Archive for the ‘Get found on Google’ Category

• I recently came across a situation where one of my clients was told by his business consultant that his  blog was for one purpose only.  To educate people  and share good information.  My client was told that his blog should not be used for “marketing purposes” and I tend to disagree.

• If your blog isn’t to be used for “marketing”, then what is the purpose in having it?  Now don’t get me wrong, educating people and offering your visitors valuable information is crucial to the success of your blog, but factoring self promotion and marketing is also important.  You have to find good balance in your blog to make sure you are educating your readers, after all that is what most people are looking for when they read blogs, they want information and providing valuable information will keep them coming back for more.

• My recommendation to you when creating a blog post is to educate FIRST and market second.  If you approach your posts by marketing first, you will most likely loose the interest of your readers within a few moments.

• The best way to use your blog as a marketing tool is to provide valuable information with hyperlinks directly to your product pages where people can take action with the product or service you are offering.  It serves three purposes:

1. Blogs create fresh content which is what “Googlers” want and what Google wants to provide.
2. Leads potential clients to the place to take action
3. Create links throughout your site or from your blog to your site, which helps with your quest to work with Google.

• To learn everything you need to know about how to blog along with what to blog about read “profitable blogging”

• For those who wish to get started on blogging, whether it be to make money or to keep in touch with family and friends, trying to figure out what to name your blog can be one of your biggest challenges.   I have an easy solution to what many find to be a big “road block” to moving forward.

• If you want people to be able to find your blog via the Internet Search Engines like Google, the fastest and easiest road there is to find a domain name for your blog that matches what people are searching for related to your subject matter.  If you have read earlier posts on how to get found on Google, you understand that the Google algorithms are programmed to help people searching on Google to find the most relevant results. Typically, the most relevant results to any search would be a domain name that matches the search term…right?  If you “Google” nadine blogs, the number one result is currently www.nadineblogs.com, because the domain name matches the search term.

• You may be asking yourself how exactly you figure what people are searching for…and again…pretty easy to figure out…IF you know where to look.

• Google has a “keyword tool” I like to use to help me figure out what to name my websites and blogs, which I STRONGLY encourage you to utilize before you name your blog or register your domain name.  The best way to use this tool is to type in different search terms that match the desired subject of your blog.  You will see a list of results with numbers that indicate the search volume for each term.

• Your best bet is to find a term that has the highest number of search volume and try to buy a domain name to match it.  To give you a good example, I will use one of my most recent clients, “Moore’s Martial Arts” in Livermore, CA.  Moore’s doesn’t currently have a website or domain name for the school located in Livermore, so we are starting from scratch.

• The steps I went through to find the “perfect” domain name are as follows:

• I search using the keyword tool for terms that included Livermore martial arts.  Martial arts being the most generic term I could think of to describe what they do.  Upon doing my research, I found that there are close to 600 searches each month for the term “Livermore Martial Arts“.  When you consider the amount of search volume for that particular keyword, it would make great sense to see if I can obtain the domain name “Livermore Martial Arts”, which is exactly what we did.

• IMPORTANT NOTE: It is important for me to note that just because I have identified a great domain name that matches the search term, it in no way guarantees this website will make it to the front page of the search engines.  What helps get you to the front page of the search engines is good content that is relative to the term you wish to be found for.  It is also VERY important to submit your site to the search engines by submitting your site map.  No site map…no search results.

• Learn more about submitting your site to the search engines on this recent post. Your site will not be indexed until you submit your site map.  Make sure to read this post.

• So, I have been watching very closely to see what would happen with our Google Wonder Wheel experiment and I have an update!

• If you have been following this experiment, you know we started on page 14, moved up to page 8, then it was slow moving to page 7…where we were stuck for a bit.  Click here to read first post.

• GREAT NEWS…we have moved to page 5 for the term “Door Hanger Printing”, which shows that paying attention to the Google Wonder Wheel can and does make a difference.

• Let me tell you some of the other steps I took to help “my cause” with Google.

