Blogs for SEO

SEO-FU

2006-12-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

We figured that everyone would want to see what Cologuy and Greenguy look like and what there special skills are so we have posted our official playing cards below.

As you can see we are a formidable team with only one goal. World SEO domination. (Can you tell it has been a long day filled with a frenzy of end of year activity?)

Business Blogging

2006-05-29T16:09:00.000-07:00

There is no substitute for good content when it comes to blogging, so says Lee Odden is President of TopRank Online Marketing. In a recent post “Optimization for Business Blogs' he lists 14 key points to think about to help bring your business blog up in the ranks where it is currently competing for eyeballs with more than an estimated 27 million new blogs a day.

His key points include:

The importance of Keywords
Optimizing your Template
Using the blog post title as the permalink
Adding RSS and Feed buttons
Optimizing your Categories
Adding the option of Social Bookmarking
Ping, Trackbacks and Comments
Submitting your blog to directories
Link Building
RSS to Email
Blog analytics
Offsite Tracking

This is just a quick overview of his points; to really understand what and why these are the key points read his post Optimization for Business Blogs.

RSS Feed Buttons

2006-05-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

To make it easy for your blog readers to subscribe to your RSS feed you can add ‘chicklets’ to your site. Chicklets are the icons that you see on a blog that when clicked will take a reader to your feed.

While some just open up your own feed, others will send the guest to a variety of feed readers that are available. All they need to do is choose the particular chicklets for their favorite feed aggregator and away they go.

In addition to adding your feed to their feed reader you can also offer them a link to their favorite tag site such as Del.iciou.us, Furl It, or Shadows.

It used to be so simple, one little link that you clicked to “Save to Favorites” but now if you are the indecisive type, you could spend all day figuring out which one to choose.

Quickly make chicklets with an Automatic RSS Feed Button Maker.

Feed Error on WordPress, Page Not Found

2006-04-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

Recently, while setting up a new WordPress blog we downloaded a template that had the following code:

While some of the templates seem to have fixed this problem, we still run across the odd template that has this in the code. When using this particular piece of code we have found that it results in a page error which says basically “Page not found”. With a little research I found out that in fact “feed” unlike “mailto”, “news”, “ http” etc is not a recognized protocol. In order to get the feed to work correctly - simply remove the ‘feed” part of the code.

Your feed is an important part of your site optimization. A recent white paper from Yahoo on RSS feeds talks about the growth of RSS feeds in the online community. On average “Aware RSS Users” subscribe to 6.6 feeds while more advanced users are likely to subscribe to even more. Another fact, from the report says that “Aware RSS Users” claim to spend an average of 4.1 hours a week reading the feeds they receive. If they cannot read your blog from a feed then they will probably not bother.

We recently found that the feed page can also get a page rank, not sure what that means for our overall site optimization, but the Blizzard Internet Newsletter newsletter XML feed page now has a page rank of 4, we believe it to be a good thing.

In order to make sure that the feed works, test it at Feed Validator.

Read the Yahoo White Paper (pdf) on a recent report on the use of RSS.

UPDATE: Here is a copy of the complete line of code so that you can see what Rob is referencing.

<li><a href="feed:<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" title="<?php _e('Syndicate this site using RSS'); ?>"><?php _e('<abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr>'); ?></a></li>

Analysing Your Keywords for Blogging

2006-04-07T12:47:00.000-07:00

A good way to keep bringing back traffic to your blog is to analyse your keywords that are being searched. What it is that brings people there in the first place? By adding a simple free tracking tool to your site such as Statcounter, Extreme Tracker or OneStat you can see what words people are using to find your blog and start writing more articles along those lines. Your blog becomes a hybrid of what it is that people are looking for and you can cater to those keywords.

If you want to pay for a tool there are all kinds of options and maybe once you start to make some real cash from your site you will want to go that route, but in the meantime a simple free tool would work.

Help on Blogging for Small Businesses

2006-03-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

Discovered a new forum on Small Business Ideas that I thought was worth sharing. They are

"…a community of over 3,000 small business folks from around the world who support and encourage each other as we grow our businesses."

A pretty active forum for those that are looking for advice on Small Business Marketing with an SEO forum, PPC area as well as lots of other great information.

My eyes went to the Blogs and Blogging forum that has some active members talking about blogging and small businesses.

If you are a small business and feel a little intimidated by some of the bigger forums that are full of techies, then this might be the site for you, it seems to be made up of small business owners that are trying to find a way to promote themselves online without using too much technical jargon. They are keen to talk about things that they have tried and experimented with and how they are fairing in the world of online marketing.

Google Domination

2006-02-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

Bob Woodruff from ABC recently visited the Google plex and interviewed Larry and Sergey. This is an interesting look into Googles plan for World Domination. This is actually very similar to the place I work for except we aren't millionaires and we don't get free snacks. Take a look at what they say about the world and what their moto means to the founders. I am skeptical that they actually believe it but its worth a view.

