StepForth SEO News Blog - by Ross Dunn and Scott Van Achte

Our Free Server Header Checker
& Other Recommended SEO Tools

StepForth SEO News Blog	>> Subscribe to the SEO Blog News Feed

THE SEO BLOG'S TOP MARKETING TUTORIALS

» How Glossaries and FAQs Can Improve Search Engine Rankings
» How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings
» Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly - Your Personal SEO Checklist
»»» More top web marketing tutorials

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Tips for Optimizing Blogs and Feeds

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:09 PM

I caught an interesting seminar today called "SEO Through Blogs and Feeds" with Stephen Spencer, Rick Klau, Doug Hay and Greg Jarboe on the panel. The following are my point by point notes that stood out as noteworthy. Some of these tips are mirrored in my 3 part tutorial on blogging called Blogs 101 but as always some great new tips popped up.

Key Tips
For those in a rush or who have already read my blogs 101 article the following tips are very worthwhile reading - if just for their importance as reminders:

It is extremely important that RSS auto-discovery tags be placed in the header of every page within a website that has feeds available. By doing so you will provide users and search engines alike with a simple method of being notified that you have RSS feed(s) and it will allow immediate subscription without fuss. In contrast simply having a RSS logo hyperlinked with a feed provides little or no benefit and does not provide auto-notification that a feed is available.

Furthermore it is recommended to create a unique auto-discovery tag for each available RSS feed and place them all in the header. If you think you have too many then I would recommend choosing the feeds that are most relevant to the page content.
A WordPress plugin was noted called the "SEO Title Tag Plugin". This plugin really impressed me because it allows WordPress users to see and individually customize the title tags of every post within the associated blog; without a doubt a powerful capability since title tags play a significant role in rankings.
If you use paid Press Release services to disseminate your latest company news then it also works to your advantage to create a separate blog specifically used for your press releases. In this regard you can use the associated RSS feed to get some free publicity by submitting it to blog directories and other blog-syndicating properties.
If you are finding it difficult to get the word out about a particular piece of news then Greg Jarboe has a great idea for you: track down the key bloggers that appear to be driving the news in your industry and contact them with your story.

If your story interests even one of the bloggers and gets published then you could get a massive amount of publicity for zero dollars.

During the presentation of this concept Greg Jarboe utilized a powerful online tool called BuzzLogic to identify which people drove the latest news in key topics. Unfortunately BuzzLogic appears to be priced well out of the capabilities of many small businesses (at $12,000/yr minimum) so I will provide a very basic free alternative to determining the leaders of a particular topic.

Step 1) Search in your favorite search engine for the particular topic. Within the results separate the blogs from the other content. If you do not find at least 10 bloggers then try search again with different wording for the same topic.

Step 2) Look at each blog individually and look for indications of readership or popularity. For example perhaps one of the website has a Feedburner subscription counter with the blog's current readership OR take the URL of the blog and conduct a backlink check on Yahoo using "linkdomain:www..com" (without the quotes) to see which blogs have the most inbound links. Sort these blogs according to their popularity.

Step 3) Find contact information on each site and then contact the writer(s) starting with the most trafficked blogs and pitch your news/idea/story.

Note: I am not saying the steps above have anywhere near the quality of results that a full-fledge program like BuzzLogic has but it is certainly a great place to start.
Promote your latest blog posting by taking advantage of a popular blogger's vanity. Compliment them within your key article (somehow) using their full name and perhaps provide a link back to their website. Chances are that the blogger often keeps an eye on blog postings or sites that utilize their name. When they visit your posting there is a good chance they will read it.

General Blog and Feed Optimization Tips:

Providing full text feeds was noted regularly throughout the presentation as a far superior method for creating backlinks and getting found online.
Your blog feed should have 20 or more items never the minimum 10.
Provide a feed for every category your site/blog offers.
Ensure that you create keyword rich blog posts and ensure that your brand is well represented within the text.
Ensure the most important keyword/phrase is listed in the blog title.

Optimize Your Blog's Linking Structure For Best Results

Provide a listing of the top 10 posts within your site so the stories do not get buried in archives or category pages. If the articles are performing well it is just logical to keep them in plain view to get more mileage from them.
Use Tag Clouds and Tag Pages to increase the possible routes to your valuable past content.
If you are using WordPress as your blogging tool it is a great idea to install the "Sticky Posts" plugin which allows you to 'stick' an introduction or key post at the top of each category page.

