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Easy WordPress Blog Setup Instructions

Nov 5th, 2009
by Thomas Petty.
6 comments

There are many informational articles and books out there that describe all the amazing benefits of having a business blog. I don’t disagree with them (since I’m writing one here). I’ve seen my site traffic increase, search engine rankings increase, and started conversations with people that I would never hope the meet “in the real world”. So I think there’s no debating the fact that there are many benefits to blogging and talking about your particular expertise.

What I wanted to do here is to set down some step-by-step instructions for the “regular” guy or gal that wants to get started with a solid foundation with a self-hosted WordPress blog. There are many terrific blogging platforms available, most available at little or no cost. I’m a fan of WordPress myself, mostly because it’s what I’m used to using. This post is some steps that I’ve learned along the way that will hopefully help you to:

  • Set up your blog easily
  • Make sure it’s safe from hackers
  • Give you some basics that will get you started to a successful blog

This is by no means a comprehensive list, nor is it intended to be. It’s merely a compendium of things that I’ve learned along the way that can help you get going with a minimum of effort, and these are the exact same steps I take for my clients who want me to do it for them. You can host your blog with WordPress directly free of charge. However, if you host your blog with your Web site, it becomes part of the Web site – really just an extension – and can benefit you from an SEO perspective.

List Of Resources To Get Started

Before you can start with any of this, you have to have some basic materials. I’ll assume you already have a working computer with a reasonable internet connection. Beyond that, you will need:

  • A Web hosting plan that supports both PHP and a MySQL database. I prefer CrystalTech, but you can use any hosting as long as they support PHP and MySQL databases.
  • FTP software – This is to move files to your hosting platform. I like IPSwitch’s WS_FTP Professional, but there are many free tools available as well.
  • Text editor – You can use Notepad or any pure text editor like TextPad, as long as it doesn’t apply formatting (for instance, do NOT use MS Word or Works).

Assuming you have all this, let’s get started with setting up a WordPress blog.

Download WordPress Software

The first step is that you need to get the software. Go to the WordPress.org Web site, and click the big button that says “Download WordPress 2.8.5″ (or whatever the current version is). Save the zip file to your hard drive, and unzip (uncompress) it to a folder that’s convenient to get to.

Create a MySQL Database

Go to your hosting platform and create a MySQL database. Usually you can do this through your Control Panel. You’ll need to know the following:

  • The database host server (sometimes it’s “localhost”)
  • The database name
  • The user id to connect
  • The password

Usually you can specify everything but the host, so pick a secure password that includes letters and numbers.

Upload the WordPress Software

create_directory_thConnect to your Web hosting with your FTP software, and create a folder that you want the blog to live in. I usually just create a folder called “blog”, but you can call it what you want. If you want the blog software to actually be your Web site, you don’t need to create a folder. Just upload all the files and folders to the root directory of the Web site. This is about 7.1MB of files, so it shouldn’t take very long if you have a decent connection.

Configure the WordPress Blog Software

config_setup_thYou’ll find a file called wp-config-sample.php. You need to edit this file with a text editor. You can either edit the local copy on your computer, or edit the one on the Web. Enter the database server, database name, user name, and password where it shows these settings in single quotes (see red underlines in the sample graphic).

Next, you must create a unique authentication key by going to the WordPress authentication key site. Copy and paste the four lines into the config file where it shows the sample lines.

Security Tip #1

The last and most important change is to make sure that you change your Table Prefix. Most hackers know that the default prefix is “wp_”, so change it to something totally random, like “wp_2H5i7U1ba”. Just add some random upper and lower case letters and numbers. This will make it much harder for a hacker to break into your database.

Save the file. Rename it as wp-config.php and either upload it from your computer, or just rename the one that’s on your Web site.

Kick Off The Installation Process

wordpress_setup_page_thOpen your browser and go to the Web site with the directory into which you installed the WordPress software. So if it’s in the /blog directory, go to http://www.yourdomain.com/blog and the installation process should automatically kick off. If it complains that it can’t connect to the database, check your config file to make sure you entered all the database information correctly.

It will automatically create an admin id and password. Print this page out! If you forget the password, or don’t write it down, you have to delete the database and start all over.

