Know SEO Blog » On Page SEO

Let Google Image Search work for you!

Jimmy — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:46:28 +0000

This post is aimed particularly at those whose blogs are heavily motivated by media. Music, Celeb, Politics, or anything along those lines. I’ve discovered that you can draw lots of traffic by placing pictures in every post. You can actually draw 10 times the traffic from google image search than you can from google web search when you are first starting. To do this, you have to be careful about how you present your images.

Although google may one day have a fast working facial recognition algorithm, that day has not yet come. Because of that google relies heavily on what the webmaster says about the photos presented. A smart webmaster can use this to their advantage. To the best of my knowledge, google is looking at the name of the image file and “alternate text”. This is why you should always RE-NAME your image files for SEO purposes. I like to use the name of the person, and possibly one short descriptive term. In the alternate text, I will then again mention the persons name and give a small caption about the pic.

I’m sure that other factors, such as the title of the page, contents of page, make a difference also, but you have to have the name and the alternate text right. If you are uploading your own photos (hotlinking will get you no where), then save them to a good name before uploading. When you upload the image, make sure that you edit the “Image Caption” field. This is also known as your alternate text.

You should be creative with your alternate text, trying to draw people in on longer keyphrases. If you have the spare time, you may even want to go back through your old posts, and add alternate text.

Don’t let spam scare you. Keep your comments on!

Jimmy — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:17:35 +0000

This post is meant to dissuade your from automatically shutting down your comments and trackbacks as some out there would have you do. Now I will admit that setting up a blog does leave you open to virtual harassment by spammers, but you don’t need to make your blog “air-tight” to allow it to succeed.

Really what you are dealing with is “Free-speech” and it is a doubled edged sword to the blogger. By allowing comments you allow interaction with readers and by allowing trackbacks you allow interaction with other blogs. While this is all well and good, this interaction can often be a nuissance to big sites, but will rarely keep you tied up with a site that is growing.

Not only do I recommend that you allow comments, I suggest that you allow users to link back to their website. Now I know that some are scratching their heads, saying “why would I allow a competitor to put a link on my site?” Believe it or not, this will benefit you in the long run. First, those blog owners who are in your niche and just starting out need links and they know it. Because of that they are usually motivated to leave thoughtful relevant comments in hopes that the blog owner will allow it. Getting a discussion going in comments is a good thing, and a good way to get someone to bookmark your site. Sometimes they are not even interested in your site, but they are interested in seeing responses to their comments. If you don’t allow users to link back to their site, you are repelling good comments.

If you are attracting blog owners who are leaving legitamate comments, then visit their site and do the same.

ADVANCED STRATEGY:

If you know PHP or a scripting language, then you can automate this process. Run a CRON job, that goes through your comments everyday saving urls from comments. If the page is a blog, go to most recent post page and leave a comment saying:

“I enjoyed this post, great blog you have here. Thanks for the visit to my site!”

or something stupid that has a good chance of getting through moderation.

No Follow Tags

Jimmy — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 23:50:28 +0000

I think there is a lot of confusion surrounding no follow tags, especially with beginners, so I hope to clear some of that up. Most people have been told that a link with a no follow tag is no good. Also blog owners have been convinced to add no follow tags to comments to keep their link authority. I’m not saying that a no follow tag is meaningless, but I think that its actual effects are exaggerated.

If you are just starting out and looking for blogs to post on, you will probably notice that many of those blogs use no follow tags for comments. Don’t let this deter you from posting a comment. Scouring through all the blogs trying to find ones that don’t use the no follow tags is a waste of time. You are better off making comments on each and every blog that you come to that allows a link.

If you watch your logs, you will notice that google bot will show up on your page and the referring link will be from one of your no follow comments. There is no doubt or argument that google follows these links. What is arguable is that the no follow links may not carry as much weight.

Although many experts still contend that there is value in the no follow tags, Matt Cutts has publicly stated that webmasters should take down their no follow tags. Although he hasn’t actually said it, I don’t think the difference between a no follow link and a regular link is substatial.

A lesson on Keywords

Jimmy — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:45:14 +0000

This post is more for beginners and deals with selecting good titles to use in your blog posts. If you typically blog about news, celebrities, sports, music, or anything popular than chances are you can generate more traffic by picking better titles to use.

Just as an easy example, lets say you write an article about the death of “Popstar X”. Because there will be tons of competition in the form of other blogs writing on the same topic, you need to be picky about your title.

“Pop-Star X Dies” – is not going to work.

“Legendary Performer Pop-Star X dies suddenly” – is much better.

Because the big sites will pick up the traffic for “Pop-Star X”, you need to include interesting and relevant keywords in your title to pick up some search engine traffic. Also, if the news is breaking, vary the title more drastically and get your post up ASAP. There is some value in getting your post indexed first.

In general, because your site is small whenever you go for a keyword try to think about what terms you can add to make the kw more specific but still relevant.

Also, if you have All-in-1 SEO installed, then your tags are also marked as meta-keywords. If you have a unique take on some breaking news, make sure that you use the tags to your advantage.

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