The recent update made by Google (Panda) is the first major change since 2009. There were many blogs that were affected by this update. Some experienced a drop in their traffic, while some experienced a surge. Whatever change your blog experienced, I’m sure you have noticed a lot of buzz around these algorithm changes. What is Panda all about? Let’s take a look:

No gibberish

According to Google, the Panda update was made to enhance the quality of search results. This made spammy sites disappear from the results. Though there still are some gibberish sites on search results, there are many websites that were pushed down in the search rankings. The Panda update is not perfect, but it did make considerable changes.

The update targeted low quality sites with superficial and shallow content, and brought down their rankings. The websites that were hit the hardest by Panda were content farms and article sites.

Content farms

Talking about a content farm, many people generally ask what exactly a content farm is. This is actually a very hazy area. Following the definition on Wikipedia, a content farm is a website that uses a lot of freelance writers to write content in order to rank high on search engine results. These websites earn money by getting many page views and thus selling ads on those pages.

This definition brings all the article directories under the definition of content farms. There are many content farms that are still standing strong, though some were penalized.

If you allow guests to post articles on your blog, chances are that some people add low quality content just for some backlinks. If this happens, your blog might have been affected by the recent updates. Opening your blog for guest posts is a good way to encourage reader activity, but some level of moderation is required so that it does not become a content farm.

Keep it Panda friendly

There are some basic steps that you can follow to optimize your website for Google Panda. Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing CEO, prescribes four steps that can work with the post Google Panda update.

1. Evaluate your blog for these characteristics: low informative value, short form, too many ads or duplicate content. If some part is being duplicated, just remove it. If the content is not too useful, add bits of information. Remove extra panels of ads. Make sure the person doing this has enough web development expertise and SEO knowledge.

2. For subsequent blog posts, focus on high quality useful content that is not duplicated from anywhere else.

3. Promote your content in such a way that it attracts links from other blogs. You can do it by providing content in a way that makes people comment on it. When people get interested in your website, they will talk about it, or post links to it on other sites. This will increase your page rank. But remember- keep it original.

4. Offer users a chance to share your blog on social media like Twitter and Facebook. Social engagement will popularize your blog faster than other mediums. This will be useful for both your blog and your readers.

Though there are some legitimate sites that got caught up in the Panda update, it has proven to be a windfall for real content marketers – the blogs that provide great content to their readers. Continue to feed the Internet with the best content with less stress on the sales pitch, and you will stay good in the eyes of Google.

If you are looking for something that would let the Panda update work in your favor then use all the organic SEO strategies that you know, and stop building low quality links. Maybe some content farms have been spared by Google, but judging by the direction Google is taking, their next update might not be so kind.

About the Author

June Buckley is an SEO specialist and avid blogger. She likes writing about social media, business blog hosting, internet marketing and mobile technology.

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For those people who have been using WordPress for years, the first plugin that they would recommend anyone starting out with the WordPress format would be the All in One SEO Pack. All in One SEO Pack was one of the first comprehensive WordPress plugins and since it was launched has been downloaded over 8 million times. It is without doubt the daddy of all WordPress plugins and the one most people download first when they set up their WordPress blog.

All in One SEO Pack allows you to quickly and simply configure the meta tags, meta description and Title for each and every post that you write for your WordPress site. This is particularly useful because WordPress will use your blog tag as a keyword. Thus the plugin is brilliant for customizing every post or webpage to get the maximum benefits of optimization. This automation of the SEO process is brilliant for beginners, because it not only generates the correct tags but it also avoids duplicate content.

However, the problem with being the top dog is that someone always comes along and tries to steal your crown. And lately another SEO package has been getting a lot of attention. The WordPress SEO by Yoast is the most recent, and certainly most discussed, SEO plugin around. Boasting a whole raft of new features it promised to be less high maintenance than All in One SEO Pack. And it comes with a good pedigree with Yoast and his team being a reliable source and having been downloaded a great deal as well.

Indeed it is well designed and very easy to use with a bunch of great options for tweaking your search engine optimisation settings. The page that takes the place of the old All in One SEO Pack page works extremely well and allows you to simply customize the titles for differing page views, with numerous options for flexibility. However, there are also some problems with Yoast at this stage, that still need ironing out. Some category tags and templates didn’t work once the plugin was enabled, and after the installation of the plugin the category permalinks also stopped working. In addition there were problems with sitemap functionality and a few other minor teething problems that still need to be sorted out.

To be fair Yoast’s SEO plugin has not been around anywhere near the same length of time as All in One SEO Pack so it needs some time to bed in. But for a plugin that does one basic job – generating and organizing meta description, title and keyword tags – and does it well, All in One SEO Pack is still the only plugin worth installing.

About the Author

Alex Simmonds is a copywriter and journalist based in the UK.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

A few days ago I received a comment on one of Blogsessive’s older posts on SEO & keywords. That comment got me a little worried about the fact that due to people spreading incomplete information, or just putting out statements like “Google doesn’t care about keywords”, some of you might think that having a keyword strategy is pointless. This is what reader David Housman asked:

I thought that search engines had stopped factoring keywords into relevancy?

The source of this belief is probably a post published on the Google Webmaster Central Blog back in September 2009 in which Matt Cutts refers strictly to Google not making use of the keywords META tag in order to calculate a search result’s relevancy to the search query.

In other words, you could type 300 keywords of your liking there. Google will just skip them entirely and rather decide if the result is relevant only based on the content itself. This doesn’t mean that the Google bot will ignore your keywords. It means that it will consider only those keywords present on page, in the content. That’s why it is extremely important to write your blog post from both the perspective of a human reader and a search engine bot.

I’m not going to get any deeper into the topic of writing SEO friendly content. Just remember that it’s a must if you want to rank high for certain keywords and phrases. For more information please read some of the articles I have published here in the past:

• Using Keywords for Blog Optimization
• Advantages of Long Tail Keywords Optimization
• Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid
• SEO-Friendly Content is the Key
• How to check and improve your WordPress SEO

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

As promised a while back, I’ve finished editing the Corporate Blogging Guide in PDF eBook format. So, today I give you the chapters you’ve had the chance to read online plus a whole new chapter (8. Technical aspects) and some bonus tips to guide you in your corporate blogging adventures!

How to download the eBook?

In order to download the ebook, all you have to do is to subscribe for free to Blogsessive’s RSS feed (if you haven’t done so until now) and you’ll find the download link at the end of each article in the feed.

eBook preview and contents

Here are two screenshots of the book’s cover and the contents page:

Don’t forget to subscribe…

… to Blogsessive’s RSS feed to download the eBook and to stay updated. There are plenty more freebies in the works, including a new WordPress theme and my second eBook: “From Zero to Blogging Hero: 100 Blogging Tips”

Enjoy the eBook friends!

