Better Content

It’s never a bad time to revisit the subject of better content, which can always be an incredibly powerful  advertising tool. Look guys, no matter what they’re selling out there as a traffic driver your knowledge ‘published as content’ is not only the most sustainable, but the most cost effective means to advertise you!; your expertise!; your product and/ or your service! Google, the other search engines and humans are all always looking for sources of good content… so be one!

The 9 Best Practices: Preparing Content Better For Search Engines!

Here are the practices we’d strongly suggest you get comfortable with in order to improve search engine indexing when publishing new content:

1. Have your 15- 25 target key phrase list ready! Ultimately you want to impress humans, but in order to capture them in the search engines you’ve got to be visible for the phrases you believe they will search in the engines and also in social networks.

2. Create strategic post titles! Search engines and humans typically want different things out of a title; to be successful you must strive to please them both. In technical terms, your page or blog post title is a header tag. This means it’s the first thing a search spider will encounter on a new post or page. Be specific using targeted phrases, so that spiders identify the purpose of the new page, but also impactful so that you attract human attention.

3.  Leverage your content! Search spiders tend to look for phrase consistencies in titles and then high in a page. Random spider crawls also digest more content toward the top of a page or post. Without this, at least during random crawls, they may skip your page leaving you with less potential key word & phrase indexing. Create compelling first paragraphs that include your target key words & phrases, but demonstrate a value proposition for humans too. On the flip side, don’t overuse keywords or use them out of context. The search engines have filters to flag this behavior – often referred to as “keyword stuffing”. And then too much keyword duplication is also just boring for humans.

4. Gather and add good links! When competing for search rank, links remain an important metric, including those you create in text phrases pointing to other content … including your own. Links matter most when relevant to the purpose of a post and also when they come from a trusted source. The best way to generate links organically from others is to create content others will appreciate enough to link back too. Consider notifying news sources that might be interested in your coverage because they just may link to you. Creating links [especially in targeted key phrases] to relevant articles you’ve already written, essentially voting for those pages yourself. That’s right folks, adding ‘anchor text based links’ in your own content to your own content is a proven strategy too. Whether creating or receiving links, it’s always best to have them laid into descriptive anchor text. Search engines prefer anchor text based links! If your page is about widgets and the link comes from text such as ‘the top widgets’ – search engines will recognize and value that more than they would ‘go here’ or go to tomswidgetshop.com.

5. Use Proper Formatting! Most readers give you a few seconds to qualify whether or not they will go deeper into your content. It’s imperative that you make it simple for them to do so. Use simple formatting and a clean layout for every blog post you create. Bold section titles, bullets and numbers are a great way to call attention to your main points and search engines can see certain emphasis too! Fonts should be uniform throughout, with photos and links well placed. If it’s a train wreck for the eye, people will typically not give it a chance AND assume neither will search engine algorithms.

6. Add Images & Video when possible! Search engines place emphasis on alternative image and video content, so use of these forms of content are actually separate competitive visibility opportunities to text based content for you. Use proper tagging, as well as descriptive text, techniques so that your images and video are easily understood and working to generate that indexing for you.

7. Categorize & Tag! Add posts into broader categorization (i.e. a blog post titled, ‘Olive Oil Prevents Alzheimer’s Disease’ should go into the ‘Olive Oil Health’ category) and tags, strictly based upon key phrase emphasis from content itself (they are summarizing bullet points from your article only – not overall descriptors of your site). Summarized, 2- 4 specific tag phrases will typically do and generally one category per post is a good discipline too.

8. Add ‘Call to Action’ & Contact Information! A call to action like, ‘Please, Use Our Complimentary Santa Barbara Online Property Search’, linked to that actual resource can drive greater engagement. And in case visitors are ready, be sure to have your personal contact information easily accessible! Remember, most consumers will NOT comment. Most don’t necessarily want to be a part of the conversation; if they’re interested, most will call or email you – give them what they need!

9. If at all possible, maximize the number of places your blog posts and thereby your brand appear! Social Networks typically offer blogs and while they aren’t going to present your brand exclusively, they certainly an opportunity to be visible to people who may be looking for your product or service. Most of these will allow for your blog posts to automatically appear via feed, eliminating the need to duplicate your effort AND saving you valuable time! You should also enable social icons on all your content so that visitors can easily share your content with their own social networks. Focus on as much visibility in as many places as possible, but do it with the intention of bringing prospects back to where you sell best. For instance, Twitter is not your brand… but you can sure use it to get people there

Related Posts:

Business Blogging Refresher Series: General Writing And Content

Business Blogging Refresher Series: Visibility, Then Qualified Users

In Aaron Wall’s post, What Is SEO, Really? he discusses whether SEO is about rankings or about money. It’s an interesting piece that ultimately concludes SEO is, in fact, about money.

