Today, I’m happy to be reviewing SEO Marketing by Brian Belfitt of BlogEngage. This free ebook (which you get when you sign up for BlogEngage)  has just 27 pages and covers:

1. Introduction to starting your very own blog
2. Hosting and set up
3. Selecting the right theme
4. Setting up your wordpress blog
5. SEO, Marketing and Promotion
6. Making money online with your blog

The ebook is a compilation of the best articles from Brian’s SEO Marketing blog and gives some useful tips.

What I Disagreed With

There was only one thing I disagreed with in the book – Brian’s advice at the start that  you should buy domain name and hosting from the same provider. In fact, I do the opposite and for almost all my domains, have them from separate providers. That means that if I ever fall out with one, I’ve still got the option of getting my site up quickly. (And I do that because I’ve been burned in the past.)

Next, Brian moves onto themes and he lists some of my favorite providers there. He discusses the importance of researching your posts and keeping them consistent and relevant for your readers. He also includes the importance of keeping your blog maintained – not only by checking and removing out-dated links, but updating tags if relevant.

Best Feature

One of the things I like best about Brian’s book is his blog marketing plan – what you need to do to market your blog. However, you might find you need more info to implement it if you are new to blogging.

His checklist of factors to look for in deciding where to market and promote your blog (by interacting and commenting on other blogs) is useful, as is the section on how you can use forums for promotion. There’s also a section on seeking advertisers and affiliate marketing, with links to some key ad networks.

The Verdict

Overall, I think this book gives a good snapshot of where to start and since it’s free, it’s hard to complain about the lack of detail in some areas. If you want an overview of the things you need to think about then you can read this book in a few minutes and have a pretty good idea. But if you want more in-depth information, you will have to check out the articles on Brian’s site and elsewhere.

by Christian Arno

Writing content that is both reader and search engine friendly can be a bit of a juggling act. These two aspects of web writing are certainly not mutually exclusive, but getting the balance right can be tricky.

With the vast amount of content on the web clamouring for people’s attention, it’s important that people can actually find your site to begin with, and effective use of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques can be instrumental in driving traffic your way. It’s no use having the most wonderful, engaging prose if no one ever sees it, but once people are at your site you have to be able to both grab and keep their attention.

What is SEO?

SEO or search engine optimisation is simply the process of improving the visibility of your website in the rankings of the major search engines. If you run a specialist music blog or a website for a company that restores antique furniture, you’ll want your website to appear as close to the top of the search results as possible whenever someone searches for a relevant term.

Factors such as back-linking (establishing links with other websites relevant to your content) are important in SEO, but the effective use of keywords is probably the single most important aspect, and is certainly the most relevant when it comes to writing copy.

Keyword research and placement

Keywords are the words or phrases that people actually put into the search engine when looking for relevant sites. A difference can be drawn between ‘short tail’ and ‘long tail’ keywords. A short tail keyword is typically short and simple, commonly used and generalised. More people will use the term but there will also be more competition from other websites. An example of a short tail keyword could be ‘furniture restorers’.

A long tail keyword is more involved and specific. An example could be ‘antique pine restoration in Sheffield’. This will yield fewer searches overall but there is less competition on long tail keywords and they generally have better conversion rates, meaning people who visit the site actually follow up on the services or products offered. Ideally, you should use a combination of short tail and long tail keywords.

Keywords should be placed in titles, subheadings and within the body of the text, but don’t over-use or ‘spam’ keywords. Early search engines simply counted the number of times search terms occurred on a page, but the algorithms used by Google and other search engines today are more sophisticated, and spamming keywords can be counter-productive, as well as affecting the quality of the copy.

Keyword tips

• Hold a brainstorming session to find the most relevant terms. Don’t forget colloquialisms, abbreviations and regional variations.
• Run your terms through Google’s keyword tool to check their effectiveness and levels of competition.
• Revise your keywords regularly. The search terms that people commonly use are not static and can in fact change with surprising speed.

Writing for the web

Writing for the web differs from writing for print and other media. A screen is harder on the eyes than the printed page and users tend to scan more, looking for important information that proves the page is relevant before reading in-depth.

Web writing tips

• Break the text into small, easily digestible chunks.
• Put the most important information close to the top and preferably in the first couple of lines.
• Use subheadings to break the copy into sections.

Writing for your audience

While the above guidelines hold true in most situations, the nature of your website and its audience will also dictate the style of your copy to a large extent. Are you writing for an academic or highly knowledgeable audience looking for in-depth analysis? Hardcore technophiles who appreciate technical specifications and understand jargon? Casual surfers who might need walking through the services you offer or the topic you’re writing about? Keeping the audience in mind will inform both your use of language and the format in which it’s presented.

