A Pre-Publishing Checklist for Feeding the Spiders

January 9, 2007 by Liz

Making Sure the Investment Pays Off

Yep I write every day and I publish. That’s way I make sure that my voice is heard. I also want to be sure that my words are visible. I like to see that the spiders serve them up in Google.

Prorating the time that I spent gathering ideas, I’ve probably spent 60-120 minutes on average post. Time writing is time working. Time spent is an investment. It’s time I could be using talking to bloggers and talking with clients. Before I hit publish I make sure that the time I’ve invested pays off as well as it might. I’ve made a short Pre-Flight Publishing list that I run down, before I pass say, “Go.”

Pre-Publishing Checklist

Is the content keyword rich? By waiting to read for keywords until after all other checks, I make sure that I don’t forfeit quality to pray at the altar of SEO. Now, I can look for keywords my readers might search for and make sure that they find the relevant content that I have to offer. I won’t be reaching, and they won’t be disappointed. Current relationships will stay strong, and new readers will be pleased with what they encounter here.
What tags might I add that belong with this post? Tags can help search engine spiders properly index my post. Post tags are definitely blog, brand, and business promotion. If your blogging software doesn’t easily allow you to tag your posts, there are plug-ins and hacks for every platform out there.
What related articles do I have that readers might be interested in reading? Offering related articles for readers to read more when they finished my post, gives people more information about a subject they’ve already shown interest in. It also gets readers more involved with my blog, my business, and my brand.
The intra-link that you make at the end of your post shows people how your content relates and is relevant throughout your blog — this helps search engines index it as well.
Are there opportunities for trackbacks? If I’ve mentioned another blogger’s work or if what I’ve said meshes well with the conversation on another blog, I’ll send a trackback to let that blogger know.
Is this this a one-in-a-million post that I should self-promote to other blogs? If I’ve written the post that reveals how to get Google Goodness from every post, I write a brief introduction of myself and your post and send a personal email to a select two or three bloggers.
I make it’s a one-in-a-million post, and I explain my reasons for thinking it’s a match with their blogs. If you don’t read a blog, don’t send a link. Period. Either way, it’s a long shot that a post really is the one-in-a-million post that we think it is. Still, there’s a right and wrong way to let folks know. If you’re going to do that, do your homework first, the person receiving the email will notice. Believe me they will.

When I’ve made these few checks I feel better that I’m sending off my work in great shape to make the most of the time that I’ve invested.

What other practices are on your pre-publsihing checklist?

–ME “lis” Strauss

Blog Promotion: How to Write for People and Search Engine Spiders
10 + 1 Things to Make Me Love Your Business Email

Blog Promotion: How to Write for People and Search Engine Spiders

November 28, 2006 by Liz

Blog Promotion by Writing Well for the Web

Writing online serves two audiences — people and search engine spiders — those little crawly bots that move from link to link indexing information that ranks my pages. People are my readers. People are also the users who search for information. Spiders locate the content for search engines to index and serve up when people go searching for information. Keeping those facts in mind helps me handle the balance between the people and the coded arachnids that search out quality, relevant content to serve them.

The best blog promotion is to write well for the web. I keep my focus on people and give a nod to spiders by following these basics.

Write for People

I write for people. I use my own voice. I write with the way people read as my guide.

I read over my work as a reader would. When I read what I’ve written listen as a person would hear the message.

I look for words, phrases, errors, and overly-long sentences that would get between readers and my message. I also have a proofreader check things behind me. If you find something, she’s not been here yet.

After the work is “people-ready,” I go over it another time for my secondary audience Ã¢â¬â- those search engine spiders. I make sure the spiders donÃ¢â¬â¢t trip and have plenty to eat.

Feed Spiders

Spiders like to eat keywords. I make sure they find some in titles and subheads and key sentences. I don’t mind a bit of repetition.

I avoid the word “here” as link anchor text. Spiders place more value on outgoing links when the anchor text shows how they are relevant.

I add related articles. Spiders like to know how my pages relate to each other, and they like to have those pages to serve up when someone is searching for a related idea.

I link out or trackback to quality blogs.

These last crumbs to feed spiders didn’t really change the content. So I give the piece a final read, fix what I find, and hit that publish button.

Readers are happy because they get my best writing. Spiders are happy because people get my best writing — that means the people will use their search engine again.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Business Cafe 08-11-2006

August 11, 2006 by Liz

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the title shots to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Bloggers Blog gives the complete rundown on who said what about the terrible possibilities that could have occurred in the air yesterday.

Jamdo offers a unique look at names and search engine traffic.

The Blogging Times introduces us to the Blogmobile, which somehow blogged its way here from the 60s.

Clear Your Mind wants us to do just that.