In the piece Wall says, “The reason people engage in SEO is ultimately about making money. They want people to find their web site. They want people to connect with them, rather than their competitors. They want people to do this so they can convert these people to buyers, of their goods, their services, or their ideas. It matters not if a site appears in Google’s index.”

The takeaway here is that if you achieve competitive SEO or even broad web optimization you can’t necessarily call it a day. Not yet! SEO, Blogging and Social Networking are tactics used to reach an objective, like maybe more visibility with qualified buyers. That visibility should in theory lead to visits or brand engagement and lead conversion. However, the grand strategy should always be about getting new business, sales and money!

Related Posts:

1. Sure, You Have A Blogsite & Social Network Accounts, But What is Your Plan To Succeed?

2. You Cannot Optimize What You Do Not Analyze!

3. … and coming soon Conversion Optimization

On Friday Google announced they were going to include a new signal in their search ranking algorithm – “site speed”. For the layperson, site speed is often refered to it as “load time” and it is a part of what affects a WordPress blog’s or, for that matter, any site’s competitive SEO. your site speed reflects how quickly a page responds to visitor requests from a web browser. Not to worry too much, Matt Cutts of Google discloses that “site speed” is only one of 200 signals used to compare you to the competition for organic search results and it’s not nearly as important as the relevance of your pages -see the below video. Google also adds, less than 1% of all search queries are even affected by the speed of sites… so again worry some, but not too much. 
 
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muSIzHurn4U]
 
While they’re saying site speed is a new signal, there are some general things you should know. First off, there are a scary number of random things that can affect how your WordPress blog loads in any one person’s browser, including their own computer settings. Second, pages have probably always had to load favorably in order to justify more spider crawling, more key phrase indexing and better SEO. Spiders don’t always crawl deep into your pages! And finally, it’s why a service like ours puts so much effort into things like WordPress updates, plugin evaluation, server setup and caching as a part of our standard monthly service. Here is a quick list of things that may affect a blogs’ “site speed” depending on your site’s setup and also on who’s visiting:
 
1. The version of the visitors’ browser – is it current or so old and obsolete that it’s having an effect on the speed they see?
2. Does site have too many plugins or widgets added – we certainly do our best to monitor this for clients, but folks want lots of plugins & widgets and a bad one or bad combination can have an effect.
3. Are there specific modifications to a site’s design or to a feature that all of a sudden slows site speed down?
4. Is the site making reference to too many outside resources, like for instance, various 3rd party or Social Media tools?
5. Is a theme or design choice creating too much drag – does it count on too many style sheets or is there a poor use of graphics?
6. Something that can be in your favor, but also deceiving in the long run is “how far along is the competition?” – are they even competing yet?
7. And then there’s security software. If tuned too agressively on a visitor’s PC, it can also undermine visitor experience.

Ultimately, we’re constantly looking for ways to balance features and speeding things up to provide a better visitor experience for all clients. No matter how you manage a WordPress blog nothing ever stands still: WordPress software, open source feature plugins, widgets, search algorithm signals, security solutions and web browsers are forever being updated and that affects everyone – not just you, but the competition too. We’d be the first to admit we’ve made some mistakes managing it all over the years, but that experience is a benefit in the long run. The focus of a service like ours is to fight the never ending battle so clients are always advancing cost effectively and in ways that support a competitive advantage!

Related Posts:

• Managing Your WordPress Blog Like It’s A Business Asset?
• Confused By Search Engine Optimization? Try This ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO’
• What does the Google Crawl mean to your business and how will your Business Blog help?

“Customers with blogs gathered 68% more leads than customers without blogs. Growing articles starts to impact lead growth once 20+ articles become available.”

Hubspot recently released a study called, “The State of Inbound Lead Generation”.  This report is an analysis of lead generation best practices used by over 1,400 small to medium-sized businesses. Findings outlined in this report are highly encouraging for business bloggers!  Overall, hubspot reports that those businesses with more pages indexed by Google see a direct correlation to increased internet leads.  They analyzed 3 months worth of data on 15+ metrics for 1,400 HubSpot customers.  See report Inbound Lead Generation.

A quick report summary of data:

Indexed pages in Google

For every fifty to 100 pages of indexed pages in Google, leads achieved double digit growth. Lead growth experiences significant acceleration for customers with more than several hundred indexed pages.

The number of keywords for which sites rank in Google’s top 100 results

Increasing the number of keywords starts to impact lead growth only once marketers achieve top 100 rankings for a significant number of keywords (in the teens).

Publishing and growing blogs

Customers with blogs gathered 68% more leads than customers without blogs. Growing articles starts to impact lead growth once 20+ articles become available.

