Dec | 17 | 2007

SEO-Browser: Quick SEO Checker

Posted by Guru as Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features If you want to know how search engine crawlers see your site you should try using SEO-Browser. I know it's a bit geeky but I actually like entering random sites into this very useful tool and seeing how optimised they are. It is surprising that given all the hype about SEO you will still find plenty of websites that does not take SEO into account at all. As an example (and I hope they don't get mad but improve their site if they see this post) try entering Flatpak's URL and parsing it using SEO-browser. Although I absolutely ...

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Nov | 27 | 2007

Weblog Usability: The Title Says it All

Posted by Guru as Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features, Tips, Writing Being a witty writer is great but when it comes to titles you'd better make your title not just witty but informative as well. A good post title is something that catches people's attentions. If you are into linkbaiting you know the importance of catching people's attentions. In my previous post where I cited examples of successful link baits a single glance at the titles will convince you that the titles, in part, contributed to their success. For example if the eBook “Zero Cash, A Little Talent and 30 Days” instead had some bland title like "Starting an Online ...

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Nov | 26 | 2007

Smart Link Practices

Posted by Guru as Linking, Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features One of the most common mistakes bloggers make is using vague words as anchor text for links. Whether you are linking internally or linking to an outside source it is good practice to use a more descriptive anchor text. There are two reasons why this is is important. The first reason is that it is good for SEO. Search engines look at the anchor text to determine what the link on your page is about. By using a descriptive anchor text you provide information needed by the spiders to be able to put the link destination (URL) into context. In the ...

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Nov | 23 | 2007

How Much Do You Know about SEO?

Posted by Guru as SEO Features Here's a fun (for those who know the answers) quiz to test your knowledge about SEO. Tell me how well you did. For those who do not feel like taking the quiz because you know you won't do that well I urge you to take it since you will learn a thing or two (or three, or four...). By the way it has a lot of questions so you will need more than a couple of minutes to answer SEOmoz's SEO Quiz. Enjoy! If you don't want to show "Show what you know about SEO" at least find out to ...

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Nov | 15 | 2007

Are Your Blog’s Feeds Optimized? Part 2

Posted by Guru as Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features, Syndication Aside from offering full RSS feeds and using Feedburner's features to optimize your feeds other things that you can do to optimize your feeds are: Pick a Feed/Channel title that is relevant to your theme - This is pretty obvious but many still fail to do this. Make sure that the title has important keywords included. The RSS Feed's title should also be easy to read and remember. Make it catchy but not misleading...and never forget the keywords. Optimize the channel description - The description is where you get to expand the title and give readers a better idea of what the ...

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Nov | 12 | 2007

Are Your Blog’s Feeds Optimized?

Posted by Guru as Blogging Tools, Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features Everyone knows the importance of optimizing ones website and blog content. What people often overlook though is to optimize their blog feed. This is a huge loss considering that the huge majority of regular blog readers access a blog's content thanks to the blog's feeds. So what can you do to make sure that your feeds are optimised? First of all, make sure that you offer FULL RSS FEEDS. Many blogs still opt to offer summary feeds instead of full feeds. While I do understand that some do this to prevent scrapers from republishing their blog's entire content the benefits of ...

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Oct | 05 | 2007

Alt-Tags: For Spiders and the Visually Impaired

Posted by Guru as Design Features, Images, Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features Lots of people underestimate the importance of Alt-Tags. Even though SEO experts time and again stress the importance of Alt-Tags many still do not bother with it at all, or if they use it, do not consistently do so. To be honest, I belong to the inconsistent group. Alt-tags ARE very important. SEO-wise the absence of alt-tags will ensure that your images and other embedded media will NOT be indexed by spiders since they will be unable to determine the actual content of each embedded element. Being a parent of a child with special needs though, I am very sensitive about ...

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Oct | 01 | 2007

Addressing Duplicate Content: Part 3

Posted by Guru as Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features, Tips Addressing Duplicate Content continued... 7. Indicating your Preferred Domain - Choose which domain you prefer to be indexed: http://blog-tutorials.com/ or http://www.blog-tutorials.com/ Both will be fine but it is best (At least Google says so and if Google says it is, then it is. Right?) if you tell them, via the preferred domain feature of webmaster tools, which one you want to be indexed. This way even if other sites link to your blog using different domains since only one of them is indexed there is no chance that Google will make the mistake of treating them as two different sites with duplicate content. 8. ...

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Sep | 30 | 2007

Addressing Duplicate Content: Part 2

Posted by Guru as Linking, Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features, Tips Addressing Duplicate Content continued... 4. Be consistent when it comes to internal links - When linking to other pages un your website make sure you use the same format for indicating the links. For example, if you use the link http://www.blog-tutorials.com/category/features/seo/ next time in another page make sure you don't link to the same article using either of the next two ways given below http://www.blog-tutorials.com/category/features/seo http://www.blog-tutorials.com/category/features/seo/index.htm Be consistent throughout the website. http://www.blog-tutorials.com/category/features/seo/ http://www.blog-tutorials.com/category/features/monetization/ http://www.blog-tutorials.com/category/featured/software/ http://www.blog-tutorials.com/blogging-news/googles-birthday/ Notice that throughout BlogTutorials the same format is used. This lessens that chance of the spider to interpret the same page as different pages. 5. Use Top Level Domains (TLDs) - Use TLDs as much as ...

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Sep | 28 | 2007

Addressing Duplicate Content: Part 1

Posted by Guru as Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features, Syndication We all know the dangers of duplicate content and how search engines can penalize you for duplicate content. In my post entitled "Strike that Page from the Index" I discussed one of the ways to address duplicate content and avoid being penalized for it. There I mentioned how you can block some pages from being indexed by simply specifying those pages in your robots.txt file as disallowed pages. Aside from blocking those pages though there are more ways to avoid being penalized for duplicate content including: 1. Syndicating properly - When syndicating your work make sure that you ask the ...

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Design and Themes

Is Your Blog W3C Compliant?

Last night I checked my personal blog’s code hoping I can proudly display the W3C Validated Button. Since I use Blogger and do not really do anything to clean up the code (beyond adding Alt-tags to the images I embed) I wasn’t surprised at all to find that my blog contained lots of errors - [...]
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Software and Widgets

Wordpress Plug-ins

If you blog using Wordpress and can’t do something that you want done like adding Sphere-related content at the end of your blog posts you might be surprised to find out that there are already plug-ins available that make it happen.
To find good Wordpress plug-ins all you need to do is search for “wordpress [...]
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A Friend In Need

I’m helping out my friends from the UA&P - IShareHappiness Blog Team.
Whenever you feel pessimistic, angry, troubled, frustrated, and depressed – what have you – you need someone to talk to. Someone who could help you be more optimistic and help make you feel that there is hope. Sometimes it’s hard to talk to someone [...]
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Monetization

Making Money Through Consumer Generated Ads

As I mentioned in my previous post today I will be suggesting some ways you can still profit by joining programs such as Pay Per Post and yet ensure that your readers don’t get turned off.
In my opinion the only way to really do this is by making sure that your blog entries stay [...]
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Marketing and Search Optimization

Building your blog brand step by step

Building your blog’s brand does not need to be difficult. However, when it comes to branding you should always remember to exert effort to be consistent with the image you wish to portray or you’ll end up with confused, turned-off, and/or skeptical readers. Branding inconsistencies will make it obvious that the image you’re putting up [...]
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