Security Tip #2

new_admin_id_thBefore you do anything else, create a new admin id that is something like “admin0512″ (or a name that means something to you) and very secure password using upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters. The meter will show you how secure your password is. Hackers know that the default admin id is “admin”, and will try to hack it. Now log out, log in with your new admin id, and delete the original admin id. This is critical to prevent hackers from getting into the site (or at least slow them down).

Apply a Theme

install_theme_thThere are lots of free themes (looks) that people have developed. Find one that has four or five stars and apply it to your site. The ones that have high ratings and have been downloaded thousands of times have been tested and upgraded so that they work the best for you. You can always customize it with your logo and other changes later.

Install Plugins

install_plugins_thI have a specific set of plugins (which are additional functionality that doesn’t come with the base WordPress software) that add value. I recommend that at a minimum, you install these:

  • XML Sitemaps – Creates XML sitemaps for Google automatically, which is great for getting indexed
  • Google Analytics for WP – Set up your Analytics code so you can track all the throngs of people reading your blog
  • All In One SEO Pack – Has great SEO tools for your blog
  • Akismet (already installed, but be sure to activate it) – It catches all the comment spammers and blocks them
  • WP Security Scan – Gives you a report to see if your WordPress blog is fully safe from hackers
  • WP DB Backup – Allows you to back up your database before you make any changes. ALWAYS back up your database before you upgrade or do anything!

Configure Your Ping Servers

setup_ping_servers_thWordPress comes pre-configured with a single ping server, but you’ll want to add more. Every time you create a blog post, you want to make sure that the search engines know about it. When you click “Publish”, WordPress will go tell all the ping servers that you’ve configured to notify the search engines about your new post. This is my list of ping servers. Just copy and paste the list into the configuration screen, and click save.

Configure Your Permalinks

Permalinks is a setting that tells WordPress how to display the links to your blog posts. We all know that you want your keywords in the link text if you can. The default setting for WordPress doesn’t give a very SEO-friendly link, so I recommend that you change it. Many people debate about the “right” way to set them up. Set them, and don’t worry about it. Most people set them to:

/%category%/%postname%

which will display your posts with a subdirectory of the post “Category”, then the actual words from your post title.

Now, you’re done and ready to start blogging. You might want to go to Technorati.com and register your blog there too.

Posted in: Tips.
Tagged: · · ·

Ping Server List for your Blog

Nov 4th, 2009
by Thomas Petty.
1 comment

If you’re new to blogging (or even if you’re not), you need to make sure that your blog gets found by the search engines and indexed. By letting special servers know that you’ve just posted a new entry in your blog, you can ensure that Google and the others will come index you.

Most blogging software has the ability to send out a “ping” notice when you’ve published something on your blog. Remember from the movie “The Hunt For Red October”, Captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) on the Russian sub sends one ping message to Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) on the American submarine to let them know they are there, as well as send a message.

Your blogging software can do the same thing and let the search engines know that you’re out there, and you’ve posted something new they should come check out. Make sure you configure it with a lengthy list of ping servers, which includes Google’s own.

Here is my list of ping servers. I’m sure there are many that are missing, but this seems to work for me. Whenever I post a new blog entry, it’s usually on Google within about 10 minutes, because WordPress sends a ping, one ping only, to the search engines.

Just highlight and copy/paste the list below into the configuration of your blog.

Blog Ping Server List

http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Posted in: Search Engine Optimization, Tips.
Tagged: ·

How To Suck At SEO

Oct 28th, 2009
by Thomas Petty.
7 comments
How to suck at SEO

How to suck at SEO

There’s lots of information out there about how to “do SEO”. Some of it makes sense, some of it is complete nonsense. So my goal here is to help you to really suck at “doing SEO” for yourself and your clients. To quote Homer Simpson, “You go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.” So here is my guide to getting really half-assed results on Google.

Make up keywords to “SEO”

You know exactly what your customers are looking for, because you know your own business right? So make sure you pick keywords that include every affiliation you have any remote connection to. After all, your customers are looking for you by them, right? Better yet, make sure your clients give you their list of words to optimize for.

