Browsing Tag how to

Okay, so you have a WordPress blog / WordPress website and now you’re wondering how to write effective blog articles for your small business right?

As a WordPress web designer and freelance Internet marketing consultant, I have some advice about writing articles for your blog that will show up on search engines and capture your reader’s interest.

First of all, you need a WordPress blog… If you don’t have one I can help with that shameless plug I know!

Secondly, you need to have a topic that you want to write about AND something that will mean something to your reader, add value to your business by offering sage advice or new information for your existing clients AND a topic that you anticipate will be worthy of people using search engines trying to find useful information about what you have on your mind.

This may sound like good old fashioned common sense, but in practice its not that easy. The reason is that as an expert in your field and as a small business owner with a WordPress blog, you may find yourself gurgling with an abundance of information, confusing concepts to the layman or worse yet – wasting your time explaining something in great detail that is totally worthwhile info, yet you can’t wrap it up and present the blog article in such a way that it can be found on a search engine, or that people don’t click on because the blog post title or excerpt is not appealing.

So what’s the secret to writing effective blog articles? Well – Honestly there is no secret to writing effective blog articles. There is only hard work and honing your writing skills, so that the blog articles you write for your small business make sense, are on topic and contain the key phrases you hope to get found on search engines for! Try, try again…

When writing blog articles to attract visitors to your website, you should be thinking of the people you want to find and read your blog article, then hopefully they look over your website and even better yet – they might call you or email you because they need what you offer. Think about their needs and how you can help them with that. Its called SOLUTION SELLING. In other words, your potential customers have a problem and YOU have the solution. Of course, you’ll need to identify what their problem might be and be confident you can help them with their problem once its identified and your potential customer realizes they have a problem which needs to be solved.

For example, in THIS blog post I’m obviously addressing the problem of how to write effective blog articles for your small business. Chances are very good that if you are reading this article, especially if you found it on your favorite search engine, that YOU probably have a small business and your problem is that you have to figure out how to write effective blog articles. Simple enough right?

So ~ If you were captivated, (or at least mildly interested in), by my WordPress Blog Article on “How To Write Effective Blog Articles for Your Small Business”, lets examine why you found my blog article, clicked on my blog article and are now reading my blog article…

1. You had a problem: You were trying to learn how to write blog articles.
2. I had a solution to your problem: I know how to write blog articles.
3. I wanted you to find my blog article.
4. I wanted you to click on my blog article.
5. I wanted to give you free blog writing advice.
6. I wanted to expose you to my blog web design services.
7. I wrote a blog article about how to write a blog article.

Moving right along…

Now that you understand that your need is learning how to write effective blog articles, and you’re aware that I can teach you how to write effective blog articles, lets examine how effective blog articles are composed, structured and authored.

I’ll sort of go through this briefly, so you can see how to write a blog article step by step (the quick version covering just the basic things you need to do to write effective blog articles).

• EDIT POST PAGE: Lets assume you have logged into your WordPress blog, (yoursite.com/wp-admin) and you’re now staring blankly at the New Post page after clicking the “Add New Post” button.
• BLOG POST TITLE: The first field you should be concentrating on is the TITLE, which is the black field below the thumbtack and “Edit Post” verbiage near the top of your screen. Creating a good title for your blog article is super important. Its the first thing a search engine will see, the most weighted textual content that the search engine will consider and it should accurately reflect the blog article, while at the same time acting as a headline to grab attention.
• BLOG POST PERMALINK: Underneath the TITLE, is something called a “Permalink”. This will be the actual URL address of your blog article. You should have your WordPress Permalink Options set so that it displays the post title. If you don’t know how to setup your WordPress Permalink Options, just send me an email. If you’re writing blog articles for a WordPress website I built for you, this option is already setup and you may notice that your “Permalink” contains today’s date, followed by the great Blog Post Title you just created.
• BLOG POST ADD IMAGE: The next thing you want to do is consider adding a photo or image of some sort. C’mon… Everybody loves a picture book more than one with just words. You want a photo or illustration that helps reinforce the topic of your effective blog article. BEFORE you upload and insert the photo, rename it to be more on topic with the blog post as well, because yes… search engines also search pictures, by name “________.jpg”, as well as by ALT TAG which is the alternate verbiae that appears if the picture is unavailable or takes a while to download. The alternate tag is displayed in what is called an image placeholder, (little red box with an X in it), should the photo download fail or delay.

I know you’re anxious to start writing your blog article, especially now that it has that cool picture and has a good title, but whoa there pardner… There’s still a few more fundamental things I need to explain first, so you can learn how to write effective blog articles all by yourself.

• BLOG POST CATEGORIES: Every blog post should be categorized, or associated with related blog categories. You will see the “Categories” towards the right side of the Edit Post page. If I setup your WordPress blog, chances are I have already added some on-topic categories for you to select. Simply check the box next to the categories that relate to this effective blog article. Search engines connect the blog categories to the article and it will give the blog post a boost in search results if they match.
• BLOG POST TAGS: Every blog post needs Post Tags. You’ll see the “Post Tags” underneath the Categories on the right side of the Edit Post page. Think of tags like key words and key phrases. You want them to match your blog post title and also include the major on-topic key phrases that are in the textual content of the blog articles.
• ALL IN ONE SEO PLUGIN: If you’re writing blog articles for a WordPress blog I built for you, it will have the “All In One SEO” Plugin installed and you will notice three or more extra fields towards the bottom of the Edit Post page. In the fields, you will simply repeat your Blog Post Title, add a description of the blog post article and add key words and key phrases that relate to the blog article. If you don’t have All In One SEO Pack Plugin, I recommend installing it.

