How To Select A WordPress Template For Your Blog
You've decided that you want a company blog and that WordPress is the blogging platform for you. Good for you. You couldn't have made a better choice. But be careful when choosing a template. There are really two ways to go on a WordPress template. You can choose one of the many pre-designed templates that WordPress offers or find a designer to custom design you a WordPress template. Either way you have to be careful. Not all WordPress templates are created equal. The problem with most templates, just like website templates, is that they are not designed with search engines in mind. I shouldn't say "most." What I mean is most that have problems ... the problem is usually poor SEO quality. You'll have to make sure you get a WordPress template that is easily crawled and provides your website with SEO benefits. Otherwise, you'll be wasting your time blogging. If you are going to use a custom designer then ask some basic questions like Do you build your templates with tables or CSS? Can you show me an example of a template you've designed that is crawled well? Ask if you can see the code before you purchase a template. If a web designer CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Social Media Optimization: Beyond SEO,
From Links To The Mashup
If you notice, SEO for websites and SEO for blogs is not any different. SEO is SEO. It makes a big difference with blogs because every blog post is a separate web page. That makes your blog an ever-changing SEO tool, unlike your web pages, which are static content pages. For ongoing SEO, there is nothing better than a well-written and optimized blog. But social media optimization is slightly different. Sure, you can SEO your web pages and your blog posts the normal way, but even the most perfect SEO won't ensure that you get tagged and Digged. I mean, Dugg. Nevertheless, social media optimization is important if you want your message to have a viral sting. If you want it to travel very far outside of CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
More Tips On Blog Optimization
Here are more tips to help you optimize your blog: Use h2 tags for subheads Lavish your readers will bold text Throw in a photo with alt text every now and then Don't forget to optimize your title Why Your Blog Needs SubheadsYesterday we talked about keywords and links. Today we'll add a little caveat. There's more to blog optimization than simply optimizing your blog post. You also want to optimize the other elements of your blog. But in terms of optimizing your blog post, using subheads is a great way to add some extra Google juice. There are two ways to optimize those subheads. The first is keywords. Use your keyword in the subhead. Readers notice, and search engines do too. Especially if you employ the second method of optimization. H2 CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Blog Optimization: The Whys And Hows Of SEO Blogging
Do you know how to optimize a blog post? No, I mean really optimize a blog post? Before I let the cat out of the bag let me just say why you need to optimize your blog posts. You see, every blog post is counted as a separate page in the search engines. Read that last sentence again. Every blog post is a separate web page. Do you optimize your web pages? Why then would you not optimize your blog posts? Think of this way. You have a website with static web pages. Most of those pages won't ever change. They consist of static content. Your blog, on the other, changes every day. It consists of fresh daily content. The search engines love fresh content. It's their CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Why Free Blog Hosts Are A Bad Idea
If you're new to blogging and you are ready to start your own blog then I highly discourage you from using one of the several free blog hosts online. There are a number of reasons. But before I get into that let me encourage you to first decide what you want your blog to do. There are as many purposes for blogs as there are websites and you should go in with a good plan. Here are a few legitimate purposes for business, or commercial, blogs: AdSense Revenue Promote Your Business Customer Service Issues Human Resources Blog Industry-Specific Dialog Promote One Or More Other Websites Sell Advertising Promote A Book, CD, Or Other Item Produced By Your Creativity Discuss A Hobby Celebrity Gossip Share Knowledge Of A Special Topic This is just the tip of the proverbial CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
CSS Is One Of The Best Web Design Tools Available Today
Web design has come a long way since the early days of markup. In those days you just had to learn a few simple html tags to build a web page. But it was very primitive. Now, you have all kinds of other tools available to you: Javascript, php, asp, css, just to name few. How do you know which one is right for you? Should you use anything but html? Well, there are two things to think about in designing web pages: Look and Feel SEO Look and Feel The look and feel is the attractiveness of the site, of course. Is it aesthetic? Are the colors clashing? Do all the elements fit together to make the web page visually appealing? Those are important things to think about, but CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Google Universal Might Change SEO, But Not Much
It seems that everyone is talking about Universal Search now. How will it change SEO? What will I as a webmaster have to do differently? Yada yada yada Same ol' same ol' ... Well, let me ease a few of your worries. Google's Universal Search, if it catches on, won't change SEO too much. It will change it really from one perspective and it's not really a change. And, by the way, I expect the other major search engines (I don't need to name drop do I?) will follow. But keep in mind that Google is just testing its Universal Search. It remains to be seen that searchers will like it and want to keep it. A really interesting scenario would be if Google ditches it based CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Find An SEO-Friendly Website Template