Find clients that want you to “SEO” their content

You have a magic wand just like all other SEO professionals out there, so make sure that your clients have already written all their content, and just want you to advise them how to tweak it for the search engines. This is always the best strategy after all – do the “SEO” after it’s all written by someone else.

Endlessly tweak your code

By fiddling with your HTML code every day, you’ll finally figure out the right combination to get your page listed a little higher on the search engines. After all, Google likes change, so make sure you change it constantly, even punctuation changes count, right?

Search for the perfect keyword

There must be the perfect key phrase that is the magic bullet just guaranteed to send thousands of rabid fans to your site. Use Google Adwords free keywords tool, WordTracker, and anything else you can think of to find that phrase that will just make you rich. It’s out there, I just know it.

Try to figure out Google’s secret formula

Someone must know it right? So if you can only figure out the secret sauce formula, just like Coke and KFC, you’ll be fabulously wealthy or famous, or both. Just keep digging my friends. Really. I mean it.

Chase high Page Rank links

It doesn’t matter that Google removed Page Rank from their Webmaster guidelines. If you can only get one more link from a site that has a Page Rank of 7 or 8 or (dream big here!) a *gasp* 9, you’d just have more traffic to your site than you can possibly handle. You probably ought to be researching another hosting company while you’re at it, because all that traffic will crash your $2.95/month shared hosted site anyway.

Buy lots of domain names

The more domain names you have linked to your Web site, the better. It’s even better if they have your keywords in it, because Google uses the domain name as the most important factor in getting to the top. Make sure all the words have dashes between them so Google is sure to be able to read all those keywords too.

Stuff your keywords in every corner

Make sure you get your keywords into all the places you can think of because the more you use it, the better. It really doesn’t matter that it reads kind of ridiculous. Oh, and don’t forget to “keyword optimize”  your images with their alt tags too. It matters. Really.

Promise your clients top position (and mean it)

Any SEO professional worth his or her salt can guarantee a top position on Google. So be sure to promise it, especially in writing. That way you’ll be sure to deliver on your promises. It’s especially effective if your clients give you the keywords they want to be number one for, because they know what their clients are searching for way more than you do (see the first one above).

My sincere hope is that you’ll use all these tips that will truly make you suck at SEO. It works. Trust me.

Posted in: Opinion.
Tagged: ·

Do You Suffer from Anemic Content?

Oct 28th, 2009
by Thomas Petty.
3 comments

One of the questions I get asked is how to optimize a page of content. “What SEO should I do to get this page listed on Google?” Business are so focused on getting a certain page or certain key phrase listed on Google, that they don’t see the bigger picture.

You can do your keyword research and find phrases that have high volume of searches and low competition. This will give you a high “KEI” score (keyword effectiveness index” in WordTracker’s parlance). The idea is that if lots of people are searching for a specific phrase, but few businesses have “optimized” for that phrase, then by definition, you get a high KEI.

But the truth is that most Web sites have very little useful content, and it tends to be more corporate-speak than provide real value to people. I call this “anemic” content. It sounds good, but does it really provide an answer to the questions that your readers ask? After all, people are your target audience, not the search engines. Give your reading audience what they want, and they will come back for more.

Similarly, by providing useful content, the search engines will index this and display your pages in the search engine results pages (SERPs) when people are looking for more specific answers to their problems. These displayed results will be despite the efforts you or others have put into applying “SEO” to your pages.

More Really Is Better

Someone asked me today if it’s better to have a site with a few pages or with more pages. The answer really lies in having more useful content, not just more pages for the sake of having more pages. Each of your pages should answer a specific question that someone might ask. These niche phrases that people are asking will get rewarded with rich content that you write.

It’s impossible to apply SEO rules to the typical corporate-speak Web pages and get any meaningful traffic from them. You know what types of pages these are. You really try to read them to see if it’s something that will help you answer your questions, and you just can’t get it.

Write Lots of Short Articles

These days, blogs are getting lots of attention, because the typical blog post is short (a few hundred words at most), it’s fresh content, and it’s useful content. They usually aren’t written from a corporate perspective, and aren’t meant to sell anything. It’s just useful information on any topic you can possibly imagine, and probably many you can’t.

