The Maine SEO Blog

I just got back from a radio interview where they asked for my Top 5 Blogging Tips. Since I’m a strong supporter of business blogs, and our own web marketing blog generates so much search engine traffic, I figured I’d share those tips here on the Maine SEO Blog.

Own Your Own Domain Name

Make sure that you own your own domain name for your blog. That means you want to blog at mycompany.com/blog or mycompanyblog.com, but not mycompany.typepad.com or mycompany.wordpress.com. Two reasons for this:

1. When you blog on a domain owned by someone else (i.e., wordpress.com or blogspot.com) you’re building up trust for that domain, not for your own. Why would you want to blog for the man when you can blog for yourself?
2. If you ever need to change platforms (we did a couple of years back, moving from TypePad to WordPress) you will lose all of your inbound links if you didn’t first establish your own domain name. All those links to mycompany.typepad.com/whatever? They don’t get to come with you.

Blog so That the Search Engines Can Find You

That means starting with a keyword analysis to determine what keyword phrases your audience is using at the search engines. Then using those keywords in your blog post title, headers, in the first sentence or two, and sprinkled throughout your post. Also drop them in your meta-description, meta-keywords, tags, categories and alt-tags.

Create Keyword-Rich Links Back to Your Website

For many of us, a blog is the place where we establish our credibility and engage with our audience, while our website is where we do our sales. If this is the case for you, you should link your keywords in your blog post to appropriate pages on your website. For example, if you wanted to promote your web design skills you might blog about the top 10 web design mistakes and then link the words website design to the page on your website where you talk about your mad design skills.

Engage Your Audience On and Off Your Blog

If someone takes the time to comment on one of your posts (unless their “name” is SEO India, Whiter Teeth, or Natural Cialis) then you should respond to their comments. Likewise, you should be active in social networking on sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as applicable for your business, and engage your network; ask questions, answer queries, and promote their stuff as well. They will be more receptive and interested when you post a link to your most recent post.

Be Patient and Persistant

Blogging is not like PPC ads on Google; you don’t get page one results from day one. Instead, it takes time to succeed. I’d recommend 2 – 3 posts a week for six months before you start to get the results you’re looking for. Although that may seem daunting, those posts continue to drive new qualified leads to your site for as long as you have your blog. I have posts from 2006 that still bring in hundreds of new visitors every month. Now that’s return on investment.

Rich Brooks
Top 5 Lists Are Easier Than Top 10 Lists

Photo credit: WoodleyWonderWorks

During the PRWeb webinar I attended a while back, Harry Brooks (of Search First Internet Marketing) brought up a few interesting points during the Q&A section of the seminar. He’d mentioned earlier some great places where you have full control over link building – including pages you link to and the anchor text you use.

Here are five of those places.

1. Blog

A blog is probably the best – and my top pick – for creating (and controlling links). Think about it. You can create keyword rich posts with keyword rich links to other posts on your blog and pages on your website. What could be better?

Better yet, guest blogging will get you keyword rich links (controlled by you) from another blog.

2. Social Bookmarks

I’m the first to admit I don’t use social bookmarks as often as I should, but you certainly have full control of the links that you share and bookmark; and therefore a great place to advertise links to your own Internet property.

3. Article Marketing

Like guest blogging, article marketing is another place you have full control over the links that appear in the article you post. Better than blogs, though, articles can be distributed to hundreds if not thousands of applicable websites.

4. Directories

There’s an argument for and against submitting to directories, but the short story is: they don’t hurt. Free directories like DMOZ are essential, as are local listing directories if your business has a brick-and-mortar location.

5. Press Releases

Press releases can sometimes be forgotten, but shouldn’t. Why? You guessed it. Those links! Make sure your press release is well optimized and full of keyword rich links; like article marketing, press releases can be picked up by a ton of news publishing sites.

Nicki Hicks
Link control

A while back, I wrote about the importance of anchor text. To bring you up to speed, the words I just linked (“importance of anchor text”) are anchor text. Anchor text is the words you use in a link. That post will go into a little detail about the importance of anchor text for users and search engines.

But there’s a hidden reason anchor text is so phenomenal: for the skimmer.

That’s right, the skimmer. We all do it – we read ingeniously entitled blogposts and articles, skimming through for interesting information.

With anchor text placed naturally and intuitively, you can take advantage of the skimmer (in a good way). How can you make a difference? Use anchor text.

Think about it: if you link “click here”, the skimmer will have no context for what that link goes to. But a link that says “Click here for a free, no obligation SEO consultation” will let the skimmer know exactly where they’re going.