Using Twitter and growing followers

B2C customers using Twitter generated two times more leads than customers without a Twitter account. Twitter users with several hundred followers had approximately twice as many leads as Twitter users with followers in the double digits.

It’s clear that success online has always been about creating content. The Hubspot report makes it even more evident that creating on-topic, relevant content via a regularly updated business blogging platform is the most effective way to target the search engine index.  The report also suggests it’s relevent to leverage Twitter to build an online community of followers.

In the next few blog posts we’ll explore the finer details of this report and each summary point further.  If you’d like to access the report now, you can download the PDF at Hubspot: Inbound Marketing Best Practices for Growing Leads

Do you need a branded business blog?  How about a connection to all those social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn?  Contact us to find out how we can help get you started!

New to business blogging?  Sign up for our FREE Business Blogger’s Bible e-book today.

Beware of What Is Sold As SEO!

Yesterday, while doing some client related research on a [a paid] real estate plugin for WordPress, I had a concerning experience I felt we should share. Namely, the company I spoke with told me their solution was a key for SEO. And they are wrong! Now I believe their plugin offers content oriented value and I’ll eventually share that with the clients we believe it can help, but I won’t dare suggest there is some SEO magic here… like I was told. The suggestion that someone or something is outsmarting Google and you can just buy SEO off the shelf is highly unlikely!

This is important! – The dynamic nature of a networked web, the constant modification of search engine ranking methods for content and the random activity of your competitors surrounding content makes organic search results unpredictable from day to day. If anyone does guarantee top organic search results, ask them what proprietary [ = unknown] information they have about the constant adjustments made to [content] ranking search algorithms? And then ask what exactly they know about your specific competitions content, their day to day activity online and how that will affect competitive rank outcomes? There are pros’ out there who actually sit on the leading edge of research, like Aaron Wall and Rand Fishkin,  and even if there were proven gaming techniques they would probably tell you organic search results are never standing still! In fact, you might compare SEO services to hiring a fighting force in a ‘war of attrition’  [in a battle versus deep pocketed search engines] that you’ll likely never win for good. It will just keep costing you more and more money! For some more detail, give the ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO’  a try.

Now, we’re not trying to expose anyone here. Not at all! There’s too much misinformation out there so we only want our experience to serve as an example.  AND we want to throw you some caution about ‘buying SEO’. Anyway and never taking anything we believe for granted, I asked why the plugin was so key for SEO. The first argument was that clients normally outperform Realtor.com & Zillow.com. I thought, “Hmmm, do some searching and so do our clients.  And, at least to date, without this plugin”. I should add that neither Realtor.com, Zillow.com or Trulia.com, nor us for that matter, have outsmarted Google’s ranking algorithm. We may all be doing some of things right some of the time, but no one should ever believe they have gamed Google for top search results. Not when over 200 hundred signals are used to compare your page to all the others with the same key phrase. Think of it this way: if every time you searched real estate in a local area [or any subject at all] the Google search results page served up Realtor.com [or any aggregator site] why would you need Google? If so, we could just go search Realtor.com… and that wouldbe limited. Being that Google depends on [organic search] consumer satisfaction, loyalty AND pay per clicks!, how would Google make a living with limited results?

Moving along, the gentleman asked I go to a clients’ WordPress blog: a particular WordPress blog [it just so happens] I have observed for several years as one of the more well documented, back linked and organically search engine optimized real estate blogs in North America. A blog I later found out had only added this plugin a month or two ago. Again and regardless of what we were going to find results-wise, it would be difficult to take credit for any SEO… certainly not in this blogs’ case.

We pulled up, copied and pasted a particular posts’ title  into Google so that we could search it as proof of SEO. The post was titled by its’ exact street address, town, state abbreviation and zip code. When we did, the posts highly specific title was the 3rd result in a little over 1,500 pages indexed. Number 3 in 1,500 is pretty good, but was it the plugin or was it the years of time, effort and money invested in this blogs competitive placement that got it there? And if not all that effort, could it have even been that WordPress, when configured correctly, is highly search engine spider friendly?

Flaws In the Above SEO Results Argument

• Is the result due to the plugin or all the positive organic SEO signals this blog has accumulated [back links, subscriptions, book marks, feed connections, SERP choice activity, etc., etc.] in 5 years time?
• With over two hundred signals used to compare pages, is it the plugin?
• Is the actual phrase we searched even sought after by the competition?
• Without the use of quotes, does the phrase searched exist on any other page in that exact word sequence?
• Search results change every day: is anything we’re seeing going to sustain competitive positioning tomorrow and the next day?
• Google search results are now personalized, so does this example even matter to the personalized masses?

