Browsing the blog archives for June, 2009

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Search Engine Optimizing Your Blog: Using Keywords

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28 Jun, 2009
Anne Bolender Edwards
Designing A Blog, Online Business, Technical Skills

Completed So Far:

My blog is up and running, and beginning to look pretty good. I have developed my list of powerful keywords and keyphrases, and now I will look at where and how to use these keywords and keyphrases.

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New Developments:

You have taken the time to carefully select powerful keywords that not only represent your site, but are also being used to in search engines to find sites like yours.

Now the trick is to effectively use these keywords in ways that help help search engines identify which words on your site are keywords and which are not. Unfortunately, you can’t just tell a search engine which keywords you have used on each page, you have to show them your keywords.  The following guidelines will help you direct search engines to your site’s keywords:

  1. use one primary keyword per page, supported by two or three secondary keywords. Use your list of powerful keywords to select one primary keyword and a couple of secondary keywords for each page of your site. The primary keyword should be placed in all of the major placement spots (more below on these), with the secondary keywords scattered throughout the page’s content. A secondary keyword from one page could be used as a primary keyword on another page (and vice versa).
  2. place your primary keyword in the page’s title and in all headings and subheadings used on the page. If you don’t normally break your content into smaller chunks by using subheadings, you should probably start. More on the usefulness of subheadings in my next post, which will be about “Content”.
  3. place your primary and secondary keywords effectively throughout your content, particularly in, but not limited to, the first few sentences. Don’t over use keywords. An appropriate keyword density is generally thought to be between 3% and 5% of your word count. So, if you have 250 words on a page, between 8 and 13 of those words should be your keywords (or 3 to 5 keywords for every 100 words of content). Keywords should not affect the readability of the copy, they should appear naturally in sentences and paragraphs that are grammatically correct.
  4. highlight keywords by using bold or italics on them, or by underlining them.
  5. place keywords in and around hyperlinks. Never use ‘click here’ to identify an hyperlink. If you can’t place a keyword in the hyperlink, itself, then use keywords around the hyperlinks. Search engines are attracted to links, so will very likely notice these keywords.
  6. place keywords in bulleted lists.
  7. if you use Wordpress to create your blog, use both Categories and Tags to list keywords that are relevant to that post.
  8. use your strongest keyword, the one that is most representative of your entire site,  in the site’s URL, in the site’s name (if at all possible) and in the site’s title and/or subtitle.
  9. remember to keyword optimize any Word documents or .pdf files that you attached to pages on your site.
Beautifully made hand-blown glass fish, hidden amongst the greenery.

Beautifully made hand-blown glass fish, hidden amongst the greenery like powerful keywords hidden on a website.

There are a few other extremely effective places where you can place keywords,  but they involve HTML coding.

Accessing and changing HTML coding on pages, posts and in .pdf files can be a bit intimidating for anyone not used to HTML coding, so I will leave posting about this until later in this series, to when I post on Advanced Keyword Strategies.

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Next Step:

Writing for the web is different from writing for other types of media.  The next post in the series, which will be published on Wednesday, looks as some of the tips and tricks involved with writing effectively for the Internet.

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If you liked this post, you can read this series on Search Engine Optimizing Your Blog from the beginning by going to the Introduction post.

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If you enjoyed reading this post, maybe you’d like to subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via email (enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, on the right) so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you for visiting!

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Search Engine Optimizing Your Blog: Selecting Keywords

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25 Jun, 2009
Anne Bolender Edwards
Designing A Blog, Online Business, Technical Skills

Completed So Far:

With everything up and running, I have begun preparing a list of powerful keywords that I can use to build my blog’s content around.

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New Developments:

Keywords and Keyphrases are the words and phrases that people use to search with when they do an online, i.e. Google or Yahoo! search. The more people who search using the same keywords you have used in your blog, the more likely it is that you will have visitors to your site.

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Note:

When using keyphrases, you should limit the number of words used to between 2 and 5 words. Using more than 5 words reduces the effectiveness of your keyphrase.

For the rest of this series, I will be using the word ‘keyword’ to mean both keywords and keyphrases.

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Selecting powerful keywords or keyphrases is not always an easy task but, in the long run, is worth the effort.