Likewise, bold, italicized, bullets, and headers can draw in the eye of the skimmer. If a click to contact you, sign up, or buy is the goal…make sure your anchor text makes it happen.

Nicki Hicks
Sneaky Skimmer

It’s no secret that getting more links results from creating more content.

Sure, a year-old article might still hold some importance. But what about that brand spanking new breaking story over at Mashable? Now that I have to link to.

Blog

Blogging is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to create link worthy content. It makes sense, right? Small, bite-size morsels of information that answer a specific question. Plus, blogs tend to be way less salesy than web sites, so folks are bound to link.

How can you get more link building bang for your blogging buck? Here are a few tips:

• Submit a guest blogpost
• Hit pain points with your blogpost
• Leave insightful comments on other blogposts
• Broadcast your posts in all the right ways

Press Releases

By their nature, Press Releases are spread all over the web. You, of course, pay for this service. However, it’s an easy and effective way to get news (and links back to your website) spread. Plus, local newspapers often pick these releases up.

Article Marketing

Likewise, article distribution is a paid service. However, the articles themselves are often glorified blogposts, are they not? Webmasters and bloggers link to the article, and with a link to your website in your signature, you’ll get the benefits of that link juice!

Social Media

The “shareability” of social media makes it a linking smorgasbord. No, these links don’t pass link juice, but you can only imagine the constant linking to pictures, images, video, websites, and blogs is bound to expose a website (or blog) to legitimate, powerful links.

Nicki Hicks
Content is king

In this post, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, talks about a lot of great things going on in search right now. He also incorporated on his latest Webmaster Tools video. In the video, Matt answers the question “What are some effective techniques for building links?” The video is below, but I’m going to recap his tips as well.

How does Matt Cutts suggest building links?

• Participate in the community: Answer a question, as in “hey I know the answer to this”.
• Original research: Do your own original research – test out what other people are saying. (Matt talks about the research Danny Sullivan did on Email spam filters.)
• Newsletters: If you have people already coming to the blog, why not make it even easier for them to get there?
• Social media: Participating here is a way to get more visibility, and more incoming links.
• Conferences: Speaking at conferences is a surefire way to get some backlinks.
• Blog: Establish yourself as an authority. You can use something like Posterous or Tumblr and not have to worry about updating software.
• Resources: Run a service or create a product (like a Firefox extension or WP Plugin)
• Other types of posts
  • How to’s and Tutorials: If you have to figure out the steps to something, why not write it down and share it?
  • Controversy (just don’t do it often)
  • Lists
  • Make videos: Videos are an easy way to share information. Do the work once, and it’s helpful all the way down the line.

BONUS TIP:

Create good site architecture: If it doesn’t make sense, Google can’t see your pages and people can’t find those pages to link to.

PageRank may be dead (dying?), but the authority powerful links give to a website is certainly not. But…where do you find these powerful links? Certainly not link building farms, but they may be easier to find than you think.

Submission

Directories. There’s a question as to whether directories have much value. They have little to none. That doesn’t mean they hurt though.

You can get a free listing (after more than likely waiting a very long time to be approved) at DMOZ, so it seems like a no-brainer. The most worthwhile paid listings are from the Yahoo Directory and Business.com (both $299 per year).

Forums. Every time you submit a forum post, you can attach a signature (not unlike an email signature) with links back to your website. Depending on the rules of the forum, you might also be able to include links within your post (although they are probably nofollowed).

Article Marketing. Submitting articles to article distribution sites (like Article Marketer and Hubpages), you can leave a signature just like you can with forums. Plus, these services (while usually paid), will distribute your article to the masses – and you don’t have to lift a finger!

Research

Competition. This is one of my favorite link building strategies. Head over to Yahoo Site Explorer and type in your competitor’s domain. After you sort by inlinks, except from the domain, and to the entire site, you’ll see all of your competition’s incoming links! Luckily for you, Yahoo will (generally) list the incoming links in order of authority, so (for the links that make sense), start going down the list!

Blogs and Articles. Google yourself. You might find old articles or blogposts that mention your company but don’t link to your website. Contact the webmaster and see if you can’t get them to fix that for you.

Then try Googling your best keywords and phrases using Google’s Blog search. Sometimes, you have to filter through the filth, but you’ll find the gems in no time!

Be proactive

Events, Sponsorships. Speaker at a conference? Sponsoring an event? Make sure the conference/event website is linking to yours. More often than not, those links are mighty powerful.

