2010 SEO tips for blogs hosted on Blogger

Blogs are the fastest growing class of websites on the internet. No longer the sole domain of teenagers and the love lorn, blogs are now an established form of internet communication.




The online business community has recently discovered the power of blogging, and as such are faced with raising the blog site's ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). As a direct result of some of the blog characteristics, high search rankings are readily available for the careful blog writer.



Like any other website, blogs have techniques for search engine optimization (SEO), many of them the same as for traditional static websites, and many of them unique to blogs. Among the issues faced by some bloggers is the abundance of free blog hosting sites.



Not requiring any initial cash outlay, the free blog hosts have literally millions of blogs on their books. One of the most popular is the Google owned blog host Blogger.



Note that in this article, the capitalized word Blogger refers to the blog hosting company, while the lower case generic term blogger indicates the blog writer. Confusion between the two words will be avoided as much as possible.



Like all free web hosts, Blogger hosted blogs face unique optimization challenges. Unlike sites where the domain name is owned by the webmaster, free blog hosts maintain ownership of the blog. In fact, the blog name is a sub-domain of the blog host, making value from the blog URL a less powerful optimization tool.



Despite the limitations faced by a blog hosted by Google owned Blogger, there are many very powerful optimization techniques available to the blogger. As we will see, blogs have some optimization methods, that are only available to blogs in general, regardless of host.



When considering the optimization techniques to apply to blogs, the basics of fresh keyword rich content, theme relevance, incoming links, and link anchor text all apply to blogs. In that sense optimization for blogs is no different from other websites.



On the other hand, some additional methods and some restrictions in the choice of techniques are involved as well. The various restrictions are often a direct result of the placement of the blog on the free host.



In this case study, the free host is Blogger. These shortcomings must always be kept in mind, when considering the best course, to fully optimize your blog.



Free Blogger hosting for your blog



Blogger enables you to host your blog on their server for free. As a very simple use interface system, even a novice with absolutely no programming or blogging experience of any kind, can be fully operational in a matter of minutes. The procedure for starting a blog is very simple, and takes only minutes to complete.



The Blogger server offers the choice of having a free standing blog as a separate website, or the option of writing your daily posts on the Blogger interface, and file transfer them to your existing website via the built in FTP feature.



Blogger provides a choice of pre-written templates for the blog layout, but all of them are changeable to include different color combinations and page formats.



Blogger freely permits the use of third party add on features, including commenting systems, track back, visitor counters, RSS site feeds, and most scripts often seen incorporated into traditional websites.



Note that Blogger offers all of those necessary blogging functions, including a site feed through Atom, with the exception of track back, in its blogging service package. Other third party feeds can be freely added to the Blogger template. I use several on my blogs.



The user is under no obligation to use the Blogger supplied versions, however. The company agreement does require that the Blogger logo icon remain on all of the pages, however.



When choosing a URL for the blog, it will appear as http://yourblogname.blogspot.com or if you prefer, as http://www.yourblogname.blogspot.com making the blog URL a sub-domain of the Blogger system.



The main domain is indicated by the "blogspot.com portion of the URL. With being a sub-domain, there are some unique, but not insurmountable challenges to optimization, as we shall see.



A Blogger user is not restricted in the choice of blog titles, and careful title and URL selection can help greatly in the optimization process. Many blogs suffer from having very poorly selected titles, that contain no relevance to the overall blog theme. Keep that in mind when selecting a title.



Keywords within the blog title and URL are very powerful in ranking well, with a blog component, especially as a sub-domain from the Blogger host.



After creating a blog title, and selecting a blog template to be customized later, the Blogger registration process is completed. A new blog writer is ready to begin writing blog columns, which are referred to as posts.



Optimization and SEO power of blogs



Contrary to what many people believe, Google does not give preference to blogs hosted on Blogger, despite Google's ownership of the popular blog service.



As a result, bloggers using the Blogger hosting system are on even footing with bloggers using other free or paid blog hosting services, and with blogs hosted under an owned domain name, or as part of an owned domain website. The playing field for optimization is as level as possible for bloggers using a sub-domain of Blogger, and for other bloggers as well.



