Following on from my post about
BifSniff Cartoons and findability, I thought I would look a little more at some blogging tips for a more findable Blog.
There is a wealth of information out there, but these are the items that I have found helpful and relevant when creating findable content. I am learning all the time, so this can be taken as work in progress ;)
Now, if you view the source of this site, and some others I have developed you will find that it looks as though I have not been following my own advice... this is either because I have learned more since developing those sites, or because some other objective took priority. However, these guidelines will help you if you follow them.
Remember that findability is all about getting relevant content to people who are interested, so you have to focus on the people who end up reading your content. I tend to use the term Findability for that reason, as opposed to SEO (Search Engine Optmisisation), because SEO sounds focussed on search engines, and sometimes people lose focus on the end user when concentrating on SEO. SEO is a dirty word in some circles, mostly because of bad practises of some SEO 'experts', however even
Google who focus on relevant content and advise against any 'tricks' advise:
- Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
- Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
So... onto the tips:
Write relevant content often
This is the single most important item, however if you have, or are starting, a blog then I am assuming you have relevant content to upload reasonably frequently or you wouldn't need a blog!
Use a web standard compliant blog template.
As I said in the
post on BifSniff Cartoons, web standards does not mean a more findable site in and of themselves, however it has been my experience that it is far easier to increase findability with a web standard site. Web standards will encourage you to create leaner and better organised code, which I feel in turn helps search engines interpret your site. If you have well written relevant content which search engines can more easily interpret then it stands to reason you stand a better chance of good search engine rankings for relevant searches.
Start your content early in your code
Try to ensure that your content is not pushed down the page in the source code. Javascript, over-zealous meta tags and various code clutter can push content down the page in your source code.
If you are using, or developing, a web standard blog template, try to ensure your main content is coded first. Most good templates will have taken this into consideration.
If your not sure what I mean, go to one of your blog pages and 'view source' - now read through the xhtml code from the top of the page and see how much you have to read before you hit the first blog post on the page. To give you some kind of guide, on a client site I am developing currently the main content starts around line 28 which I am extremely happy with - however on my own site right here, currently the content starts after line 100... which is still working out quite well, but I think I could probably improve it by taking some of my own advice below... ;)
As long as you ensure you have done everything you can to take out any unnecessary code before the main content you should be ok.
Use external CSS files - Very easy to do, very well documented.
Use external javascript files - as above, this is extremely easy to do, and well documented.
Use only the meta tags you need. Title and description meta tags are probably enough. Keywords is on the way out, you may feel you want to keep it for the moment...I found
a good article on meta tags with some great links on it too.
Place your meta tags first in the <head> - Right after the opening head tag put your title meta tag and follow it with your description meta tag.
Key Words and Phrases
A good writing style is essential, you don't have to be Shakespeare, but bear in mind these are tips to help you and should never be used to the detriment of your content - this is extremely important to bear in mind.
Before you begin writing a post, stop and have a think about the subject you are about to write about. If you wish for a specific target audience to find your posts then there are two key factors to consider:
1. Who do you hope to attract.
2. What they would search for.
I talk more about this in the
BifSniff Cartoons post, but essentially you might want to think about what someone who has no prior knowledge of your subject would search for.
Do some research using tools such as
Overture Keyword Selector and
Wordtracker . These tools will help you identify the phrases people are actually searching for around your subject.
When researching, use as many of these tools as you can in order to get a rounded picture of your key phrases.
Not every post needs to be optimised for key words, but for example they may play a crucial role in commercial blogs - or for personal blogs where you want to get the word out about something... so for example if you are a musician with a blog and are posting about your latest song available for download you could optimise for 'music download' and get much higher hits than if you had simply posted about 'my latest song'. To highlight the importance of research, you might find for example that 'music download' is more searched for and has less competition than 'music downloads' - a small difference in phrase which could make all the difference to your traffic.
Once you have identified your keywords or phrases for your post you should also prioritise them. That way you can decide roughly how often to include your words and phrases in your content. Concentrate on your primary key phrase and pepper your other phrases in when you can.
Again, keep your writing style natural, don't hammer in your key phrases such that the piece becomes awkward - you want to highlight the relevant terms for search engines, but always remember it's only so that the right people will find your site, therefore it has to remain engaging and naturally readable.
Use your primary key phrase in your URL - most blogging software will take care of this automatically.
Place your primary key phrase close to the start of your title - so if we take the example of 'music download' your title might become 'Music Download - my latest song now available' or some such. Usually blogs will generate the title tag and url from your post title so as long as you get your post title right the url and title tag are taken care of. The exact system will differ across different software, so keep an eye on it...for example, I have found that Blogger makes the title tag your Blog title followed by your post title. For this reason, on blogs where different posts will target different key words I keep the blog name short in order to keep relevant key words close to the start of the title tag.
Use your key phrases throughout the text - Ideally for optimum findability you should try to have 300 - 500 words and then include your primary key phrase around 4-10 times. This is a very rough guide, and you should always include it naturally. With this amount of content it should be possible. For example with 300 words you should easily manage 3 or 4 paragraphs with your primary key phrase once in each paragraph and that should be enough.
Include primary key phrase early in your first paragraph and late in your last paragraph - So you might start off 'My latest music download is...' and finish your last paragraph with '...and that's what I think makes this a great music download.'
Try to include your keyphrase in text links in content - so for example you might include a link in the content somewhere to 'another great music download site' or link to another of your own songs by having a link to 'another recent music download'
Remember the alt tags - if it's relevant put your keyword in image alt tags.
Headings - if you're writing a longish piece consider breaking into digestable chinks and using headings - you'll have to check how it looks in your blog template and possibly edit your styles to get it looking right. I like to use my primary key phrase in headings as appropriate also... for example see
an article I wrote for BifSniff- a regular web page as opposed to a blog, but the idea is the same.
Other stuff - Some people will also tell you to include your primary key phrase once in strong tags, once in emphasis tags and so on, but I rarely find it relevant to do so.
Outward Links
Outward links are important for some search engines, if you can link to relevant and reputable third party sites in your content do so.
Oh What a World - Rufus Wainwright