In general, a more knowledgeable audience will be more inclined to read through involved, complex prose, but unless you want your site to have an air of exclusivity (and fewer consequent visitors) you should also cater for less knowledgeable visitors. An easily accessible introduction or overview of your topic, products or services can easily be linked to more in-depth copy. Also remember that even academically-orientated copy is easier to read online when broken into sections and presented in an orderly and attractive manner.

It’s not always easy to balance content that is both SEO and reader friendly. Even experienced writers coming from another field can struggle with the format at first, but it’s an important balance to strike for anyone wanting their web content to be both visible and effective.

About the author
Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of professional translation company Lingo24, experts in the foreign language internet. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 150 employees spanning three continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over sixty million words for businesses in every industry sector. Follow Lingo24 on Twitter: @Lingo24.

(Photo: avrdreamer)

Sharon Hurley Hall has been a friend for years. She is one of the best ‘self taught’ SEOs I’ve ever met. Not only can she market her websites – without understanding the methodologies behind bibliometrics and Latent Semantic Indexing – but her name is a ‘keyword string’ related to ‘get paid to write’ in both Google Search and Google AdWords. That is why I thought of her blog when I found this new tool.

Sharon is always teaching writers how to promote their websites with a clarity and simplicity that I find difficult. However, very few tools can be used by the average website owner to track their search engine results. Even the free SEO software packages can take weeks to learn how to use, and months to understand the significance of the data produced.

I found www.cuterank.net this morning and immediately thought of Sharon and her readers. It is a free little script, perfect for anyone with only a few websites and blogs. It lets you track your ‘rank’ in any of Google’s search engines.

Have you ever run a ranking report that stated you were at the top of Google – but you couldn’t find your website’s SERP (Search Engine Results Position). This little tool lets you pick any Google search engine and find your rank specifically – or find your ranking on a large selection of websites.

IT also tells you if you are in the top 100. This is very important. If you have a keyword in the top 100 – then you have done the ‘hard part’ of SEO. Once in the Top 100, just continue creating blog posts with a keyword density between 2 -4%, but a Keyword Weight of 70% or higher. Density is the number of times a keyword appears. Weight is the value of each keyword.

This is easier than it sounds. The average blog post has 400 words including title, links, menu, and footer.

First: Never use more than 4 keywords on a page. In fact, using only 2 keywords makes it easier to achieve a high Keyword Weight.

The keyword should always appear in the URL, Page Title, Meta Tags, and Description. Next, include the keyword in the Article Title. Your URL, Page Title, and Article Title do not need to repeat themselves.

Second: Add the keyword to the first 50 words of the page, the last 50 words. Hyperlink one of these to a relevant page on your blog.

This is all the average blog needs to generate a Keyword Weight over 70%. This is the first step to reaching the top 100 Keyword Positions.

Keep Track of the keywords and run them through www.cuterank.net . There is no upgrades, no members section. You do not need to buy a better version to see all your results.

Suzanne James is a professional search engine marketer. Find out more at Axiom9.

Editor’s Note: When I agreed to publish this guest post, I had no idea I was going to be heaped with praise – thanks, Suz.

Disclosure: I have received no compensation for publishing this review post.

Every now and then I write a series of posts on a similar theme. Sometimes that’s because there’s too much to be said to fit it into one post. At other times, it’s because I find related topics at different times. However, it’s not always easy to find these posts later. That’s why I’ve grouped some of them into a number of series. The series are listed below, with links to the first post, where you can find links to the other posts in the series.

Making It As A Freelance Writer was the first series I did on this blog, back when it was in its first home. These are short tips on different aspects of the writing life, written when I was quite new to blogging.

I then turned my attention to how to SEO Your Website, giving some ideas on how you could create your website, get it indexed by the search engines and promote it on the net.

Tools For Writers is an occasional series of posts on useful things I find while browsing – usually free.

You’re probably most familiar with my ongoing Get Paid To Blog series, which reviews paid to blog companies, based on my personal experience of using them.

And I recently started a series of Writers’ Blogs Reviews, which includes writing sites as well.

Just added Promotion Is Free.

I’ll update this post whenever I start a new series. Happy reading.

Write Really Great Keyword Articles is today’s post from Dana Prince’s Writer’s Blog. I read this blog every day and it’s one of my favourites. This post will tell you why.

When you get an assignment that involves ten of the same keyword or twenty or more,it can feel like a bottomless pit at the start. How on earth can I write 10 keyword articles about a common word such as Google with a 1.5% keyword density?

Dana doesn’t just ask the question, she provides the answer and it’s easy to implement. If you’ve ever flagged when writing keyword articles, Write Really Great Keyword Articleswill help you.