PS: Please do not link to the download link in the feed. Instead, if you wish to promote this ebook, link to this post. Otherwise, I will consider it spam and wrongful usage!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

A few weeks ago I was driving down the highway. It was late at night and I was tired. The radio was starting to put me to sleep. Suddenly a song come on that woke me up – I could not believe what I was hearing. The song was that bad.

I am no expert when it comes to music. The last time I played an instrument was in grade 6 music class. It was the xylophone – I simply had to hit a a couple keys with a wooden mallet whenever the teacher pointed at me. I do not know anything about timing, rhythm or beat. But I do know how to listen to music. I know what music should sound like.

What I heard on the radio was not music – it was painful noise. No rhythm, no beat and the singing was nothing more then a girl squealing forced rhymes. I listened to the whole song just to find out if it was some kind of joke. Would the DJ admit that it was something his 5 year daughter composed and asked daddy to play on the radio? But at the end of the song the DJ only said, “… and that was The Shaggs”

The Shaggs

The Shaggs were a 3 girl band from the late 60′s. The girl’s ages ranged from 18 to 22. They had no intention of having a band, their father did. He had visions of being a big shot manager for the next big thing in music – his daughter’s band. He pulled them out of school and made them practice and play. He spent the family savings to buy instruments and record an album. The albums where distributed by the father to all the local stations.

Of course success did not come as the father had anticipated. And the reason is obvious – the music is terrible. It sounds like the instruments and singer are being thrown down a long flight of stairs. No tempo, erratic and completely off-kilter singing. The lyrics are about Halloween, a two legged dog, and how great parents are. It is simply bad music.

When I got home I was curios to find out who The Shaggs are and how they got on the radio. As shocked as I was when I heard how bad the music was, it was nothing compared to my amazement when I saw that on Amazon the album has a customer rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 and 131 reviews.

How Did The Shaggs Get On The Radio

They did not have thousand’s of hours of training, they did not have a million dollar promotion campaign, they did not have brilliant lyrics. How did they do it? How did they get popular enough to be heard on the radio?

The answer is what bloggers call a great backlink.

The famous musician Frank Zappa heard the album and publicly stated that the Shaggs are “better than the Beatles”. Why he thinks so or what he was on does not matter. What matters is that he said it. Suddenly The Shaggs were in the spotlight. People started to buy the album and listen to the music – it started to be played on the radio. Thanks to all the resulting publicity, in 1996 the Rolling Stones called the album one of the 100 “most influential alternative releases of all time”.

Terrible music but a big seller, all thanks to Zappa.

Focus on Getting the Zappa Backlink

The mantra you hear over and over again is that you need backlinks. The more backlinks you get the better chance you have of success. You might have the best blog in the world but without backlinks nobody will ever see it.

You are suppose to submit your blog to directories, make comment on other blogs, and submit articles. Accumulate as many as you can,the more the better.

True, this will increase the number of backlinks to your site. But even a hundred of these backlinks do not compare to a Zappa backlink – a backlink from a major player in your niche.

Get a backlink from the top blogger in your niche because it is worth more then the 100′s of backlinks from blog comments and directories. A nod of approval from someone famous and respected will instantaneously bring your blog into the spotlight. If they have a following of a 100,000 then suddenly 100,000 eyes will be on you.

How To Get the Zappa Backlink

Obviously the problem is getting the Zappa backlink. It is not easy and there is no step by step process to getting one. Nobody can give you advice on how to get it, there is no formula. You have to be creative and original. You have to find a way to get the attention of a big player and get them to mention you. There is the chance you will get lucky and receive one without trying, but more likely you will have to work hard for it.

A perfect example of a great backlink is this guest post. This blog is very popular with 1000′s of visitors a day. By putting in the time to create this guest post and having it accepted I suddenly get lots of exposure. The backlink from this high page rank blog can turn out to be my Zappa backlink.

You have a choice: you can either diligently spend a hours every week accumulating little backlinks that might make your blog a success over time. Or you can spend those hours going after the big score. The one big backlink that is worth a 100 little ones.

About the Author

Roman Jelinek is a new webmaster with a blog and website describing in detail what is involved in creating, maintaining and profiting from a site. Charts and statistics are used to reveal How This Website Makes Money Online. If you find the article interesting, do take the time to subscribe to his feed.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

A while ago I wrote about a cool project that allows users to check how their blogs and websites stack against their competitors, Review My Web. Today, I’d like to present you with another free (and so useful) tool, from the same developer: RockinSEO.com.

Free Keyword Tracker

Yes, that’s what you get with RockinSEO. You get to track your website’s results in Google, Yahoo and the recently released Bing for up to 20 keywords, for free. More than that, for the same keywords you can compare your results with those of up to 3 competitor websites or blogs.
The results are easy to read and interpret as you can see in the following screenshots:

Track search engine keyword position

Check keywords against your competition

As you can see, the tool is really useful and simple to use, and any blogger interested in his blog’s position in the most relevant search engines should give it a try. And if you decide to do so…

Get Blogsessive’s Coupon and track up to 50 keywords!

Yes, that’s right. Even if the tool comes with a limit of 20 trackable keywords, the author, @Terry Novak has been kind enough to offer a special coupon to all the readers of Blogsessive who sign up for FREE until the end of this Friday. Use it and increase your account’s limit to 50 keywords.

Coupon code: blogsessive50

Now, go sign up and start optimizing your blog to number one!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

While working on a couple of WordPress projects these days, I’ve been on the look out for some new WordPress plugins. During my searches I’ve come across some really cool and useful plugins that you might want to check out too.