By writing a short article, interview, opinion, how-to, or any of a variety of forms of content, and doing this on a regular basis, you can stop having anemic, boring content that no one wants to read. Speak with your audience in mind, and they will thank you.

All these short articles add up to a large library of information that will be rewarded by the search engines without overt “SEO” applied to the content.

Posted in: Opinion.
Tagged: ·

Top 10 List of Steps to Get on Google

Oct 3rd, 2009
by Thomas Petty.
No comments yet

If you’re looking to get listed on Google or Yahoo!, this is our top ten list of things that you need to do to get listed properly. It’s not a comprehensive list, but these are what I believe are the top ten most important things you need to do to get some search engine results.

I’ve listed these in reverse order, a lá Dave Letterman, and they are listed in order of difficulty. The first is the easiest to implement, that last takes a bit more work.

10. Fix Your Title Tags

One of the easiest places you can have a dramatic impact on the position of your Web site is to fix the <title> tags on your site. Most people don’t know what to do with them, and just put the name of the page like “Home”, “About Us” or “Contact Us”. Do you know how many pages are in the index with a <title> of “Home”? Too many to count.

Your <title> tag should have your primary key phrase for that page at the very beginning, and some other information taking no more than 65-70 characters (yes, including spaces).

Type site:yourdomainname.com into Google or Yahoo! to see what your <title> tags say. It’s the first line of each page entry.

2. Fix Your Description Tags

Your “Description” META tags similarly are abused or omitted completely by many people, and it’s probably the second most important factor that influences the position on the search engine results pages (SERP). Never copy/paste your “Description” tag from page to page. They should always be unique and specific to that page on your site. Again, make sure your main key phrase is at the beginning of the “Description” tag and have some other descriptive information up to about 165 characters.

Use site:yourdomainname.com again in Google or Yahoo! to see what they see. It’s usually the two lines listed below the <title> tage. If you’ve omitted the “Description” META tag, you’ll probably see random text from your site listed in the SERP.

8. Fix Your Header Tags

Your header tags are like telling Google (and your readers!), what that or page is all about. You should always have one <h1> tag at the top of your body content, and no more than one. Your <h1> tag should have your primary key phrase in it, just like your <title> and “Description” tags. Use <h2> or <h3> (up to <h6>) tags on your site and include your key phrase or variations on a theme. There is no difference in Google’s eyes between an <h2> and an <h6>. They are just typically formatted differently.

Never put “Welcome” or “Home Page” or useless words like that in your <h1> tag. The <h1> should match or be close to your <title> and “Description” tag.

7. Body Content and Check Key Word Density (KWD)

You need to have a good amount of quality text that describes your key word phrase. A good amount is 300-500 words, and use your key phrase in the body content where it makes sense. Never “stuff” your key word phrase, but use it in natural text so that it flows and makes sense. Use synonyms where you can (these count too), and even antonyms if you can. It all adds up to good quality content.

Check your key word density to make sure you’re not overusing your key phrase. There are several automated tools available.

6. Build Internal Links

Internal links are important in the structure of your site. Internal links are those that you build between pages on your own site, and you have complete control over the words in the text and the URL. They don’t have as much influence as external links, but are still helpful.

  • Always use your key phrase for the target page in the actual link text
  • Never use “Click here” or “Read more” in the link text
  • Use the full URL including the Web site and page address, instead of the shortcut “relative” link.

5. Build External Links

External links can help your site by building link reputation as well as helping build PageRank. You often don’t have full control over the external links coming into your site, but the more you build quality content, the more people will link to you. This is called “link bait”.

4. Use Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer

Make sure you play by the rules and register your sites with Google and Yahoo!. By using their tools to manage your site, you’ll be seen as one of the “good guys”. Google’s Webmaster Tools gives you more insight into what’s in Google’s index, and what they see when they look at your site. Always fix any errors you see listed in their tool.

Yahoo!’s Site Explorer is also very useful, and always register your site with them.

3. Create an XML Sitemap

By creating an XML sitemap for your site, you’re giving Google and Yahoo! a full map to your site. It’s kind of like giving them the floor plan to your Web site, so it’s easy for them to figure out what’s in there. You’ll be more trusted by them, and they’ll be able to discover new pages more quickly than having to discover them through new links.