Folks, our point here again is NOT to suggest anyone is purposefully being misleading. They may be less informed than they need to be to make such claims, but they wouldn’t be the first. And we’ve certainly heard worse claims for ‘the silver bullet SEO solution.’ No, the point here is discern what is being sold as SEO: understand SEO is based upon 1) focused, well formed & consistent content, 2) a measurable reaction to that content [back links, SERP activity, bookmarks, subscriptions, feed connections to other sites, time on page, etc., etc.] and also 3) well configured / easily crawled sites.

The fact is, there is no silver bullet… truly sustainable SEO requires time and some effort!

SEO — search engine optimization — is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search engines. All major search engines have such listings, where web pages, web sites and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.

Interesting SEO Debate

The SEO debate is important for a small to medium sized business to understand.  The take aways should include:

• What is SEO?
• How can we achieve SEO?
• Can we achieve SEO sustainably?
• Or, if immediate SEO needs outweigh sustainability, can we afford to continue to pay for SEO?

Derek Powazek, renowned Web Designer, has gone on record to say,

“Search Engine Optimization [SEO] is not a legitimate form of marketing… If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.”

Ultimately Powazek’s point is that the only true SEO is good content. That good content drives visibility, traffic and new business.

Luminary SEOs such as Aaron Wall and Danny Sullivan do not necessarily disagree with the idea of good content supporting SEO, but they certainly have issue with Powazek’s critique of legitimacy saying

“SEO is a [legitimate] profession” and “Of course a good SEO can “make eyeballs rain down on you. We do it every day.”

Powazek goes on to add,

“Occasionally a darkside SEO master may find some loophole in the Google algorithm to exploit, which might actually lead to an increase in traffic. But that ill-gotten traffic gain won’t last long. Google changes the way it ranks its index monthly (if not more), so even if some SEO technique worked, and usually they don’t, it’ll last for a couple weeks, tops.”

Wall supports that good content can bring SEO saying,

“As for publishing content for Google, then – yes – guilty as charged, By making content Google wants, Google rewards you. Don’t, and it won’t. Content can satisfy both Google and humans. It is false to suggest content that appeals to Googles algorithms isn’t what humans want to read. Google wouldn’t be a business if their results didn’t satisfy humans.”

SEO Is Business Priority

And the debate rages on, but placement in relevant search engine result pages, for qualified prospects [qualified by their search activity] to find, is truly a business priority. And, therefor, SEO is truly a business priority. To reiterate Wall’s point “By making content Google wants, Google rewards you.”

So, to support your SEO, you should produce content that Google wants. What content does Google want you ask? Google wants the most useful, current & timely information on every subject, including your subject! Business blogging makes giving Google what it wants very easy, very cost effective, very sustainable… and therefor SEO very possible.

So, if you want cost effective & sustainable SEO consider your choices… and know that good blogsites can drive visibility in and traffic from search engines; good blogsites drive visibility in and traffic from social networks; good blogsites drive voluntary subscriptions, return visitors, registrations and sales.

And please, don’t hesitate to ask us about good blogsite build, design / brand, optimize, manage, educate & service.

Related Posts:
Confused By Search Engine Optimization? Try This ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO’
Business Bloggers, You need to consider yourselves a source of [modern day] Trade Media!
10 Reasons Business Blogging is the Top Marketing and Advertising Value Proposition!

The Absolute Basics

What is it all about? It’s about leveraging the Internet, a worldwide network of interconnected computers. It’s about leveraging the World Wide Web, an *Internet application* for helping people to access our web page information.

Yet, with trillions of web pages to navigate, it is very difficult for people to find the good information we business people have to offer.

Search Engines solve this problem by crawling, indexing, ranking and essentially preparing as many pages on the web as possible so that when people search they can find our good information.

Search engines are consumer answer systems and they provide us business people with targeted organic and pay-per-click advertising opportunities; however, unlike with traditional advertising, consumers can get the information they desire exactly when they want it. Rather than interrupting the consumer, search engine optimization or search engine marketing helps the consumer find us!

Define SEO or Search Engine Optimization

Wikipedia.org, the free online encyclopedia, defines Search Engine Optimization [SEO] as the,

“subset of search engine marketing that seeks to improve the number and quality of visitors to a web site from “natural” ["organic" or "algorithmic"] search results. In effect, SEO is marketing by appealing first to machine algorithms to increase search engine relevance and secondly to human visitors. The term SEO can also refer to “search engine optimizers”, an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients.”

We’d add we believe achieving SEO centers 1.) on web page optimization [proper content creation], 2.) off web page optimization [the activity that stems from that content] and 3.) in web page optimization [site/ page crawler friendliness.] On a larger scale we all need to think beyond search engines, to a broader web optimization. Achieving either one however, is neither basic nor simple.

