I’ve forgotten the name of the new tool that Tony mentioned which Google are developing in response to the success of Twitter…

On a website, with organic methods, optimising and tweaking the content, it can take around 6 months to reach the top-spot in Google, but with blogs, it can be possible in 3-4 days!

Time, however, needs to be spent in the early stages to define the keywords – it’s not rocket science, but experience demonstrates that it takes around 3 days to develop this.

What do you write about?

Write about what they want to learn about, not what you want to sell (aside from any possible benefits it may have for your viewers), as it’s all about a process of relationship-building. 

Know Me -> Like Me -> Trust Me -> Buy Me

In the UK studies have shown that visitors access a site 6-7 times before they buy.

What should a post look like?

• Internal headings (indicative of content)
• At least one graphic
• 500-800 words (ok, view many of my posts so far as extended reportage, rather than blogs!)
• Lists – not too many (e.g. 10 things for x)
• 1 idea per post, keyword related.
• The headline should assume that the reader won’t read the article.
• Can surprise people with twists on words, etc [although I would add I'd take care not to be nothing to do with the words, as I get REALLY annoyed by that]
• No problems with being commercial if it’s a personal opinion, clarify as such. 
• No spelling errors!

A couple of free-ebooks are on his website. 

Publishing Schedule

• 1-2 times per week and stick to it.
• With WordPress (and probably others) can set a date to publish
• Create keyword content/strategy.

What can you put in a post?

• Interviews (including via email)
• Video interviews
• Guest posts from similar blogs (copy but provide a backlink, this is your CURATORIAL slant – pointing people to the best material)
• “Best of” lists
• “How do we do it” posts, including screenshots

Can you get someone else to write it?

Yes, plenty can be found on eLance, but no one knows your business as you do, and you’re missing out on participating on the conversation.

Tony, however, cited an example of tallshipsraces.org, which he took from a static site, which was targeting the 16-24 age bracket, and turned it into a site which generated great publicity/its own content, including YouTube. 

Put an RSS feed on and talk to your market. A number of US blogs are now using blogs as cusomter service. Time consuming but gets results. 

Comments

• Take comments seriously
• Comment back – share an example, etc. (don’t just market your product). Tony recommended CommentHut for commenting (along with another product he’d forgotten the name of!), aiming for 10 comments/backlinks per day.
• Offer thought leadership.
• Find out who people are and follow links.
• Subscribe to blogs and follow on Twitter
• There are pros/cons to monitoring comments, but easy with WordPress

Twitter

• Use it as part of your blogging strategy.
• Check out the “social media experts”, who’s following them?
• Aim for 95% personal tweets, 5% sales, otherwise likely to be de-followed. 
• Place Twitter URL on homepage, press releases, business card, email signatures!

Technorati

Technorati is the Google of the blogging world, so get your blog registered there. Find some big bloggers and start to link to their material (so you start to feature in their comments, etc.)

Google Reader

There’s a number of RSS feed readers [I use Newsgator], and Tony recommends Google Reader, which I use to follow blogspot blogs. 

Tony Treacy

I like Tony’s approach, offering advice to allow clients to run their own blogs! He’s passionate about what he’s doing and you can hear the excitement in his voice as he talks about the explosion of social media and how few companies can survive with a website alone!

Age Groups (Roughly!)

• Under 35: Digital Natives
• 35-55: Digital Immigrants
• 55-65: Digital Aliens
• 65 + Silver Surfers (who largely want to PhotoShop their family history then email it!)

AimHigher

Meantime, I’m looking forward to the end of this month when I’ll be adapting my WordPress for websites to WordPress for blogs to schoolkids who are engaging with University for the first time, shall think how best to structure the session!

Post first posted 3rd June 2009, on drbexl searches the net!