Once you have identified the types of pages you will be adding to your blog, and have some idea of the content for each page, it’s time to make a ‘seed list’ of potential keywords that you will build into the content.

Some tips for selecting powerful keywords include:

Brainstorming: Brainstorm possible words and phrases that describe your product or service either by getting ideas from other people, or mind-mapping, etc .

Finding powerful keywords takes some effort

Finding powerful keywords requires a bit of research.

  1. Using Non-specific keywords, that identify general categories, e.g. digital cameras or cars;
  2. Using product specific keywords, that identify specific products, e.g. Nikon D80 or 2005 Honda Accord;
  3. Using location specific keywords, that identify a specific city or region, e.g. Toronto Nikon Dealer, Guelph Honda;
  4. Using word variations, e.g instead of car use truck, van, SUV, or auto, automobile, vehicle
  5. Check out your competitor’s websites, what words or phrases are frequently repeated.

You can usually generate a fairly extensive list of potential keywords just by brainstorming, or you can also dust off the old thesaurus, see what word variations you can use to expand your list with. At this point, you can either begin integrating words from this list into your copy, or  you can go one step further and use a keyword analysis program.

Keyword Analysis Programs: A keyword analysis program determines which keywords people are already using to search for your products or services, and which of these keywords are being used most often. Some keyword analysis programs will even provide you with alternative keywords that can be used instead of your original keyword. Most search engines have some kind of keyword analysis tool that you can access.

At Google there are three tools that you can play with:

  1. Google Search-Based Keyword Tool: http://www.google.com/sktool/
  2. Google Adwords Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
  3. Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends

Another great keyword analysis tool is SEO Blogger by Wordtracker. Wordtracker is a company that specializes in keyword tracking, analysis, etc, and offers several ‘tools’ that you can use to do keyword analysis with, some free, some not so free. Free downloadable tools include a Wordtracker toolbar that works with both Microsoft’s IE browser and the SEO Blogger that works on Firefox. Basically the SEO Blogger plugin sits as an icon at the bottom of the Firefox browser page. When you click on the icon, a column appears on the left hand side of your browser window. Just type-in a keyword and the program generates a list of alternative keywords plus an indication of how popular both your keyword and the alternative keywords are. This plugin is very easy to install and use.  You can download a copy of SEO Blogger at http://labs.wordtracker.com/seo-blogger/

Wordtracker publishes a free online tool, Keyword Questions, found at http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions that is also fun to play with. You type in a keyword and Keyword Questions provides a list of questions that have been used over the past year to research the market your keyword represents. You can easily pull new keywords from the questions listed here.

There are other keyword analysis tools available, like KeywordDiscovery at: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com and ClickTracks at: http://www.clicktracks.com but both of these are subscription-based services and cost to use.

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Next Step:

Now that you have generated a dynamic list of powerful keywords, it’s time to start using the keywords and keyphrases. Monday’s post will look at how to effectively integrate keywords into your blog.

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If you liked this post, you can read this series on Search Engine Optimizing Your Blog from the beginning by going to the Introduction post.

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If you enjoyed reading this post, maybe you’d like to subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via email (enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, on the right) so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you for visiting!

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Search Engine Optimizing Your Blog: Introduction

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23 Jun, 2009
Anne Bolender Edwards
Designing A Blog, Online Business, Technical Skills

Completed So Far:

My Blog is now live with a proper URL, I have planned what content I want to put on it over the next few months, and I am now at the point where I want to start developing the content.

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New Developments:

Before I could start working full-tilt on writing and preparing content, I needed to know a bit about Search Engine Optimization, and how to use SEO techniques to help draw visitors to this blog.

Here's a relaxing picture you can come back to if this post starts to overwhelm

It is important to relax when you are learning new skills, particularly when they are as frustrating to learn as developing a blog ;-)

The reason to learn about and use search engine optimization is so that search engine spiders and bots can find, evaluate and rank your website or blog.

When someone does a online search, say on Google or Yahoo!, they usually end up with pages of results listing masses of websites, but only clicking on links to websites they find posted on the first 10 or so results pages. The more optimized your site is, the higher it will be ranked by search engines. This means that your site is more likely to end up on the first couple pages of the search engine’s results when someone searches on the keywords you have used to optimize your site with.