Manual Related Links

Tired of the old and sometimes irrelevant automated “Related posts”. This new WordPress plugin allows you to hand pick the links to be displayed at the end of your posts. Also works with off site links. Some might think that it’s a waste of time, other like me will see the value in giving the reader really relevant, hand-picked links.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: Aaron D. Campbell

WP htaccess Control

No need to access the FTP or the cPanel anymore to add rules to your .htaccess file. With WP htaccess Control you get to do that from the comfort of your WP Admin screen.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: António Andrade aka Dardna

Magazine Columns

This is a cool WordPress plugin for all you “magazine-style” fans out there. Ever wanted you posts to be displayed split into 2, 3 or more columns, just like in a newspaper? By adding a shorttag – <!–column–> into your posts you’ll be able to do so. Easy to use, nice result.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: Chris Bavota

Pretty Links

“Pretty Links” is a nice little plugin that allows you to setup custom URLs on your blog to act as either short URLs or affiliate marketing links. Also features click statistics.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7.1+
Author: Blair Williams

Template Tag Shortcodes

Justin Tadlock, author of the cool Query Posts plugin gives us yet a new useful tool for our blog. The “Template Tag Shortcodes” does exactly what the name says. It takes WordPress’ template tags that you usually use in your hardcoded templates and transforms them into shortcodes that you can also use in you blog posts and pages, in the admin screen. Really cool, and supports over 40 template tags and growing.
Download hereWP Version: 2.5+
Author: Justin Tadlock

Post Snippets

This plugin comes in handy when dealing with post series and recurring snippets of code and text in your blog posts. Setup new snippets of HTML code via the plugin admin page, then call them in you posts through a small button that’s added to you post edit TinyMCE editor.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: Johan Steen

Important

As all of these plugins are recently released, I would advise some testing before going live. If you have access to a local server of test version of your blog, try using these plugins there first.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

If you’re a blogger, by now you have already found out that the majority of your blog’s traffic comes from search engines and social media & bookmarking sites. There is a lot of information available on any of these two traffic sources to help you get started in either optimization you choose to make, although I would suggest you do both, to diversify your incoming traffic.

I know that for many start-up bloggers, the blogs they manage are probably the first contact they had with a website from the role of an administrator, and surely the first contact they had with the concept of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). In terms of blog optimization, I have shared with you a few articles in the past that offer a good range of blog SEO tips, so, in case you need to refresh your memory, feel free to go through them again.

The problem is that even with the available information, those new to the concept of SEO tend to try anything and everything, without taking the time to decide what’s best and what could actually damage their rankings. In what follows I’m going to present a list of the top SEO mistakes you must avoid.

SEO Mistake #1 – Ignoring Basic Search Engine Guidelines

From my point of view, this is the biggest mistake a SEO beginner could make. SEO is a set of actions meant to improve search engine rankings, so the most important thing would obviously be to first check out the targeted search engines’ quality and submission guidelines. Here are the links to the guides of two of the most important search engines, Google and Yahoo:

• Google SEO & Quality Guidelines
• Yahoo SEO Guidelines

Any further SEO actions you take should abide by the above guidelines. After all, is their “approval” you’re seeking.

SEO Mistake #2 – Not Having a Keywords Strategy

There is one common mistake that people do and it’s about the way they understand the concept of using keywords. Keywords are not what you would want you’re website to be found for, but what your website could show up for in relation to its content.

I’ve seen hundreds of websites with that keywords META filled with the most incredible and unrelated words and phrases, most times on the homepage. It’s a mistake to target numerous keywords and actually diminishing that chances to succeed with either one of them.

The development of a keyword strategy is done in strong relationship with your blog’s structure. Just like your blog’s homepage is a gateway to more detailed content topics, so should be its keywords and the keywords of its subpages, categories and posts. Focus on choosing keywords that go hand in hand with the actual content and topics you approach rather than keywords that you’d think might be representative.

Work from your homepage downward in your blog structure, going from more general keywords, to very specific keywords as you get to the posts, like in the diagram below:

Here are 3 past articles you might find useful when it comes to developing and maintaining a keyword strategy:

• How to check and improve your WordPress SEO
• Using Keywords for Blog Optimization
• Advantages of Long Tail Keywords Optimization

SEO Mistake #3 – Ignoring the title tags (H1, H2, H3, H4…)

When writing and publishing blog posts, many ignore these HTML heading tags. You’ve probably seen that I use them in most of my posts, and not only for optimization reasons. They also help your readers better follow the post’s structure and ideas.

Use appropriate keywords inside these tags. The search engine bots give special attention to these headings and continue to “read” your content based on the information found inside them. It builds up relevancy.

Also, a look at how your theme uses heading tags, SEO wise, would do good too.

SEO Mistake #4 – Too much focus on one of the optimization elements

Due to not filtering the incoming information on SEO, some people make the mistake on focusing too much on optimizing the meta tags, or the titles, or the body text of posts. Optimization is a process that should cover all aspects in a very close relationship.

Once you’ve decided which keywords to use, make sure you optimize your page title, META’s, subheading, body text, links, alternate (ALT) text on images and so on. The more consistent the whole page looks in terms of optimization, the better the chances of a higher ranking.

SEO Mistake #5 – SEO is Not a One Time Process

No Sir, it’s not! It’s a matter of trial and error, of research and observation of evolution. Don’t make the mistake of resting at peace once you’ve finished optimizing a page or website. Check the results from time to time, adjust your keyword strategy if necessary. You don’t have to do this only because search engines change algorithms. You have to do it also because you’re definitely not the only one targeting those keywords, assuming you’re targeting competitive ones – otherwise, what’s the point?

Research -> Analize -> Experiment. It’s the only path to success, in any field.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Back in 2005, the folks at Google took on an “experiment” that later proved to be a very popular tool for webmasters and SEO people: the Google Sitemaps. Their exact words on the official Google blog were:

We’re undertaking an experiment called Google Sitemaps that will either fail miserably, or succeed beyond our wildest dreams, in making the web better for webmasters and users alike.

Ever since sitemaps where added, the Google Webmaster Tools became more and more used and useful, many new features being added over the time.

How do sitemaps help you?

Based on the main reasons that lead to this successful “experiment”, sitemaps are meant to improve the way your website is indexed and crawled by the GoogleBot.

Furthermore, through the Webmaster Tools interface and using sitemaps, you have access to vital information such as pages that could not be crawled, broken links, search queries that returned your website’s content, queries that drove traffic to your website and many more features worth discovering and using.

How do I build a XML sitemap?

As a blogger, you should not worry about that. Arne Brachhold developed a wonderful WordPress plugin that is very easy to manage and automatically generates a standards-compliant XML sitemap based on your blog’s structure. This is one plugin that I include in every WordPress blog I create or administrate, so, from my point of view, it’s one that I “could not live without”, so I highly recommend it.

Download Google XML Sitemaps Generator Plugin here.

Once you have the sitemap ready, it’s time to upload it to your Google Webmaster Tools account. In order to access these tools, all you need is a Google account. You can use your Gmail login info to access them.

Google Webmaster Tools

As soon as you log in to your account you’ll be taken to your dashboard. Here you can select through already existing website profiles, add new ones, add sitemaps and confirm your administrative rights (verify) for those websites.

