WordPress SEO to Be a Top SEO Blog #2

Posted by James Harrison on Feb 2, 2010 in Blog, SEO / Search Engine Optimization | 11 comments

I was thinking about this series, its’ goal, and what I had in mind when examining its’ title; “WordPress SEO to be a Top SEO Blog“. From how it sounds, this series is going to be about SEO tricks and WordPress optimization techniques that will boost my rankings for the term “SEO blog”, AND IT IS/WAS. But thinking back to my post like “Deep Down, You Know Why You’re Not Ranking #1” led me to believe that I have to do much more than just optimize this blog.

So the good news for the followers of this series is not only will I share tips I’ve done within this blog, I’ll also be sharing other things I’ll have to do  in order to compete in this saturated SEO blogsphere; which most likely will have nothing to do with WordPress at all.

Just keep that in mind.

So for my 2nd couple of hours..

Earlier I wrote a post on 2 free tools you can use to analyze your website. So I figured while I’m at it, I’d run my blog through these tools and make all the necessary adjustments to improve my scores and search engine friendliness.

First I ran the tool through the infamous websitegrader. You can view my report here. But my scores (prior to this post) are below.

Section	jameseo.com
Website Grade	97.7
Moz Rank	4
Google Indexed Pages	240
Traffic Rank	248,714
Blog Grade	68
Inbound Links	1,581
del.icio.us Bookmarks	11

Here are the points I missed;

• 3 most recent articles weren’t retweeted..
• 2 images without alt tags were found
• page title of the homepage is too long – 73, 70 is recommendation
• no meta descriptions in my 3 pages; about, contact & services.

Next I ran my blog through the SEO Workers analyzer tool.

I pretty much passed on all the basic and techy stuff. But here were some factors I wanted to address/keep in mind..

The phrase “SEO Blog”;

• Domain Keyword Density
• Homepage Keyword Density
• Site Keyword Prominence
• Main Keyword Theme of Site

In one of the sections of the analyzer tool results, it points out your top single keywords, 2-word keyphrases, and 3-word keyphrases.

I know I’m going old school here, but ceteris paribus..

Single Keywords: ["SEO" & "Blog" should be #1 & #2, if "SEO Blog" is my target term]

• seo – 35 – 3.02%
• blog – 14 – 1.21%
• 2008 – 11 – 0.95%
• http – 10 – 0.86%
• san – 10 – 0.86%
• james+harrison – 10 – 0.86%
• jameseo.com – 10 – 0.86%
• diego – 10 – 0.86%
• comments – 9 – 0.78%
• google – 9 – 0.78%
• 2009 – 9 – 0.78%

Check

Two Word Keyphrases: ["SEO Blog" should be 1st on the list]

• san diego – 10 – 0.86%  <— My Hometown
• http jameseo.com – 10 – 0.86%
• comments http – 9 – 0.78%
• seo blog – 7 – 0.60%
• diego seo – 6 – 0.52%
• jan 10 – 6 – 0.52% -
• search engine – 5 – 0.43%
• dec 09 – 4 – 0.34%
• engine optimization – 4 – 0.34%
• internet marketing – 4 – 0.34%

Looks like I’m going to have to write the phrase “SEO blog” everywhere I see “San Diego” or match the amount in other places witin the site. I pretty much just have to say “SEO Blog” 4 more times. I’ll also have to cut back on whatever it is I’m doing to show  “comments http” 9 times. Same with “http jameseo com”.

Three Word Keyphrases: ["SEO" & "Blog" should be in the 1st one or within the 1st 2 combined

• comments http jameseo.com - 9 - 0.78%
• san diego seo - 6 - 0.52%
• search engine optimization - 3 - 0.26%
• diego seo freelancer - 3 - 0.26%
• recognizes san diego - 2 - 0.17%
• website isn’t ranking - 2 - 0.17%
• awesome browser icon - 2 - 0.17%
• professional seo specialists - 2 - 0.17%
• reporter recognizes san - 2 - 0.17%
• james+harrison 30 jan - 2 - 0.17%

Obviously, I have some work to do. But maybe as I filter out "comments http" and "http jameseo com", and switch "search engine optimization" with "SEO", the phrase "SEO blog" will show up on the list.

URLs found in the page

This section lists the URLs found within the page, and the number of times each was found.

Found 78 urls of which 62 are unique.

