7. A particular view of Google
• Tries to make the Net a better quality place
• Tries to stop SEOs and Webmasters from cheating
• Tries to penalise junk sites
• Panda and Penguin updates
• Continuous algorithm tweaks
8. Used properly, your blog helps you
keep Google happy
• Google has always liked lots of good
quality content
• It lurves it now
9. Your blog is a brilliant delivery
mechanism for great content
10. So we just write a load of good
stuff and Google will love us?
13. You’re stumbling around
• How easily will you get to your destination without a map?
• Isn’t that just what you’re doing by creating content aimlessly?
14. Content isn’t King
• Content, alone, is an indulgence
• Content needs to be a team player
• It needs some support
15. If Content is a team player,
Strategy is the coach
• Content needs a purpose
• Content needs a vision
• Content needs to work for you
• And, to work for you, it needs to work for your readers
20. I came up with these answers for
Writing For SEO
• To attract new clients
• To act as a platform to develop and deliver products
• To share my expertise with more people (sorry if that sounds a bit
yucky, but there it is)
21. Yours may be
• To attract more natural/organic search traffic
• To interact more closely with your customers and prospects, your
community
• Supporting a local, hobby or sporting group - it doesn’t have to be to
make a profit, or even work within a business context
• Another way of putting this is to define your niche. You shouldn’t try
to be everything to everybody
22. Find out what your audience is
searching on
• Google Key Word Tool (http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/) tells
you a lot
• Key phrases you haven’t thought about
• How popular a key phrase is (how many searches are being made on
it)
• There are loads of other tools out there, too - free and paid
23. What’s the competition?
• Not ‘Who’s the competition?’
• On the Web, I don’t care who my competitors are, I want to know
what I need to do push them off the first page of Google
24. Take a look at the competition for
the key phrases you need
• Try:
• Web SEO Analytics (www.webseoanalytics.com)
• SEOmoz (www.seomoz.org)
25. Put your key phrases into a
spreadsheet
• Sort on search numbers
• Sort or filter on difficulty
• Filter on particular words
• Explore to see what themes there are for
your content
26. Put a content strategy in place
• Theme key phrases for Pages on your blog
• Do the themes suggest Categories for your blog?
• Use the key phrases you’ve discovered to suggest blog posts
• You’re ensuring what you produce will appeal to people and presented
in an easy-to-digest way
27. Use an EMD as a WMD
• Exact Match Domains
• A domain that reflects an important
key phrase - like WritingForSEO.org
• A favourite tool for spammy affiliate
sites
• Google said it was outlawing them
• But it hasn’t
28. Choose your EMD
• Find a high-traffic key phrase that applies to your site
• Search for available domains
• If you have a UK customer base, a .co.uk domain is a good thing
• So you’ll end up with agoodkeyphraseformyblog.co.uk
29. Choose a blog platform
• If you want a personal blog, choose Blogger or WordPress.com
• If you want to do business, make money or put a blog on an existing
site, use your own WordPress install
• Flexibility
• Ownership of data
• Use your own domain (you can with Blogger, too)
30. Using a blog to help a site’s
performance
• Don’t put the blog on a different domain -
www.yourdomain.wordpress won’t help the site at
www.yourdomain.com
• Don’t put your blog on a separate subdomain - Google treats
blog.yourdomain.com as completely separate from
www.yourdomain.com
• Do put your blog at www.yourdomain.com/blog/
32. Writing your content
• Go for substance rather than frequency
• Post every day if you can, but don’t worry about it if you can’t
• Include at least one image, because it makes your post look less
daunting
• Put together a schedule, and try to stick to it
• Monitor page popularity, social mentions and links
33. Give your content leverage
• Use your key phrases in headings, title tag and keyword tag
• Don’t go mad with key phrases
• Make sure you’re writing for your audience and Google in mind, not
just Google
34. Build some links
• Social bookmarking sites:
• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• Reddit
• Guest blogging
• Forum and blog comments
35. Social media
• Don’t spend all your time on social media
• Content production is more important
• I suggest a presence on Twitter and Google+
• Plus either Facebook or LinkedIn
36. Measure your results
• You can find where you’ve got with Analytics - Google Analytics is free
and very powerful
• Also install Google Webmaster Tools
• Link to Google Analytics
• Keep on measuring
37. Do all these things as best you can
• Online success is about doing as many things as possible well, rather
than one or two perfectly
• Don’t cheat or automate
• Give your readers what they want
38. You can fill many of the gaps by
looking on my website
www.writingforseo.org
39. David Rosam
• Web www.writingforseo.org
• Twitter @writingforseo
• Google+ www.writingforseo.org/
googleplus
• Telephone +44 (0)1273 906607
• E-mail david@writingforseo.org
• LinkedIn www.writingforseo/linkedin
• Facebook www.facebook.com/
writingforseo
• Also www.webpositioningcentre.co.uk
• Please see Writing For SEO for image
acknowledgements