First Ever Links Post

2006-02-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

I am not big on link posts but some interesting reads are here for those looking for reason to use blogs on your website or why comapnies are doing it themselves. Also a couple interesting tidbits.

Russell Savige has a short but interesting piece on why he entered the blogosphere.

Here is another article on the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki from Business Week.

Technorati is trying out a slider, similar to yahoos "shopping/research" slider to help you find authority sites. Does not work great in what I tried it for but it adds a new element to the long tail. The article is here on the Search Engine Journal.

Blizzard Internet, a fairly large SEO/Marketing/Design company that mainly focuses on hospitality, has launched a business blog program for anyone. Eve if your site is hosted elsewhere they can set up[ a blgo attached to your site that close match to your site.

Completely off subject but kind of funny is the Elvis Search Engine. Find anything you ever wanted to know about Elvis right here. Not sure what its good for beyond that but it is kind of funny.

Blogs the Choice of the Next Generation

2006-02-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

Okay so its not Pepsi but Coke has decided to send a team of college student bloggers to Torino to cover the Wineter Olympics there. The blog site is attached to coke and is being used for PR purposes. This of course is one of the big boys finally getting it. Blogs are great for increasing your ranking in Google as well as driving traffic to your site. Something I have been saying for a long time, use blogs on your site or lose traffic. Its starting to happen now, don't get caught behind the curve.

Stop WordPress Comment Spam

2006-01-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

Comments spam for bloggers is like any celebrities political comments during the Academy Awards (insert whatever award show you like here). They take away from the full enjoyment of the show, distract you from the content, annoy you with the inane and stupid comments, and steals all of the power from the event. Comments spam does all of that, most of all stealing the power from your blog. In fact comment spam left unchecked can get your site banned from Google. Software like blogger.com does some things to help like putting "nofollows" on comment links, e-mailing you when you get a comment and the captcha check (captcha is the annoying little picture with letters in it that you have to enter into a box to continue. See picture to the right.) The problem with these is that spammers have moved away from automated spamming to paying people to spam you which means that captcha lets it go sailing on through and then you have to check you email. If you have a big blog checking your mail 3 or 4 times a day can be a royal pain, especially if you get spammed quite a bit. Last I hate nofollows on blogs. They truly break up the conversation that blogs support. I want Google to see that Jim Westergrens has commented on my blog and he has a great site too. It also makes my site more relevant by providing a link to a relevant place.

WordPress of course is not immune to this. That's why today I am doing a review of my absolute favorite comment spam killer called "Spam Karma". This is the best spam program for blogs that I have ever used. The premise is that each comment has a "Karma". This karma is affected by a number of variables such as URL's in the comment, number of comments recently, and if it comes from a black listed IP address to name a few. The beauty of this is that it works really, really, really well. I have had a total of 1 comment spam out of over a thousand get through on WordPress after installing the Spam karma plug-in. The one that got through got moderated very easily and added to the blacklist in seconds. The oriental antique place out of Vietnam won't get a link out of me that easy.

The best part of this spam assasinator is that if your copy blacklists an IP address it is sent to a database, which in turn tells everyone's Spam Karma that the IP address is bad. This means that you not only get the benefit of your own program but everyone else. Its kind of like shared processing, you get the benefit of others computers and experience.

Getting rid of comment spam will help you with SEO on your blog also. Not having it there means less non-relevant links away from blog, more PR kept in your blog, and more time for you to concentrate on making those keywords, descriptions, and posts to help your blog along.

Again, according to Matt Cutts you can use nofollows (or link condoms as they are known in the SEO world) that don't really work. You can try captcha which is annoying and ever so not foolproof. You can get an email with every comments. Or you can install Spam Karma and be done with comment spam (for the most part).

Next WordPress post is on getting rid of those Ugly (myblog.com/?p123=etc) and making them much more search engine friendly. (Trust me it helps). Oh and if you want a question answered please feel free to post a comments and I will get around to answering you as quickly as possible.

Last V7ndotcom Elursrebmem Post for a While

2006-01-17T08:46:00.000-07:00

I have started another blog at www.v7ndotcomelursrebmem.blogspot.com/. This one is only to track the contest and is not in the contest. Just as this blog is not. I will keep it updated at least every two days if not more often depending on what changes (no promises on the weekends).

Last a request. If you want to really push some link juice at the Charity site (http://www.watching-paint-dry.com/v7ndotcom-elursrebmem/) and don't have much to go around, like a PR 4 or lower, you can do two things. Link to the Charity site is number one, then you can also link here. This will help raise this sites PR and push some towards the Charity site. You can freely take down the links at the contest is over. I'm only asking for help with the contest. After that is over do what you want. You could also link to the tracking blog, which also links to the charity site, but that one is not indexed as of yet and has no back links at all. Another way to help is to go and Digg his article at http://digg.com/technology/SEO_for_charity_-_v7ndotcom_elursrebmem_contest_entry Thank you for any help you can give, it will help kids and adults out all over the world.