Once you’ve added a new profile using the form on the top of the table – as indicated in the above screenshot – it’s time to verify your site. In the table, you’ll see your new website with two links beside it. One to add a sitemap and one to verify it. Click on the verify link and you’ll be taken to a new screen:

Here, you’ll be provided with 2 verification methods:

• By adding a specific, unique META tag to your website’s header;
• By uploading a HTML file into the root FTP folder of your website.

It’s up to you to decide which method will you use, the results are the same.

Now that your site has been verified, you can add the previously generated sitemap to its profile, either by clicking the “Add” link, near the website name on the dashboard, or by navigating the left side menu to Sitemaps -> Add a sitemap. Both methods will take you to this screen:

From the initial drop down menu select “Add General Web Sitemap“. This is the most common selection for text-based-content websites like blogs. In the form below, at point 3, enter the URL of your sitemap. This usually is something like: http://www.youblog.com/sitemap.xml, and click the button to submit it.

Allow some time for Google to process the information of your newly added sitemap. Once the sitemap is approved, your sitemaps dashboard will look like this:

From here, you will gain access to report about your crawling stats, sitemap and website status and many more interesting things that you will be able to access through the options in the left side menu of Google Webmaster Tools.

And that concludes this guide. You should now have your Google Sitemap up and running, nice and easy!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

When you want to attract more virtual footfalls and internet traffic volume that would translate into sales, you have to learn how to use relevant keywords to optimize for. The right keyword selection is the first and foremost criterion of search engine optimization – SEO.

Approaching the Long Tail Keyword Optimization Process

In order to succeed in search engine optimization you need to use informative, unique and keyword targeted content for optimum conversion.

Of relevant keywords, 60% to 70% of the net organic internet traffic experienced by a website is taken up by long tail keywords. And if you are an optimizer you must capitalize on long tail keywords because they bring in genuine customers and insure conversion.

The traffic brought in by long tail keywords is usually targeted for a niche clientele, and that results in high conversions rates.

Because it is difficult to predict the types of long tail keywords that people may search for, you have to create relevant content and aim at the most appropriate keyword theme to enable long tail keyword SEO.

It makes good sense to think of yourself as a tutor, or an instructor whose job is to educate his target audience about the service or product he is selling or offering through informative articles.

If your articles are well written, keyword rich, informative and well researched, there are high chances that mere searchers may convert into potential buyers, which is what you were looking for in the first place.

What are long tail keywords? Why are they so effective?

Long tail keyword search can stretch from 2 words to 5 phrases (only in rare cases), but comes as a 3 to 6 words search phrase. Comparatively fewer websites compete for long tail keywords. Therefore it is relatively easy to attain or qualify for a high rank in a search engine through long tail keywords because they are less popular in the keyword market, less frequently used by sites and also every month they get fewer search hits.

The bottom-line is that long tail keywords happen to be that missing magic link between a trickling or zero traffic and voluminous traffic with a high rate of conversion that will boost your sales and profit.

When you look at each keyword as a gateway to your site, then obviously using a series of relevant keywords or long tail keywords for optimizing your web pages will bring in more traffic, because there are multiple bridges to your site in those phrases.

However don’t try to optimize each and every web page because although it will ensure that your site is undergoing heavy optimization, qualifying for a top 10 ranking in the search engines will remain a distant dream.

So, the best approach is to aim at the most popular keywords for a long term goal and for a short term purpose, that is, for the immediate future, go for 3 or 4 of the less popular, less competitive long tailed keywords that will not only drive in traffic, but also result in conversions.

For more information on this topic, you could also read my previous article on “Using Keywords for Blog Optimization“.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

The internet is filled with websites competing for the same niche, which makes it very difficult to attract visitors to each individual website. Without proper promotion, a website could just sit idle for days, weeks or even years and people wouldn’t notice it.

Website owners know this fact, so they have learned to adjust to the online fast-paced environment and one method of promoting websites they’ve come up with is to use link baits on their sites.

In this article you’ll find out what is a link bait, what types of link baits are there and how to plan and write the perfect link bait blog post.

What is Link Baiting?

The term ‘linkbait’ is used to describe a tool for websites designed to “lure” or generate incoming links to a particular site. It is there for the purpose of attracting web users to visit a website (increasing traffic), and as a result, they generate material which is linked and picked up by other sites.

Link baiting also pushes a site up on the search engine ladder, as a lot of search engines look at how many websites link back to yours, their quality, and measure your site’s value through these links.

Link baits definitely help promote a website, although not all link baits can be considered “good”. There are two basic types of link baits: good and bad link baits, based not on their effectiveness, but on their “attitude”.

Good Link Baits

A good link bait is simply anything that is meaningful, insightful, new, or interesting and also, is acceptable to a majority of web users. It could also give incentives to visitors, like contests.

A great example of “good link baiting” is Daniel Scocco’s post: 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid. It’s a very useful and comprehensive article that managed to attract over 350 comments. Unfortunately, DailyBlogTips.com does not display trackbacks, but, judging by the huge amount of comments, we can imagine how many back links that article received.

Bad Link Baits

Bad link baiting, on the other hand, is publishing controversial or contentious content, which can be highly effective, although some may find it distasteful.

An excellent recent example of “bad link baiting” is Shoemoney’s post – SEO Has No Future – a very controversial topic that not only managed to attract a huge amount of back links (Blogsessive included, twice now), but also an impressive amount of comments.

In order to write a good and effective link baiting blog post, here are some tips on the actions you need to take before getting started.

Brainstorming

Write down all the ideas that you come up with on a certain topic, no matter how weird or far-fetched they are. You don’t need to edit your notes at this time since you would like to build a “database” of all your ideas on the matter.

Filtering

Once you have gathered all the ideas you could think of, the next step is filtering them. Break down the ideas into their Concept and Content components. Separate the format (Concept) of the suggested link bait (quizzes, contests, tools, etc.) and the subject (Content) of the suggested link bait (celebrities, Microsoft, ads, etc.) into two lists.

Evaluation

Critically evaluate all notes under the Content list, ignoring those that are in the Concept list. Check if the ideas are appropriate for the current time setting and if these are the ideas you would like to write about. You might also want to research if there is any related news that complements your link baits.

Matching

Once you’ve prioritized your Contents, you can now match them with your Concepts. If you want your link baits linked to a specific music website, write down the Concepts that would match there, like top ten, awards, contest, etc. By matching the right Content to your Concept, you can make sure that your link bait would reach your targeted audience, meaning what you’re writing about is effective.

Some people believe that good link baiting is a great SEO tool, and they are right. With proper use, link baits would surely increase traffic to any website.