If you are planning to build your website with a template you'll have to make sure you get the right kind of template. Some templates may look pretty but are sorry SEO templates and will hurt you in the search engines. One such template is the CGI plug-in type. It's written in PHP, but the title of the document is taken from a CGI plug-in. Beside the security issues associated with this template, all the pages share the same title, description, and keyword meta tags. That's bad for SEO. Ideally, your template should include separate meta tags for every page on the website. If your website has just one title, description, and meta tag then you will not be able to customize each page's content for CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Ensure You Never Get Link Love
Wonderful! I was going to post on things to keep in mind while performing social media marketing. I was going to copy and paste a few comments from another blog that had addressed that very topic. Then I was going to link to it (you know, it's always nice to give attribution!). Well, something came up and instead and I'm going to tell you the one thing you should NEVER do. I went to copy and paste and I couldn't. The blog owner had inserted some security code that prevents people from copying his content. How stupid is that? Well, he won't get a link from me. The funny thing is he has the AddThis bar at the end of his post AND is giving great advice on CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Top 11 Reasons To Hire A Professional SEO
10 reasons to hire a professional SEO company: Search Engine Optimization Takes Time, Effort, & Dedication SEO Tools, SEO Strategy, & SEO Experience Goes a Long Way Search Engine Optimization Is Not Easy SEO Services Do Not Have to be Very Expensive Search Engine Optimization Can Take Your Website to New Heights Professional & Experienced SEO Services Can Be the Difference Between You and Your Competitors Search Engine Optimization Gets You the Best Bang for Your Buck SEO Services Can Help Increase Business Sales Drastically Professional Search Engine Optimization Can Increase Your Search Ranking in a Shorter Time Period Treat Your Website Like a Business Search engine optimization does take time and it's not easy. You can't just sit down over a weekend with a case of beer and kick out a 12-point strategy for taking CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Affiliate Marketing And Its Advantages
Affiliate marketing is a new concept for many people. The idea is to hire and train a sales force that you don't have to pay until they make a sale. It's an idea whose time has come and because of the Internet it is possible for any business. It is also desirable and can produce tremendous results for your business. But let's draw a distinction between affiliate marketing and reselling: A reseller is someone who buys your product or service and sells it to another party with a markup. That's how they make their money. This type of relationship works real well for service businesses. By contrast, an affiliate marketer is someone who pre-sells a product or service for someone else then sends the customer to the CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
What Is The Difference Between PageRank and Page Rank?
There is a lot of confusion about PageRank. Some people seem to chase it like it's the banana. Well, there is a huge difference between Google's PageRank and page rank. Here it is in a nutshell: PageRank is Google's patent protected determination as to the value of a web site. It's based on incoming links, other off page factors, and on page factors. All it really means is that your website is worth a certain amount of clout in terms of its content and online reputation. Page rank where your web page falls in the search engine results page for a given keyword query. In other words, if I search for "banana" and your web page shows up at the No. 5 position for that keyword then CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Anchor Text: The High Value Of In-Text Links
Search engines have long valued textual links. That's why anchor text is one of the best ways to build your internal links. Sure, you can - and should - have a menu bar, either at the top of your web pages, on the side, or both. But a menu bar only takes you so far. I highly recommend in text links using keywords that will take your visitors from one page to the next. You don't want to overdo this though. Don't put too many in at one time. One or two per page is the most you want to include. Otherwise, it will look like search engine spam. So what's an example of anchor text? Let's say your keyword is search engine optimization. If you CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Copywriting Is More Important Than Web Design
One of the mistakes that Web business owners often commit is that they spend too much time on the design of their website, and not enough time on the content. Keep in mind that the content of your website is more important than the design, which is why people who invest too much money on site designs primarily instead of focusing on its content will only end up wasting it since this will only bring in a few people to visit their website. Instead, try to invest in copywriting initially, and only spend money on the site design later on. How true this is. Too many new webmasters or business owners who want to start a business online start a website and think that a CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Ensure Article Readers Can See Your URL
When you write your author resource box for article marketing, be sure to include two links. The first link should be the URL of the landing page you want your visitors to go to. The second link should be anchor text, that is, an important keyword phrase that serves as a link. Here's what the two links will look like: http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com Search Engine Optimization Journal The reason you want to do it this way is because many e-zines are text only. That is, they are published without graphics when your article is published the anchor text link will not be activated. Some html publishers will not go through the trouble to ensure that hyperlinks are activated in the resource box. If that happens then you still CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
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Brick Marketing Founder,
Nick Stamoulis:
Nick Stamoulis - SEO Bio.
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