Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

[Adasta]

Does anyone know anything about this? I know there are quite a few digital marketing types floating around these boards. I was just wondering because I'm looking to make my blog more "noticeable". The problem is that SEO has advanced massively in the 5-6 years since I was last concerned with it. The Google Panda update has made me (and everyone else, I think) even more confused as to what makes a "good" website.

What should I be concentrating on and how do I got about it all?

 

[Shaun]

I shall just whizz this over to the electric Cafe for all the geeks to chip in ...

 

[thomas]

Good, unique content.
A well formatted website.
Good relevant inbound links to your blog and blog posts.



There's obviously a lot more to it than just that, but those are the starting points.

If you're using wordpress I'd look at getting the all in one SEO pack as a starter.

 

[ColinJ]

When I started my blog, it was taking Google up to 2 weeks to spider it. I found that as I made more and more posts, Google became more attentive. Eventually it got to the point that I could find my own posts on Google within 20 minutes of making them.

If you want to rank above millions of other sites for competitive keywords then you have an obvious problem.

What kinds of things to you want to rank for? If it is 'weight loss', 'dating', 'insurance', 'credit cards', that kind of thing - good luck with that!

If it is something unusual like 'forest of bowland ride' - easy! My CycleChat forum ride thread is currently ranked 5 and 6 on Google.co.uk.

If you pick something specialised like 'crud roadracer mk2 review' - easy! I have 2 entries in the top 4. Only BikeRadar outranks me.

I'd say follow thomas's advice.

Remember - regularly updating your blog helps.

Load time is a factor. Don't bloat your site out with lots of huge pictures. Shrink them and link separately to the original large images if you want to.

If it is a WordPress blog, make sure you use a cache plugin to speed your site up immensely - I suggest WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. Use a decent hosting company. I used one which was always slow (forgotten its name now!). Hostgator does some good deals but there are many others.

Oh - a very obvious one - post frequently on popular forums/fora that allow you to attach signature links! People click on mine all the time. You'll see that I've made an effort to catch people's attention. I haven't done a lot of experimentation with mine but I'd say word your signatures carefully and play with the formatting. (Don't go OTT though or Admin/mods will step in.)

 

[Adasta]

Good advice - it's consolidated what I already assumed. I'll investigating the cache options, though; I hadn't thought of that!

 

[thomas]

Oh - a very obvious one - post frequently on popular forums/fora that allow you to attach signature links! People click on mine all the time. You'll see that I've made an effort to catch people's attention. I haven't done a lot of experimentation with mine but I'd say word your signatures carefully and play with the formatting. (Don't go OTT though or Admin/mods will step in.)

It should be noted that forum links will do nothing but get visitor traffic (which is obviously what you want!). They are of no SEO value. This is because (on the whole) forums use 'nofollow' links which means search engines do not attribute any value to that link.


If you search for google keyword tool that's quite useful. For instance more people might search for the term "Road bike", rather than "Road Bicycle" (or whatever - I'm bad of thinking of examples). So it may pay to use this to decide what your title should be...or the keywords to call things by.

 

[ColinJ]

It should be noted that forum links will do nothing but get visitor traffic (which is obviously what you want!). They are of no SEO value. This is because (on the whole) forums use 'nofollow' links which means search engines do not attribute any value to that link.

BikeRadar forum signature links being one useful cycling-related exception!

 

[thomas]

BikeRadar forum signature links being one useful cycling-related exception!

hah. Even then as they are after every post Google will notice and detract their SEO value due to less relevance...but yeah. A link from any website related to your website is generally good. Even if they are nofollow they still have value.

 

[MontyVeda]

Does anyone know anything about this? I know there are quite a few digital marketing types floating around these boards. I was just wondering because I'm looking to make my blog more "noticeable". The problem is that SEO has advanced massively in the 5-6 years since I was last concerned with it. The Google Panda update has made me (and everyone else, I think) even more confused as to what makes a "good" website.

What should I be concentrating on and how do I got about it all?

I don't think SEO has advanced much at all in the last 5 or 6 years... good unique content & relevant in bound links are still what it's all about. Depending on how 'niche' your keywords are, you don't need many in bound links... and even links which use 'no follow' do get followed, they just don't pass any (google) page rank, and the less you worry about page rank, the better.

 

[ColinJ]

I did a blog post less than 10 minutes ago about my cracked crank and it is already number one in the Google results for cracked bicycle crank and number 10 for broken bicycle crank!

(Ignore the post time - I edited it back to when I discovered the damage to the crank.)

 

[thomas]

I did a blog post less than 10 minutes ago about my cracked crank and it is already number one in the Google results for cracked bicycle crank and number 10 for broken bicycle crank!

(Ignore the post time - I edited it back to when I discovered the damage to the crank.)

shame it's not really something peopel search for

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#date=today+12-m&q=cracked bicycle crank

 

[ColinJ]

shame it's not really something peopel search for

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#date=today+12-m&q=cracked bicycle crank

The Long Tail, my boy, the Long Tail ...

(I'm not really bothered about people finding that one. I was just illustrating the fact that Google does keep on top of things and if you go for something a bit less obvious you can easily rank well.)

Okay, try Deda dog fang then. That does show up on that Google search chart thingy!

 

[MontyVeda]

shame it's not really something peopel search for

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#date=today+12-m&q=cracked bicycle crank

I always take such tools with a pinch of salt. They over estimate traffic on more generic terms and give no data for many niche terms. IMO, such tools with the Google brand name are designed to get folk paying more for generic terms on Adwords... but I'm a cynical old fart

 

[ColinJ]

One Google tool which can be useful and which my blog is signed up to (but I have been largely ignoring until now!) is Google Analytics.

I've just been looking at some of the numbers and am surprised by what I've found. The Dog Fang and Crud Roadracer reviews get about 10 hits a day each and the average time spent on those pages is about 2.5 minutes so people are obviously reading the reviews and that translates into people buying stuff. Those are pages that I have actively promoted.

What surprises me is that old blog posts about local walks and bike rides are often getting a hit a day from people searching for info on that kind of thing. 'The Long Tail' in action!

 

[Carwash]

Good, unique content.
A well formatted website.
Good relevant inbound links to your blog and blog posts.

^ This.
Beware the SEO snake-oil salesman.