Photo credits to Dale Eurenius

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

I believe that educated clients, who understand your job as a SEO specialist, are good clients. That way you avoid misunderstandings, many frustrating situations for you and your client and you may work more efficiently.

A client that nods their head just to get rid of you. on the other hand, needs more time to work on, more time to explain anything and thus, you lose time that you could spend on implementing the SEO strategy. And even then, you are never sure if the client actually agrees with you or still wants to get to their own business. You simply waste time and money with that kind of attitude.

Teaching your clients about SEO

That’s why, before starting a SEO campaign, you should educate your client in SEO/SEM. I’m not talking about deep training, basic things should suffice. If you don’t work directly with your employer, but with a certain team (marketing or web design agency) you should focus on giving them a glimpse on what SEO is (and what is not).

You may prepare a document describing SEO, that you will deliver to those involved in the project, and especially in the SEO process. Keeping it short and simple should prevent people from taking it lightly from not reading it.

You may also spend 2 hours to meet them in person and talk about the SEO strategy. Now, that is much better as they will interact with you and ask questions if you manage to startle their interest. They will be also happy to have 2 hours off work, when you do the job and they listen. Get some cookies and coffee, make them feel relaxed, not stressed. You don’t want to scare them with your knowledge or with what you have to say.

Don’t talk too much about details, but if you see they want more, go for it. Explain them what they need to know and of course, what they should know about SEO.

If you are working as a freelancer or on distant location, do a phone or Skype conference. A video conference is even better as you may see your audience and they can see you. Discuss the benefits of having a SEO strategy and make them feel involved in the process, just as if you were a team.

If your client is a hopeless cause, you need to find a way to reach him/her; and since all clients are different, you’ll need to come up with different approach techniques. Don’t try the same tactics and expect them to react the same way. You need to be active and creative about delivering information and knowledge about SEO.

Good luck!

And now, how do you deal with your clients? Do you educate them? Or maybe they know what SEO is and there is no need to get into details?
Share your experience with us!

About the author

Paweł Szulencki is a SEO/SEM certified specialist and the owner of the Search Engine Optimization & Marketing blog SEOBlogr.com. Make sure you visit his blog for more information on SEO, Marketing, Google and all things search engine related.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

What is SEO-friendly content and why is it important? Where is the limit between helpful and spam? The answers to these questions are essential to producing high quality, high ranking web content.

What is SEO-friendly content?

Basically, SEO-friendly content is the type of content that is both interesting and helpful for your blog readers as well as attractive for search engine spiders, which leads to better rankings.

Think of this kind of content as the intersection of publishing high quality posts with the search user’s need to find that relevant, quality content. It’s the most basic search engine promotion you could do.

Creating SEO friendly content is by no means an easy task, nor a short term one. The “maintenance” is very important and insures that your search engine rankings are at least kept, if not improved.

Since optimized content can be of great help when it comes to blog and community growth, relevant organic traffic, bounce rate improvement, awareness and much more, you can imagine that these kinds of services don’t come cheap. But, don’t worry, with practice, you’ll find out that it’s not that hard to transform your articles in pretty decent SEO-friendly web content.

Effective optimization techniques

The first and most important thing you need to consider is your readers / future readers. Try approaching from your readers’ perspective. Is your content something of interest? If so, is it presented in an easily readable form?

Targeting simple keywords

The next step is to select the appropriate keywords to target in the optimization process. When it comes to keywords, the best thing to do is think natural. The more natural and simplistic way to express a “need”, the more chances that keyword will be one with a high level of searches.

Look at the little comic strip above and consider this. A publisher writes a review of the “Dark Knight Movie”. Users that want to see that movie will most likely do a search for a review. Which of the following keyword phrases do you think will perform best in searches?

• Review of the Dark Knight movie;
• Dark Knight movie review;
• Dark Knight review.

If we take a look at the results suggested by Google’s Keyword Tool, we’ll find the following statistics based on approximate average search volume:

1. Dark Knight review – 14.800 searches;
2. The Dark Knight review (variation) – 8100 searches;
3. Dark Knight movie review – 880 searches;
4. Review of the Dark Knight movie – irrelevant or very few searches.

So, you see how simplifying the targeted search query is more likely to put you in the spotlight for a higher amount of organic traffic. Repeat the process until you come up with a list of related keywords, to help support the main keyword throughout the post and to avoid unnecessary repetitions and stuffing.

Using the selected keywords

Now that you have a primary phrase to optimize for and a few support phrases, make sure to spread them seamlessly throughout the article. When it feels natural to do so, use bold text or italic (emphasis), but don’t simply bold out entire blocks. That will only hurt your optimization level.

Start from the beginning by using your main phrase in the first sentence or paragraph. Depending on the length of your post, you can try repeating a few times, as long as it does not sound bad for a reader. Repetitions can drive away your visitors and search engines both, as their spiders are “trained” to think and read based on a human model.

Use your main phrase in subtitles and, obviously, in the post title too. Add it to the post’s Meta tags, along with the support keywords. I’ve explained before how you can fine tune your blog to turn your post’s title into a SEO title.

If possible, try adding pictures (relevant for your readers) and use your keywords as ALT text for those images. Sure a search engine spider will not see the actual image, but image oriented spiders like Google’s Image Search will definitely be on the lookout for that alternate text.

You can read one of my previous articles for more tips on keyword optimization.

Conclusions

SEO friendly content is the best investment you can when it comes to your blog’s search engine promotion. It generates natural results with real people reading your posts, based on their needs. And when that happens, the path to conversion is at least half way taken.

Regardless to what some people think, there’s nothing wrong with helping out good content find its way to interested search engine users, as long as you don’t go overboard and turn into search engine spam. The line is thin.

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It’s a known fact that the number and quality of backlinks a page/site gets will affect its search rankings. SEO copywriters have always struggled to write not only search engine friendly content, but also creative content that would make people want to link back. Others chose the easier, but more expensive, way of the “link marketplaces”, such as TLA.

In what follows I’m going to explain one easy enough method to boost your number of backlinks and also improve your blog’s Technorati rank. All with the help of Mixx.

Initial considerations

Those of you familiar with social media, social networking and bookmarking services have surely heard of Mixx and are most probably registered users. For those that are not familiar with this service, I strongly suggest you try it.

Not necessarily because of the traffic that it could provide – which is currently way below services like Digg, Reddit or Stumble Upon – but mainly because is one of the few services that are still not “infected” with trolls, down-voters and spammers. On Mixx you can still find content worth reading and bookmarking and also, Mixx is of great help when it comes to what I’m about to share with you.

