The Maine SEO Blog

…or at least your online presence.

1. Get writing practice.

It’s easy to get stuck in one writing style on your own blog. Guest blogging can help expand your horizons and push your writing limits.

My first guest blog post was a very sarcastic one on SEOmoz’s YOUmoz (their user-generated blog). It was just for fun; but not everyone was laughing…

…but I did something a little different. The caveat: not everyone will enjoy what you write.

2. Expand your network.

Connect with industry leaders, your blogging heros, and more! Which leads to…

3. Start the conversation.

Blogs with a broader reach than your own tend to get more comments. Be prepared to answer them!

4. Get inspired.

Conversation, other posts on the blog, and a number of other factors could lead to inspiration for more blogposts.

I received the following comment from a fellow SEOmozzer…

…which led me to write this sarcastic sister post about Google Webmaster Tools. Writing several guest blogs led me to writing this post. See the snowball effect?

5. Get more exposure.

Last, but most importantly is the exposure you get from guest blogging. Whether it’s to a new and different or maybe just a broader audience – exposure, if nothing else, is the reason to guest blog.

Usually the service (and those who run it) will tweet about it:

And they’ll also include a bio signature with some pretty influential links:

Convinced guest blogging is for you?

Get out there and start writing! Nearly every industry will have some user-generated content blogs, it’s just a matter of finding them!

Nicki Hicks
Guest Blogger

If you’ve talked to a web marketer lately and they give you tips, I’ll bet I know one of them: Blog.

If you’ve talked to a friend about a wonderful idea you have, I bet I know what they said: Blog about it.

If you’ve asked a question online recently, I bet I know where you found your answer: A blog.

I think you get the point.

Blogs are just, well, awesome. Put aside reasons for the average foodie to take beautiful high def photographs of their latest creation and start a blog (though they do have the best recipes), there are a ton of SEO benefits to blogging.

You can target the long tail.

Through keyword research, have you found some of those beautifully extraordinary keyword phrases that you can seem to put anywhere on your website? The blog’s the place for ‘em.

It’s wonderful link bait.

Blogs are one of those mythical creatures where it doesn’t take a whole lot of link building work to build up those backlinks. Sure, you have to do some, but put a great resource online and people are sure to find it. Plus, people really appreciate specific, targeted posts that answer their burning questions.

Social media’s all the buzz, but don’t discount a space with a few more characters to say something.

Not only are people saying Get a blog, but they’re also saying Get on Twitter! Get on Facebook! Get on LinkedIn! Get on TheSuperCoolestSocialNetworkEver!

What do you do? If you can manage the time to blog and be on all the hippest social networks, then by george, do it. But at the end of the day, it’s all about content creation. That said, go where you can create content around more than 140 characters: to a blog. (Then, if you have another extra moment in your hectic life, just be sure to tweet about your posts )

Incorporate images, video, and podcasts.

Let’s not forget these things also rank well on the search engines. Optimize any of your images/videos/podcasts the best you can and make sure you’ve got some text!

Nicki Hicks
Blogging for SEO

Image by alamodestuff

Many blog platforms are set up, by default, to catch any spammy looking email address or website, as well as a comment with more than two links within it. Of course, the blogger always has the ability to refine these parameters; even approving on a comment-by-comment basis. If your comments are getting disapproved, this might be why:

Your name isn’t India SEO. That may be what you do – and kudos for the attempt to incorporate as much anchor text as possible; but I’m sure your mother didn’t see you for the first time and think I shall call him India SEO.

You’re not adding value. While “Really great post, I’ve subscribed to your blog” might boost the ego of the blogger, it does little more than that. The comments section is meant to create a conversation – not accentuate an ego trip.

You included links in your comment. While readers might find a substantial resource over at your website for Viagra, I’ll thank you to not include links like that. Every blogger is different, so while many don’t, I approve comments with links if they provide a valuable resource – especially when I know the commenter isn’t linking to their own site.

All of these things add up to one reason your comments are being disapproved: you look like spam. Whether you’re trying to be or not, commenting using these tactics makes you look like a spammer and any blogger, if they’re paying attention, will delete and/or block your comments.

Nicki Hicks
Are you adding value?

FeedBurner is a great platform for seamlessly keeping your blog subscribers up-to-date on your latest posts. The added bonus? As the blog owner, you get some pretty sweet stats out of the deal.

A lot of people (myself included) probably don’t check their FeedBurner stats often enough – but why would we? The FeedBurner dashboard is not the most intuitive under the sun. So let’s start with something simple: I want to see how many email subscribers I have and who they are.

From the main Analyze page, click “See more about your subscribers”. (By the way, subscribers on this page shows the total number of subscribers; reach denotes how many people made an action – viewed/clicked.)

You’ll be taken to a page with a graph – showing where your subscribers are actually subscribing from. If this is all the information you were looking for, then you’re done!

Here comes the tricky part. If you’re more interested in email subscribers, then scroll almost to the bottom of the Subscribers page until you see “Email Subscription Services”. Click “FeedBurner Email Subscriptions” to expand the box, then click “Manage Your Email Subscriber List”:

Now you’ll have a list of all of the email subscribers to your blog!

As a side note, I don’t know how accurate the numbers on FeedBurner truly are; but what they will do is give you a relative number of subscribers and stats for measuring purposes.

Nicki Hicks
Seeking out hard-to-find statistics

• Theme: a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design.
• Themes alter the look and presentation of material

Understanding your site (Knowing what you’re looking for)

• Information architecture: the structure and organization of your information
• Kinds of information
  - Posts
  - Links
  - Media
  - Pages
  - Comments

Things to think about

• Homepage
  - An informational page with information about my business
  - My recent posts
  - My best posts
  - All of the above
• Primary buckets of information
  - Top level nav should incapsulate your 5(ish) most important buckets of information
• Building a sitemap: outline of content on your site intended to organize the information so people who visit can understand it (love this definition)

Understanding your site: Vocabulary

• (Photo/Web/Video) Blog
  - focus is a chronological diary of posts
  - homepage showcases recent updates
  - has navigation elements, but often understated
• Magazine theme
  - think blog, on steroids
  - content freshness important, but quality has value too
  - home page usually showcases “best of” content
  - content often fits into clear categories (navigation)
• Content management system (business)
  - CMS
  - typically refers to complex, page centric sites
  - audience usually comes for static information, not “fresh” content
  - common for business & non-profits
• Portfolio
  - not an individual showcase
  - may or may not have “blog” component
  - typically a large focus on media
  - often a small, media-centric CMS

3 Types of Themes (from a Licensing perspective)

• Freely available, GPL (General Public License) compatible
• Commercially supported GPL
• Proprietary (non GPL) – doesn’t have to mean commercial
• Premium = NOT a type of theme

What comes in the box

• Default, pre-installed WordPress theme [Kubrick]
• Best place to find themes: Official WP Themes Directory
• Other resources: Smashing Magazine, ThemesPreview.com, WPHacks, Premium WP, StudioPress

Things to consider

• Price – think about time spent after purchase
• Support
• Quality of Design
• Features
• Ease of use

Tips for finding a consultant

• Show, don’t tell (see examples of themes)
• Ask for referrals
• Look behind the curtain (ask for examples for “out of the box” features)
• Be realistic about price expectations
• Have they given back to the community?

Customization

• Look for theme specific settings under “appearance” menu

Jake Gold, C. Murray Consulting
@jakemgold