On the surface, Squidoo.com may look like a free way to create a minisite and share information with others. In its simplest form, that is exactly what it is. But there are a lot of other ways you can benefit from having a Squidoo lens.

First Page on Google

One of the big perks is that Squidoo lenses tend to do well on Google, especially if you optimize for a certain keyword. For example, I have a lens that is optimized for the keyword “make money writing”. It spends a lot of time on the first page now and the rest of the time is spent on the second page.

In order to get your lens on the first page you need to do several things. Here is a short list:

• Do some keyword research and make sure they are in the URL.
• Put the keyword in the main page title and then scatter it throughout the page.
• Make sure you have 4 modules at the minimum. The more modules you have, the better.
• Update it often. In the beginning, you will need to update it every day. Small changes count, such as deleting a sentence.
• Promote your lens whenever you can.

Newsletter Subscribers

You can use your lens to get newsletter subscribers. You can put your subscriber box in one of the text modules. This requires that you use an “iframe” command. You can find some information online on how to do that. Or, click on my link at the end of this post and I’ll send you some information.

Affiliate Marketing

I promote affiliate programs on my lenses. In the month of June, I made around $40. Yes, you can make money through the modules on Squidoo, but you can make a lot more if you sign up for the affiliate programs yourself and add them to your lens.

Show That you are an Expert

Another thing that a lens does is that it shows you are an expert at a particular subject. If you want to develop a reputation that you know a lot about something, you can research it and create a lens. This is a tool that you can use for self promotion.

*****
Katherine Huether is a freelance writer who loves creating Squidoo lenses. To view a list of her lenses visit http://www.squidoo.com/kathography

Website promotion works. I love the sound of this number. 1000. It rolls off the tongue and gladdens the mind. I’ll tell you why. That’s the number of unique visitors to my freelance writing site in July. These are my best figures yet and it’s all been done through free promotional techniques (and the contacts I’ve made here on WritingUp). Now, I know these are small figures compared to a lot of big league sites, but they’re not bad for a freelance writer’s site that’s just over a year old.

To get to this point I have used self-promotion of all kinds, including blog carnivals, writing free articles, and looking around for any articles that will help me find out what the next step is. I’ve taken advice from Mitch, Haven and gracepub and many others.

But this is not just about blowing my own trumpet. The thing is that you can do this too, if you want to. There’s no big secret (especially since I’ve been blogging about it for a year). It’s just a matter of taking the time to do it.

And by the way, just so you know, not everything’s going my way. One job has stiffed me for GBP150 – so I need to figure out how I’m going to recover it.

I’m falling in love with TodayBooks.com. This might be the honeymoon period, because I’ve just had my second book listed with them. And it’s one that’s grown out of this very blog. Remember when I did a series of posts on search engine optimization and website promotion? Well, that turned into a presentation for Inspired Author. One day when I had not much else to do, I converted the presentation into a Word document and sent it to TodayBooks.

A couple of weeks later I got back an email that said that they liked the book but felt it was a bit thin. Who could blame them? After all, it WAS based on a bullet point presentation, so I knew it was light on content. But sending them the presentation gave them the chance to assess whether it was something they would publish. After I thought about it for a while, I decided to beef it up by including some of my original blog posts from here, generalised so they didn’t just apply to writers. This book is the result of the combination.

The whole process has taken several weeks. TodayBooks are extremely slow at responding to email. What I like about them is that if they think changes are needed they tell me. They also promote the book on the home page. Most importantly, I get an ISBN, so I can list my book with Amazon and others.

There’s one thing I thought they could have done better. The suggested a new title and asked me to write sales copy. I had no problem with that – after all, if I wasn’t prepared to promote my own book, why should they? But … they’ve changed the title again and they didn’t change the sales copy to match. That’s why the title of the book is SEO Tricks but the sales copy refers to Web Page Action. That’s a bit careless, I think.

All in all, I’m happy. I’ve got my second ebook out and it’s a general one that I can promote heavily. It will look great in my profile on IFreelance and other places. And I may make some pocket money from it, too

You can’t argue with these figures. This month I had 843 unique visitors to doublehdesign.com (200 more than when I wrote about this in January). I had 17,000+ hits (only a small increase) and I had nearly a 50% increase in page views (to more than 10,000). This month I’ve also had a few emails a week from the contact form on my site and people have seen my stuff and contacted me about work. So I must be doing something right. The trouble is, when you throw everything at a problem, it can be hard to know which one has worked best. Here’s what I did. I hope following these steps will help you promote successfully too.