Social media. Links from your Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts may be nofollowed (LinkedIn’s are not nofollowed, but redirected), but you only have to take one look at your Analytics to see the traffic coming from them. What’s more – social media websites are fantastic for viral aspects – and they might lead to other links!

Comment, comment, comment. Likewise, comments are also nofollowed, but still count as a link! Again, someone else commenting sees your insightful thoughts; theoretically resulting in a link!

What are your favorite ways to discover new possibilities for incoming links?

Nicki Hicks
Link Building for Dummies

Recently, I blogged about a session at Social Media FTW (Search Engine Optimization and Social Media). In it, my boss, Rich Brooks, gave a great analogy for incoming links. I didn’t share it then since I wanted to give it its own special place…because I think it’s that powerful.

The analogy

Let’s say you’re visiting Chicago; so naturally you ask 10 friends what restaurant to go to while you’re there (as opposed to Googling it. You’re smart, you want recommendations.) 7 friends suggest Restaurant A, 3 suggest Restaurant B. All things being equal, you’re going with Restaurant A.

That is, of course, until you realize that those 3 friends are Chicago natives and the group of 7 are tourists, just like you. The 3 friends might even tell you “Tourists say Restaurant B, because they don’t know about A”. Then things change – the 3 friends have established their expertise now, and you’re on your way to B for some fine dining.

The same rule applies for Link Building

More links may be pointing to Website A than Website B. At first glance, that might mean that search engines would give more “value” to Website A (all other things being equal)…

But just like our restaurant scenario, things aren’t always as they appear. You see, as far as search engines are concerned, quality incoming links matter – not quantity. Sorry, A.

What’s the takeaway?

Sure, try to get out there and get all the incoming links you can. But the low hanging fruit won’t help you in the long term. Shoot for attaining links from those high quality websites that will help you establish your expertise.

Nicki Hicks
Visual Learner

Thanks for all the photos.

Anchor links aren’t for everyone or every website. However, a short list linked to anchors sections below can be incredibly helpful for readers. We use it on our SEO page like this:

With frost eminent, and more lettuce (and other assorted vegetables) than I know what to do with, I searched for “can you freeze lettuce” (knowing full well that even if you could, I probably wouldn’t want to anyway).

When I searched, I found this result (which told me I could indeed freeze it, but the taste would be compromised), accompanied by an even cooler discovery: an extra link to the anchored section I was looking for!

I’m not sure if this is a new development or not – as I’ve never seen or heard of it before. [Update: Because it is new!] But it just goes to show you – those anchors are important!

Nicki Hicks
Won’t ANYONE take this zucchini?!?!

Webmasters and bloggers are more likely to link to business blogs than business websites. You might’ve heard Rich say this.

The reality is: it’s true! That’s why you need to really work on leveraging that blog. Hopefully your blog and website link back and forth, so while a link to the blog isn’t as good for the website as a link directly to the website, it’s pretty close!

How do you leverage the blog? Create captivating posts: not only what’s going on with your business, but also what’s going on around town (bringing in the local bloggers), what’s going on in your industry (bringing in industry bloggers), etc.

Then, go looking for blogs/websites that talk about the same subject(s). Google’s blog search is my favorite resource. The best way to start is by commenting on blogs you find – not just the generic “Great blog, keep it up!” but something insightful, a question, or best of all: that starts a conversation. Then, start the process of asking for a link.

The next time you write, ask yourself: what would be of interest to a blogger enough so that he/she would want to link to my blog? At the same time, these posts shouldn’t overwhelm your blog; first and foremost you write for your readers. So what’s the balance? Writing interesting posts that will entice both links and potential customers.

Nicki Hicks
Link Building for Blogs

There are certain ways you should ask for a link, and then there are certain ways you shouldn’t.  I recieved such an email just this morning: and to that person, I’m sure your company means well…it just doesn’t show in this link request.

1. “Dear webmaster.” Never EVER address the person as “webmaster”. It quickly told me that this person a) copy and pasted this email and/or b) did not take the time to read any posts and find out my name.

2. (The first of many) grammar errors. Read, reread, and proofread your link request emails. Since this particular request was through my contact page, I could theoretically overlook one grammar or spelling mistake, but not the 5+ here!

3. Random characters and symbols. ‘Nuff said.

4. A compliment. OK…props for that. However, I know full well that my website is just as esteemed as the 2839 other blogs that received this identical link request.

5. Link and anchor text will appear later. Typically, you would include the link and copy you’d like to appear as anchor text in the initial email. Not knowing what link I’d even be giving this person makes me just plain nervous.

Nicki Hicks
Thanks, but no thanks