Ideally, if your homepage is you main page going after your main keyword, then that page should have the most internal links pointing back to it. Always point more links saying your desired keywords to the most important pages within your site/blog.

The pages listed below should be listed in the same order as your 'page importance order'. So, I either have to add another site-wide link pointing to the JameSEO.com homepage or get rid of one of the sets of pages links (either in the top nav or sidebar).

• http://jameseo.com/services/ – 2
• http://jameseo.com/blog/blog-optimization/ – 2
• http://jameseo.com/about-james-harrison/ – 2
• http://jameseo.com/blog/san-diego/ – 2
• http://jameseo.com/deep-down-you-know-why-your-website-isnt-ranking-1/ – 2
• http://jameseo.com/essential-accounts-for-online-marketers/ – 2
• http://jameseo.com/a-san-diego-seo-freelancer-thats-me/ – 2
• http://jameseo.com/wordpress-seo-to-be-a-top-seo-blog/ – 2
• http://jameseo.com/feed/ – 2

This post will be continued tomorrow, when I will discuss my fixes and optimization techniques based on my Google Webmaster Tools & Bing’s Webmaster Center finding. Stay Tuned!

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Slightly Hidden Content – SEO [IM Chat #1]

Posted by James Harrison on May 5, 2009 in Blog, SEO / Search Engine Optimization | 15 comments

I know many of you SEO’s feel the same or experience the same thing…

You know more about SEO and computers than everyone around you, so you’re “Mr. SEO know it All” that has to answer every computer related question for friends, family, and co-workers, even if it has nothing to do with SEO. But every once in a while a buddy of mine will ask me a SEO question on IM and I take on the role of Mr. Know It All James-SEO.

[11:15] seobuddy: hey james…do you have a minute to look at a site for me?
[11:16] James-SEO: sure
[11:17] seobuddy: Here’s the site

[11:20] seobuddy: the site has rankings, but do you think it may be considered spam at the bottom of the pages?
[11:20] seobuddy: the keywords almost the same color as the background.
[11:20] seobuddy: what are you thoughts?
[11:21] James-SEO: you know, it’s not too bad, but it’s not good
[11:21] James-SEO: I have 2 things to say about this
[11:22] James-SEO: 1. Google can recognize the color difference and assume that since you don’t really want visitors to see those words that well, they can assign a lesser value to those words. why even index that content?
[11:23] James-SEO: after all, those aren’t the words you want to visitors to read
[11:23] James-SEO: since it’s not invisible, it’s not “illegal”
[11:24] James-SEO: But it’s also not in proper legible grammar, so it’s safe to assume that that part is not meant to be read
[11:24] James-SEO: it must be just a bunch of keywords with commas and a matching color background[11:24] [11:25]seobuddy: do they need to be there…isn’t having them in the meta’s good enough…
[11:25] James-SEO: meta data is different than onpage content
[11:26] James-SEO: if you insist on having those keywords there, make sure those exact keywords are in the metas for relevance between meta data and content
[11:26] James-SEO: if those keywords are in the meta data, each phrase better be found somewhere in the content
[11:26] James-SEO: naturally
[11:26] James-SEO: not slightly hidden
[11:26] seobuddy: i also have the same titles on most of my pages…
[11:27] James-SEO: that’s a big no no as well
[11:27] seobuddy: yea, you told me that before, that’s why I mentioned it
[11:27] James-SEO: Google likes each page to be unique
[11:28] James-SEO: if pages have a lot of similarities, they just index the stronger page
[11:28] James-SEO: but back to the almost hidden keywords,..
[11:28] James-SEO: #2
[11:28] James-SEO: the background is CSS, it has a background image and a background color
[11:29] James-SEO: google can only read (for now) the color of the background, which by default is normally white. so the words look to google light Grey on white
[11:29] James-SEO: If the css background is set to Grey, then it could appear you have completely hidden content
[11:29] James-SEO: light Grey content/keywords written in un readable form (like meta keywords) is of course of a lessor value than words in large bolder black font or bright red keywords mixed in content on white backgrounds
[11:29] seobuddy: yea, but i thought that bolding kw wasn’t nec anymore
[11:30] James-SEO: there’s 100′s of ranking factors, ALL of value
[11:30] James-SEO: bolding just doesn’t mean as much now as it did in 2000
[11:30] James-SEO: but search bots can still recognize a bolded phrase
[11:38] seobuddy: so if you were optimizing this site, what would you do to it? i am running a ranking report now, for a crapload of keywords, so it will take a long while. I do have many 1st page rankings, so what could you change?
[11:39] James-SEO: got to find out if the site is ranking for the most relevant traffic AND conversion generating terms
[11:41] James-SEO: i’d make sure 1st that all meta data is unique from page to page and that they are all targeting the BEST (tons of factors) keywords
[11:42] James-SEO: then make sure the content is naturally relevant to those metas
[11:42] James-SEO: or do it vice versa; content then metas
[11:43] seobuddy: yea, but I don’t have the text on some of the pages to support a lot of keywords, so would I be better off putting them at the bottom of the page, only in bold?
[11:44] James-SEO: nothing compares to naturally written content. Why do you feel you should rank for terms your content isn’t relevant to?
[11:44] James-SEO: that sounds dishonest and misleading