1. Choose A Domain Name

I bought my domain name almost a year before I was ready to do anything with it. That was one area where I made a mistake, going for a name that captured what I thought I wanted to do. Doublehdesign is ok, but SharonHurleyHall.com would have been better. I’ve bought the other one now, but I’ve put a lot of effort into promoting doublehdesign, so I’ll have to be creative in how I promote the other one. If you are blogging, choose the name of your blog carefully. Although you may be able to change it later, any links that you have promoted may show up as broken if you change the name (this happens on WritingUp). This will not help with site traffic.

2. Create A Website

I set up my site. This was quite simple when it started. There was a home page, a bio/cv/resume page, a ghostwriting page, a writing samples page and a contact form. This was enough to get me going. It was simple and I added the bells and whistles such as my photo, links pages, a sitemap and google ads later. I added one page a week to my site for about four months. I updated at least one page every week or two. If you’re blogging, add at least a couple of posts a week.

3. Promotion By Adding A Blog

I added a blog in November. This was a good move, because that’s when my traffic really started to increase. However, a month later, I got addicted to blogging at WritingUp, so it might have been just as easy to use a WritingUp feed on my site, with links back to the site whenever possible. This is a strategy several WritingUp bloggers use effectively.

4. Submit To Google, Yahoo, MSN

I submitted my site and blogs to Google, Yahoo and MSN. I also submitted my site to DMOZ, where it’s been listed at last after nearly a year. Then I submitted to other appropriate directories. The difficulty with this is that there was rarely a category that matches exactly what your site or blog is about. Some directories listed writers’ sites as personal, others as business, still others as arts. I just picked a category and hoped for the best. This added to my search engine hits and to my traffic. I submitted my blog to blog directories of all sorts. First of all I went for those that did not require a linkback, then I targeted a few that did. Traffic to my blog soon surpassed traffic to the main site. A word of warning, though. Sometimes you can get submit-happy and submit to sites that will bring traffic that you don’t want. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a month after doing an accidental mass submit to sites around the world, I got traffic from sites looking to sell Viagra, Tramadol and more.

5. Promotion By Writing For Free

One of my best promotion techniques was writing for free. I wrote free articles for EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, ArticleMarketer.com, ArticleBlast.com, SubmitYourNewContent.com and many others. These are the ones that have resulted in the most links back to my site. EzineArticles is the one that had the quickest results. Two of my articles got picked up by freelancewriting.com and I consistently get 10 or more hits a month from this site. I also wrote reviews on Dooyoo.co.uk, ciao.co.uk and Epinions.com. This allowed me to practice writing, earn some pennies, show some versatility and develop my writing voice. Again, many of these turn up all over the web.

6. Finding Opportunities Through Blogging

I signed up with freelance job agencies, looked on craigslist and looked at other job listings. These brought some work, but blogging has been even more fruitful. It was on WritingUp that I first heard about InspiredAuthor, Blogitive, Lifetips, IFreelance and other sites which are now the backbone of my freelance writing life. Taking time to read other blogs paid off in a way I could not have predicted.

7. Promotion By Exchanging Links

More recently, I have done link exchanges with writing sites, joined a writing web ring and changed my site template to be more seo-friendly. I am now getting more visits than ever. Figures for the year to date are nearly 4000 unique visitors, about 54,000 page views and about 86,000 hits. The figures were skewed slightly by the Viagra-Tramadol brigade in February. I have also used, social bookmarking, tagging and pinging.

8. Promotion Through Keywords, Tagging And Pinging

I’m also trying a new strategy. I look to see what people have been searching for (or in the case of my blog, which ads appear on the days I make most money) and then I blog about that topic again. I haven’t done this on writingup yet, but I have done it on my other blog. It’s too early to say how that will turn out. I do use keywords in my blog posts, though. If you want your blog to be known for a particular subject, research the keywords, use them in your blog, and use them as tags. If you look through my blog, you’ll find that tags on the early posts are all over the place, while tags on recent posts are much more focused.

9. Promotion: Keep Updating

Believe it or not, when I started my promotion efforts, I didn’t know much about what I was doing. I read, learned and tried new ideas, discarding the ones that didn’t seem to work for me. Now that I know more about what I’m doing, it’s time to look at my site and blog again and see how they could be improved. Some of the pages need some work on keywords; others need to be split into two. Of course, I’m so busy writing now that I have less time to spend on promotion, but I know I’ve got to keep up my website promotion efforts to keep the ball rolling. I hope some of these strategies work for you.

One of the topics I blog about occasionally is SEO and website development (see the list on my index). I’ve been getting emails this week from a site touting tag and ping for site promotion (who’s going to argue with that strategy?). I was a bit impatient to know what they were going to tell me, so I hunted around their site for the sitemap and I came across several useful articles in the seo-articles section. The articles are easy to understand and are aimed at beginners. I learned a few things myself, especially about WordPress plugins I could use on my other blog. Anyway, the info is there – have a look.