In yesterday’s post we talked about SEO and keywords; what they are and how to pinpoint keywords that will help you get more traffic. Today we’re going to begin implementing some of what we learned in that post.
If you’re following along, you should have created a list of 30 high traffic keywords using the Google keyword tool I linked to yesterday. Beginning today let’s take the first keyword in your list and craft a blog post around it. For illustration purposes I will use my Frugal Living Today blog.
When researching keywords, the first one I used was economy. This was the result I found using the Google tool:
As you can see, there were quite a number of searches on Google that use the term ‘economy’ in the month of September and given the current events I know that October is going to be even higher. For that reason I am definitely going to use keywords that include the word economy in them. It isn’t as easy as just using the word though, you have to use it in the right places and in the right amount for them to be effective.
The Title
Definitely choose a keyword that you can incorporate into the title of your blog post. This is the first place search engines look for new content and if they find their keyword there, you have a better chance of improving your search engine ranking.
The First Paragraph, The Last Paragraph
Use the keyword again at some point in the first paragraph of your blog post and in the final paragraph of your post as often as possible, and if your post is long include it a time or two in the content itself.
The rule of thumb is that you don’t want your keyword to make up more than 2-5% of the content itself or search engines may see it as a deliberate attempt at spamming the database. This would result in your site not being indexed at all.
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization, a term that refers to making your web site friendly to the crawlers sent out by search engine databases to locate and index new web pages. The more SEO friendly your blog is, the more likely it is that you will find yourself ranking well in search engine results.
There are several factors that play into your search engine ranking but for our purposes we will focus on the one of the most important - keywords.
What are Keywords?
The simple explanation is that a keyword is a search term that someone might enter at Google or Yahoo!. Let’s say for example that your web page is about frugal living. Oh wait, I have a page about frugal living! If I want to draw the right people to that blog I need to use keywords when I am writing my content that my audience might search for.
A fantastic tool for coming up with a list of good keywords to use is Google’s Keyword Search Tool. Not only will this tool help you come up with some keywords you might not have considered, it will also tell you how many people have been searching for those keywords. Obviously if given the choice between two keywords, you would want to use the one that got more traffic.
For today, let’s start by coming up with a list of 30 different keywords or key phrases that relate to your blog topic. use the Google keyword tool I mentioned in the last paragraph and spend some time researching so that you come up with 30 good keywords that have received a good amount of traffic over the past month or so. Tomorrow we’re going to learn more about how to use those keywords to get the maximum benefit possible.
For the next several days we are going to take an in-depth look at driving new traffic to your Today.com blog. If you are one of those who are trying to drive more traffic to your site (and who isn’t?) here are a few tips to help you get some new unique visitors:
Once Is Never Enough
One potential mistake I see new bloggers making is that they don’t post often enough. With the knowledge that Today.com will only pay you for one post of 100+ words per day many of you may be satisfied with just writing that amount and leaving it at that. If you post twice a day though, you are making it more likely that the search engines will pick up your site more quickly and you’re giving the search engine more food to feed to potential visitors as well.
Keyword Usage
If you aren’t using keywords in your content then you’re missing out on an excellent opportunity to get more search engine traffic. The search engine robots (also called ’spiders’) search your content for keywords and serve web sites up on search results pages based on those keywords. Watch this blog for tips on making your blog more SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly over the next few days.
Watch Your Word Count
Here’s something I bet you didn’t know: While Today.com only requires you to write a post of 100 words to qualify for payment, your blog may be missing out on traffic if your post entries are less than 250 words. Some search engines will not index a post page that has fewer unique words than that. Let me explain:
The template of your blog contains content that is static - that’s to say that it shows up every time a page of your blog loads. As far as a search engine is concerned, all of that is content and since it doesn’t change, they are looking for the new unique content that you add by way of your blog posts to decide whether or not it will be indexed. The fewer words you have in your post, the less likely it is that it will be indexed.
If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask the Answerman!
Okay, time for an important lesson for new bloggers and one that can sometimes be painful to learn on your own. Today’s post is about a process known as hotlinking.
In particular we need to discuss the process of hotlinking to images on someone else’s server without their express consent. For starters, it is stealing and although it happens every day it is illegal to do so. Beyond that, such links can cause your page to load more slowly for the end users.
It was brought to my attention today that a new blogger used a hotlink for an image on their blog only to have their readers greeted by a pornographic image later. That’s a common practice for people who have their images used without permission, so you can see it is a big problem. On top of that, it costs the image owner money because you are using their server resources and they aren’t getting anything for it.