*****************Update***************
Oops sorry Alek. Good thing its only Yahoo

V7ndotcom Elursrebmem

2006-01-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

Blogs for SEO is proud to be competing in the newest SEO contest from V7. The newest keyword is v7ndotcom elursrebmem. We are competing in the contest not for us but for children with Celiac Disease. If you want to check on us the hospital is fully on board with us. If you want to help us help thousands of children all over the world please link to this site http://www.watching-paint-dry.com/v7ndotcom-elursrebmem/ with the text link displaying as v7ndotcom elursrebmem. This will mean the world to kids all over the world and to us, the webmasters, who are competing to win the money for this terrible diseas. Please feel free to post comments or ask questions about what we are doing or why. I will try to reply as quickly as possible. Do not worry we will be back to posting about using SEO on Blogs here shortly but for today we are concentrating on v7ndotcom elursrebmem and making sure this site hits #1 in the SERPs at google. Any help other webmasters can provide will be greatly appreaciated. Thank you.

Optimize Your WordPress Titles

2006-01-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

Okay so you have decided to blog and use it on your website to increase you exposure, traffic, and hopefully conversions. So now you need to optimize your blog, which is easier said than done most of the time. Well we will now start showing you how to optimize you site. This is only the first in a series on how to make your blog search engine friendly. Remember for now we are focusing on WordPress. I will cover other blogging software including Mambo, Joomla, Typepad and even Blogger later.

The title on most WordPress posts is kind of ugly. If this post were in a blog it would show up in the title bar like this;

Blogs for SEO >> Category Name >> Optimize Your WordPress Titles.

or this:

This doesn't do a whole lot. The search engines don't really realize that your title is what this post is about. It thinks that every post is only about Blogs for SEO and its not, well not completely. This post is about WordPress titles, which is what you want to have indexed and show up in the searches. If you are using WordPress 1.5 or later than there is a great option for you.

Optimal Title is a plugin for WordPress that will make the titles show up correctly and without the category name in it (unless of course you are on the category page). Click on the link above and it will take you to the plug in designers page. You do have to be comfortable editing code and using FTP to change your site though so its not for the faint hearted.

There are other tricks but those involve going into the code and also having some PHP ability. I would suggest using optimal title. It seems to be the best bang for your buck so to speak. After you install it it will make yout titles look like this:

Post Title >> Blog Title

or this

******Update*********
WebProNews talks about the same thing here and anry a link to me. What the heck. All they get is a nofollow showing that they could have linked here and given their readers a great resource.

Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki

2006-01-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

A new (well new in terms of the web) website has popped up called the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki. This is from a couple guys at wired magazine. This wiki is designed to track which Fortune 500 companies now use blogs for their online business. While a business having a blog is not an entirely new idea the idea to keep an eye on a companies blog to track performnce is a fairly new one, at least for the big boys. Companies like General Motors and Boeing using their blogs to generate good PR while also addressing customers concerns and complaints. These blogs, while a manifestation of general popularity of these on line journals, also can create a buzz about the company which in effect is free advertising. The truly suprising thing is how few of the 500 use blogs. While most of the 500 don't need a whole lot of help with SEO or improved rankings on the search engine, they all can benefit from the good PR. With only 19 currently blogging, granted the 19 are the truly big boys, I can only imagine that over the course of the next year more will join those ranks. I would venture a guess that by this time next year that number will be over 100. If its not then the other companies really do not understand the web culture or the need to communicate with the masses in a truly free (mostly) and honest way.

**********************************************
UPDATE
**********************************************
Apparently AT&T plans to acknowledge bloggers in the new year but they don't want to spend any of the $800 million advertising budget on a company blog even though they are trying to appeal to a younger audience. Yeah that makes sense.

Optimizing Word Press Blogs

2006-01-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to write a post on how to optimize a sight for wordpress for a while. It seemed like one of those projects I would get around to when I had a moment. Which turns out to almost never. Thankfully I stumbled across Jim Westergren's Blog. While his entire site is not dedicated to SEO for blogs he has a great post on SEO for Wordpress blogs. While I agree with most of what he says. I only differ from him in one aspect. He says:

Took away unnessary links and put rel=nofollow on some.
You don’t need for example two links back to Wordpress - if you don’t want of course. Also the RSS links I put rel=nofollow on. The less external links you have the better, it means your other blog pages get’s a bigger share of the PageRank

I completely agree with putting nofollows on certain things like rss feeds, trackback links, and the like. I believe that a blog is an extention of a conversation beyond your one site. It is what the web should be. Not static but dynamic with people sharing links. To limit the googlebot to only exploring your site is limiting that conversation. While this makes some sense when linking to a "bad" neighborhood, I don't like doing it in practice. I even think limiting the comments to nofollows is really just an easy fix. On my wordpress blogs I use Spam Karma. I never get spammy comments. There are tools out there for almost every blogging software that will help with comment spam. Limiting the links to nofollows is the easy way for any SEO. Course that just my soapbox talk for the day.