How can Mixx boost your backlinks and Technorati rank?

The answer is simple. All bookmarks added to Mixx are “do follow” links. Sure, they are marked with rel=”bookmark”, but that does not negatively affect the link.

So, what could you do to get and make better use of those links?

1. Create a profile

And not just a profile, but rather start building a solid profile. Submit quality content, content that will attract votes. Considering that Mixx has been recently launched, compared to other such services, you can still build a power user profile.

2. You profile page

This page contains links to all stories you’ve submitted. On Mixx you are allowed to submit your own stories, but encouraged to use moderation and common sense. Again, all links are followed by search engines, the profile page is indexed and gets Page Rank. My profile page for example is currently a PR 3.

3. Power users/ Super Mixxers

It’s easier to get in touch and collaborate with power users on Mixx and just as your profile is indexed so is theirs, but only with more relevance and even higher Page Rank. After friendly helping them out, I’m sure that most of them wouldn’t mind submitting some stories for you.

4. Popular stories

And since Mixx is so “new”, you have quite a good chance of making the “popular stories” list. Success is guaranteed with a few supermixxers on your side. The “Popular” page is also indexed, links are followed and it currently has a PR 6. Get your story on the Mixx home page and you’ll get yourself a PR 7 link.

Popular and home page stories will instantly affect your Technorati rank too.

Final considerations

This article is only meant to help you better optimize your online presence and it’s not meant as an encouragement to spam Mixx. I can assure you that the Mixx masters are watching.

So, the best you can do to get in this win-win situation is:

• Join Mixx
• Submit quality and relevant content
• Make Friends
• Help out
• Get help back
• Boost your rankings
• DO NOT spam!

And while you’re on Mixx, you can also follow me.

For more information you can also read my other post on SEO link building.

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When it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) there are so many little things that can affect your blog’s ranking. We’ve talked about headings and titles, META tags and keywords, link building strategies, but how do we put to use our blog’s domain name and hosting to improve our rankings? This “SEO Sunday” episode will explain a few important things you should consider.

Choosing the right TLD

Some say that the TLD (Top Level Domain) – domain name extension – doesn’t matter. Most say it does and from my own experience I must agree with the majority.
First of all, let’s say your writing in your native language other than English. By choosing a country specific TLD (but not exclusively) you’ll tell search engines where your blog is based and to whom it addresses. For English written blogs, a .COM or a .NET TLD will most likely do the best jobs since the .COM is the most common extension and English the most used language online. Also, .COMs are a good alternative if your country specific TLD has already been registered.

Keyword domain names vs. Brandable domain names

A keyword in the domain name will definitely help your rankings for that specific keyword. Still, this doesn’t mean that a well optimized blog using a brandable domain name will not rank well. If your going for a brandable domain, try to play around a keyword, like I did with Blogsessive. It will add a bit to the value.

Dashes and numbers in the domain name

Unless strictly required (numbers are part of the identity, like Hi5), I would suggest to stay away from numbers. SEO wise they add no value. Also, if in the future you’ll be looking to sell that domain name, all the money you’ll get will mostly be based on the traffic that name received and its page rank (if it will be the case).
Dashes are still dropping the financial value, but in regards to SEO, search engines seam to accept them – even if with less value – and with the right on and off page optimization they could rank very well.

Domain registration period

When you register a new domain, try and register it for at least three or four years. Why? Simple, search engines will know that domain will be around for a longer period of time and it won’t be a simple spamming/domain flipping registration. Thus, they will add more weight to the results coming from your domain. Also, if you’re buying a pre-registered domain names from a domain name marketplace, try to buy one that has been registered and not dropped for a long time. The longer, the better. It also adds to its financial value.

Register one or two more major TLDs

Let’s say you’ve just registered BlogDomainName.com and you’re looking to build a brand around that blog. By registering BlogDomainName.net and BlogDomainName.org (for example) and pointing them to the .COM, you’re telling search engines that you’re consolidating your online brand, which will again add weight to the results coming from your blog.

Domain name history

It’s always a good idea to check out if the domain name has been registered before by using a WHOIS tool, and if it has been, also check out its history with a service like the Wayback Machine. If that domain has been banned by search engines due to whatever reasons, don’t buy it. You’ll have an almost impossible job building up its reputation.

Shared hosting IP vs. Dedicated hosting IP

By sharing an IP with many other websites and blogs you’ll lose a bit of your own identity in front of search engines. Also, if search engines have a habit of banning the whole IP range if one of the websites you’re sharing the IP with will be banned for spam or other strange activities. By getting a dedicated IP you’ll be on your own, safe as long as you act fair. Dedicated hosting is not cheap, but many hosting providers offer dedicated IPs with even the cheapest hosting plans for a small extra fee, sometimes as low as $3.

So, as you can see, there are many other factors than links and META tags when it comes to optimization. Do everything right and you be getting closer to those high rankings, step by step.

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One of the most basic, yet highly effective things you need to consider when doing blog optimization is using keywords to indicate search engine spiders what your posts are about. The more relevant to the page’s content, the better the search engine ranking.
Keyword optimization is part of on-page SEO, which means that it is a part of the optimization you’ll make on your blog’s code.

What you should know right from the start is that keywords can give your blog posts a boost in rankings or get your blog out of the first and most important search results. It all comes down to how well you’re using them and how relevant they are to your content.

Rules of keyword optimization

Since you’re reading this, I have no doubt that you understand how important well-researched keywords are and that you’re willing to make better use of them. These are some of the most important things you need to consider:

Things to do

• Consider using keywords relevant to your article;
• If the keywords are somehow related to each other, that’s a plus (for example: internet marketing, online marketing, search engine marketing);
• Use different keywords for different blog posts. In most cases, search engines will return two results from you blog at most, so having five or six posts optimized for the same set of keywords would be a waste of content;
• Write your article first, but with the right keywords in mind, not the other way around;
• Use your most important keyword(s) in the title tag. If you’re using a SEO plugin, you can set a different page title than that of your blog post;
• Use those keywords in the META description too;
• Use the keywords in the title of your blog post and preferably in the first phrase or paragraph of your article;
• Edit the post slug (permalink) so that it contains the most important keyword and also try to keep it as short as possible;
• Place the keyword(s) a few more times (don’t overdo it) throughout the article in a humanly natural order and context;
• If there are other older relevant posts on your blog, try to create backlinks from them using the selected keywords as anchor text (same goes for external incoming links).