• Though Google specifically tells you not to submit any page to the search engine which has a link from your home page, I did end up submitting the link after waiting…and waiting…and waiting for Google to crawl the page.  Submitting your site to Google

• Once Google finally crawled the page, we came up two more pages in the rankings to page five, in position #3.

• I have also added articles about “door hanger printing” to our PrinterBees Blog because as I have mentioned before, Google likes blogs because the content is fresh.

• You should also note that every time I have used the term “door hanger printing” in this particular post, I have linked back to the door hanger printing page on PrinterBees, creating another link.  ONE-WAY links pointing to your site are one of the factors Google considers when indexing all websites.  The more links you have, the better.  The more links you have from “authority sites”, even better!  I will explain “authority sites” in another post…it’s complicated.

• Use the above tips to help get your website/web pages linked on Google.  It really does work!

• Let me explain….Anytime you can link back to your own site using your specific keywords, it helps your “cause”. Let me give you a  very specific example with a keyword specific to one of my clients.

• The keywords “California mortgage loan” or “California home mortgages”  are being targeted by one of my blog subscribers who owns the blog/site www.cahomemortgage.net.   In the previous sentence, I created three valuable links to his site.

• A direct link by typing his domain name and linking it back to his site.  I have also created two even more valuable links back to his site by using his keywords and linking those back to his blog site.  When you have a link back to your blog/site which is  your actual keywords, it gives Google more clues as to what your site is about.

• The lesson here…create as many links back to your site on other websites or blogs which contain your keywords.  Having links to your site from other sites or blogs is one of the factors Google uses to determine ranking.  You can achieve more links by participating in social networking sites along with participating in other blogs and commenting and creating links that way as well.  Anytime you can participate AND add value to a blog or forum AND create links, it is a real win/win situation!

• The experiment with the Google Wonder Wheel Continues and we are up seven pages in the Google Index in just six days for the search term “door hanger printing”.

• When we started the experiment by using the Wonder Wheel as a way to identify the proper keywords, we were indexed in the middle of the page 14 for the term “door hanger printing”.  The results are astounding and Google hasn’t even crawled the updated page yet!  (Read the details about the Wonder Wheel here)

• On September 15th, I made changes to the web page based on what I found on the Google Wonder Wheel, created a blog post on our PrinterBees blog and of course included the key words in my blog posts on this blog site.  As of today, the page is the bottom of page seven and when I reviewed the “cached” page, it shows that Google last crawled the page on September 14th, so I will need to be patient to see what happens when the search engine crawls the page again.  I have my fingers crossed and again invite to you watch as the experiment continues.

• P.S.  You may be wondering how I knew that Google hadn’t crawled the most updated version of my webpage since since the 15th of September.  In the image above, I have put a red box around the word “cached”.  If you click on the link “cached” it will show you the version of the page that Google is currently using to rank your site in the index.   It will also show the you a date on the top of the page, which is the last time Google crawled your site.  I hope this is helpful to you!!!  Don’t forget to read the initial article about the Google Wonder Wheel and how I used it to increase our rankings.

In the last post, I described how to use the new tool found on Google to help your rankings and as promised will follow up with videos and posts to check our progress with this test.  This is a totally new approach for me to SEO, so we will learn as we go along and I will show you step by step what I have done and what I have changed to increase the rankings for the search term “door hanger printing“.

One of my other tactics is to make sure I am also creating links back to my website using the term Door Hanger Printing to help my cause of climbing up the ranks.  Currently, Printerbees is on middle of page 14 for the search term Door Hanger Printing.

The first video recorded in this series is located here. Hoping the “Google Wonder Wheel” will help us get ranking for Door Hanger Printing.

One Day – advanced 4 positions so far.  Up from middle of page 14 to the top of page 14.  Page 13, here we come!!!!

• I am often asked how to go about choosing the right keywords to optimize for with regards to Google and I have to tell you that it really is no easy task, it does take research and more importantly it takes time.  For companies that provide SEO services, one of the most time consuming aspects of doing SEO for any website, is determining the right keywords to optimize for.   There are several factors to consider when choosing your keywords and I am hoping this article will help explain what to look for and how to do it yourself.

