SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make
By Stephan Spencer,
Founder & President, Netconcepts
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Blog SEO
 So easy a child could do it
 16-year old blogger
 Passive income: ~$1000/month
from Google AdSense
 Effort required: 1 hr/month
 Thank you, Google!
My daughter,
SEO-in-training
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

#5 for “neopets”
#3 for “neopets cheats”
#6 for “neo pets”
etc.
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Biggest SEO Mistakes
 Leaving title tags to be auto-generated (from the post
name, category name, etc.)
 Squandering your “crawl equity” by letting pages get
indexed that don’t deserve to be (“Email this page” etc.)
 Having multiple “homes” for your blog
 Not using unique “Optional Excerpt” to minimize
duplicate content
 Not using rel=nofollow to direct PageRank flow
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Biggest SEO Mistakes
 Over-reliance on date-based archives
 No stability in keyword focus on category & tag pages
 Suboptimal URLs (too long, too many words, too many
directories)
 Only one RSS feed, and it’s un-optimized
 Hosting blog/feed URLs on a domain you don’t own
 Using suboptimal anchor text when linking internally
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

What Are We Waiting For??
Let’s Fix Your Blog!
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Rejig Internal Linking Structure
 Tag clouds & tag pages & tag conjunction pages (e.g.
“UTW Theme Compatibility Thing” WordPress plugin)
 Related Posts (e.g. “Yet Another Related Posts” plugin)
 Top 10 posts (e.g. “Popularity Contest” plugin)
 Next & Previous / pagination (e.g. “WP-PageNavi”
plugin)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Tags point
to Technorati
tag pages
Tags point to
internal tag
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com pages

A tag page
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Optimize 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”
WordPress plugin)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

“SEO Title Tag” plugin for WordPress
 Allows you to override the title tag with a custom one on any
post, static page, tag page, category page, etc.
 Now updated to work with WordPress 2.6
 Can even define a custom title on ANY url
 Reverses the order of the blog name and the title, or drop the
blog name altogether, or replace it with a shorter nickname
 Can use category’s description as the title on category pages
 Has a Mass Edit admin and an Options page to change settings
 Download at www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

“Thin Slicing”
 Make quick decisions. Don’t overthink.
 Only really works if you’re an expert
 E.g. hand-optimize title tags across hundreds of pages quickly
(prioritized)
 Focus on your title tags, H1s and URLs
 Don't obsess, doesn’t have to be perfect. Instead, iterate.
 If you don’t have an admin interface, use a spreadsheet and do a
database import
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Thin slicing
title tags
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Great name
for the blog!
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Optimize URLs
 URL affects
searcher
clickthrough
rates
 Short URLs
get clicked on
2X long URLs
(Source: MarketingSherpa,
used with permission)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Optimize URLs
 Further, long URLs appear to act as a deterrent to
clicking, drawing attention away from its listing and
instead directing it to the listing below it, which then gets
clicked 2.5x more frequently.
– http://searchengineland.com/080515-084124.php
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Optimize URLs
 Subdomain? Subdirectory? New domain? Domain of
your blog host?
– www.metlife.com/blog vs. StayingFitBlog.com
– Got a blogspot.com or wordpress.com URL? You benefit from
their domain authority, but you’re forever wedded to them!
 Rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores
 Maintain legacy URLs even after switching platforms
 Keep post slugs relatively short (e.g. “Slug Trimmer” or
“Clean Trunks” plugin)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Optimize URLs
 Test and optimize URLs, but don’t lose link juice to previous URLs.
301 previous URLs to latest. No chains of 301s.
 WordPress handles 301s automatically when renaming post slugs
 Mass edit admin for URLs (post slugs) in WordPress – via the
“SEO Title Tag” plugin (www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-
plugin)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Thin slicing
URLs
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Optimize Anchor Text
 Make the post’s title a link to the permalink page
 Use SEOMoz Backlink Anchor Text Analysis tool or
BLA (tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer) 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!
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Post title is anchor text.
“Permalink” is yucky anchor text!
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

“Sculpt” Your PageRank
 My preference is to have rel=nofollow...
– On links in trackbacks, comments (by default on most
platforms)
– Where the link would be reciprocal
– On links to date-based archives, assuming you have category
and tag hierarchy (noindexing/disallowing is not enough!)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Minimize Duplicate Content
 Code your Main Index Template to display “Optional
Excerpts” on everything but permalink page
 For each post, write unique content (i.e. paraphrase),
don’t just use the first couple paragraphs (i.e. Don’t use
the <!--more--> tag!)
 Meta robots noindex & rel=nofollow are your friends
– Date-based archives
– “OR” Tag conjunction pages (e.g. netconcepts.com/tag/seo|
articles)
– Printer-friendly versions
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Improve the Keyword Focus
 Heading tags
– category name on category page
– Yes for post titles, no for dates!
 Emphasis tags within posts (bold, strong, etc.)
 “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. “WP-Sticky” or “Adhesive” plugin
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Sticky post
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Optimize Your RSS Feeds
 Full text, not summaries
 20 or MORE items (not just 10)
 Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post)
 Keyword-rich item <title>
 Your brand name in the item <title>
 Your most important keyword in the site <title> container
 Compelling site <description>
 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
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Thank You!
 For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO
checklists & worksheets, and audio recording, executive
summary & transcript of thought leaders
teleconferences on SEO & blogging, drop me your
business card or e-mail your request to
seo@netconcepts.com
 To contact me: stephan@netconcepts.com
 Download...
– PPT: http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/seo-mistakes.ppt
– Article: http://searchengineland.com/070823-082758.php
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com