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Resources:

The resources I used for learning about Search Engine Optimization include:

  • the SEO Copywriting Success program from the American Writers and Artists Institute (AWAI), located at http://www.awaionline.com. This program’s format includes a set of DVD’s, a workbook and a textbook. The program goes into copywriting a little bit, but the bulk of the information is about SEO skills and techniques. The information is easy to understand and use – even for an absolute beginner.

  • ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, by Darren Rowse & Chris Garrett. This book continues to amaze me with the amount of excellent information it provides.
  • I also used the Search Engine Optimization for Dummies (3rd edition) book, written by Peter Kent, and have Google-searched for information I wasn’t sure of. Both of these resources are also excellent.

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Basically, there are four basic aspects to SEO-ing that bloggers should be aware of, and make good use of:

  1. keywords and keyphrases
  2. developing excellent content
  3. links, links, and more links
  4. advanced keyword and keyphrase strategies

Clicking on any of the highlighted sub-titles will take you directly to that post.

These four topics involve a lot of information, so to prevent you, dear readers, from getting a headache, I am going to further split these four topics into a couple of sections each, and post them individually on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays over the next couple of weeks.

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Next Step:

The first post in this series will be on Friday will focus on selecting the keywords and keyphrases that will start to bring traffic to your blog.

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If you enjoyed reading this post, maybe you’d like to subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via email (enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, on the right) so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you for visiting!

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Tweaking Your Blog

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22 Jun, 2009
Anne Bolender Edwards
Designing A Blog, Online Business, Technical Skills

Completed So Far:

So far, I have decided on how I want to monetize my blog and have begun developing a blog that will support the sale of information products. I have also sourced a number of resources that I can use to help me develop my virtual business, but have already run into my first little snag.

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New Developments:

In running a critical eye over my blog, I very quickly realized that I would need to put some major effort into it before I could even begin thinking about marketing issues and plans. So over the past couple of days I focused on three things:

  1. I renamed and slightly refocused the blog;
  2. I migrated the blog over to wordpress.org; and
  3. I began planning and developing content.

1) Renaming and Refocusing The Blog: The original name of this blog was Boomer Nomads, which was fine because the major audience I am focusing on is baby boomers. However, in planning the content I realized that the practical information works for anyone at any age – hence the change in name to Ageless Nomads.

There will still be some material on the blog that focuses specifically on baby boomers. This material will address unique issues and circumstances faced by baby boomers, for example, my articles Boomers as Entrepreneurs, and What is This “Third Age” Thingie? begin to look at some boomer-specific issues.

The other reason for the name change is that I am also working on a second blog, Ageless Explorer that looks at a number of other lifestyle design issues (e.g. dealing with major lifestyle transitions; preparing for retirement; finding a purpose and a passion, etc).

The path less well taken

The path less well taken

2) Moving the Blog to wordpress.org: Wordpress.com has some real advantages when you are learning to create a blog, and works great for a personal blog. It’s easy to get started on, easy to use, offers a good selection of functions and it’s free. For a business blog, however, it’s limited in what it can do. Wordpress.org, on the other hand, offers functions that are perfect for a business – and is still relatively inexpensive and easy to use.

I am a techno-phobe and am constantly concerned about getting in over my head with stuff like this, so I called on my tech-guy (my son) to act as my go-to person in case I ran into any difficulties. My concern was that everything I had read about getting started on wordpress.org talked about having to download the program onto your computer, then setting up an account with an online server, then creating your blog. But nothing ever stepped you through the whole process.

As it turns out, if you use one of the hosts recommended by wordpress.org, or any online host that already runs wordpress.org on their servers, you don’t need to download anything onto your computer. All you need to do is to set up an account with the online server (I used BlueHost only because it was one of the hosting services listed on wordpress.org), pay for the account (mine cost less that $85 US per year), click on one button (your hosting service will tell you which one), fill in two or three little bits of information including the username and password you want to use for the account, and the blog is up and running. It was really, really easy!!