• What needs to be considered when choosing your keywords is the following:

1. Who am I trying to attract?
2. What might they be looking for (“Googling”) when they enter a search term
3. How will I identify the most qualified prospects, the ones looking to make a purchase?
4. What is the competition for the keyword?  When you “Google” the keyword, how many results come up?  Is it 35,000,000 or is it 500,000?  Obviously it will be much more difficult to compete with 35 Million other websites vs. 1/2 million.
5. How many people are actually searching the keyword you wish to optimize for?
6. What words are “related” to the keywords you are optimizing for?  This is called your “semantic keywords”.  Semantic keywords are explained in the youtube video below.

   Here is the link to the Google Adwords/Keyword Tool so you can try it yourself
   The keyword we are after is “door hanger printing”, so you can Google it to see how we are doing.

• I encourage you to watch the video, which will explain how to accomplish what I have listed above.  It is also VERY important that you you use the tools Google makes available to you to increase your chances of being indexed.  If this all seems like a bit more work than you have time for.  I do have a team of people who do much of my SEO.  It is very time consuming, but if you have more time than money, I do encourage you to try it on your own first.  What have you to loose?  If you feel like you need help with your SEO and managing it, I provide SEO services for a monthly service fee starting at $499/mo.  The clients I work with do rank, do get traffic and do see an increase in business when we start optimizing their sites.  The investment pays for itself several times over.  Again, following all of the tutorials included here will help you to rank yourself.

Follow the series of videos to see how the rankings are coming along for “door hanger printing” and if what we are doing is working or not.

I felt I needed to share a recent article I read on Line 25, which is a website about web design. The article listed the 20 most common used plugins for Word Press. It is a good list, many of which are in use in my own blog.

• When it comes to getting found on Google, on of the most important steps that hasn’t yet been covered in the series Getting Found On Google is submitting a site map to Google.

• In order for Google to know your blog is up and ready for business, you must invite the spiders to “crawl on by” by submitting a site map. Your site map tells Google what pages are on your site and gives the spiders a “map” of where to crawl. A site map also helps the spiders crawl your site fast, fast is important!

• I personally use Google XML Sitemap. I found it easy to install and set up, and I like it because it is automated. This handy little “widget” keeps Google updated on new posts, pages, etc. This site was being indexed on Google in just a week after submitting my site map via the plugin Google XML. Though your site may not be “ranking”, you can find out if Google even knows your site/blog exists by typing your blog URL blog address in the Google search bar.

• The Contact Form 7 plugin is also a great tool I have implemented on my own site so I can easily be contacted or asked questions on blogging, search engines, Google, etc. I found it very easy to add in to the site.

• Adding a plugin for people to bookmark your articles on sites like “Delicious”, share them via email or “digg” them on the “Digg” social network is very important. Adding this sort of plugin to your blog site will help spread the word. It is really important to getting found on Google because it creates links in to your site.

• These are just a few on this great list of 20 I have tried myself and encourage you to check out the list. It is a great list and any of these plugin’s can be installed right from the “Add New” menu item under the Appearance section of your side menu. See below for the images to guide you.

Happy Blogging – Nadine Blogs!

Lesson Six:

Naming your pages:   How you choose to name your HTML web page files and blog posts is very important. Every clue you can offer Google helps “your cause”. For your Word Press blog, make sure take advantage of your ability to use the “permalink” editing option, right below where you title your article to make sure it matches your content OR gives Google the proper hints about what you website or blog is.

For your HTML pages, use all lower case letters to name your pages AND used a “-” between any words.

Example using Keller Williams Business Cards.html, should be named keller-Williams-business-cards.html. When you have spaces instead of dashes in-between any file name that has multiple words, each space will become a % on the Internet. Examples would be Keller Williams Business Cards.html would become Keller%Williams%Business%Cards.html. It’s not clean and it doesn’t help your cause.

I have had make many repairs to the names of my own files from making this mistake many times. Remember, always in lower case AND no spaces in your files name, always dashes.   Same goes for naming your images or anything else which will find its way to the Internet on your website.