Always manage the XML sitemap and keep it up to date. If you add a page, make sure it’s listed in there. Register your sitemap with Google’s Webmaster Tool and Yahoo!’s Site Explorer (they call it a “feed”).

2. Create an Industry Specific Blog

By creating and maintaining an industry blog of your information, you are automatically building great quality content. People will read it, link to it, and value it. It’s a great place to put links back to your own corporate Web site. Keep at it, and keep it fresh. If it goes stale, people will stop reading.

1. Post Online News Releases

Online news releases are a terrific place to generate targeted traffic, and get quality links coming back to your site all at the same time. The cool thing about online news releases is that they typically show up in Google’s index within a few hours of going live.

News releases require a specific format, and should be newsworthy. If you’re not sure how to write one, hire a professional writer who has experience in the press. Someone that I highly recommend is Evan Denbaum. I’ve used him for many projects, and he’s terrific at getting punchy articles for either your blog or your news releases.

Posted in: Search Engine Optimization, Tips.
Tagged: · · · · · · ·

How To Use Header Tags With SEO

Sep 29th, 2009
by Thomas Petty.
2 comments

The lowly header tag is a simple HTML code that allows you to format your content with headlines. But it has a far more powerful influence on the search engines that many may miss. I like to use the analogy of a newspaper in talking about Web design. When you read a paper, the first thing you look at is the headline of the top story. That’s the BIG story, and you want to see if it’s something you’re interested in. Those few words will influence whether you want to read more or skip to another article. It’s efficient and quite practical.

Guess what? Google reads your headlines too, and they help Google decide what your page is about. If your headline says “Welcome!” or “Home Page” or something like that, it’s not very useful or meaningful for your readers nor for Google.

What Are Header Tags?

The header tags are an HTML code that tells your browser to display the text in more of a headline format. It will typically be larger, bolder and set away from the paragraphs around it through vertical spacing.

You code it by enclosing your text within opening and closing header tags like this:

<h1>Leather Collars for Dogs and Puppies</h1>

You can include inline formatting in the <h1> tag, or use cascading style sheets (CSS) to format the tag in an external style sheet if you prefer.

There are actually six “levels” of header tags, from <h1>, <h2> down to <h6>, and they all pretty much work the same. They might have different formatting, which makes them handy for formatting text differently on different sections of the site.

Why Are Header Tags Important?

The most important thing you can do from an SEO perspective is to include your carefully researched key phrase in the header tag. Just like the example above, it talks about leather dog and puppy collars, which not only tells your customer what that page is about, it tells Google too. Google pays special attention to header tags to make sure they match up with all your other elements, like <title>, Description and body text on the page.

Here are some hints about header tags that will help you with your SEO efforts:

  • Always have a single <h1> tag at or near the top of your content. It should include your primary key phrase.
  • Never include more than one <h1> tag on a page.
  • There is no difference between <h2>, <h3> or the other tags. Google looks upon them as the same thing
  • Use multiple <h2> (or other level) header tags on your page to break up the content into sections, as a formatting element, and to help reinforce your keywords.

Notice that I have more than one <h2> tag on these blog posts, which always includes some form of my keyword, but also helps break apart the text into sections so it’s easier for my reader to read.

Formatting Header Tags

You can apply any kind of formatting you want to header tags, as long as you’re not trying to cheat by using white on white or some other frowned-upon practice. You can include inline formatting, use <font> tags (that’s old-style and adds to code bloat as well as difficulty in managing it!), or just include them in your externally linked CSS files so you don’t have to do anything (best choice!).

<h2 class="header2_style">Keyword Phrase</h2>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">Keyword Phrase</h2>
<h2><font color="red">Keyword Phrase</font></h2>

There’s also a very advanced technique to use header tags so Google is happy, but to replace them with a graphic so your Web designer and customer is happy. After all, header tags aren’t really very glamorous. But I’ll leave the last point for another blog post if you’re interested.

Posted in: Search Engine Optimization, Tips.
Tagged: · ·

How To Measure Keyword Density – Does Keyword Density Matter?