The original wordpress.org blog theme that is created is a very plain theme, so you will probably want to change it fairly quickly to something a bit more pleasant to look at. Over 800 free themes can be found on wordpress.org (just click on the “Extend” tab, and then on the “Themes Directory” link), which you can just download and then import into your blog. This process creates a unique theme gallery for your blog that you can use to preview the themes you like while deciding on which one you want to use. Scads of other free and purchased themes are available online – you can do a Google search to find thousands of theme sites.

The first big theme-related question for me was whether to go with a theme that was search engine optimized or not. I chose not to go with an SEO-ed theme mostly because I didn’t like the look of any of the ones I saw. For me, having the blog look nice was important. Most SEO aspects, like keywords and links, can be added quite easily. However, changing the look and layout of the blog is not something I am comfortable with doing – yet.

Once the theme was selected, I spent some time familiarizing myself with the basic functions, including finding how to use the “Text” widget to begin developing an affinity program with Amazon.ca/ Amazon.com. OK, so adding a proper eBookStore is something I still have to work on :-)

3) Planning and Developing Content: Now that the blog is up and running on wordpress.org my next step was to begin planning and developing content. My goal was to make sure that there is a good amount of content on the blog and that I know what other content I want to develop before I begin marketing. This way I know that when the marketing begins to provide results, there will be enough content here for people to begin exploring and hopefully come back to. I have also planned the content for this blog to overlap somewhat with my other blog (Ageless Explorer) which will, hopefully, benefit both blogs.

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Next Step:

My goal for Wednesday’s post is to explore how to Search Engine Optimize the blog and it’s contents. I figure I might as well begin developing the content with search engines in mind right from the very beginning.

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If you enjoyed reading this post, maybe you’d like to subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via email (enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, on the right) so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you for visiting!

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Selecting an On-line Business/Blog Topic

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20 Jun, 2009
Anne Bolender Edwards
Designing A Blog, Lifestyle Design Skills, Online Business

Completed so far:

I have gathered enough resources together so that I have an understanding of what I need to do to create an online business …. if only I knew what business I wanted to create!!

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New Developments:

Becoming an online entrepreneur and working from home is an extremely appealing idea for many people of all ages – if only they could figure out what they wanted their business to be about!

I waffled for years. I knew that I really wanted to have my own business and then would get sooooo frustrated trying to decide what to develop a business on that I would eventually give up. Only to come back to the idea of being self-employed and go through the whole frustrating process again…….and again.

Selecting just one is sooooo difficult.

Selecting just one is sooooo difficult!!

My big issue seems to be that I am a scanner, or a renaissance soul – someone who needs to continually explore new things, new topics, and has difficulties remaining focused on one topic for too long. Not great for developing a business – or so I used to think!

In my scannings, I discovered 3 methods that can be used to help individuals select topics for online businesses:

  1. The Technology Method: this is where you select keywords that describe the business or service you want to develop, and then do Keyword Analysis on them to see which ones are strong keywords (are often being used in online searches) and which keywords are experiencing a growth in usage. See my post on Selecting Keywords for more information on keyword analysis. The problem with this method for me, was that although this might give me a business topic that was popular (at least for now), it wouldn’t necessarily be a topic that I would want to work on for the next 10 or 20 years.
  2. The ‘Find Your Passion’ Method: this method is used by a lot of career coaches and school councilors. Through various methods of personal analysis, a person can determine a topic that they are passionate about and focus a business around that topic. This is how I discovered that I am a scanner – that there is no one topic that I feel really passionate about or would want to spend the rest of my life working on.
  3. The Template Method: I sent a big “Thank you!!” to Lea Woodward from Location Independent Living and Cath Duncan from Mine Your Resources who put together a Location Independent Lifestyle Beginners Guide, for this suggestion. Both Lea and Cath are scanners. The model that Lea developed to suit her scanner personality was to focus on developing a template involving a core set of technical and entrepreneurial skills that could be used to develop an online business on any topic that was holding her interest at the time.

The Template Method is the model that I am using to develop my online business with, and this blog/website is a ‘How-to guide’ that follows the step-by-step process I have taken to develop this business template.

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Next Step:

With topic and resources in hand, its time to develop my on-line business blog/website.

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If you enjoyed reading this post, maybe you’d like to subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via email (enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, on the right) so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you for visiting!

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