Lesson seven:

Proper tagging: When creating your website or blog, it is important to have proper “title tags”, .“meta description tags”, “meta key word tags”, and  “Robot. Tags”.  I know it sounds overwhelming, but with blogging it is super easy and very helpful if you wish to rank.  Again, it gives Google the clues it needs to know where to “index” you.

This is what they all mean:

“Title Tags” – The title of the page within the site or blog. Make your title tags relative using the information above.  It is also what shows up as the title of your page or site on the search engine listing. While putting your company name may seem important, you may consider leaving it out if it won’t encourage someone to “click”.

“meta description tag” - This is a SHORT, did I mention “short” description of what the web page is about and should include your keywords. If you make your description too long, it could end up counting against you (I will explain this part in future lesions), so use your words wisely and this can end up being the description that shows under the page title in the Google search results so it should also be a good “heading” that captures the persons attention who is reading it when they find your site in the Google Index. Also, make sure it includes your most important keywords.

“meta key words tags” - this is a list of words that best describe the subject of your website to the search engine. The list should not be too long. Did you hear me???  The list should NOT include too many words.  Keep your code clean and precise, it works in your favor.

“Robot tags” - Your robot tags tell the search engine if the search engine spiders should crawl the page or NOT crawl a particular page. You are probably asking yourself why you would have Google NOT crawl one of your pages. Well, the answer is simple, the fast Google can crawl your site, the relevant pages of your site, the better. There is no reason to have Google “follow” your companies “Contact Us” page for instance. That particular page most likely has nothing on it that will improve your chance with Google, so why have the spiders crawl that page. You want them in and out as past as possible. To have the spiders crawl the page, use the word “follow”, to keep the spiders from crawling a page, use the tag “no follow”.   You will see this option in Word Press, for HTML pages, you need to manually add them in.

Click here if you missed part 1 or part 2 of this series.  The information contained in part 1 and part 2.

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Getting  Indexed on Google Lesson Four:

Use the social media networks like YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter to name a few.  When we added the Mona.vie and Herbalife business cards to our product line, we created a web-page as well as individual blog posts for each product and a YouTube video.

The video was a simple slide show created using Picasa (a free Google photo organizing and editing product).  We announced the  new product lines, embedded the YouTube videos in to the blog posts as well as the new pages we created.   We were ranking on page one within a few days!

You will want to create your own YouTube channel and make sure to name your videos according to the key words you want to be found on.  I encourage you do to “podcasts” and post them on YouTube to create links to your site.  A great product for doing video pod casting is the “flip” hi definition digital video recorder.  It is about the size of a deck of cards, does great videos and comes with software that allows you to upload straight to YouTube.  What could be easier.

Using the social media networks creates links to your site.  An example of some of the social networks which should be on your radar are listed below this article.  Clicking on them will also allow you to bookmark this article which will help other people find it.

Getting  Indexed on Google Lesson Five:

Mixed media – What the heck is “mixed media“?  Mixed media is the use of text, images, video and sound and your blog.  Your blog is the perfect place for mixed media type content.

One of the most important things to remember with your images or anything media related is to NAME THEM PROPERLY.  This is so important, so I will say it again…NAME YOUR MEDIA FILES PROPERLY.

You are probably asking…how do I name them properly?  First let’s examine what NOT to do.  If the images in your website have names like “banner1.jpg” how does this help Google know what your website is about? Files not named properly tell Google a whole lot of nothing!

What if you named your images like we do on Printerbees.  On our “business card printing page”, the images have names like “business-card-printing.jpg” or “color-business-card-printing.jpg”.  When Google comes across these images, what do the file names tell Google about our website? It helps Google to know we are in the business card printing business.

One of the simple things often forgotten and overlooked is the use of “alternative text” also knows as “alt tags”, these tags that are always an option when you add in an image to your website or blog.  The “alt text” tags help people who are reading websites without downloading graphic images like on cell phones or don‘t automatically download images know what the images are.  Using alt tags also gives Google one more clue of where to index your site!  Every clue  you give Google helps your cause.

Happy Blogging and I encourage your questions, so that I can answer them not only for you, but for other people who may have similar questions they want answered.  Email your questions to nadine@nadineblogs.com