Blogs rank well in the search engines by their very nature. They are regularly updated with keyword rich content. Most blog writers stick to a main theme for their blogs making relevance easy. Because of the blog's versatility, the blogger can add more themes to the blog and tie them together, enabling a blog to maintain several strong themes.



Blogs are also link magnets, mainly from other similarly themed blogs. It is not unusual for a blog to receive a Google PageRank 4 or 5 after being live on the internet for only one month. The theme relevant links are often placed right in blog posts, and contain powerful link anchor text.



One way inbound links to blogs are freely given by other bloggers as many blog writers are not concerned about search engine rankings. As a result, the competitive level of the sought after keywords is not as strong as its overall potential, based on sheer numbers of blogs.



Bloggers maintain large link lists, called blogrolls, that usually sit on the blog's home page. The weakness of the blog link lists is their volume, providing less than optimal PageRank and link popularity passage, as it's divided among large numbers of receiving blogs and websites.



What the blog link popularity lacks in amount of what is passed along, is made up for in theme relevance and quantity. Blog links are literally a volume business. Note that reciprocal blog links don't appear to suffer any downgrading, as is often the case for static sites. Incoming links, including reciprocal links, are effective for blogs.



On page blog optimization techniques



Blogs are optimized using the same techniques as static websites. Keep in mind that a blog is simply another website. What works in the search engines for other sites will also work for optimizing a blog.



Blogger assists the blog writer by building in many optimization features, that enable a blog to compete in less competitive searches, even if no other optimization techniques are applied.



The blog title is important, and should be chosen carefully to reflect the topics and themes of the blog. Many blog titles are frivolous, and provide little search engine value. Including at least one important keyword in the title is recommended.



The title is important as it forms part of the URL sub-domain. Combining a keyword enriched title with the blog URL is often enough to compete for non-competitive searches.



As the regular posts are added to the blog, each one generates a unique page with its own URL. Since the blog title forms part of that URL, it's important that it contain some keyword, as the blog title is at the front of the URL.



The individual page URL contains all of a short blog post headline, and most of some longer ones. For that reason, place the targeted keywords early in a blog post headline to ensure their conclusion. Blogger publishes the page URLs, with the headline words separated by dashes, in accordance with the Google preference for dashes over underscores.



The blog title tags are readily and easily changed in Blogger, to reflect any targeted keywords and phrases. Because the blog itself is a website sub-domain, altering the title tag is a very powerful option for any blogger to utilize.



The Blogger supplied templates are pre-written with h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6 tags. The headings are placed in the heading tags automatically, providing an instant search engine advantage for the blog. The templates are fully CSS compatible and welcome both additional CSS and html coding.



Blogs are well crawled by the major and lesser known search engine spiders. Because the posts are so frequent, the spiders return to reindex the blog, on at least a daily basis.



By pinging the blog, which is notifying the specialized blog search engines and RSS aggregators of an update, the blog reaches a huge audience including media outlets. A good one stop multiple site pinger is Ping-O-Matic.



Three very powerful optimization tools are missing from Blogger templates, and would be very helpful in improving searches for Blogger hosted blogs.



One missing item is categories. Blogger users can't place their posts into theme related categories. The ability of other blog hosts to provide categories gives those blogs a bit of a theme related SEO advantage. That is to say nothing of the benefit to the blog readers of neatly organized categories for related links.



Blogger doesn't provide a related links feature that lets readers find additional posts on the same blog topic. Another benefit to readers, and to the search engines due to the loss of an internal link, is missed by Blogger.



A third issue is the lack of internal "tag" coding. Blogger users are required to write their own tag code for Technorati and other users of post tags for search. As embedded linked keywords, tags are also very powerful for creating themes in search engines.



There appears to be little, if any discrimination against Blogger and other free hosted blogs among the members of the media, and other blog RSS feed subscribers.



Link power of blogs



Much of the search engine optimization power of blogs is through their extensive linking networks. Blog owners are free and generous linkers. They link to other blogs permanently, usually from the high PageRank home page, and freely link to what they consider interesting blog posts.



Not only are posts linked frequently by other bloggers, but the on page link is often from a post to a post. As a bonus, the link is usually dripping with important keywords and phrases.