Another question about widgets, this time it comes from from Derek at Rolling Traveler:
I have a widget-related question too. How do you add widgets and buttons like those from Blog Catalog to your sidebar? I’ve noticed that you and several other Today bloggers have them, but I can’t for the life of me work out how you get them on there. I’ve tried every tab in the Control Panel, and even tried adding them as links to the blog roll. What am I missing?
Add-ons like Blog Catalog and anything else that involves the addition of HTML to your page are all added by using the same widget, but you might not recognize it when you first see it because the label is a slight misnomer.
To start, let’s get to the widget page by clicking on “Look & Feel”. Then you will see the current theme you are using and to the right is a text link marked “Widgets”. Click that link to get to the starting point.
With the more widgets you have, does it make your pages load slower on this system database? It could just be my service, as I have been having trouble with Charter.
In general, the more of anything that you have on your web page can cause it to load more slowly. When it comes to widgets though it largely depends on the content of the widget itself, because it is increasing the number of locations called upon to get the information to the end user.
Let me try to explain it this way. For the most basic of sites there are only two primary factors involved - point A (the web site host server) and point B (the end user’s Internet Service Provider). A heavy load of traffic on point A can cause a slow down, just as a sluggish response on your ISP can. To add to the potential bottleneck, consider this: when a widget is requesting information from a point C (such as is the case on your website with Blogrush - the info loads from their servers when the page loads), any problems with point C’s server can cause the site to load slowly for any end user.
I hope this clears up any confusion; if not please don’t hesitate to ask me to clarify!
Answerman,I have a question about the Categories. I set them up so that they are nested, with Parent categories and then categories that go underneath the Parents.When I write a post, the checklist for the Categories shows up as nested, but on the published blog itself, the list is flat — all of the Categories, whether they are Parent categories or lower-level ones, show up on the same level, in alphabetical order.
Is there any way I can change this so that the Categories list displayed on the pubished blog shows up in nested form?
I’m using the default template, in case that makes a difference.
Unfortunately, the problem you are describing is related specifically to the design of the theme itself, and is a common one among many (if not most) of the themes that are currently available. I have tested several of them myself after receiving your question.
I am going to continue to look into this issue further and see what can about it in the future, but for now I’m afraid to say that it is just something we are going to have to deal with for the time being.
The good news is that at least the categories show up alphabetically so they appear to have some semblance of organization even if it is not sub-categorized the way you intended.
Hey folks - after a few precarious days of being without my precious laptop I am back in the swing of things and I have another video to share.
This video discusses the Today.com Content Call program and gives you a simple primer on what a content call is, how they work and how to use the program to make some extra cash every month.
Content calls are a relatively simple way to boost your monthly payment from Today.com and in most cases they don’t take a great deal of time to do. The only thing that I have to emphasize about writing for content calls is the same thing that I tell people when they are blogging: If you are ever unsure of yourself, use a spell check.
People who read our blogs want to look up to us as a relevant source of information or entertainment & it is easy to become disheartened or distracted by typos and other easy-to-correct mistakes.
A Personal Note from Michael: I hope you will excuse the departure from my normal content but I am taking 9/11 off from work as I do every year, and I wanted my readers to understand why.September 11, 2008 is not just another day to me.
It is an annual reminder of the worst day in my life, a day that no one who was alive then will ever forget.
I lived in New York City on 9/11/01 and watched in numb horror as the tragedy took place before my eyes. When I grabbed my scrubs (I have emergency medical training) and what equipment I did have, I began the trek into hell - the site that the world now knows as Ground Zero.
Before that day I knew it as the World Trade Center where I would stop daily for doughnuts on my way to work.
I lost one of my dearest friends that day, along with more people than I care to think about who were also close acquaintances. The photo in this post shows what I have to remind me of that day. It includes newspapers, my stethoscope, a face mask and the glove of a fireman who gave his life to save others that day.
On that day, the world proclaimed that “We are ALL Americans Now”. I can find no better example of this than when Celine Dion - a Canadian - performed “God Bless America” in the aftermath of that day.
According to Dell, the laptop from hell should be back in my hands at some point today, at which time I will resume making those fun and helpful little videos for all of you to enjoy and learn from. This does not remove the period of time during which I have been forced to use a secondary machine for all of my work (and all of your answers), nor does it make up for the time that will no doubt need to be spent reinstalling software that are required to do what it is that I do.
In other words, if you have questions please bear with me while I get things in order on this end. The answers are coming and the Answerman will soon fly again! Fear not!
September 11, 2008 is not just another day to me.