Better Business Blogging » Blog Optimisation

Optimizing your Blog for your Business

Mark White, Blog Consultant — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:57:09 +0000

The 3rd part of the series and a lot of what I have been talking about in the first two posts on Optimising your blog for Search Engines and Optimising your Blog for your Readers, will be relevant here. In fact, it probably all is. Generally, when it comes to our businesses, our online relationships with our readers and with the search engines are inextricably linked in todays world.

After all, we use optimisation techniques to try to get a higher profile in the Search Engine results pages and so attract more visitors. Then the optimisation for readers comes into play by keeping them on the blog, getting them to read and enjoy the posts, and ultimately encouraging them to return or recommend the blog. Optimising your blog for your business, ties these two together and supports them through the use of additional elements which further promote what you are doing and why.

So, make sure that you consider these as well if you want your blog to make the impact that it should on your business and support everything that you are writing:

1. Promoting your own services? Keep them above the fold

If your intention is to use your blog to attract people to you and make them aware of the services / products that you offer, then ensure you keep the links to them visible and above the fold, so that they can be seen without having to scroll down. At the same time, don’t make them so in your face that they take over. Balance is the name of the game. Your readers are astute and are likely to judge you on what you write but also on how you conduct yourself and this falls under the latter. Essentially, it comes back to the idea that you should not try to sell to them on a blog, rather help them discover why they want to buy from you.

2. Don’t swamp your blog with adverts

This means both yours and other people’s. If your readers are likely to lose the will to live because of the number of adverts that they have to wade through to find your posts, then they will quickly fall out of love with your blog and you. So if you intend to include adverts and partner links, make them relevant but don’t let them take over your blog.

3. Spend time on your blog design

When I talk about blog design, I’m not just thinking about the graphic design (ie. the look and feel) of your blog and how that relates to your business, but also the placement of the different elements such as navigation, categories, special posts, sign up boxes, offers etc. on the blog. Just as you may well have spent time on your website and possibly worked with a web development company, take the same care with your blog to ensure that it best serves your business goals.

4. Add easy referral methods

Referrals and recommendations are the lifeblood of many businesses and are possibly the best type of business introduction that you can get. In blogs, your posts provide information about your business both through the content and the way in which they are written – help your readers to share this information by making it easy for them to pass it on. Include an email a friend option as well as links to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, del.icio.us or Stumble Upon and, with the current interest in micro-blogging, a link to Twitter might also be beneficial.

5. Can they print it?

Sometimes I wonder if I am not yet fully embracing the online experience because I still often like to print off blog posts and webpages that I find useful so that I can read them at my leisure offline. I know that Im not alone in this. Unfortunately, printers often truncate these posts because the page width is, well, too wide. So make sure that if people want to print off and refer to your article (yes!!) then they can without having to guess what are the missing words. [Wordpress users might like to include WP-Print for this.]

6. Make it easy to comment

I mentioned the need to make it easy for people to leave comments when talking about optimising your blog for your readers, but of course it works both ways. Comments are the start of a conversation which hopefully will benefit both parties and they should also benefit all those who come to your blog – they’ll not only see extra information but will also get a better picture of you through your replies. In addition, you may want to consider using the comments on special pages as live online testimonials, product commentaries, hotel/restaurant rating or whatever use that your business can put it to. If you want to know how valuable this so-called User Generated Content is, just look at companies like Amazon, Hotels.com or eBay!

7. Make use of RSS Marketing (and basic RSS Advertsing)

RSS is a key element of getting our information out into the right places on the internet, automatically and directly – it will also ensure that our messages reach people who have subscribed. However, there are many ways in which you can use your RSS feed to reinforce the business messages that you wish to get across. Presuming you are not hot on XML coding (I certainly fall into that category), then use Feedburner – you can add logos and notes to each post sent via RSS through their service. In addition you can add links after the post to promote/inform about your business, services or special offers using their Feed Flare facility. Think of it like adding a couple of relevant links to your email signature – great visibility without being too intrusive.

8. Include Calls to Action

I know that a blog should really just be about engaging with your readers, starting a conversation with them and creating those all important connections, but you are running a business too, so it’s important to give the process a little helping hand. Make sure that you have calls to action on your blog – it’s not direct selling or straying from the general ethos of blogging, it’s just letting your readers know how to take it to the next stage.