Links from other blogs tend to be very theme relevant in content, as bloggers link to articles, blog posts, and other blogs that are of interest to themselves and to their readership. One way incoming links are a very frequent event for bloggers.



Reciprocal blog links don't appear to be discounted by Google or the other major search engines, as the exchanges are usually between theme related blogs. Blog owners should, however, exert some level of caution, regarding link exchanges with non-theme relevant blogs, as those incoming links might not receive full value.



Linking to and from Blogger is easy, and the template provides an unlimited sidebar area for the inclusion of html links, to other blogs and traditional websites. Links can also be coded within the posts themselves, right at the time of post composition, using simple embedded html conversions.



The Blogger posts are archived after a chosen time period of usually one week, into one month long archive sections. Those time frames are changeable in the Blogger settings, for longer or shorter durations.



The internal linking of the pages is precoded by Blogger, enabling PageRank link popularity, and link anchor text to pass freely from one page to another. The pre-written code can also be altered should the blogger prefer a different internal linking structure.



Conclusion



Hosting a blog on a free host like Google owned Blogger need not be a disadvantage to achieving high search engine rankings. Simply apply recommended standard SEO optimization techniques and the blog will do very well in the SERPs.



The Blogger supplied, and readily alterable templates contain many powerful optimization features by default, including h1 tags, CSS, and strong internal page linkage, to name just a few.



Be sure to keep in mind that the blog URL shows a sub-domain. Because of that limitation, care should be taken with the blog title, title tags, and the headlines given to the regular blog posts.



The power of the many keyword rich anchor text incoming links, from theme related blogs and websites, will go far towards reaching the top of the rankings.



The links are to be expected because of the regular posting of theme relevant content. Other bloggers will link naturally to the blog, with the highly potent one way link.



Be sure to add your own tag code for using those powerful search tools.



The blog combination of fresh keyword rich content and relevant incoming links will propel the blog, and a related website, to the top of the SERPs.



While it's always a better policy to own your own blog domain, don't be afraid of a free blog host, if you are short of cash.



Even a free hosted blog is highly powered in the search engines.

A little SEO help with search rankings straight from the Bible

Ok, so, yes things evolve, peopel get smarter, people get older, people gain knowledge, computers get faster, bigger screens, bigger faster processers, more websites, better phones, bigger homes, faster cars, cooler everything.. It seems everything evolves.

BUT

People never like to be wronged or rejected, People still breathe air, the heart is still required to live, humans still walk on their feet and not their hands.

Excerpt: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ECC%201

My point? There are some underlying things in the world of SEO that have not changed and will never change. So, stick with them and you’ll be safe. Yes, in order to really, really ‘grow’ you have to experiment and take a risk, but dont ever do this while neglecting the basics. This I have found is a critical mistake people, including myself, make. We get so pumped with the lastest link sculpting method we forget to send a few emails out to potential link partners for a legitimate link or two. Why? Because its boring. But many things in life that may seem boring are critical to life. Example: Brushing your teeth, going to pee, breathing.

Take breathing for example: What if someon told you to do something every day 17,280 times each day, every day for the rest of your life an dit was the same thing over and over? That would suck wouldnt it.

However, if you choose to cut that down just by 10%, you’ll be dead in a day. That would suck too.

So, what are these basics, or ‘tricks’ people might think.

First, stick to a plan. Got an idea for a website? - Do it. Finish it. Make it live with all its features. Grit your teeth and make it happen, no matter what.

This is a genius saying I know but here it goes: “You wont do anything if you dont do anything”

Very simple but how true. How many ‘great’ ideas do you have but never implement any of them.

A friend of mind pointed out recently that 80% of the fuel on the Space Shuttle is simply used to extend beyond orbit and the remaining mission relies on the 20% remaining. That is what its like starting a business, blog or putting an idea into reality. It takes 80% of your efforts just to get it off the ground as compared to then running the business, following systems etc.

So, tip for the day is. Take all the things you have going on in your head. Pick one. Do it until the imagination of it in your head is a reality.