Things to avoid

• Don’t target too many keywords. Use as many keywords as you feel that are relevant to your content which means they are present on the page and have value to a visitor. A list of 50 keywords means that most probably at least 40 of them are almost totally irrelevant;
• Don’t use irrelevant keywords. If your post is about NASA’s recent trip to Mars, I don’t know how Demi Moore or Vi*gra would fit in the picture;
• Using text formatting on some keywords in your content is OK. Bolding everything out is not;
• Avoid duplicating keywords in your META tags;
• Placing a list of comma separated keywords in your title tag and META description is a big NO. Write something natural and appealing to humans;
• Avoid keyword stuffing. Don’t fill your blog post with keywords only to increase the keyword density. It is unnatural, provides a negative user experience and will probably get you penalized by search engines.

Conclusions

Some say that keywords don’t really matter when it comes to search engine rankings, and since everyone is entitled to an opinion, I will disagree with that. Same people say that their blogs or websites rank high even if they neglected keyword optimization. That is true, but I’d like to see how well they perform when they’ll be competing with a well optimized blog or website when similar factors are on the table, like: almost same age (possibly younger), number of indexed pages, number of backlinks etc.

Keyword optimization is part of a much bigger and complex process. Acting blind in front of it is like sticking your head in the sand, hoping that if you don’t see anyone, nobody will see you.

Next week, we’ll talk about choosing relevant keywords and discuss a few keyword suggestion tools.

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It’s time once again for a SEO Sunday special, dedicated to links, link building, tips and good practices of linking. It is a known fact that links pointing to your blog are meant to increase its value, not only in the eyes of search engines but also when it comes to authority measuring services like Technorati.

Links are a great tool to increase you search engine ranking and your blog’s visibility, but only when the link building is done smart. Sometimes, people that heard about the importance of link building are willing to do whatever it takes to gather as many links to their websites and blogs as possible, and this is potentially damaging their rankings. So, before going any further, I’ll tell you some things that you should stay away from.

Bad link building practices

More and more link building services are promoted on forums these days. I’m sure that many of you have come across those “1000 directory links for $10″ topics. Well, some people have to make a living, and that’s not to blame, but before paying for such services you should consider a few things.

Most sellers state that links are placed in directories with page rank varying from 2 to 6/7. In most cases, this is only partially true, as that page rank value is only met on the directory’s home page and not on the actual page where your link will be placed.

Further more, these service provider will most likely submit your blog using the same title and description or at most with 2 small variations. Why is this bad? Because out of nowhere, 1000 links to your site, all containing the same information will pop up in search results. How does that sound? That sounds a bit like spam to me, so be careful with it. Link farms don’t work!

Another thing to avoid is buying or selling links through link market websites. These websites have a bad record with Google and have been penalized since their services are seen as a threat to Google’s policy about natural, relevant backlinks. So, if you care about being in Google’s grace, search engine rankings and page rank, think twice before using them.

Whenever you want to buy a link, make sure it stays between you and that website’s owner and also learn as much as you can about his website’s history and previous practices. Also, if you’re going to buy directory links, make sure you study the offer well. No serious provider will offer a good service for such a low fee. Link building through directory submissions can have positive results if managed well.

Link building: Reciprocal links

Reciprocal links are a common practice between start-up bloggers. These have less value than one way links but still can be very helpful under some circumstances. Reciprocal links ease the spider’s circulation and the page rank transfer when encountered between blogs that activate in the same niche, approach the same topics.

Link building: One way links

One way links have a stronger SEO value because they are considered more natural. Getting one way links to your blog from pages that display relevant content and also have high page rank are certain to give you a boost in search engine rankings.

If we’re talking about 100% natural links, there’s basically no way that you could control where these non-reciprocal links come from. You cannot pick the page rank or the anchor text, but still, there’s one thing you can do.

Write good quality posts as they are more likely to attract the interest of higher authority blogs and websites and so, pass some of their search engine trust to you.

Link building: Deep linking

Deep linking is one highly important factor when it comes to link building. It does not only add to the total number of link backs to your blog, but also contributes to traffic levels and increases spiders’ interest in your content, making it more likely for them to index it faster, give it more importance and check back more often to rebuild their cache.

Link building without considering deep linking is meant to fail. Again, great content is one powerful tool to attract such links.

More good linking practices

Consider building a strong internal linking system. Make sure you use relevant anchor text whenever linking to you own post. Do so to ease up spiders’ discovery and navigation through your blog.

Also, if you’re one of those link-love givers, at least do it right. Take 5 more seconds to add at least a relevant title to that external link if not a good anchor text. It costs you nothing but helps the receiver a lot. After all, that’s what link love is supposed to be about, a way to show appreciation.

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Here comes another SEO Sunday, but this time, instead of writing another Blog SEO Tips post, I’m going to review and recommend you a free eBook on SEO for WordPress 2.5 Blogs by SEO and PR consultant Mihaela Lica.

I’ve just finished reading her book and believe me, those 44 PDF pages where really worth it, and the best part is that you don’t have to do anything to get the book. No subscription is required, no commenting contest or link backs. You just click the link in her blog post and start reading.

The book will guide you through steps like installing and setting up your WordPress 2.5 blog, setting up permalinks and onsite & offsite optimization tips and techniques.

Here are the contents of this eBook, just to have an idea of what to expect:

Introduction
Chapter 1: Hosting
Chapter 2: Installing WordPress and Keeping Your Site W3C Compliant
Chapter 3: Optimizing Permalinks
Chapter 4: Basic SEO Techniques Made Easy
Chapter 5: Avoiding the Duplicate Content Penalty
Chapter 6: Creating Google Sitemaps
Chapter 7: Other On-page SEO Techniques
Chapter 8: Optimizing Images
Chapter 9: Pinging
Chapter 10: Important Linking Tips
Conclusion

I’m going to be honest with you and tell you that most of the SEO information provided is not revolutionary. So why do I recommend it?

Because it’s a must read! Because most of us forget about the most basic things when it comes to keeping our blogs clean and search engine friendly. I know I do it, and I bet that if a SEO specialist would take a look at my blog’s code will run like crazy.

And I’ll give you one more reason to download and read this book. Why would you want to spend hours searching the internet, filtering all the information and in the end getting the same result, or maybe poorer, when you have it all in one PDF.

Did I mention that it’s free? Yes, I know, we all love free stuff, as long as it is good quality. And free, high quality is always hard to find.

Still here?

Ok, you need to do this now. Scroll down, you see the big picture? Click it, get your copy and enjoy it! Don’t forget to come back and tell me what do you think about it.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

We keep hearing about “organic traffic” and how important it is for our blogs. Well, organic traffic is the traffic you receive from search engines, based on the level of relevance and optimization of your blog posts. The more relevant for the user’s search term, the higher the ranking in search engine’s results.