E-Marketing Top 10 New Years Resolutions

2005-12-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

The e-marketing newsletter HotelMarketing.com had an article last year on a Hotelier’s 2005 top ten Internet strategy resolutions. They all still hold true for this year and don’t just necessarily apply to the hospitality industry. Here they are in no particular order with some editing.

1. I will make this year the “Year of Building Interactive relationships” with my customers. I want to own my customers, give them a site that they will come back to again and again.
2. I will make Brand Building on the web a focus of my marketing efforts.
3. I will make Direct-to Consumer Online Distribution the centerpiece of my Internet Strategy. For both hospitality and online stores this means best Internet rate guarantee, website optimization, pay-per-click marketing and among others link creation.
4. I will adopt an ongoing Website Optimization Strategy and turn it into top priority.
5. I will deploy a robust Internet Marketing strategy and turn marketing of my optimized site into a top priority.
6. I will perform a comprehensive Search Engine Marketing Strategy because search engines are an essential component of the online marketing strategy.
7. I will carry out a comprehensive Product Web Strategy to leverage the popularity of my product by making my site the most knowledgeable on the web.
8. I will use competitive intelligence to continually evaluate how my comp is set using the Internet and Direct vs. Indirect Online Channels.
9. I will launch a blog on my site that will allow me to keep my information up to date and relevant to the current news for my industry.
10. To achieve the all of the above I will create a relationship with an experienced Internet distribution and marketing consultant to help me achieve these goals.

HAVE A MERRY GOOGLE CHRISTMAS

2005-12-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

To get in the spirit of the holiday season, check these out:

A Google Christmas Carol

An original poem by Kalena Jordan celebrates some of the “gifts” Google has given to webmasters and internet users in 2005. She even provides a link to music to accompany you. Google Christmas Carol

Decorated Adwords

Do a Google search for candy canes, hanukkah, christmas lights, kwanzaa, christmas or santa and see sponsored ads that have been customized by Google to spice up the page. I’d bet there are some others out there. as well. Can you find them?

Google Holiday Logos

Those who use Google regularly are often gifted with special Google logos. Go to this link to see the official holiday logos that have been used in the past: Holiday logos

Be certain to keep an eye out through the holidays for new surprises.

More Fun with Google Logos

Here are some logos that fans have suggested to Google: Custom Logos

And here is an entire website devoted to Google logos of all types. The unofficial logos are guaranteed to bring a chuckle. LoGoogle

Images in Adsense

John Battelle over at Battellmedia has great post about the images that are showing up in adesense. It could be a trend but for now its very much in the Holiday spirit.

UPDATE
It looks like Google is doing a progressive Christmas logo. I can't recall ever seeing them do a storyline doodle before. If you have missed the last few days go over to the story doodle to see the last 3 days of the logo.

Just a little fun

2005-12-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

Enough seriousness. I found this and had to share. Enjoy.

How a blog can help

2005-12-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

Elleyne VanBryce has great article about how blogs and RSS feeds can help you websites page rank. While page rank is not the end all of SEO, it is one aspect. More important than page rank though is your location in the SERPs. Most of the reasons she states can also help you in the SERPs as long as the link text you have is optimized for the keywords you want. One of the key Issues the Elleyne brings up is;

"A few months into search engine optimization and you’ll get to realize the value of having your link appear in as many places as possible in the World Wide Web."

If you use trackbacks you can start to get links all over the web. (See our articles on "Best Practices for Trackbacks", "Understanding Trackbacks" and of course "Trackback Explained" With the addidtion of an RSS that gets picked up and displayed on a website you can start getting a lot of tlinks fairly quickly. Of course you must be doing things the right way or you will not get the benefit of a blog.

Another point that she makes that is a bit misleading is;

"Blogs are free. Whether you decide to use a web account, like the aforementioned www.blogger.com , or a movable type program which you could upload on your own server under your own domain name, like www.wordpress.com , blogs won’t require any financial burden."

While some blogs are free, if you want a blog that is designed properly you will have to pay for it unless you know how to use HTML andpossibly PHP. There are many different layouts that you can choose from but to make it your individual blog you have to really go in and change the code.

Another problem is hosting. While blogger is free, you gt what you pay for. There is not much in the way choices. The same goes for Movable Type or Wordpress. To get a blog that is truly your own you will need to have it hosted elsewhere. There are companies out there that will design your blog and host it. One that I am most familiar with is Blizzard Internet Marketing which sells all inclusive packages for new blogs.