What is PageRank Good for Anyway? Get PR

A couple of months ago, SEOmoz explored the relationship between a web page's PageRank and its position in search results. They concluded:

Google's PageRank is, indeed, slightly correlated with their rankings (as well as with the rankings of other major search engines). However, other page-level metrics are dramatically better, including link counts from Yahoo and Page Authority.
I was intrigued by the study, and vowed to investigate the metric using my own data set. Because all of my data are at the root domain level, I chose to focus on the homepage PageRank of each domain.

Methods

I averaged three months of data (November, 2009 - January, 2010), collected on the last day of each month for 1,316 root domains. Using Quantcast Media Planner, I selected websites that had chosen to make their traffic data public. To be included, websites had to have an average of at least 100,000 unique US visitors during this time period.

The domains selected for this study do not approximate a random sample of websites. Because of the way in which they were selected, they will bias in favor of sites with many US visitors, and against sites with very few. There may also be differences between Quantified sites with public traffic data, and non-Quantified websites. For example, Quantified domains are probably more likely to include advertising on their pages than sites without the Quantcast script.

PageRank

PageRank (PR) can only take eleven values (0-10). It is an ordinal variable meaning that the difference between PR = 8 and PR = 9 is not the same as the difference between PR = 3 and PR = 4. Like mozRank, it probably exists on a log scale.

The median and mode PageRank among websites in this study were PR = 6, with a minimum of PR = 0, and a maximum of PR = 9. However, only ten websites had PR < 3, and only seven had PR = 9.



Results

SEOmoz Metrics

Using Spearman's correlation coefficient, I compared PageRank to several SEOmoz root domain metrics. Domain mozRank (linearized) was strongly correlated with PR (r = 0.62)*. This correlation was somewhat smaller than the 0.71 that SEOmoz reported in May, 2009. The disparity may be due to differences in methodology; SEOmoz used Pearson's correlation coefficient, and did not linearize mozRank. Additionally, PR data in my study were probably measured over a smaller range of values, potentially weakening the observed dependencies.

*All reported correlations are significant at p < .01.

MozTrust was also highly correlated with PageRank (r = .62), with Domain Authority somewhat less-so (r = .55). The latter has since undergone some major changes, and this result may not reflect the metric as it exists today.

Search Engine Indexing

I performed [site:example.com] queries using Google, Yahoo, and Bing APIs to approximate the number of pages indexed by each search engine. Much to my surprise, PageRank shared the strongest correlation with the number of pages indexed by Bing (r = .52), instead of Google (r = .30), or Yahoo (r = .24). My first thought was that Google might not have reported accurate counts, a phenomenon often noted by SEO professionals. However, there is some evidence that may indicate otherwise.

If Google's reported indexation numbers are inaccurate, we would expect the metric to have lower correlations with similar metrics. However, indexation numbers reported by Google and Yahoo share a fairly high Pearson's correlation coefficient (r = 0.38). Both appear to share smaller correlations with Bing: 0.34, and 0.26 respectively. Even more interesting, SEOmoz metrics seem to have much stronger correlations with Bing's indexed pages than the numbers reported by Google or Yahoo.



If Google is failing to accurately report the size of its index, we might expect that similar queries would also return inaccurate data. However, PageRank shares a high Spearman's correlation coefficient with the number of results returned by a Google [link:example.com] query (r = 0.65). The strength of this relationship appears similar to those between SEOmoz metrics and PR mentioned earlier. PR's correlation with the results of a Yahoo [linkdomain:example.com -site:example.com] query is somewhat smaller (r = 0.53).

If the number of pages Google reports having indexed is a relatively poor metric, we would also expect to find more variation between months than other search engines. However, I did not find this to be the case. In fact, Bing had by far the highest average percent change in the number of pages indexed, a whopping 355% increase per month. Google averaged an increase of 61%, and Yahoo an increase of only 2%.

While it is still possible that the number of pages on each domain that Google reports to have indexed is inaccurate, I see another potential explanation. Moreso than Yahoo or Google, the number of pages that Bing will index on any given domain is related to the quantity and quality of links to that domain. Perhaps, at least when it comes to indexation, Bing follows more of a traditional PageRank-like algorithm. After all, Google claims that PR is only one of more than 200 signals used for ranking pages. This theory is supported by the results of SEOmoz's comparison of Google's and Bing's ranking factors.