9. Be easy to contact

Just in case you were about to forget, the aim of a business blog is to encourage people to get in contact but you still find bloggers who make it difficult to find out how to do so. Make sure that you have a contact page and that its easy to find and use in this instance, its nothing about being transparent or open, its just good solid business common sense.

10. Want sign-ups? Where’s your form?

If a key goal is to get subscribers for a newsletter or ecourse, then make sure the signup box is given a prominent position on your blog. Email marketing and the use of autoresponders for sequenced messages works really well with blogs and is something that is often overlooked as we keep our head down trying to write new posts. Remember the research which indicates that we tend to read pages in an “F” shape starting with the top left hand corner, working our way across the top and then reading down the left hand side – use that information and judge the placement of the important elements accordingly.

11. Make your blog as sticky as possible

A lot of the stickiness of a blog will come through the content that you write, but there’s no harm in giving it a helping hand. Judicious use of both videos and podcasts, for example, means that you can get your message across in a number of different media, and use them as additional avenues to promote your business through video optimisation and podcasts directories. Consider running online surveys or contests, offer free downloads, reviews of relevant books – all can complement the content you write to help keep your readers on your site and keep them coming back.

12. Use TACT Track, Analyse, Change and Track

Make sure that you know what your readers are really reading, what are your most popular posts and what the Search Engines are referring people back to. Use a program such as Google Analytics or Statcounter to give yourself a good level of visibility of what is drawing attention and whether your calls to action are having the desired effect. Of course, this will only be beneficial if you analyse the information that it gives you and make changes accordingly. The process then starts all over again – it is certainly worth it though and will help make your blog work better for you.

In optimising your blog for your business, what you are really doing is giving it every chance to help promote and develop it. In doing so, you are ensuring that your blog can be found by your readers and potential customers and that they have easy access to the information that it contains. They should then be in a position to act on that information, ideally by getting in contact and by also sharing that information with others.

As ever, don’t get hung up on trying to optimise your blog purely for Search Engines or even purely for your readers. Remember what it is really there for – a tool to market and promote your business. Instead, keep a watching brief on the requirements for both readers and search engines, but make your main focus one of optimising it for your business.

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Optimizing your Blog for Search Engines

Mark White, Blog Consultant — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:00:07 +0000

Warning – Long Post (even for me!)

Remember that when it comes to “Optimising your blog”, looking at the factors which will be picked up by the Search Engines is only one part of the equation. You also need to consider optimising the blog for your readers and optimising for your business objectives – creating a blog which happens to rank highly for certain relevant key word phrases is going to be of zero value to you if you can’t back that up with things that your readers are interested in. (We looked at Optimising for your Readers in part 1 and optimising for your business comes in part 3).

Most of the elements mention here can be applied to all full blown blogs – however, hosted blogs (particularly free ones) are unlikely to offer the flexibility to allow you to change all of these elements. So, if you are looking to really benefit from a fully optimised blog then I recommend you check out what’s on offer before you begin. For me, the full Wordpress system, particularly because of the wealth of specialist plugins, is extremely powerful in SEO terms (and my first choice of blogging system), and so I will be referencing suitable sources from the Wordpress community where possible.

While we will be looking at individual SEO elements, you have to remember that there are very few factors which will cause a major shift change to a post or page ranking on their own. Rather, it is the cumulative effect that has real value a prime example of “the sum of the parts being greater than the whole”. So on each page, decide on the specific keyword phrases you wish to target and make sure that all of the individual elements come together to support them. Although vitally important, I won’t be looking at inbound links here, but rather concentrating on elements on the blog itself.

1. Title Tag

Generally considered to be the most important individual item so well worth spending the time and getting right. While opinions vary, general consensus is that you have about 8 words to play with, with greater relevance awarded to those at the start of the tag to gain most benefit from this, ensure that as a default format, the title tag displays your “Blog post title” followed by “Blog name” so that the keywords in your post title are highlighted at the start of the tag.

However, whenever possible, you should take the opportunity to write a custom Title Tag – with Wordpress you can use the plugins such as Stephan Spencers SEO Title Tag or All in One SEO which will allow you to do this easily. What to write? Well, remember where the Title Tags appear youll find it at the top of your browser window and, more importantly, as the clickable link on the Search Engine Results page. So while you should look to include your keywords to appeal to the Search Engines, you also need to write something which will inspire your readers to click on that link!