Five Things That Can Maximize Your Blog Exposure

2005-12-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

Five quick points to remember to help maximize your blog exposure online:

Keep each post to one topic – it helps the search engines categorize the post. If you have more than one thing to talk about make a second entry.

Make your post about 250 words. Less and the search engines can’t really figure out what is going on, there are not enough keywords. More and you will probably loose your reader. Think small but substantial bites. Can’t make it to 250 words. Then bench the idea and come back to it later when you have more subject matter.

Spend about one third of your time on posting well formatted and thought out posts and spend the other two thirds researching other blogs in your space and use their comments to interact with other bloggers, linking back to your own blog – it helps greatly with link building.

Post regularly and consistently, keep the crawlers coming back to see what is updated.

Use categories for different topics. If one topic becomes too big, maybe look into creating another blog specifically for that category. Three months since the last post in one category? Then maybe look at how you can incorporate that category into another and get rid of it, visitors won’t be too impressed if the last post was 4 months ago.

Thanks to industry guru Dave Taylor for these great ideas, just some of the things I learned in his recent Denver seminar on The Case for Business Blogging.

Using a Blog for Marketing

2005-12-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

Garrett French has a great article Adding a Blog to you Article Marketing Strategy. While he talks about mainly using a blog to link to an article on a website he has some great tips for general use.

Personally I think that one of his best points is;

Discuss responses to your article, whether good or bad in blog posts. Show the impact your articles have had on your readers. Show, more importantly, that you're engaged with them.

Many large sites have done this with great response. Many of the auto dealers have done this and it works. Basically you need to make an attempt to engage everyone sho posts a comment on your blog. Bad comments can be even more beneficial than good ones because you can quickly address the problem. If done correctly you cna make a person who is upset much happier. Automatically deleting bad comments and leaving only the good makes your business to good to be true. Of course though abusive comments need to be deleted so that it does not taint the experience of your users.

Why use blogs Part 2

2005-12-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

The Chain of Blogs

Blogs are a powerful tool. They are powerful for the average person who wants to create a website but does not have any HTML experience. They can give the average person a place to speak out in a world dominated by large news companies. They can be a social gathering place for people to talk about things that are important to them. Most importantly though they an extend a conversation from a one blog to many blogs spread throughout the world.

Trackbacks

The real power behind a blog is trackbacks. We have talked about them in the past with our Trackback Tips post and our Trackbacks Explained post. We really have not gone into why to use a trackback though and what they do for your blog.

Extended converstations that can occur on blogs are started mainly by trackbacks. A trackback is a way for a blogger to talk about someone elses post on their own blog. The blogger then can easily and quickly post a comment to the first blog with a link to their own site. This means that the blogger, simply by talking about the same topic and linking to the original post, can gain a link back to their blog. As we all know a quality link is worth its weight in gold.

Of course though spammers know this too. Whenever you do a trackback you need to talk about the same topic and make an addition to the conversation. Bloggers hate to see trackbacks done for no other purpose than a link. If you anger a blogger there is a good chance that you will bring the wrath of the entire blogging community down on you.

Why use Blogs part 1 1/2

2005-11-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

In the interim between the last post on why use blogs and the now I came across the How blogging can help your business on speroforum.com by Hendry Lee. He covers a lot of good ground here and explains, in lesser detail, the same thing we talk about here. One of the more important things he said was;

One of the best things about using a blog with your business is that it can be used in a variety of applications. Started as a simple personal journaling web application, a blog can quickly mature and evolve into a business and marketing tool that some of us can't live without.

This of course may seem a little strange. Many would ask what other applications could a website have other than being a website. The real important thing remember here is that a blog is much mroe than a webpage. While there are other systems out there that can create dynamic content, none of them can do it in the easy way a blog can.

Internal blogs can help with company communications by keeping everyone on the same page. By using the categories (and tags but more on that later) you can organize data into searchable and well laid out topics. I have seen blogs used for time management also. By using the categories you can organize projects. Even keep yourself up to date with meeting minutes and your thoughts by inputing your notes into a post.

For a technology that is really in its infancy blogs have matured into a necessity that almost everyone can use, become reliant upon, and use to boost a companies competitive edge.

Why use a blog? Part 1

2005-11-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

A few people out there may ask why use a blog to help optimize my site? What does it do that other websites can't do? In this series I will talk about what is inherent in blogs that is lacking in websites that makes them a perfect tool for promoting your website. The first topic we will cover is website size.

Size Matters
The size of a website is taken into account by at least google. This does not mean a site with a many pages that has limited content on them is any good either. A site should have lots of pages with good content on each page. A blog is perfect for this.

Each Post a new Page
Each time you make a post a new page is created that can be found a number of ways by a search engine. So each post you make makes the blog one page bigger. If you post on a normal basis, hopefully at least once a day, your blog will make your website at least 365 pages bigger by the end of a year. Talk about easy content building.