Social Media

PageRank even shares fairly strong correlations with social media metric such as how many of a domain's pages are saved on Delicious (r = 0.49), how many stories it has on Digg (r = 0.38), and even the number of Tweets linking to one of its pages as measured by Topsy (r = .38).

Website Traffic

Last, but certainly not least, PageRank predicts website traffic with somewhat surprising strength. As reported by Quantcast, monthly page views, visits, and unique visitors are all significantly correlated with PR. Google's little green bar even correlates with visits per unique visitor (r = 0.18), but not page views per visit. However, putting this in context shows the value of a metric like Domain Authority.



Discussion

So what exactly does all of this mean, and why is it important?

First, despite being a page-level metric, homepage PageRank is actually a fairly good predictor of many important domain-level variables relevant to SEO, social media, and website traffic.



For instance, on average, websites with a PR = 7 homepage had 2.6 times as many unique visitors as those with a PR = 6 homepage, which in turn had 1.5 times as many unique visitors as those with a PR = 5 homepage.



Second, homepage PageRank is sometimes used as a proxy for a hypothetical “domain PageRank.” While technically inaccurate, this study supports the idea that the PR of a website's homepage provides information about the domain as a whole.

While it may be limited to just eleven possible values, PR it is surprisingly good at predicting the relative number of inbound links to a domain reported by Google and Yahoo, as well as the relative number of pages indexed by Bing. The key word here is “relative.” As an ordinal variable, PR cannot be used to predict the actual values of continuous variables.

Finally, this study provides evidence that SEOmoz's domain-level metrics may be good (and possibly better than PageRank) predictors of variables important to search, social media, and web analytics. This, as well as all of the results of this study should be interpreted within the context of the included domains (high-traffic, US-centric, and publicly Quantified).

I hope you enjoyed reading my post, because I certainly enjoyed writing it. I intend to write many more based on your feedback.

I Really Love Link Building - And You Should Too!

Link building is always a hot topic because it is really what makes an SEO campaign work. Content is important, page and link structure are important, and the url is important, but for competitive search terms, great on-site optimization will only get you so far. I have had a bit of a love/hate relationship with link building over the years, and I have really started to be a lot more analytical in how I go about building incoming links.




This love story begins at the beginning of 2006. I was diagnosed with a terminal cancer, but prayerfully enough it turned out to be a large non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma tumor which was treatable. For over six months, I was stuck in a chair and didn't have the energy to get up an do anything so I spent that time teaching myself about websites and marketing. I started reading SEO blogs (like SEOmoz and others) to learn what I could. I figured I might as well put the time to use, right?



Over the coming months, I started my first SEO campaign for my newly built car accessories website. My target keywords were stupidly competitive - car accessories and aftermarket auto parts and a lot more keywords like them. I figured if SEO really worked, then I could do it. I could get ranked for some ridiculously competitive keywords.



I had a good understanding of on-site SEO such as titles, meta tags, content, URLs, and link structure so I built the site to be highly optimized for my keywords. I found creative ways to get a lot of content on the homepage using ajax and javascript tabs but still keeping the website aesthetically pleasing. Once the changes were indexed, I made sure that the content in the tabs was indexing properly. After trying some long tail queries, I found my site's tabbed content was indexed very well.



The on-site SEO bumped the rankings into the top 100 for car accessories. It had previously been ranked around 350 or so. With everything I had done to beef up the on-site SEO, it was still a long way from where I wanted it. That's when I started the link building process. In 2006 I found a lot of info about directory submissions, article marketing, reciprocal linking, buying links, DMOZ, and blogging so I did a little bit of everything. A little of everything turned into a lot of everything over the next six months, and slowly but surely the rankings began to rise.



The directory submission process was done with a combination of manual submissions, semi-automated submissions using software, and even some automated submissions. I used a few directory submitters plus doing a simple Google search for relevant directories and submitted to any and all that didn't require a payment. During this process I also started writing how-to articles and submitting them to article directories, blogs, online magazines and journals. After a few months, the site made it to the first page and traffic started coming in.



Not long after that I started getting reciprocal link requests, so I exchanged a few links along with way as well. As traffic picked up, I started getting sales on the website for the first time and my attention was being directed towards sales and customer service instead of SEO. For about a year, I didn't do any marketing on the site except write a few articles and syndicate to whoever would publish them. Sometime in 2008, I checked the rankings and found this.