The Blog Herald gives us a CLUE about the election last Tuesday.

Related ala carte selections include

The Business of America is Business hosts an International Carnival of spectacular proportions, showing that capitalists still believe that bigger is best. 🙂

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like.
No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thinking Inside-Outside the SEO Sandbox

April 11, 2006 by Liz

Learning by Getting It Wrong

Remember your first web site or blog? You had to learn so much about coding and Search Engine Optimization. Bet you learned most of what you know now by doing–OJT, On the Job Training, otherwise known as getting it wrong and fixing it. Those were valuable experiences.

The thing about learning by getting it wrong is that you remember what you did. Tweaking a template and having your sidebar fall off is WAY more powerful than anyone telling you how not to code something.

As much as I wish that WordPress had an undo button, I know I’ve learned more because it doesn’t.

Think like a Search Engine

SEO folks think like Search Engines. They buy and read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and its updates. They follow and discuss Matt Cutt’s blog, and the Google Blog–probably not this one, the Google Blog, but this one Google Research Blog–or maybe all of them. They check in at Yahoo’s Search Blog, MSN Search, and with other SEO hangouts, such as Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Round Table, and Threadwatch. So I do some of that–the first half at least.

But reading doesn’t help me half as much as doing does.

Thinking Inside-Outside the SEO Box

I’ve been searching out experiences to help me think like a search engine. I use my stats to watch how search engines route traffic to my blogs. Sometimes they hit right on the page that has the content being searched for. That’s not interesting. I expect that. They’ve invested powerful resources into research in doing that right.

Sometimes they hit right next to where they should. THAT I find puzzling and intriguing, especially when the page in question is tagged with the exact search term that was entered.

It happened again this morning. Someone searched for “nextsplogs.” The searcher was sent to the home page of Successful Blog rather than to the page called SOB Business Cafe 04-07-2006, where Nextsplogs actually appears twice–in the text and as a tag. Is it because the term is singular in one and capitalized in the other? Hmmmm. I wonder.

I don’t like things I don’t understand, and I want to understand this.

I’ve learned a lot from watching my stats, but this kind of thing my stats can’t help me crack.

Build Your Own Search Engine

Just when I was about to give up on my chance of knowing, along came this post from the MSN search weblog, Build Your Own Search Engine. I thought, here’s a way to learn by doing. It’s not an actual full-blown search engine–it’s search engine macros–and it’s an early BETA version. That suits me just fine, though. It gets my brain and hands in the process and I can even watch how the parameters have to be tweaked to work right. Just reading the comments about it, I can feel myself getting smarter.

Go on over. Take a look. It’s an inside-outside the box way to learn SEO.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
MSN and Microsoft Joint Research Venture
SEO The Secret Life of Search Engines
Check Google Backlinks Through Yahoo
SEOÃ¢â¬âThe Value of Outlinks to MY Blog

Great Find: SEOmoz Beginnerâs Guide

January 26, 2006 by Liz

seomoz_org logo

Great Find: SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO
Type of Article: A Series of Articles on SEO
Permalink: Beginner’s Guide to SEO
Target Audience: Any blogger who is curious about SEO and how it works
Content: SEOmoz, a Seatlle-based Search-engine organization has put together this series to help individuals, organizations, and companies who have little to no experience with search engine optimization and want to learn the basics of how search engines work. The organization states their goal as to improve your ability to drive search traffic to your site and debunk major myths about SEO. We share this knowledge to help businesses, government, educational, and non-profit organizations benefit from being listed in the major search engines.

From this list it appears that they take their goals very seriously. The first four (in purple) give you a quick look at what you might be interested in further down the line. All of the articles are short and written in clear, plain English, so they’re easy to follow and, well, interesting to read. Take a peek.

This is one fine reference to add to your library. It’s nice to bump into an SEO org that wants to share what it knows in such an organized fashion. Thanks SEOmoz.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: Tlog Blogging Tips Series

January 24, 2006 by Liz

Great Find: The Tlog Blogging Tips Series
Type of Article: A Growing Series of Articles on Setting Up and Running a Blog
Permalink: The Blogging Tips Series
Target Audience: Any blogger who wants to think about blogging or rethink the direction his or her blog is going.

Content: Pedro Timoteo, the Tlog owner and developer of this series is a network administrator. I’ve read through these posts and they put out in sequence the step-by-step basics of blogging. It’s well worth looking over for a thorough blog review. The organization has a programmer’s knack of parsing out knowledge in manageable chunks. They are delivered in language that is clear, accurate, and respectful of the reader. This belongs in everyone’s survival kit.

Look at this list.

What’s not to love about this? The thought that went into this series shows in the list alone.
AND there’s a whole blog beyond this.

–ME “Liz” Strauss