2. Post Text

The old adage of content is king still holds true and perhaps is even more compelling in blogs as the writing is intended to be more “personal” than the normal text penned by a corporate website scribe. In any case, what you write about and then the actual words that you write is clearly crucial in all good business blogs, there should be a clear focus or direction for the blog overall, and it is likely that the content in each post is going to be focused on a certain subject matter as well. This will naturally lend itself to a keyword targeted post but and it is a big “BUT” it must be written in a way which will attract and then appeal to your readers. They must be your primary concern and focus!

3. H1 tag

The H1 tag is usually the formatting tag used for the title (or heading, hence the “H”) of a page or, in this case, for your post. If the title of your post contains your keywords then youll benefit from using the tag, so make sure you use it – though only use it once on each page though. There are also H2, H3 etc etc tags which can be used as subheadings throughout your post these are also likely to naturally encourage the use of keywords, so make best use of them.

As a word of advice in most Wordpress themes, the H1 tag is often set up as the title of the overall blog, up in the header image. It would, however, be much better to use the H1 tag for the individual post title – this will therefore allow you to benefit from a different, and specific, keyword focus on each page and therefore support the other SEO elements for each post. Its a small element, but every little helps!

4. Meta Tags

There are two metatags which people generally still talk about from an SEO perspective, the Description and Keywords metatags. In reality, the keywords metatag does very little (if anything) from a search engine perspective, mainly due to excessive spamming in the early years for me, still put them in but use them primarily as a reference for yourself.

The Description metatag does, however, have a certain value, although I prefer to use it for a specific purpose. There are still some Search Engines (including Google in certain circumstances) which use the description metatag as the text under the clickable link on their Results pages. Therefore I suggest writing it as a call to action to help you to get people onto your pages as well as for any residual SEO value. For Wordpress users, the All in One SEO plugin will help you to do the job again.

5. Friendly Permalinks and URL structure

Make sure that you have activated the friendly permalinks for your blog so that the individual posts are supported by having words in the URL rather than the ?id=20 type of format. Not only are these much more helpful to your readers in identifying posts, but the use of keywords in the URL has an influence on the Search Engines, in the same way as top level domain names do, though of course with less impact. In Wordpress, you can modify the permalink structure by going to Settings >> Permalinks in the admin section.

What is the best permalink structure? I have always recommended using the format of www.domain.com/category name/posttitle/ because I liked to include the additional keywords that the category names can offer. However, I have found that this format can be restrictive if you want to make structural changes to your blog at a later date, so a more traditional www.domain.com/year/month/posttitle/ will serve almost as well and give you more flexibility in modifying categories if required.

6. Link Text / Anchor Text

Blogs are full of links and, although sometimes overlooked, the majority are likely to be internal links of one type or another, whether they actually appear as categories, post titles, tags, in your blog posts or anything else. Since these links connect to different pages on your blog, they therefore all add something, not only to the page that they are on (as keyword text) but also to the pages that they point to, particularly if you make sure that the anchor text they use is relevant to the target page. Very important!

In case you are unsure, the anchor text refers to the words which actually make up the link that people click on and have a very positive effect on the page that they link to. So think about your links, whatever form they take, and when you are tempted to just put “click here”, stop, give yourself a good talking to and then put in something useful instead.

7. Category Names

Categories within a blog are designed as a way of indexing your posts according to topic and act as an ideal navigation tool for your readers looking to explore specific subject areas that you cover on your blog. However, from an SEO perspective, the category names will also appear as text links on every page in your blog which, as we have discovered, is good news all round.

In addition, blogs create category pages which bring together all your posts with similar content together on one page great news for search engines looking for targeted content to deliver to their searchers. To help them further, create an introduction to these category pages which gives a summary of the topic – of course, using relevant keyword terms. You will find that the “sticky” function in blogs like Typepad or a suitable Sticky plugin for Wordpress will do the job nicely if you prefer not to hardcode it. In any case, do make sure that the category names contain your keywords because they are going to appear extensively across your blog and automatically at that!

8. Footer Text

While the post text is the area that most people focus on, and rightly so, when they consider the message they want the Search Engines to see, there are other sections of the page which can also be used to highlight text without compromising your focus on your readers. The sidebar is one such are but another, lesser used one, is the bottom of the page. Here, text used as part of the footer or indeed below the footer can be used to help support the keywords which have been used elsewhere, or indeed add additional scope to them.