Sep 28th, 2009
by Thomas Petty.
1 comment

Keyword density (KWD) is a way to measure how many times you use your key phrase in your content. Basically, if you’re trying to optimize for a specific phrase, say, “leather dog leashes”, then you need to use your key phrase in many places of your Web page. If you don’t use your key phrase effectively in the content, then you aren’t going to be rewarded with a high position on the search engine results page (SERP).

How Do You Measure Keyword Density?

In a simplistic formula, you can think about how many words on your page there are. Divide that into the number of times you use your key phrase, and multiply by 100%. So if you have 500 words on your page, and you use your phrase 5 times, you’d have a 1% keyword density:

5/500 times 100% = 1%

However, as with everything on the search engines, it just isn’t simple. It never is, huh.

Google and the other search engines actually look at all your content in the HTML code, and determine your actual keyword density based on all the places you can put your key phrase:

  • Title tag
  • Description tag
  • Keywords tag
  • Header tag(s)
  • Body Content
  • Menu links
  • Incoming and outgoing links
  • Alt tags on your graphic images
  • Comment tags
  • Div tags

One way to give a quick eyeball measure of your site or someone else’s site, is to use Google’s toolbar. Go to your Web page (or that of a competitor), type in your keyword phrase into the search box, but do NOT click “Search”. Just click the highlighter pen tool, and it will give you a visual of how many times that keyword phrase appears on the page.

Another way to measure your keyword density is to use an online automated tool like the SEO Tools’ free keyword density analyzer tool.

Keyword Stuffing

What is the “right” keyword density? There is plenty of debate, and many SEO professionals say, “stick to the 1-2% range”. The truth is that there is no “right” answer, after all, Google grades on a curve. You can experiment by trying different keyword densities, to see if it helps you or hurts you. Look at your competitors, and I’ll bet that many are higher than 1-2% KWD. I’ve seen as high as 10% or even higher.

However, just remember that if Google counts up all the words on your page, and sees you using your key phrase too often, you may get penalized for overusing the phrase. This is called keyword stuffing, and I say, “Stuffing is great in turkey, but it sucks on your Web site.”

It’s also difficult to come up with creative ways of using your keyword phrase in effective content without sounding ridiculous. It’s better to just write naturally, and not worry too much about it. Use synonyms, antonyms, and other related words in your content. It will help the overall “score” that Google will assign to your page of content.

Image “Optimization”

Some people believe that stuffing your keywords into any nook and cranny on your site that you can think of is a good thing. A common practice is to cram your keywords into the “alt” tag on your images. It doesn’t change the readability of the content, but it can add to KWD. I have a problem with this on two levels:

  • Alt tags are intended to identify the image, especially for the visually impaired or those who use alternative browsers (or just have graphics turned off)
  • “Cheating”, even just a little, may or may not really help you. Writing effective content and just using alt tags for their intended purpose is a best practice.

So if you have a picture of a puppy on your site, just label it:

<img src="/images/puppy.jpg" alt="Photo of a puppy playing." />

Rather than trying to cram your keywords into the alt tag, like alt=”leather dog leashes” from the example above. Those who actually see the alt tag will thank you, and my belief is that Google will “thank” you as well by rewarding your quality content, rather than just trying to cheat a little.

Posted in: Search Engine Optimization, Tips.
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How Businesses Need To Use Social Media To Market Themselves

Sep 18th, 2009
by Thomas Petty.
3 comments

Livermore Chamber Marketing Summit with Thomas W. Petty from Amos Productions on Vimeo.

On August 18, 2009, I worked with the Livermore Chamber of Commerce to put together a Marketing Summit for businesses. I invited four of my colleagues and friends to present different topics, and we had about 60 people that attended the summit. The speakers were:

This is the video of my presentation, which is about one hour long. It talks to business owners about how we can no longer afford to advertise to people because all of us are increasingly intolerant of the messages being pushed at us. Instead, we have to engage our customers who are interested in our products and services by attracting them. There are many avenues to make this happen, but a lot of it involves social media: Twitter, business blogging, LinkedIn and other online outlets.