Everythings a New Page
Every category and archive page you have also creates a new page for your website. Not only does it create a new page for your website but it creates another way for the search engines to find each of your post pages. If you are using pictures correctly, every picture you add takes the search engine to a page with that picture plus its underlying ALT tag.

As you can see the inherent structure of a blog can make your life much easier when it comes to promoting your website and making it show up high in the SERP's. Next time, The Chain of Blogs.

Full Service Blog Hosts

2005-11-22T21:46:00.000-07:00

Hosting for a blog is not hard to find as Chris Garrett muses about. But what if you want to find one that lets you have all the control you need or want? That can be a tough one. Not many blog host want to let you into the entire code or are scared of you making a mess out of their server. There are a few out there that will let you in and you can host with. I have used three myself. One is Penguin host You can get into the control panel and play with the code. However that is not always what you want. Webmasters.com is one of the few that will give you FTP access onto the server and you can play with the code. I have used this service for a while for different blogs using Wordpress and have liked them so far.

Best Practices - Tips for Posting to Blog

2005-11-13T00:11:00.000-07:00

This is specifically for a WordPress site- it is for a business owner that was starting a blog on their site, using WordPress.

You can say or show the world anything you like on your WordPress site. Here are some tips you need to know to help you write your posts in WordPress.

Use Paragraphs

No one likes to read writing that never pauses for a line break. To break your writing up into paragraphs, use double spaces between your paragraphs. WordPress will automatically detect these and insert

HTML paragraph tags into your writing.

Using Headings

If you are writing long posts, break up the sections by using headings, small titles to highlight a change of subject. In HTML, headings are set by the use of h1, h2, h3, h4, and so on. Example:

Vail

Use HTML
You don't have to use HTML when writing your posts. WordPress will automatically add it to your site, but if you do want control over different elements like boxes, headings, and other additional containers or elements, use HTML.

Spell Check and Proof
Some serious writers will write their posts in a text editor with spell check, check all the spelling and proof it thoroughly before copying and pasting into WordPress.

Use Keywords
Without being too contrived use keywords in your posts. Keywords help others find your Blog. Use words such as names of places, mountains, resorts, activities, well known restaurants, towns etc.

Be Chatty
Try to make your posts chatty, as if you are talking to a friend. Use your own experiences to talk about places you have been and know. Give insider tips such as the best places to go for nightlife, best runs, off the beaten path restaurants and how to avoid the crowds. Be creative!

Think Before You Post
Ranting on Blogs is commonplace today, but take a moment and think about what you are writing. Remember, once it is out there, it can be seen by many and crawled by search engines and taking things back is harder once it is public. Take a moment to read what you've written before hitting the Publish button. When you are ready, share it with the world.

Linking
Don’t be afraid to use links. You can link to pages in your own site, ski sites, competition sites just about anywhere. We want your Blog to become the place people go to find out information on ski resorts and by giving people lots of links you are offering them great information. They will come back for more.

Every Post - add a Link!
On every post try to link to one of your interior pages and or another website or Blog. And/or include a trackback.

Using Images on your Blog
Make sure the images are of good quality - and pertain to the post. It is good to add images, but don’t overuse them. The best image size has a max. of 72 dpi. This is a standard resolution for the web as it gives a quick download time while maintaining the quality of the image.

To take an image from your website go to your website, right click on the image and select ‘view properties’ this will give you information about the URL. Copy and paste the URL into your post editing area using the image tags.

Always write a good but brief description of the image.

Trackbacks Explained

2005-11-08T09:37:00.000-07:00

Trackbacks can be one of the most misunderstood aspects of blogging. While they are the true power behind a blog they are often misused or not used. Two guys, T. L. Pakii Pierce and Jim Edwards discuss what trackbacks are and how to use them on their blogs.

Mr. Pierce said "Trackbacks are definitely a powerful content promotion and distribution strategy. When used properly, Trackbacks can get you noticed and get you traffic." (Read his whole post here) This is something that I have understood but is difficult to get others to understand. Think about it this way, trackback=backlinks=more attention from google. Which goews into what Mr. Edwards said "The breakthrough I experienced has to do with "back links"... a way for you to automatically get other people linking back to your blog (and I'm talking about high traffic blogs that can bring you targeted clicks for free)." (read his whole post here)

Their videos are great and very informative. The series of three last about 30 minutes total, definetly worth checking them out. The links straight to the videos are here (video 1, video 2, video 3)

Search Engine Ranking - 93 Factors

2005-10-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

This recent report from randfish at SEOmoz.org puts together a comprehensive analysis of current trends and factors in SEO. According to Ammon Johns from Web Marketing Plus in the UK, Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Watch, Jill Whalen from High Rankings and many other great SEO names, there are 93 factors can influence your major search engine ranking. With the most important factor being the 'Title Tag' and a close second is the 'Anchor Text of links'. For a quick review a short list of the top 10 is also listed. Of note should also be the list of 'Detrimental Ranking Factors'.

