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Blog & Feed Search SEO. Optimizing for Blog & Feed Engines. Yahoo News & Blog Search Sorted by relevance. Only top 4 get onto News SERPs Google Blog Search Sorted by relevance. No way to submit. Only a matter of time before it ends up in the “One Box” Technorati
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Optimizing for Blog & Feed Engines • Yahoo News & Blog Search • Sorted by relevance. Only top 4 get onto News SERPs • Google Blog Search • Sorted by relevance. No way to submit. Only a matter of time before it ends up in the “One Box” • Technorati • Sorted by date. Tagged posts featured in sidebar. • Feedster • Sorted by date. • PubSub • No immediate SERPs. Delivered only in RSS.
Optimizing Your Feeds • Full text, not summaries • 20 or MORE items (not just 10) • Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post) • Keyword-rich item <title> • Your brand name in the item <title> • Your most important keyword in the site <title> container • Compelling site <description> • Don’t put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss) • An RSS feed that contains enclosures (i.e. podcasts) can get into additional RSS directories & engines
Slashdot headlines syndicated on Nanodot.org
Optimizing Your Blog • Rejig your internal hierarchical linking structure • Tag clouds & tag pages (e.g. UltimateTagWarrior plugin) • Related Posts (e.g. Contextual Related Posts plugin) • Top 10 posts • Next & Previous posts • Build inbound links • Add Technorati tags to your posts (must claim your blog first) • Get onto bloggers’ blogrolls • Trackbacks & comments won’t help with link gain
Tags pointto Technoratitag pages Tags point tointernal tagpages
This tag pagecontains nopost content No tag cloud on sub pages
Optimizing Your Blog • Title tags • Blog name at the end of the title, not at the beginning • Tag name should go in title on a tag page • Customize with additional keywords for display only on your home page • Override title tags w/ custom one (“SEO Title Tag” plugin) • URLs • Rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores • 301 redirect from yourblog.com to www.yourblog.com • Maintain legacy URLs even after switching blog platforms
#8 for “webmarketingblog” aftercreating acustom titlefor the homepage
“SEO Title Tag” plugin for WordPress • Free & open source • Allows you to override the title tag with a custom one (defined through a custom field in a post or a page) • Allows you to define a custom home page title • Reverses the order of the blog name and the title, or drop the blog name altogether, or replace it with a shorter nickname • Puts the tag in the title of (UltimateTagWarrior) tag pages • Uses category’s description as the title on category pages • Has an Options page in the admin to change settings • Download at www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin.htm
Optimizing Your Blog • Anchor text • Make the post’s title a link to the permalink page • Use Neat-o tool (webuildpages.com/neat-o) to look for opportunities to request revisions to anchor text on inbound links • Internally link back to old, relevant posts within the body of a blog post. Don’t use “here” or “previously” etc. as the anchor text! • Heading tags • category name on category page • Yes for post titles, no for dates!
Optimizing Your Blog • “Sticky” posts • Always appear at the top of the page • A way to add keyword-rich intro copy to a category page or tag page • e.g. Adhesive plugin • Author profile pages & author links (for group blogs)
Optimizing Your Blog • Emphasis tags within posts (bold, strong, etc.) • Rel=Nofollow • All links in trackbacks, comments, and in posts where you don’t vouch for the site • Where the link would be reciprocal • Pings • Lets the feed search engines know you’ve updated • pingomatic.com, pingoat.com, pings.ws, feedshot.com
Blog SEO • It’s child’s play! My daughter, SEO-in-training
#10 for “neopetcheats” within 2 weeks, andwith only 1 link!
More Gritty Details about RSS • 1-click subscribe buttons • “Add to My Yahoo” link in SERPs • Tracking • Customization • Link gain