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Onpage SEO: Title Tags Change Search Engine Rankings

Posted by James Harrison on Aug 12, 2008 in Blog, SEO / Search Engine Optimization | 5 comments

Recently I decided to blog more about SEO related topics. Mainly because I have a couple keywords I want to start targeting. I noticed one of my blogs (My San Diego SEO Blog) (<— not this SEO Blog) was getting traffic for terms relating to ‘SEO‘ and ‘San Diego‘. I’m pretty sure the love I’m getting from the engines come from my relevant link right here in my blog side bar because I never really had any San Diego content.

The title of the blog used to be

“SEO Competition – Blog 2.0 vs. The Website“

But now that I’m targeting the term San Diego SEO, I changed it to

“San Diego SEO, Blog SEO & Web 2.0 SEO“

Basically I gave the term I’m targeting prominence, plus I gave the keyword ‘SEO‘ more density. This blog is one of my fun blogs. I’m not really targeting any other terms. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend adding a keyword 3 times to the title tag (like I did with ‘SEO’). But like I said, it’s my fun blog.

I was getting traffic from Yahoo! & MSN, but NOT GOOGLE. As you can see in this snapshot I took (with the time & date) that my rankings for the term ‘san diego seo’ was horrible.

Before I made that title tag change on Thursday, August 7th 2008 Blog Optimizer was ranked #498 for the term ‘san diego seo‘

*Disclaimer – That Thursday night I wrote the post; Web 2.0 Tags + SEO = Search Engine Love

Now look at the change in ranking the next day.

The next day (Friday, August 8th 2008) BlogOptimizer was ranked #63 for the term ‘san diego seo‘

*Disclaimer #2 – Since that site is a blog, it has the ability to jump 400 spots AND fall 400 spots overnight (literally). If you search for San Diego SEO now, I’m willing to bet that BlogOptimizer is not #63 anymore. Blogs are very fluid in the SERP’s unless that blog has strong link strength.

In case you didn’t know how important titles were to websites, search a term in Google and see that 9 out of the top 10 sites have that targeted term in their the listing titles.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my SEO blog. I really do appreciate it. You can read another related post (found below) or subscribe here. Once again, thank you for visiting James’ SEO blog.

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SEO Video – Keyword Placement

Posted by James Harrison on Jan 12, 2008 in Blog, SEO / Search Engine Optimization | 4 comments

ON PAGE SEO VIDEOS

A few places to place your keywords on a webpage…

Then I remembered more places…

“The search engines look at many factors. They look for the words throughout the page, both in tye visible page and in the HTML source code for the page. Each time they find the word, they are weighted in some way. A word in one position is “worth” more than a word in another position. A word formatted in one way is “worth” more than a word formatted in another”….

“You’re putting keywords into your web pages in such a manner that the search engines can get to them, read them, and regard them as significant.”

“If a search engine finds the relevant keywords on your page, that’s good. If it finds the keywords in the right places on the page, theat’s a really powerful thing that differentiates your page from your competitors’.”

Peter Kent: Author of Search Engine Optimization for Dummies

I can quote Pete all day, but that wouldn’t be fair to his book. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s never too late!

background image could be named a keyword too. 

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On Page SEO – Keyword Placement

Posted by James Harrison on Jan 12, 2008 in Blog, SEO / Search Engine Optimization | 5 comments

I Hope y’all like my video on on page SEO. My buddy just asked me a pretty simple question, so I answered it with a video.