Best Practices Trackback Tips

2005-10-17T19:23:00.000-07:00

I am going to call my series of posts "Best Practices" and will start with some basic stuff.

I will start with an easy technique. The curious thing about my starting post is it doesn't actually work with Blogger/blogspot. That is Trackbacks.

"Trackbacks" are when you link to other blogs and they automatically link back. Blogger doesn't actually support this, but, many other blogs do. Here is an example.

At my Glenwood Springs Blog, I was writing a quick post about the Glenwood Canyon Brewpub. I did a search for "Glenwood brewpub trackback'' and found some people's blogs who
a) had an interesting article about the Glenwood Brewpub
b) advertised a "trackback" link

I incorporated those blogs into my own post, and linked to them. I put their "Trackback URL" into the "trackback" field and published.

Now, their blog links to mine as a related blog. This is a good way to help search engines find your website. Using trackbacks when they make sense is a best Practice!

Please note, this is not a spam technique -- if it is used properly. The brewpub is really a favortie of mine... so much, my wife says "not the brewpub again!" But, by using trackbacks, your posts become more relevant to google.

Understanding Trackbacks

2005-10-09T23:22:00.000-07:00

Trackback a URL

If you are referencing another Blog article you have found then you can link back to the Blog article by using the Trackback link. This sends trackback pings to the URLs you specify in this field. You can trackback multiple URLs by separating them with commas. Whitespace between things is insignificant. Trackbacks are our friends because they help with link integrity which in turn makes the search engines love us.

What is a Trackback?

In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, "This is something you may be interested in." To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.

A better explanation is this:

Person A writes something on their Blog.
Person B wants to comment on Person A's Blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own Blog
Person B posts on her own Blog and sends a trackback to Person A's Blog
Person A's Blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B's post.

The idea here is that more people are introduced to the conversation (both Person A's and Person B's readers can follow links to the other's post), and that there is a level of authenticity to the trackback comments because they originated from another weBlog.

Most trackbacks send to Person A only a small portion (called an "excerpt") of what Person B had to say. This is meant to act as a "teaser", letting Person A (and his readers) see some of what Person B had to say, and encouraging them all to click over to Person B's site to read the rest (and possibly comment).

Person B's trackback to Person A's Blog generally gets posted along with all the comments. This means that Person A can edit the contents of the trackback on his own server, which means that the whole idea of "authenticity" isn't really solved. (Note: Person A can only edit the contents of the trackback on his own site. He cannot edit the post on Person B's site that sent the trackback.)

Blog for Press Releases

2005-09-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

In this time of not enough time, we all want to get our information out there as quickly as possible. Some of us have known that the major search engines were using blogs from press releases but not many other businesses are doing this. Loren Baker has some interesting points on her recent post. The main idea to take from this is that using a blog for press releases is a very powerful way to get your news out there. It is very easy to write the press release on the blog and then email whoever you want with the link. Not only will this get you news out but a few of online publishers may link to your blog.

I think it is important to note though that if your not a big company you should use the blog for more than press releases or you will never get anyone to read your thoughts. Strike a balance between having a conversation with people and telling people something. Most people come to blogs to take part in a conversation so limit the press releases, unless that is the only point of your blog.

SEO Basics...Part 2

2005-09-23T08:33:00.000-07:00

White VS. Black

I mentioned in this post that there are different ways to get up to the top of the listings. Basically these are separated out into two categories, white hat and black hat. Before going to far into it though it is important to note that the tactics of both or good strategies to get you to the top of the listings. Black does not necessarily mean that the strategies are bad. It just means that the way a black hat tactic is performed is frowned on by those in the SEO community who value doing things the right way, not to mention Google. So with that said on to examples of white and black.

White Hat

White hat tactics are ones in which you do not hurt others or trick a search engine to achieve your goal of getting to the top of the SERPs. The foundation of this is good site optimization and using natural link building (we'll come back to both of these in more detail later). Basically what Google want to see is a site that builds it reputation and links over time in a natural progression. Buying links can be one part of this but it must be done wisely and over time.

Black Hat

The way to think of this is to think of Wyatt Earp. He did his job, got his goals accomplished, but did it in a way that was questionable and frowned upon by some. That is black hat. Spam is a great example of this. Most people think of spam as the email you get in your box about little blue pills. While this is true there are other types of spam. One example of this is buying links from link farms that have pages solely to have hundreds of links on them without a rhyme or reason to what links are on the page. This tactic is not an honest way to get up the SERPs and will hurt you (usually) in the end.

What this all means

Basically what this all means is that you need to be careful when promoting you site. If you are not sure how get some help from experts who really know how to do it right. Research who you use. The company I work for has had to work hard to fix what other SEO's have broken, in some cases this means completely creating new sites with new URL's. I won't mention the company by name but Arron has. This company uses techniques that in the long wrong can get you banned from Google.