By attracting only those are intested in our products and services, we can spend our time in dialog with those people who want our stuff. This sets us up as experts in our own respective industries – because we’re all experts, right? The point of social media is to engage people in dialogs. Nothing more. By doing so, I like to say that:

“People buy into us before they buy from us.”

If you take away the need to “sell” someone, and just engage in dialog, they will naturally work with you to select what’s right for them when it’s right for them.

Amos Productions Rocks!

I have to put in a plug for Jody Amos from Amos Productions in Livermore, CA. Ray Garcia on his team video recorded my presentation as well as Michele’s and Elaine’s. They did a fantastic job, were professional, and put together our slides with the video (above). I highly recommend that if you need videography or DJ services for any kind of event, that you call Jody at 800-693-5003 and arrange for him to put together a plan for you.

Posted in: Opinion, Presentation.
Tagged: · · ·

Multiple Domain Names: Do They Help Search Engine Position?

Sep 17th, 2009
by Thomas Petty.
7 comments

A lot of people ask me about having multiple domain names, and can that help them in their search engine rankings? A corollary to this is having keyword-rich domain names and pointing them to their current Web site.  There is a belief that having keywords in your domain name is the “magic bullet” that will make you pop to the top.

Unfortunately, this practice can actually backfire on you and cause bigger issues that you didn’t intend to create.

Domain Name SEO

It’s absolutely true that your domain is a factor in the “score” that Google assigns to your Web site. There’s a reason I picked the domain name I did for my business – it has “search engine” in it. Google reportedly has between 200 and 500 factors that it uses every time someone does a search to figure out whether you show up in position #1 or position #1000 on the search engine results page (SERP). It does this in just a fraction of a second for the approximately 1 trillion Web pages that are in its index. (That to me is an amazing feat all by itself!)

Your domain name is one of these 200-500 factors that counts towards your position.

Is it a big factor? Nope. Is it highly influential? Nope. It might notch you above the next guy, but that’s about it. You really want to concentrate on the bigger hitters that will give you better position:

Multiple Keyword-Rich Domain Names

So what if you do go out and buy 10 domain names that have your keywords in them, and point them to your single Web site? Won’t that help? Won’t that associate your site with those keywords? The truth of the matter is that it will hurt you more than it will help you.

As an example, lets say that you sell pet food for reptiles. You buy “nutritious-iguana-food.com” and “delicious-garter-snake-food.com” and point them to your Web site, “healthy-reptile-food.com”. Assuming that Google is at some point going to index the now three domains and register them in its index, will that help you?

Many people believe that it will, but it will actually hurt your position on the SERPs because now you have a duplicate content issue. Google will see different “Web sites” all pointing to identical content. Google doesn’t like duplicate content, and therefore, you will be penalized because everything from the content, META tags, and everything else, will be identical.

Fix Multiple Domain Name Duplicate Content Issues

If you have bought multiple domain names either with keywords or you want to own all the .com, .org, and .net variations so someone else doesn’t grab them, that’s perfectly OK. But you have to manage them in a special way. You have to let Google know that only one of the domain names is the “real” domain, and to ignore all others. This is called a 301-redirect. There are many excellent articles describing how to set up a 301-redirect, so I won’t cover the minutiae here (just “Google” it).

What a 301-redirect does is gives instructions to Google and the other search engines that if someone landed on a URL through them, that you’re going to redirect them to the correct URL, and give Google back a message to remove the old URL from their index.

So in the example before, you can own “nutritious-iguana-food.com” and point it to your Web site. But you need to set up a 301-redirect to pop it over to “healthy-reptile-food.com”. So if someone either types it in directly to their browser, or come to that page through the search engines, it will resolve to the correct domain:

"nutritious-iguana-food.com" -> "healthy-reptile-food.com"

Same thing if you own the .com and .net versions of your domain name, you want want to resolve safely to the other:

"xyz.net" -> "xyz.com"

In this manner, you’ve still got your proverbial cake (many domain names), but only one of them counts. So don’t worry about trying to “optimize” your domain name with keywords. Use the other techniques described before, and you’ll have far better results. If you want keywords in the URL, use them in the page name instead:

"www.xyz.com/keyword-phrase.html"

As a final note, be sure to read the blog and watch the video about domain name canonicalization, which is very much related to this topic and has a similar impact.

