Blog & Feed Search SEO
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Optimizing for Blog & Feed Engines
Yahoo News & Blog Search
– Sorted by relevance. Only top 4 get onto News SERPs
Google Blog Search
– Sorted by relevance. No way to submit. Only a matter of time before it ends up in the “One Box”
Technorati
– Sorted by date. Tagged posts featured in sidebar.
Feedster
– Sorted by date.
PubSub
– No immediate SERPs. Delivered only in RSS.
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Optimizing Your Feeds
Full text, not summaries 20 or MORE items (not just 10) Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post) Keyword-rich item Your brand name in the item Your most important keyword in the site container Compelling site Don’t put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss) An RSS feed that contains enclosures (i.e. podcasts) can get into additional RSS directories & engines
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com
Slashdot headlines syndicated on Nanodot.org sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Optimizing Your Blog
Rejig your internal hierarchical linking structure
– – – – Tag clouds & tag pages (e.g. UltimateTagWarrior plugin) Related Posts (e.g. Contextual Related Posts plugin) Top 10 posts Next & Previous posts
Build inbound links
– Add Technorati tags to your posts (must claim your blog first) – Get onto bloggers’ blogrolls – Trackbacks & comments won’t help with link gain
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Tags point to Technorati tag pages Tags point to internal tag sspencer@netconcepts.com pages
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com
This tag page contains post content
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
This tag page contains no post content
No tag cloud on sub pages
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Optimizing Your Blog
Title tags
– Blog name at the end of the title, not at the beginning – Tag name should go in title on a tag page – Customize with additional keywords for display only on your home page – Override title tags w/ custom one (“SEO Title Tag” plugin)
URLs
– Rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores – 301 redirect from yourblog.com to www.yourblog.com – Maintain legacy URLs even after switching blog platforms
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com
#8 for “web marketing blog” after creating a custom title for the home page sspencer@netconcepts.com
Great name for the blog!
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
“SEO Title Tag” plugin for WordPress
Free & open source Allows you to override the title tag with a custom one (defined through a custom field in a post or a page) Allows you to define a custom home page title Reverses the order of the blog name and the title, or drop the blog name altogether, or replace it with a shorter nickname Puts the tag in the title of (UltimateTagWarrior) tag pages Uses category’s description as the title on category pages Has an Options page in the admin to change settings Download at www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin.htm
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Optimizing Your Blog
Anchor text
– Make the post’s title a link to the permalink page – Use Neat-o tool (webuildpages.com/neat-o) to look for opportunities to request revisions to anchor text on inbound links – Internally link back to old, relevant posts within the body of a blog post. Don’t use “here” or “previously” etc. as the anchor text!
Heading tags
– category name on category page – Yes for post titles, no for dates!
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Neat-o tool
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Post title is anchor text
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Optimizing Your Blog
“Sticky” posts
– Always appear at the top of the page – A way to add keyword-rich intro copy to a category page or tag page – e.g. Adhesive plugin
Author profile pages & author links (for group blogs)
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Sticky post
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Author profile
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Optimizing Your Blog
Emphasis tags within posts (bold, strong, etc.) Rel=Nofollow
– All links in trackbacks, comments, and in posts where you don’t vouch for the site – Where the link would be reciprocal
Pings
– Lets the feed search engines know you’ve updated – pingomatic.com, pingoat.com, pings.ws, feedshot.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Blog SEO
It’s child’s play!
My daughter, SEO-in-training
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
#10 for “neopet cheats” within 2 weeks, and with only 1 link!
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
More Gritty Details about RSS
1-click subscribe buttons “Add to My Yahoo” link in SERPs Tracking Customization Link gain
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Make It Easy to Subscribe
1-click add to your favorite aggregator
– “Add to ____” buttons – Link tags for autodiscovery
• e.g.
– Make your listings in the Yahoo! SERPs display the “Add to My Yahoo!” link
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
“Add to My Yahoo!” link in SERPs
Add your feed to your My Yahoo! Page Ping Yahoo! with your updates
– e.g. http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping? u=http://www.whatever.com/rss) – Or just use Pingomatic
More info at
– http://my.yahoo.com/s/publishers .html
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Track Subscriber Behavior
Subscribers from User-Agent field in log files
– e.g. User-Agent: Bloglines 2.0 (182 Subscribers)
Reads through “web bugs”
– e.g.
Clickthroughs through clicktracked URLs
– e.g. http://www.company.com/rss.php? 88288Cafaa903cf09ecafb231662ca053c4c56
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Personalized/Customized Feeds
Best practice for users
– Subscription form with interests tickboxes – Allow the user to stay anonymous if they so choose – Give them the option of subscribing via RSS, or email, or both
Personalized feeds not ideal from an SEO standpoint
– Because you’re not reinforcing the same items across multiple sites. – Offer standardized feeds for your affiliates, other webmasters. Make keyword-rich as a value-add.
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to a feed personalized to you
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Capture the Link Gain
Encourage links through RSS directories/engines submission (www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/), trackbacks, pings (Technorati, Pingomatic,…), Clicktrack your links and pass the link gain
– 301 (“permanent”) redirect, not 302, or link gain may not flow – Most ads and affiliate links suffer this fate – Warning: Feedburner use 302, not 301
Pay attention to each item title; it’ll become link text Keep your RSS feed URL at your own domain
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Taking It Further
Great ebook: Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS (Marketingstudies.net) MarketingProfs.com’ Thought Leaders Summit on blogs for marketing
– email me for a free copy of the executive summary, podcast, and transcript: sspencer@netconcepts.com
Download the Powerpoint from
– http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/blog-feed-search-seo.ppt
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com