While your site[s] must be search crawler friendly, it’s not necessarily the site the search engines want. The fact is, search engines rank each page, rather than the site itself. Know that search engines want all the content contained in all your web pages and site signals like active new content can certainly help to get you more & deeper crawler visitation. This is an important thing to understand when it comes to SEO because search engines actually need the current information produced in your new pages [on all subjects] in order to succeed in their own business. Hint: be a focused current coverage information provider!

Signals Used To Rank Content

A confused client once told me, “Your competitor told me my blog is poor because I’m not ranking for a particular phrase.” A quick glance at my clients’ descriptive tags, categories and content showed their blog site did not contain the phrase, so short some form of artificial or god-like intelligence how could they be in the index, none the less rank for that phrase? Shame on the competitor for being misleading, but clearly the client had not asked us to build the phrase into their tags, nor had they written or blogged it. Clearly, the issue was they had NOT targeted the phrase.

At it’s core, SEO is still target key word and phrase driven. Regardless of the old or new signals, your search engine and web optimization should be centered on the key words and phrases we wish to be discovered for. As the top priority, we must understand and we must target the language of our consumer when advertising online; however, it’s much more complicated than just that… or everyone would easily search optimize to the top.

Search crawler, spider and bot are interchangeable terms for what search engines use to find and index web pages. The search algorithm is a mathematical formula that uses a couple hundred different page signals. Namely signals like key word or phrase usage on a page, the number of links that page has, the quality of the links and many many others to [then] rank pages for the content they contain. When it comes to information retrieval [IR] or search, text and link analysis as signals are being diminished some, yet they remain a large part of an ever evolving science for ranking content.

Links on the web are growing by the billions per day and a great deal of them are calculated or gamed. If we know there’s gaming out there, you can bet the algorithm engineers knew and began taking steps to deal with it months ago. They’re abnormally smart people; they have a great deal of resources, unrivaled user data for analysis and they have an interest in fighting gaming to assure the best user experience is possible. If you’re gaming… it’s your time and money. Good luck.

Either way, trying to discover and rank existing pages in the index accurately, while dealing with the massive arrival of new web content is NOT easy for search engines. The cost of crawl & index bandwidth alone for this process is a giant business challenge. So, in a world where search engines must be able to provide the most relevant breaking news or risk losing their search user [has free ever driven customer loyalty?], they must also continue to improve the way they identify, index and rank content.

What Are The New Signals Used To Rank Content?

What’s new you ask? How about a reversal of emphasis by the search engines from what site owners do to what web users do. Ha? Consider less [not all] of an emphasis on site text and links and more on what the user chooses from a search, bookmarks, tags, subscribes to, downloads and rates.

Marketing or SEO is becoming less an exercise in broadcasting, than it is listening to what consumers do.

[Youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rTzIAWI4Ms]

These consumer signals, previously not counted because they don’t have sites of their own, now influence what web pages are relevant by their usage of various search and social networking applications [i.e. search clicks, bookmarks, tags, subscriptions, downloads and ratings.]

How do search engines track this? In many ways, but how about the ubiquitous Google Search Toolbar for one. Not only can it monitor a consumers click, bookmark, tag, subscription, download, search query chain and rating activity, but it can gauge negative or positive voting by how often she leaves a page immediately [via the back button]. It can even follow the page view path she takes from what she searched. Yes it’s a little scary, but when we saw FREE we all jumped in and loaded that Toolbar without looking back. As ‘supposed anonymous consumers’ the tax we pay for FREE is fodder for another post, but for the purposes of this one you can assume anything free comes with [minimum] some sort of personal data mining. Namely, your activity is data that search engines use to see what is and what is not popular. Better yet, what is and what is not trusted!

Search traffic isn’t fading either. With Internet use and searches rising, search is here for the long haul.

Where Does This Leave SEO?

Your search marketing resources have to contend with this statement by Google, “Let me start with our main goal in web search: to get you [the consumer] to the web pages you want as quickly as possible. Search is not an end in itself; it is merely a conduit.“

Your resources may get you into the top ten for lots of key words and phrases, but is there true visibility, interest and traffic growth? Studies show that searchers rarely go to the second page of search results. Rather, most scan above the fold and, if they don’t see an appealing result, they will actually adjust their search entirely. Has being above the fold become more important than the top 10? Beyond the pay per-click-ads, search engine results have added local content, maps and [with Universal Search] an emphasis on alternative content like video and image. And with the personalization of search results  [yours are different than mine] becoming ever more a reality, is an accurate report even possible?

The question becomes are your website, blog and/ or search optimization resources aware of the new signals? Within their defined scope or responsibility, are they able to develop reliable optimization strategies? There are plenty who sell expensive SEO services, many that try to game search engines entering you into a race you can’t win sustainably. So, if you’re not so knowledgeable, be sure to make cost effective progress and sustainability the realistic goal with any investment!