Posted in: Search Engine Optimization, Tips.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

How To Increase PageRank: Does PageRank Really Matter?

Sep 14th, 2009
by Thomas Petty.
1 comment

PageRank™ is a way of rating a specific Web page on a Web site, on a scale of 0 through 10. Google assigns a PageRank to every page, and it’s a measure of how important that page is in their index. The more important a Web page (and it’s PAGE specific, not site specific), the higher the PageRank value. PageRank is essentially a voting system. If you have links coming into your site from other places, each of those links is a “vote”. It’s assumed that if you have more links, then you’re more important.

But there’s a HUGE caveat with that: Links aren’t all the same of course, and not all will help you with your PageRank. If you’re interested, there’s an extremely complicated formula on Wikipedia for calculating your PageRank (henceforth abbreviated “PR”). I frankly just don’t care.

Google gives us a much more convenient way of seeing what our PR is by looking in the Google Toolbar. There’s a nice little green bar graph that shows you on a scale of 0 to 10, what that page’s PR is.

Google Toolbar showing PageRank of 6 out of 10 bar graph

Google Toolbar showing PageRank of 6 out of 10 bar graph

Improving Your PageRank

In a very basic nutshell, the more links you have coming to your Web page, you will increase the number of “votes” you have. This will help to improve the “importance” score that Google assigns to your page. If a Web site that has a high PR links to your site, you “inherit” a little of the PR from them. It’s a logarithmic scale, so a single link from a PR5 page is worth more than 10 links from a PR1 site. I like to think of it as standing in their “glow”. The higher their PR, the more “glow” there is to share with you. And the brighter the “glow”, the more difficult it is to get a link from them.

But as with everything in life, it just ain’t that easy! As we talked about before, a link isn’t the same as a link, which isn’t as same as a link.

The Nofollow Tag and How It Affects PageRank

If you have a link from one page that has a high PR on your site to another with a lower PR, you’ll pass some of that PR along to the other page. If you put too many links from a high PR page, to many others, you’ll “dilute” the PR points that are being passed along, and therefore it won’t be as effective as you’d hoped. So Google invented the “nofollow” tag for your links so you can tell Google not to pass along that PR. Your link text might look like:

<a href="xyz.com" target="_self" rel="nofollow">link text goes here</a>

The “nofollow” tag tells Google that the link is there, but you don’t want the PR to be passed along. That way you can “sculpt” your PR and make it go where you want it to go without worrying about too much dilution.

However, according to Matt Cutts not long ago, Google changed the rules last year about how they count the “nofollow” tag, so it does continue to dilute your PR even though it’s not passing it along to the next page.

Further, note that a lot of the “big boys” out there automatically add the “nofollow” tags to all outgoing links:

  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Del.icio.us
  • Digg.com
  • WordPress comments
  • Etc.

So guess what? Those links don’t help you! Look at the code on those pages, and they all have the “nofollow” tag.

In the article above, Matt Cutts is quoted as saying, “The notion of ‘PageRank sculpting’ has always been a second- or third-order recommendation for us. I would recommend the first-order things to pay attention to are 1) making great content that will attract links in the first place, and 2) choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search engines alike.”

PageRank Is Only One Piece of the Equation

When building your Web content, links, and all the on-page and off-page SEO factors, PR in reality is only one small piece of the equation that Google uses to give you whatever position your page has in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Chasing high PR is fine, but may not be your best bet on getting high positions on the SERPs.

What we teach in our SEO classes is to spend a little bit of time to build good links from PR5 or higher sites if you can, but just don’t sweat it. Send out great news releases from PRWeb.com (PR7) or other news sites, write articles for places like Evan Carmichael, or create a blog. All of this will help you in the long run, rather than chasing the elusive high PR link!

Links are vital to your Web site, and building proper external links as well as an internal linking strategy is very important. If you can build some PageRank with it, cool. If the PR value is a little lower, that’s OK too. Just don’t worry about it too much, because you really have much larger sticks in your toolbox to get your Web site to show up on Google.

Posted in: Search Engine Optimization, Tips.
Tagged: · · · · · · ·

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