It had climbed to #1 out of 92,100,000 results. I could not believe it. Traffic was up over 1000%, and the site was getting literally thousands of unique visitors a month just from this keyword. I checked the analytics and traffic was up and down and all over the place. After monitoring this for a few days, I experienced the "Google Dance" with rankings ranging from #1 to #4. Surprisingly, traffic amounts from positions 2-4 were not even HALF of the amount generated from position #1.



Jump ahead to June 2010. The website is ranking between #2 and #5 from day to day for car accessories. The surprising thing about this case study is that there hasn't been any additional marketing done to the site since around November 2008. Even with the low quality nature of directories, article directories, and even some reciprocal incoming links, the ranking has stayed top 5 for a really competitive keyword. I did take the time to get the website listed in DMOZ, the Google Directory, and a lot of other "good" websites. Some of the syndicated articles landed on sites like DIY, ehow.com, and other car enthusiasts websites generating some great inbound links. The site doesn't get credit for a lot of the low quality links that were acquired early on but I did do a few things right that had some great results.



I mentioned earlier that I am taking a more analytical approach to link building, and after reading a lot of articles, seeing this video about article marketing, and getting a better understanding of how much better Google is at identifying low quality links and websites, I have really changed the way I think about link building. Much like in the world of content, quality is better than quantity when it comes to obtaining links. After analyzing my own link building path from 2006 until the present, I came up with a list of best practices to guide my link building moving forward:



It is well worth the time to write great content as opposed to lots of decent content. Some of the best articles I wrote are the ones that attracted the most links and landed on good websites, and one or two were even highlighted in a breaking news story that brought a LOT of referral traffic while it was on the site's homepage.

If you figure out something cool or unique, like getting Pandora to play through a mono bluetooth headset, write about it and keep the content on your site and create a buzz using social media. Links will surely come.

Write content for your own site first. As Rand points out, you will get the links pointing back at your site for having the original content.

Here is one of my favorites - syndicate your RSS feed, not your article content. This is a philosophical change to the approach I used to have in article marketing. Instead of publishing your duplicate content everywhere, keep the content on your site and ping services like technorati, twitter, facebook, and anywhere you can publish your site's feed. Get visitors on your site and then give them an opportunity to bookmark or share your content via social media.

Quality directories are still valid. I have still seen good success from getting listed in the top human-edited directories, especially local and regional ones. Avoid the free-for-all sites and focus on the ones that add value to users.

Guest Blogging is a new hot-topic which is also worth doing. As Rand mentioned in this weeks WBF video, finding relevant websites to post content to is a good way to get quality inbound links and brand awareness. In many cases, you can get content for your site as well if you establish a good partnership with a complementary website or blog.

Patience is a virtue. It is hard to not check rankings every day, but there are a lot of other things to do with your valuable time than checking rankings. I schedule a time once a week to check up on how things are progressing. This keeps me from wasting time each day, and gives me a reason to measure results and dive into analytics at the end of the week.

Reciprocal links are not all bad. It is natural for complementary websites to link to one another, so the emphasis is on relevance. I will exchange links with relevant and complementary websites, but not with just any site. You want to make sure you are linking to reputable websites too.

Don't Spam. Search engines (like Google) mostly update their algorithms to do one of two things: to increase the relevance of the search results and to battle spam in their index. If you keep things relevant and avoid spam tactics, your rankings should remain intact as long as their isn't a fundamental shift in how websites and pages are ranked. Up until the recent "May Day" update, all of our sites have actually improved over the past few years with Google updates (The May Day update gave us about a 14% drop in the number of indexed pages, much like with SEOmoz and others).

Four years later, I have a much different approach to marketing, a different approach to life, and a lot of sites doing well in the search results. Marketing gives me an outlet for my competitive edge which is why I tend to climb the keyword mountains that I do. I would like to hear how your link building tactics have changed over the years and see how far we have come. I plan to keep a student's approach SEO, which continues to prove itself as one of the most frustrating, rewarding, and elusive things in life. It is (after all) a love story!