Addressing Blog Duplication Concerns
By opening up categories (a.k.a. 'labels' on Blogger) to the search engines you increase the likelihood of having a great deal of duplicated content. Fortunately the search engines have, so far, been quite clear that duplicate content in blogs is not a concern because it is a natural consequence of labeling. That said, there was a WordPress plugin noted that would allow you to create controlled article excerpts (or teasers) within the category pages. It is called "Optional Excerpts" and by using it you can maintain the authority of the core posting since the label pages will only provide a teaser versus the full text of the article.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: Blogs, Conferences, Ross Dunn, SEO, SEO Tips, SES San Jose 2007

Email this News Post: 2 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:09 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Tips for Optimizing Blogs and Feeds

ADD TO:

Blink

Del.icio.us

Digg

Furl

Google

Simpy

Spurl

Y! MyWeb

| Back to Top | Email Us Your Question |

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Consolidating Feeds on Blogger and FeedBurner

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:13 PM

On July 11th, Google's Blogger announced a deceptively minor update that allowed users to reference a 3rd party feed for their blog. For veteran Blogger users the importance of this update may be obvious but for others let me explain.

Then: Blogger only had its own feed type which meant that users of Feedburner or other 3rd party feed trackers had to include two feeds on their blog - one being their 3rd party service and the other being the Google service. The result was that some visitors who subscribed to their blog could have subscribed to the Google feed rather than the preferred 3rd party feed. This meant the actual subscriber base for a blog would be inaccurate (lower than it actually is) because the 3rd party feed is the feed being measured.

Now: Blogger has made it extremely simple to set the default feed from its own atom.xml feed to that of a 3rd party URL. As a result, new subscribers have only one feed to pick from and your feed tracking stats will be far more accurate.

Why is Consolidating a Feed So Important?
More accurate stats equals more accurate marketing decisions. For example it is beneficial to see which blog posts have done better than others so that you can make a mental note to write similar articles in the future OR to expand on the successful article.

Labels: Blogs, Google, Ross Dunn, Social Marketing

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:13 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Consolidating Feeds on Blogger and FeedBurner

ADD TO:

Blink

Del.icio.us

Digg

Furl

Google

Simpy

Spurl

Y! MyWeb

| Back to Top | Email Us Your Question |

Friday, July 06, 2007

How Much is Your Blog Worth?

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 4:58 PM

Well I have no idea how this algorithm based on Technorati's API is but according to this nifty widget created by Dane Carlson, StepForth's SEO Blog is currently worth $83,551 buckaroos. Hmm, now if we could just get that kind of money from our blog :-)

My blog is worth $83,551.92.
How much is your blog worth?

Labels: Blogs, Fun, Ross Dunn, StepForth

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 4:58 PM.

ADD TO:

Blink

Del.icio.us

Digg

Furl

Google

Simpy

Spurl

Y! MyWeb

| Back to Top | Email Us Your Question |

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

FeedBurner is Now Totally FREE

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 11:29 AM

FeedBurner's previously for-fee services are now free after its relatively recent acquisition by Google. This is great news for the blogging community which is probably why it is getting some serious publicity (#1 story on TechMeme).

So what is all this bruhaha all about? Two features, Total Stats PRO and MyBrand PRO have been opened up to the masses:

Total Stats PRO: this service used to cost about $5 per blog per month and provided stats on the posts that got the most interest along with information on uncommon uses, which feed readers are being used and live user reporting. The information is fairly valuable for people with heavily used blogs because, among other things it can provide insight into which blog postings appear to be getting the most interest; which might just spark you to write a follow up.

MyBrand PRO: FeedBurner feeds are normally located on feedburner.com. For example, our feed is at http://feeds.feedburner.com/search-engine-optimization-blog. With MyBrand Pro, however, you can configure the FeedBurner to use your own domain. Why is this useful? Some companies do not like the idea that their feed address is located on a domain they do not own. FeedBurner aptly calls it "the ultimate in feed-serving transparency."

FeedBurner Rocks
If you haven't made the move to use FeedBurner for your blog then maybe these new features will be enough to entice you. Even before these features were free I felt FeedBurner was a fantastic service because it made subscribing to StepForth's SEO Blog simple for any online news reader. In addition, I like that FeedBurner automatically pings the major news websites for us whenever we post something new - one great way to promote our blog without much effort.

Labels: Blogs, Ross Dunn, Social Marketing

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 11:29 AM.

ADD TO:

Blink

Del.icio.us

Digg

Furl

Google

Simpy

Spurl

Y! MyWeb

| Back to Top | Email Us Your Question |

Friday, May 25, 2007

What is FeedBurner? Wallstrip Interviews CEO Dick Costolo

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 4:14 PM

As a follow up to my article "So Google Has Feedburner, What Now?" I thought this Wallstrip video interview with Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo was a perfect addition. If you are at all curious about Feedburner this is a clip for you:

Here is a direct link to the clip on YouTube in case the video has difficulty showing on our blog. Unfortunately this is more often the case than not. Apparently YouTube is not very Blogger friendly which seems ridiculous to me.

Labels: Blogs, Ross Dunn, Video

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 4:14 PM.