Can Business People Succeed Reasonably?

We’re not SEOs, but we are an experienced online marketing services company and [with ongoing instructional guidance] our clients do very nicely. We believe SEO is achieved sustainably and cost effectively with consistent focused content coverage that targets a marketplace. We advocate pushing that content wider and also motivating activity around it. One very straight forward example might be based upon Universal Search and Google’s interest in video content.

Folks, it’s not just the search engines, but complete web optimization that we need. We achieve SEO reasonably with focus, consistency, proper content creation, activity that stems from that content and site/ page crawler friendliness. We see clients do it every day.

When adding a business blog to your marketing arsenal, there’s much to think about. Particularly if you’re a small to medium sized business owner already committed to a great website.

Three choices ‘committed website owners’ typically have include:

1. Existing Domain with folder: widgets.com/blog
2. Subdomain of Existing Domain: blog.widgets.com
3. Separate Domain: widgetmania.com

No one scenario is necessarily better than the other. The way Google uses its’ ranking algorithm to compare competitive pages on the web is incredibly complex, mostly unknown, always changing and a lot more involved than just a domain. Sure your choice of domain can matter and having a key phrase domain can be advantageous, but above all things Google favors good consistent content! And always remember, search isn’t everything. Good blogs should be about building an online presence that demonstrates your value to humans, regardless of how they find you.

Hypothetical Independent, Folder or Subdomain questions and answers:

1. Google has over 200 signals that it uses to compare competitive web pages. They change or re- weight those signals almost every day. One must always take this into consideration when trying to understand why their rank for a page is or is not up to expectations. It is never just the domain choice.
2. As it stood, a subdomain strategy could offer some great external links to website content making a subdomain potentially advantageous versus a folder. Subdomain blogs were considered a separate entity in Google search results; however, recent updates suggest Google and other search engines generally will no longer list more than two [related domain and subdomain] pages in the top ten search results. The update supposedly treats links from a subdomain as internal links, as opposed to external. You should know that, while good external links are highly valued, good internal links are of high value as well. Ultimately, the point is that when it comes to creating your own external [or backlinks] neither folder nor subdomain necessarily offers any advantage.
3. The above point assumes that if the subdomain and main domain are hosted in the same place the links between the two will be weighted as internal links; however, recent research suggests that if the subdomain is hosted separately from the parent domain, the links may still be weighted as external. This makes the subdomain strategy potentially advantageous over folder. We host many client blogs and, assuming they tend to proper content creation, there is a great deal of proof for this.
4. Regarding the ‘two page limit’ and per Matt Cutts point, “if a particular domain is really relevant, we may still return several results from that domain [meaning including domains and subdomains].” So, it’s really just more difficult than it was for multiple subdomains to rank in a set of top 10 results. It is not impossible.
5. There’s a lot of rhetoric concerning the proper strategy, but little to worry about for the small to medium sized business. Sure, the ranking algorithm has been tweaked so that multiple pages from multiple subdomains [blog.widgets.com versus widgets.com] have a higher bar to clear. But if the goal is to be there it may be best to think in terms of ‘a web presence’ and how it works for you as a whole.

Q: Are any of the three a better way to get more pages into the SERPs?

A: Considering the recent algorithm update mentioned above, possibly motivated by subdomain backlink abuse, it appears NOW a leading strategy may be to have a separate independent domain; however, a new independent blog domain inherits none of the trust, authority or ranking power for its’ new pages that search engines may have otherwise passed to a subdomain or folder. If the blog’s content will be much different than the primary websites’ [i.e news.google.com, googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com versus google.com] content overlap won’t be a concern anyway and the folder or subdomain will be great. Google wants to limit any one businesses’ ability to get more than two results on page one of a high volume search. Simply put, it limits choice for their search consumer. If you’re determined to have more than two pages in the top 10 search results for a query, which is very difficult and never guaranteed, consider a separate domain.

Also and per the above, know that hosting a subdomain separately from the primary domain [see above] also seems to make the index limits concern go away.

Above all, good consistent content should always be the focus.

Q: Should I manage my own blog?

A: If you’re a ‘do it yourselfer’, managing a blog can be a way to go; however, know that it’s a challenge for even the most self sufficient business person. Just securing, updating and adding new features can be a big headache. For example, here’s a recent comment from the WordPress forums “I am desperate for assistance with my site. All was working fine until I upgraded. As it stands right now, I tried to downgrade and my blog site is down [blank screens.]“ So, if you want all things firing you may consider getting help. And also know you don’t necessarily have the programming challenges a large company [with tens of thousands of pages of content] has. We all routinely read about different problems in the tech’ forums and trades, but if you want to avoid wasted investment and fire drills try to understand [i.e. understanding open source/ understanding word press] whether or not what you are reading applies. The small to medium sized business may have different budgets, levels of need and goals all together.

