The previous post in this series was regarding running my blog through the SEO Workers’ Analyzer Tool and the Website Grader Tool and discovering what points my site fell sort on. I also analyzed my blog’s theme based on keyword density. In this post just as the top sites in this industry have already done, I’ll focus on completing (most of ) the on-page WordPress SEO.
However, before I get started and continue on with this series I wanted to publish my site’s data to date since I KNOW it’s going to change..
- Alexa Ranking - 247,900
- Compete – 1,094,293
- Delicious - 12
- Yahoo! Links – 2,232
- Google Links - 10
- Google PageRank – 2
- Twitter Followers - 177
- “seo blog” Google Ranking – 20
- “seo blog“ Bing Ranking – 69
- “seo blog” Yahoo Ranking – 80
- jameseo.com Google Mentions - 187,000
Ok, let’s get started. We’ll cover..
- A. Website Grader Fixes
- B. SEO Workers Analyzer Fixes
- C. Google Webmaster Findings
- D. Bing Webmaster Center Findings
A. Website Grader
In order to improve my grade on Website Grader I had to complete the following tasks;
1. Condense Title Tag of Homepage to 70 Characters or Less
Not something I’m willing to fix. Therefore may never obtain 100%. I’ll talk more about title tags another time.
2. Add Alt. Attributes to Images on Homepage of Blog
I added alt tags to all images except for my rotating banners below, because they run through my ads manager which doesn’t allow me to add alternative text. But we’ll still work on that in another post.
3. Add Meta Descriptions to Pages
My pages (services, contact, about) didn’t have meta tags (descriptions/keywords). So I added them using Headspace plugin by Urban Giraffe.
4. Get Bookmarked in Delicious
I created a Delicious account specifically for this blog and bookmarked a few of my favorite posts.
5. Retweet(ed) Last 3 Posts
B. SEO Workers’ SEO Analyzer
1. Description Relevancy
My description relevancy to webpage content was off. The meta description could help your site out big time if used correctly. It’s important that your description is almost a ‘verbatim summary’ of that webpage composed into 160 characters; which should also be ultra relevant to the top 10 keywords of your website. Here’s my top 10 phrases according to SEO Workers (Prior to Fixes).
- seo – 4
- web design – 4
- blog seo – 3
- link building – 3
- james harrison – 3
- internet marketing – 3
- seo blog – 3
- resources – 2
- internet news – 2
- san diego – 2
If I can’t create keyword-targeted title tags and descriptions based on the page’s top terms, then I need to re-examine my content(top terms), metas &/or keywords; because they should all match.
2. Add Keyword Meta Tags
Added keyword meta tags, even though Matt Cutts says they’re useless. (There are situations where meta keywords do come in handy though.) But for the sake of my Website Grader. score, I added keywords really similar to my footer keywords to the meta keywords global setting in HeadSpace. That way the metas still match every page’s content.
3. “SEO Blog” Onpage/Domain Keyword Density
Tried to make “SEO blog” more prominent and dense by adding the sentence; “Thank you for reading my SEO blog :)” near the top of the side bar.
4. Make Homepage Have Most Site-wide Internal Links
I added a little sentence at the end of the comment sections of each blog post, utilizing a little option in Intense Debate’s comments settings.
Sentence: “Thanks for commenting on my internet marketing and SEO blog“. Now every page but the home page (because of the read more function) has one more (SEO’d) link pointing to my homepage.
5. Cut Back on the Phrase “comments http jameseo com”
I figured the reason ‘comments http jameseo com’ was the most dense was because the word “Comments” was above each post (10 times).
I used some options in Intense Debate, so instead of saying “comments #”, it says things like “blog comment here”, “talk seo with me”, “like my seo blog?” We’ll see if this works.
C. Google Webmaster Tools
1. Verify Domain in Google Webmaster Tools
Make sure you verify both (the www & non-www) versions of your website in Google Webmaster Tools so you can tell Google your preferred domain.
2. Submit XML Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools
The easiest way to submit your XML sitemap is to tell Google to use your blog’s feed as your xml source.
3. Fix Crawl Errors
I had 3 crawl errors.
- One error was an old page I took down – But as you may notice, I brought back my resources page simply because 52 pages are linking to it. Thinking of how to make the best of that page now..
- One of my errors was an old page that picked up some links when it was under the old permanlink structure. I redirected it with the redirection plug-in.
- The last error had no business being indexed (wp-admin). So I disallowed the robots from the wp-admin in the robots.txt file.
D. Bing Webmaster Center
1. Make Sure Robots.txt File Doesn’t Have Any Problems
I ran my robots.txt text through Bing’s Robots.txt File Checker Tool and everything looks good; no problems found.
2. Check Site’s Outbound Links
I exported all my external links to an excel spreadsheet and scanned for any sites I shouldn’t be linking to. I ended up deleting about 10 links and nofollowing 5 or 6.
- Don’t Link to Spam Sites
- Don’t Link to Inactive Sites
- Don’t Link to the Competition
That’s pretty much the basics besides what’s to come.. My next posts will cover leveraging my best pages, and optimizing my ‘read more’ text links, and as you can tell by my rankings much, much more ( to do).
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.
Tags: Blog SEO, blogging, onpage seo, optimization, SEO, seoblog, wordpress
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Good work!
Most people blabber on about SEO without having anything about it.
Good to see you're executing.
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Posted by Rupesh Anabhvne | 2010/02/10, 9:16 AMVery interesting and informative post. Really worthy.
Posted by website design india | 2010/02/16, 11:52 AMnice blog post, i not really care about page rank or other number, i just care about traffick. because traffick wil make money hehehehe
Posted by dian | 2010/02/20, 4:23 AMThanks your posts are really helping. the only trouble I have here is keyword density but its hard as I don't want to write search ebgine fodder get what I mean?
Posted by ebay selling tips | 2010/02/26, 5:39 PMHey Auction Tips,
I feel you 100%.
Keeping it natural, but not spammy.
That will always be an issue if our content isn't naturally about the key phrases we are targeting.
Back in the day keyword density = subject of page. But not any more. A page could still have a keyword 50 times, but is the that content actually about that keyword?
Luckily, keyword density isn't as important as context(LSI SEO) or keyword placement in high value places ie. title tags, H1, 1st sentence, last 10 words on page,etc.
Posted by james_harrison | 2010/02/27, 9:12 PMHey guys,
thanks for information, for me must import is traffick, you know why…
Posted by London Merik | 2010/02/28, 1:11 PMThis is great information – thank you.
I have been haveing problems getting google webmaster to pick up my keywords – any idea why that happens?
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