Take the example of a local company looking to promote their wares in the local area. They can and should write posts which focus on the local area and this of course will feature in the body of the text. However, you can re-inforce this in the footer by including, for example, geographic references ( ie. Norwich, Norfolk, East Anglia, East of England etc.) to complement the other keywords in the text. You might also consider adding misspellings of key words which, used elsewhere, would spoil peoples views of the site itself. In an ideal world, consider making these specific to individual pages – however, even as a single site wide footer, there is certainly value to be had.

9. Blog Tags

In addition to all of the tags that are routinely mentioned with regard to SEO, there are other types of tags which are specific to blogs from generic “markers” through to tags used for specific search engines such as Technorati. They allow the author to suggest additional categories or foci for their own posts and hence effectively highlight keywords that best describe the content or help put it in context. Tags are useful in a number of ways, particularly within Wordpress, acting as a type of subcategory – but importantly, they allow you to add additional specific keyword phrases which appear alongside your post and highly visible to Search Engines without prejudicing your readers.

10. Image Alt Tags

I believe that blogs benefit from having graphics included in the posts its a good way to break up the blog post or support a point being made in the text. However, since Search Engines effectively cannot “see” them, then make sure that you include some “alternative” or “alt” text partly because its good practice, but also because the text will be picked up by search engines and can help add to the other elements on the page. No keyword stuffing though! Ideally it should describe the image it is applied to but adding a relevant keyword as well can only benefit you.

11. Index only the important parts

A blog creates and updates a number of different pages each time you make a post, from the blogs homepage to the individual blog page and then those covering the categories and tags associated with it as well as the monthly archive page! Phew! In many respects, I think that this is highly beneficial (lots of new and updated pages to be indexed) but there have been some worries expressed about duplicated content on a single blog.

In response to this, some people go as far as to block everything from Search Engines except the homepage and individual post pages, often using the robots.txt file – I am, however, against that. Block the monthly archive pages if you like but I feel that the Category pages and the tags pages bring together lots of useful and similar content, therefore providing focused content, useful for both readers and Search Engines. There’s a good article at U the Guru on this and for those WP users looking for help on this, there is a handy Robots plugin which allows you to choose noindex for individual posts or categories etc.

12. Getting Indexed quickly

Normally, you are at the mercy of the Search Engines as to how long it takes them to index new pages or changes to existing pages though you can use tools such as sitemaps which will help. With blogs, you have another tool up your sleeve which is called pinging and while this isnt strictly an SEO element, you cannot start to work on the ranking of a page until it is indexed and so I think that its relevant to include.

In Wordpress and Typepad, the area you want to look for is called Update Services (Options >> Writing in Wordpress or Settings >> Writing in 2.5) and you need to include a specific address for the sites which you want to inform that you have added a new post pinging is rather like tapping the search engines on the shoulder and beckoning them over to your blog to index it. Anywhere, there’s a list of sites to ping here. You might as well use the XML sitemap in addition, particularly if it can be done automatically for you there are a number of plugins for Wordpress users to do this such as this one.

13. Social Bookmarking

We will look at the main use of social bookmarks in the 3rd part of the series – but bear in mind that when you use them, ensure that the social bookmarking images have the alt tag automatically included which includes the post title hence enhancing the keywords it contains. If there are text links as well then include the Title attribute but, to save the pagerank for your own blog, make these links “no follow”.

Well, congratulations if you have made it through all of these and even more so if you already have them implemented on your blog. Blogs may be inherently attractive to Search Engines because of their structure and being regularly updated, but there are still many things that you can do to help develop their ranking further and I hope you will find the major ones mentioned here. Happy optimising!

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Optimising your Blog for your Readers

Mark White, Blog Consultant — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:58:33 +0000

This is the first of a 3 part series looking at blog optimisation. When people talk about how to optimise blogs, they are generally referring to Search Engine Optimisation while this is important, and something Ill be looking at in depth in part 2 of the series, its only part of what we should be thinking about when we optimise a blog.

First of all, I think that its important to look at optimising a blog for the people who really count – your readers! Its in your interest to make sure that their experience is as pleasant, productive and straightforward as possible. Why? Because these are the people that you want to connect with, the ones you want to talk to, the ones you want to work with and the ones that you want to recommend you to others. Be nice to them!

You need to make sure that you help them to find the information that they are looking for, point them in the direction of other subjects they might also find interesting and generally ensure that they stay around to concentrate on the content you are offering without struggling to find or use it.