Q: Am I committed to a website?

A: This is important because there are blog sites that can do most all things any website solution can. If you see marketing and advertising as the crucial element online, than you may want to be sure your blog is the priority. With a web presence and from amongst design, presentation, lead capture, etc. you may not need a traditional website.

Q: If my website doesn’t rank, will my new blog folder or subdomain be shot from the start?

A: It’s a great question because often blogs are used to help create a search engine presence where the primary domain website has failed. If the site hasn’t gotten it done, the provider may not be versed in building search friendly website technology; therefor, it’s unlikely the blog they add will be any friendlier. You can hire an SEO, but know this kind of work [done right] can be an endless investment and you may be able to approach SEO with a good blog. If you want to build relevance be sure you’re using the most search optimized blog possible. Understand linking, proper content creation techniques and get versed on the various social networking opportunities as well.

Q: If I’m in a folder or a subdomain and want to go to a separate domain can I move my content without losing the indexing my pages have achieved?

A: Absolutely, there are Google Webmaster guidelines for permanent redirects. We’ve have done it for folks several times.

Q: If my website provider offers a blog, will it be feature rich, agile for new tools and page optimized?

A: Great question and one you should look into carefully. Ultimately, assume free anything is not hitting on all your requirements. And remember, content is a valuable asset that accrues greater potential benefits over time. It’s not completely your asset if you’re going the free route.

Q: Being that proper content creation is so important, will my provider educate on how to use a blog, it’s features and also on content creation?

A: Great question and one you should look into carefully because spinning your whells is time and time is…. Assume anything free may not satisfy all your business requirements.

 If so, we must be committed to publishing with the right solutions & techniques! Current coverage of our various trades including how we add value for our target marketplaces has become a strategic requirement in this modern day and age. 

Being current demonstrates the authority modern consumers respect in an environment where they have power. You see, there is a fundamental change in the environment we sell in. On one side, consumers have immediate access to a depth of information via search & subscribe. On the other, we [business people] can have the means for advertorial content creation and [direct to the consumer] distribution. In the past, consumers had no immediate source for information, so we hunted for their attention. Now, consumers research with an ease never before possible. It means the value of traditional advertising has diminished in their eyes. Now, we have got to be there when consumers search… showing we’re committed, trustworthy, knowledgeable, appealing and current!

In order to meet the challenge we’ll need advanced blog configurations & ongoing tech’ management, as well as a mastery of current better blogging techniques. That is, if we wish to make it easy for search engines to crawl and to index our content favorably. We’ll also want to be as appealing to [search engine] machines as we are to humans.

For better competitive search placement, let’s look at some blog platform search optimization standards.

Blog Platform Search Optimization Standards

• General Site Management & Architecture – Your blog should be configured to maximize the dynamic nature of the web. It should be set for proper search spider cooperation and continuously monitored for adequate load times with each new feature addition or update. It should also have security against attacks that can slow loads, or worse bring our sites down.
• Site Title Tag – Our site’s primary meta tag [or coded description] is designed to distinguish the top level business blogging goal for search spiders. Our title tag is the first thing a visiting spider will recognize, so it should tell what the topic of our site is. We need to be sure our platform has its’ tag coded accurately!
• Page Title Tags – Each page or post we create should be set up to auto tag, based upon the unique title we use to describe that page. Consistency between titles and those auto-coded page tags is noticed by search spiders and can lead to deeper crawling, which [in theory] means more topic indexing. This tag will also appear as the title in search results pages so we need to title carefully, with one eye toward human and the other toward spider attention!
• URL Structure – Good blog platforms may add a pages title to it’s URL string to make it friendlier. As opposed to cryptic URLs like long numbers, this offers information about the page’s purpose. Again, consistency between titles, tags and [now including] URLs is noticed by search spiders. It can support more and deeper crawling!
• Categories – Categories are pretty standard, but the the addition of good categorization can only help to add emphasis for targeted subject areas when spiders crawl. Categories also support humans, who may want to drill down into those subject areas! They make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on our site. Good blog platforms may add the category a page is placed into it’s URL string.
• Pinging Engine – Blogs should be set to notify search engines each time we post to our blogs. While not all search engines listen, several do so it should happen automatically!
• Sitemaps – Our blogs sitemap displays the structure of our site, and usually has a hierarchical list of all pages on your site including all new. Sitemaps make it easier for a search engine to discover all pages on a site and they should be re-created automatically with each new post/ page. One should be able to find a copy at the following addresses: YourBlogURL/sitemap.xml
• Tag Cloud – Your blogs tag cloud can create an additional content mapping to help search spiders identify & index content by topic. A key phrase word family emanating from our content organizes our pages by those phrases or tags.
• Content & Links – Obviously, having a strong knowledge of what works with search engines and with people when blogging is crucial. We write often on the subject of better blogging practices for business blogs here. While the above is all very advantageous, creating useful content will always attract the most people. If so, it’s likely some of them will direct others to us via links from their own blogs, social media or forums. Their organic links to our content can also be an important factor in gaining a competitive search placement advantage. Our own use of anchor text linking is also an important competitive criteria, both deep internal and incoming.