Let’s say that you wrote a very interesting and helpful post. You would definitely want it to rank well, and by doing so, attract more traffic to it. This traffic can generate both comments, a base for advertising and also potential backlinks to your post. In short: It’s important.

So, how can you optimize you blog posts? By doing 3 simple things:

1. Optimize your titles;
2. Optimize the post body;
3. Optimize the internal links.

Optimizing the titles

In one of my past posts I’ve told you about the importance of writing SEO friendly titles with the use of H1, H2, H3 tags. And since on single post pages your titles should be listed with H1 tags, search engines will give them maximum attention.

Your post’s title should definitely use the primary keyword, the keyword for which you want the post to rank higher in search results. To decide on your primary keyword and the best form that you could use, you need to run a bit of research on common search habits of users.

For example, let’s say your blog post is about websites where you can find and download images for free. People tend to shorten the search query, so you’ll most probably get only a few searches for a keyword like “images for free”. Instead, the chances are much better for a keyword like “free images”.

Considering this, your post title could be one of the following variations:

• How/Where to find free images
• Free images website(s)
• Search for free images

You should also consult some keyword suggestion tools or even Google AdWords Keyword Tool, which is a very useful application. Another useful service from Google is Google Trends, an application that allows you to access statistics of search trends over periods of time and in different regions of the world.

You can also check out Brian Clark’s article on how to write headlines that work. It’s quite a recommended reading.

Optimizing the post body

Optimizing the title is not enough. You need to do a bit of work on you post’s body too. Using the same technique I’ve described above, focus on finding secondary keywords for you blog post. These are similar or related phrases that could boost your article’s relevance.

If we stick to our “free images” example, an interesting list of secondary keywords could be:
- Free photos
- Free stock images
- Stock photography

Make sure you place secondary keywords in your post’s body, but don’t abuse them. It’s OK to want to attract the search engines, but never to write exclusively for them. At least, out of respect for your readers. They don’t want, and won’t read a spam article.

Optimizing the internal links

Whenever linking to other posts of your blog, make sure you use primary (best) or secondary keywords. This will increase the level of relevance, and also help the readers to better identify the content they should expect when clicking a link.

Also to consider

Whenever you want to optimize you posts, it’s always a good idea to run a search on Google and see how others perform for that search, and what form of the keyword they chose to use.

Also, a good idea would be to study your website’s statistics and re-optimize some of your older posts for keywords that returned your blog, but you did not thought of using initially. This will happen, and if the statistics are “kind enough” to tell us, why not use the free tip?

And this concludes another blog SEO tips post on SEO Sundays at Blogsessive.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Another quiet Sunday in the blogosphere, as usual. This morning I thought about writing another link share post or a WordPress theme recommendation, but later I’ve decided to break the pattern (since it’s all so quiet) and make Sundays the host of a blog SEO tips series. In this first post I’m going to talk about the importance of using SEO friendly titles (H1, H2, H3) and the right way to do so.

Usual Coding Patterns in WordPress Themes

If you’re even a bit familiar with the WordPress themes, by now you’ve probably took a look at your theme’s files. Blog pages are rendered through an association of a few PHP files with standard names (index.php, archive.php, single.php) with different templates of the theme, based on the content type.

The index.php file usually stands for your home page, also being capable of replacing any other template that hasn’t been already defined. So, if you don’t have a template for search results (search.php), the index file will take over and render your search results page.

Each of these templates includes smaller pieces of code to build up the final result. The most used are header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php.

For now, we’ll limit our attention to the following files in your theme’s folder:

• header.php
• index.php
• single.php
• page.php (not every theme has it)
• archive.php, search.php (not every theme has them)

Optimizing the Header File

Having your primary keyword present at the top of you page it’s very important.
Considering the fact that most themes come with text based logos instead of graphics, we’ll be looking for the <h1> tag in the header.php file.

If you look at the WordPress default theme will find this piece of code, close to the end of the file:

<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>

The first line displays your blog’s title into a link to the homepage, inside the H1 tag.
The second line displays your blog’s description.

H1 is the most important heading style and the coding recommendations state that only one should be used per page. When talking about a homepage, archive page or search results, it’s best that we optimize these pages according to our main keywords, therefore this H1 tag is required.

But what about on the single post pages? When we display single post, we would want to have their pages optimized according to their content, not the overall keywords of the blog. This is where the H1 should be removed from the header.php file, and placed instead of the H2 surrounding the posts title, to give make it more visible and representative in the eyes of a search engine spider.

How do we do that? First we need to add some conditional tags in the header.
Look for the piece of code that I’ve listed above and replace it with this one:

<?php if(is_single() OR is_page()) {
// On single post pages and static pages we use this code
?>
<h2><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
<?php }
else {
// On home page and archive style pages we use this code
?>
<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
<?php } ?>

By using some WordPress conditional tags we managed to limit the use of the H1 HTML tag to all archive style pages (including the homepage).

Next, we move to single posts and static pages to continue our optimization.

Optimizing the Single Posts and Static Pages

After we’ve made the changes in the header file, we need to apply some modifications to the single.php and page.php files to make their titles more search engine friendly.

Open the default theme’s single.php file and look for this piece of code:

<h2><a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"
title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

Remember that I’ve told you we are allowed to used <h1> only once per file, for our most important title / phrase. Since we’ve eliminated the use of <h1> on single posts and static pages in the header.php, now, all we have to do is to change <h2> and </h2> with <h1> and </h1>, just like this:

<h1><a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"
title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>

There you go, now your most important phrase on a single post page is the post’s title, as it should be!
Most themes don’t come with this type of heading importance separation and by following this guide you’ll be able to fix this issue on your own with no trouble at all.

While the default theme does not have a page.php template defined, you could clone the single.php file and rename it. If you don’t clone it, the index.php file will be used to display static pages, which means you’ll list page titles using the <h2> instead of <h1>.

Consider Using Subheadings in Your Posts

For further SEO improvement, you should consider using relevant subheadings inside your post to evidentiate different parts of your post’s structure.
Write down your article and when you’re finished, switch to HTML view and add <h3> & </h3> around you subheadings, like this:

<h3>This Is a Subheading</h3>

Final Thoughts

Usually, titles are the most important links on your blog. Through them, users and spiders alike navigate through your content. Use them smart and effectively.
If you have any questions or need further help with this, feel free to drop a comment.
Also, join me again next Sunday for a new post in the Blog Seo Tips series.

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