Well now I feel important!

2005-09-23T08:12:00.000-07:00

I have to say that three days into blogging I did not expect to have Arron Wall of Seobook show up on my blog and post a comment. Well I assume it was Aaron becasue of what he said about my post on his new Myriad Search even though it was listed as anonymous.

">However, one must assume that the top results in each search engine are authority sites for that search term. I'm not convinced this is necessarily true.

That is the whole point of combining them and allowing searchers to adjust the weight of each engine...it lets you redefine the authority weightings offered from the regular search services. It is by no means perfect, but it is just another way to find information. I am also debating adding Alexa weighting and / or a few other things to the display.

thanks for the mention :)"

First I hope Aaron does not take offense to anything I said. I like the new Myriad search and any refinements will make it better of course. I think that it is another good tool to add to any SEO tool bag. I agree with his assertion that about the top placed listings not necessarily being authority sites.

Oh and no problem for the mention.

Linking away on a blog

2005-09-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

One of the main ideas when using a blog to raise you "rank" in search engines is to link away from the blog to other sites, even competitors. Now you may ask yourself, "If I want to keep people on my site, why would I make it easier for them to leave." Well the answer is a bit complex but lets just remember that leaving the site is a back button away for almost any user. So providing a link is not going to chase them away, even if it is to a competitors page. The link shows a couple things to users and search engines.

First the link shows the user that you have done your own research and you are inviting them to look at that research. This will allow a customer to trust you a bit more than they already did. This brings me to my second point, this "trust" is also used by Google. If you link to another site or blog that is talking about the same thing you are Google sees your site as an authority on what you are talking about. This makes Google trust you more and raises you up on the free SERP's.

So remember, linking away from your static web pages to a competitor is not always a great idea, but if you are blogging it is a great way to get a higher page rank, which should help your main page if you set up the blog right.

Stuntdbl nails it again

2005-09-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post. Stuntdbl has a great post about who to listen to in SEO. The basics of it is that you should surround yourslef with people who know what they are talking about. I know the company I work for has certainly done that. We have people versed in all areas of internet marketing. No matter where you go or who you hire to do your SEO if you are not doing it yourself, make sure they know what ther are talking about.

Authority Finder

2005-09-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

I like the new too that Aaron Wall released recently in beta called Myriad Search. Basically what this does is crawls the top 10 to 50 sites in each of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves). Myriad then rates each site by points, depending on where it was in the listings on each SE (search engine). A top placement gets the most points and it works down from there. It takes the points from each SE and adds them and (correct me if I am wrong Aaron)then lists them by the most points to the lowest. While this is not the greatest way to find authority sites, it certainly can shorten you search time by narrowing them down. If you want to read what Aaron said about the release please go here.

SEO Basics

2005-09-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

SEO

I have noticed a trend in SEO to speak our own language and not make it understandable by anyone outside of our industry. So I will start a short series on the basics of SEO and then move on to the much more complicated thing. I will try not sound pedantic and most bloggers in the SEO community may look at me witha little bit of contempt, but for the general masses out there I think this will be helpful.

SEO?

First SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization or Optimizer. Google some great links to what others define SEO as here. My basic definition is designing or making changes to a website with the goal of increasing your placement in the SERPs.

SERPs?

SERPs stand for Search Engine Response Pages. This is the links that are returned when you do a search for a term or word in one of the Search Engines, like Google. So the goal of optimization is to get your webpage to the top of the SERPs. There are a number of ways to do this but to do it right and get to the top in Google takes some hard work. Typically Google only likes White Hat techniques, and will punish Black Hats with removal from their SERPs.

Tomorrow: What is White and Black hats anyway?

Pure Unadaulterated Evil - Comment Spam

2005-09-15T12:51:00.001-07:00

Anyone who knows blogs knows that comment spam can just ruin your day. I hate it and anyone who is trying to run a good blog hates it. Jason Cain went into it in detail here. I'm about as nervous about letting the world know about it as Brad Fallon is. He explains wisely why he is nervous about it too.

On my other blogs close moderation is the only way to get rid of it. Plug-Ins and other tools can help but as soon as someone makes a tool for it someone else finds a way around it. Monitor them yourself, if possible, and get rid of comment spam fast. Of course if you have a huge blog it can take forever...

Blogs...by Google

2005-09-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

Google is now in Beta with its blog search. We knew this was coming a while back when they aquired Pyra Labs (who by the way made blogger). Chris Sherman wrote a great article on it here. What this could mean for us in SEO is still up in the air but it has some interesting possibilties. If Google still indexes blogs inboth the main SERPs pages and the blog SERPs blogs could end up being worth more than they are now. However, the one benefit to seperating them would be that blogs end up in their own place which can move a website up a few notches in the SERPs. We will have to see if google changes the algo because of this move. Poor technorati, they just can't get a break.

By the way check out what the Google guy is saying about it here