Beyond these, there are also several other techniques and features you can consider. We’re working with lots of clients on extensive SEO, Design, Social Networking & Lead Capture Packages all of which can help to improve visibility:

Blog Platform Search Optimization Advancements

• RSS Engine: Insert RSS into Post/Page + Education – This is another very unique tool. Similar to the RSS listings page described above, this tool gives you the ability to create pages or posts that contain partial RSS results [depends what the RSS feed contains.] You can bring in 3, 5, 7 or more articles from an RSS feed and insert them directly into a post or page. So long as you have permission, of course. The possibilities to create more search spider superfood are endless!
• Page Title Tag Overrides – Our Page Title Tag override fields offer an ability to change how titles,
  keywords and description fields for each blog post or page appears to a search engine. At times a title may be appropriately long to capture more human attention, but a shortened version for spiders might also be smart.
• Google Custom Search/ Priority Indexing Status – Google Custom Search Engine is a search mechanism we can place on our blogs. For visitors it will not only offer search of our blogs content, but any sites we add to its’ parameters. It also adds some priority, immediately pushing our blog posts to Google for indexing. This, rather than waiting for spider visits.
• Google Webmaster Tools - Installing Google Webmaster Tools can tell us a lot about what the spiders see on our sites. How often spiders actually visit, any errors they encounter, anchor text information and much more. Webmaster tools also helps to prioritize the push of our new posts into the Google index.
• RSS Directory Submit – Directory Submission registers our RSS feed with lots of directories and search engines. Not only will our blogs get listed, but depending on the property we may also gain valuable back links.
• Share This or Bookmark It – This social bookmarking tool attaches a “Share This” link on every blog post making it it easier for readers to share them with any of of their favorite social networks. It also gives them an easy interface to email the blog post to friends.
• And lots and lots more.

It’s a competitive environment for targeted content placement & distribution; it’s also an environment that is in a constant state of change. By imposing the discipline on ourselves to publish we will improve our search marketing much more easily and much more affordably. A business has core responsibilities, so it’s unrealistic to know it all. Help with a reduction in month over month learning curve, including what’s working for others, matters!

Get in touch, we’re committed to helping folks become better online marketers/ advertisers. We’re committed to helping folks build better and more sustainable online brands! 

For instance think regionally with your titles like top Hinsdale IL Realtor Bryan Bomba does here, leveraging the words ’Real Estate in the Monroe Grade School Area Of Hinsdale IL’ in his post title:

And to demonstrate optimal indexing, notice Google ranks Bomba No. 1 in 23,900 indexed pages for his targeted topic

Real Estate Blogsites are designed to have the post titles you create simultaneously influence post title tags and URLs. Note that titles must accurately describe a post’s content, but consistency where search engine spiders crawl first [i.e. Title Tags, URL, Post Title] can go a long way towards the posts SEO. A secondary benefit is deeper spider crawling, which translates to more topic indexing from the content in the post. The idea being, good technology design can help to establish a focus for better SEO and also deeper topic indexing from your post content.

Notice Carmel CA Realtor Malone Hodges’ post here, which [like Bomba's] automattically influenced both his title tag and his URL:

Carmel CA Real Estate Blog

Hodges also appears to have satisfied Google’s interest in consistency & focus, with a top 5 position for his post title in 36,700 total indexed pages.

However, there are times where the need to satisfy humans and search engines at the same time offers a difficult challenge. You’ve always got to capture human interest with creative titles, while serving search engines with a dryer focus toward key phrases. Note that if the your title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in a search result.To support this we’ve added an ability where you can write titles that serve to capture human attention [i.e. Pingbacks: Beware of Comment Spam!], but that don’t necesarily have to be the same in the URL. It allows for the edit of a URL down to the meaningful keywords that search engine spiders will see [i.e. pingbacks AND comment spam].

Kinetic Blog URL SEO

It’s important to note, Google advises that your post URLs should be friendly to crawling. What they mean is, be sure and leverage the important targeted topic of the post in the URL. Clearly, we do. And then they also add, URLs with cryptic number sequences do NOT serve better SEO.