So, in this respect, what are the areas that we should be looking at and how can we help our readers really benefit from what we write in our blog:

1. Write posts on topics which interest your readers

I know that we come back to content time and time again, but it really is so key that I’m afraid it’s worth repeating once more here. Write things that your readers will find useful, relevant and interesting! You already do? Great – then concentrate on the rest of this post and the other two in the series because they’ll support what you’re doing every step of the way. If you’re still looking for help then, when you’ve finished here, may I suggest checking out Brian Clark at Copyblogger – recommended. Seriously.

2. Consider the layout of your posts

Try not to have great swaths of text which create an often impenetrable barrier between your readers and the ideas you wish to communicate. Make sure that you break it up, have areas of white space and use subheadings to highlight your points – where appropriate, use bullet points as well and generally make sure that the layout supports your content rather than hides it.

3. Good Navigation

Good navigation should be consistent, easy to find and easy to follow. When your readers are on your blog, the last thing you want is for them to be floundering around trying to find other posts or searching unsuccessfully for them. Why not? Because they wont keep searching – they will have already left and gone to find it elsewhere.

Try to keep the main navigation menus in the same place on each page and if you use the general blog conventions such as the home page link being in the header, then remember that you are also looking to attract non blog readers who will be looking for a ‘home’ button. Bottom line, make navigation as intuitive as possible for everyone and let them concentrate on your content.

4. Easy Subscriptions

Whatever you may be using for subscription forms, make sure that it is easy for your readers to sign up for – this goes for both your RSS feed and any newsletter sign up you might have. For your RSS feed, offer an RSS via email option (and link to a quick overview of what RSS is and its use to your readers) and for your newsletter sign up, include it on all pages, reassure about your privacy policy and perhaps include a giveaway as a sign up sweetener too.

5. Help them to read more

If someone has been interested in what you have written then make sure they can find other posts on your blog which might cover the same or closely related topics. Either in your sidebar or following the individual posts, give them a list of the most popular, frequently read or other related posts which they would be interested in. Any element of this type, well placed, will help to direct them to other related posts helping, in turn, to keep your blog “sticky”.

6. Use Descriptive Categories

Blogs in general offer you a wonderful automatic filing system in the form of categories and archives – Wordpress also offers you the option of using tags as well to help classify your posts. When it comes to naming your categories and selecting your main tags, choose them carefully and make them descriptive as they will provide another method for your readers to find relevant posts which will be of interest. If the category names also contain your key words then there will be additional Search Engine value as we will see in part 2. As they will also act as a type of secondary navigation for your readers, try to keep them consistent.

7. Search

The Search function is another element which needs to be on every page if someone has arrived at your blog for the first time and is looking for something specific, then the search box is likely to be their first port of call. So make it visible … and make sure it works!

8. Don’t forget to link out

Although conventional wisdom on normal websites says that linking out equates to losing a potential customer, this is not so on a blog. Links out are of great benefit to your readers because it takes them to sites that you deem to be worthwhile to read, hence developing further the trust they have in you and your recommendations. So when you write posts, dont forget to link out where applicable either to support your arguments or to direct your readers to other valuable resources.

9. Make Commenting easy

Comments should really be the lifeblood of blogs which enable you to develop interaction with your readers and ultimately a community feel, so make sure that you make it as easy as possible for your readers to leave them. At the same time you do need to safeguard your blog against spammers so what would be the best solution? Making your readers sign up or log in to leave a comment is likely to dissuade all but the keenest commenters and especially first timers. So do your comment moderation behind the scenes and use spam filtering software such as Akismet.

10. Can they contact you?

Try to ensure that you are as easily accessible as possible. I know a number of bloggers who are reticent to do this, but in a business blog it is imperative that your contact details can be easily found, ideally on a specific contact page. You should also have a Profile page so that people can get a little more background on you and what you do which again should contain contact details. It might well be to your benefit!!

As a final check, if you are able to make sure that your readers dont have to jump through hoops when they want to do something on your blog, then incorporate it. What do I mean? Well, look at it from your readers point of view as a test, go onto any blog or website and any time that you hesitate or arent sure what to do next on it, try to think why and then make sure that situation doesnt happen on your own blog.

To paraphrase the well used phrase – “they hesitate, you lose”. So make sure that your readers dont have to hesitate but can find their way around your blog and around the information it contains.

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