In my video about locations on your site to place your keywords, I mentioned the following locations:

• Title Tag – Everybody knows how important the title tag is. I sure as hell do! I love the title tag. It’s definitely one of my favorite tools in SEO. Remember to think prominence & density, but don’t forget to think about how it will look to the visitors on the SERP’s.

• Meta Description – Occasionally this will show up on the SERP’s so choose wisely. This can make a difference in your click-through-rate. Make sure you add keywords and make sure they are very similar to your keyword-rich content.

• Meta Keywords – They still work! I’ve seen sites rank for terms you can only find in their Metas. Don’t spam. Think prominence & density. Make sure every word in your keyword metas is in the page.

• Table Summaries – Add your keyword to the table summaries. Aim to make them similar to the headers in that table or the main keywords of that section.

• File Name – Save your file as your keyword. i.e. dirtbikers.htm. This way it shows up in the URL.

• Header Tags – <H1> = keyword 1 &/or keyword 2. <h2> = keyword 2 &/or keyword 3 & so on.

• First 10 Words of the Page – The more prominent you can make it, the better.

• First 1/3rd or Content – Make sure your keyword is in the first 1/3rd of your content. Try to trickle down the keyword priority throughout the content.

• Keyword Style – Bold, underline, italicize or give the keyword its own style (css & name that style that keyword). This allows the keyword to stick out to users and bots.

• Picture File Name – When you save your pictures, make sure you save them as your keywords. ie. blue-keyword.jpeg.

• Picture Attributes – If the picture links to another page, give it a title attribute. title=”main keyword of page linking to” and don’t forget the alternate attribute; alt=”keyword”.

• Caption of Picture – Adding the keyword to the caption not only tells the visitors how relevant that picture is to your site, it also helps the pictures rank in image searches.

• CSS File – This is probably one of those locations that doesn’t really matter, but it’s another spot that could give you the cutting edge necessary to compete. Think Ceteris Puribus.

• Internal Linking Page – Put the keyword in the anchor text and title attribute of a link pointing to another page on your site. This shows that you link to relevance and it’s also another chance for you to help that other page out.

• Last 10 Words of the Page – Give the bots something to remember. Be relevant head to toe.

Now, I have to be honest with you. I don’t really know the order of importance of these keyword placement techniques. I know some matter and some don’t. Some may make a difference in your rankings in one search engine but not in the others. Some may be beneficial to the user and some could actually hurt your site esthetics.

JUST DON”T SPAM!

Here are a few things to remember when placing your keywords on your webpage.

• USABILITY – You have to think, if the user searches for this keyword and clicks on your site, that person should be able to identify your words right away. Keep it natural. Stay away from the obvious keyword stuffing.

• DENSITY - Sometimes you may have a site that’s competing with other sites with high density of your targeted keywords. How dense should your keywords be? 6%, 16% 20+%??????  Density should probably be based on the engine & competition.

• SURROUNDING CONTENT – The spiders are getting smarter. They are starting to see if you have similar, latent and relevant content surrounding your keywords. Create content that intensifies your keyword within it. I like to use Quitura to see what kind of words should be surrounding my content.

• TOPIC - Ok, so your site is about commercial loans. Not only do you put commercial loans throughout your page, you make your page EVERYTHING COMMERCIAL LOANS. Commercial loan source, mortgage brokers, commercial & residential loans, bad credit loans, loan applications, etc. If the visitor just types in “commercial loans” you have to think to yourself what is the visitor trying to accomplish?

• COMPETITION - Look where your competition is placing the keyword. If theirs is in the <h1>’s, put yours in the <h1>. Make the keyword more prominent in the content, title and metas. One thing I like to do is, print out the top 10 pages ranking for my targeted keywords and highlight all the places my competitors are placing those terms. Sometimes you’ll see a pattern (sometimes you don’t) and you should do what it takes to fit right in. Remember to check your competition’s link strength. You make be wasting your time on all this on page SEO.

• PROMINENCE – This to me is big. I should have placed it first, but I like to save the best for last. Think of all the strongest places you place your keywords on a page. The title, the header, the url, near the top of the page… You can’t get more prominent than that. But if possible, try to make other prominent places on your page.

I hope this helps you locate more locations to place your keywords on your site. If you know of other places to place your keywords, PLEASE comment them in this post. Thanks!

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