Woo Hoo ~ So we are finally ready to start writing our effective blog article for our small business! Here is where the fun begins.

Some folks love writing and others do not. As for me, I love writing and I tend to ramble or interject some humor here and there. Other folks just want to write what they have to say and get on with it. Either way is fine. Your blog is YOURS and it should reflect YOUR personality, style, professionalism, expertism, or whatever “ism” you are trying to portray. Just try to be honest. Don’t rant, nobody likes a whiner. Say what you say confidently because you have done your research and your experience and success proves your point.

Since I tortured you already with the rigorous, tedious, yet necessary exercises of creating a Blog Post Title, Blog Post Permalink, Blog Post Categories, Blog Post Tags and then repeated that drudgery with the All in One SEO Title, Description and Key words, you should have a fairly clear idea of “what” exactly your blog post will be about by now.

You might not know exactly what you’re going to say yet, but you know what the topic will be, (that’s your Title and main key phrases), you know basically what the article will be about, (that’s the description and categories). Most importantly you know what WORDS and PHRASES you will be using.

After doing SEO since 2002, this comes naturally to me, but for for beginners here is what I suggest: Copy and paste your Blog Post Title into the area where you will be composing your effective blog article. Paste it a few more times… Paste it in there about 5 times in separate paragraphs. Next, copy and paste or type your Categories and Post Tags. Copy and paste them a few times in a few different paragraphs.

At this point, if you’ve followed my advice your blog post is almost ready to publish. It has a title, permalink, categories, post tags, and the SEO meta tags. It has a cool picture and several paragraphs that contain your title, categories and tags. The only problem now is that its not an EFFECTIVE BLOG ARTICLE yet, because it makes no sense right? Now,  you will need to start weaving all the words together. For a perfect example of what I mean by weaving it together, you can study this blog post “How To Write Effective Blog Articles For Your Small  Business”.

Basically you want to get your main ideas across, while utilizing the key phrases that people would search for the information by. In this instance, I knew I wanted to write a blog article to help my clients with WordPress blogs to better their blog writing skills. In case you were sleeping, I’ll bullet point some of the key phrases I used throughout my blog article:

1. How To Write Effective Blog Articles
2. Effective Blog Articles
3. WordPress Blog Articles
4. WordPress Blogs
5. Writing Blog Article
6. Effective Blog Article

I also included a myriad of combination’s, you can see the syntax and how my key words “effective”, “blog”, “articles”, “wordpress”, etc. are all tied in with natural, organic sentences and paragraphs that make sense.

If your first blog articles are lacking don’t sweat it, because they will still add valuable content to your wordpress website and you need the practice… The important thing is that you keep writing blog articles. With each one try to narrow the focus of your topic and tighten up the Title, Categories and Post Tags.

Happy Writing

Category : Blog

The question of “How Long Does It Take To Show Up On Search Engines?”, is perhaps one of the most frequent questions that I am asked. The process may seem impossibly long, because once a website goes live, or is launched, a ton of planning, time and perhaps money has been invested in your new website. Waiting to see whether or not your website shows up on search engines, can be an excruciatingly long wait, especially since you’re probably spreading the word about your new site and friends or clients may report that “I cannot find your website”, or “I typed in the URL you gave me and nothing showed up”.

The unfortunate truth is that although waiting is the hardest part, it does take time for a new website or rebuilt website to show up on search engines. Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes months for a website to be “included” on a search engine and certainly at least several more months for the search engine results for your website to stabilize. For example, if you have a painting company in Dallas, you’ll probably want to be seen for search phrases like “dallas painter”, “dallas painting”, “painting contractors dallas”, etc. In order for this to happen, your site must contain relevant information that pertains to those searches first of all, and then when the search engines display your site for those key phrases, and people click through on your site, then the search engines will start to “learn” that your site is relevant for those terms.

Obviously there is a lot more to it than just that, but be assured that is the very basics and the essence of what you want to happen. Once again though, this takes TIME… Maybe a short time, but more likely a long time. Don’t anticipate launching a website and having it show up on search engines in just a couple of days or weeks, its simply not realistic.

If you absolutely need to drive traffic to your site immediately, (that means getting site visitors – not having your website show up on searches right away),  then you can opt for the sponsored pay per click ads offered by Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. The cost is usually $100 +/- to start an account and the “cost per click” is typically between $1.50 and $15.00, but usually averages out to roughly $5.00 per click-through depending on your particular market. Bidding on search terms for something common and competitive like Dallas Painter will be more expensive than something more obscure like Kokomo Candle Maker.

Over the long haul, you want to establish a solid back-link strategy to build up your website’s “link popularity”, which is term that describes how many websites link to yours. Search engines measure these back-links to establish your “popularity”. A website with 1000 other sites linking to it, will show up better on search engines than the site that has only a few. Keep in mind that the quality of the links matter too. You want links from reputable sites that are similar in content to your own.

Category : Blog

Why some websites show up better on Google than others do!

One of the coolest parts about my job, is that when I am asked a question by a client, I am forced to think about what I naturally take for granted and summarize that into words… Therefore I can make posts like this that other people with websites might find interesting.

This question came from one of my newest clients, his website was launched within the past couple of weeks. First, I will post the question from that client and then my answer, allowing you to enjoy the full breadth of the conversation.

I am still not showing up in google searches until the 3rd or 4th page. What can we do about that?

The following was my answer. Keep in mind that it was specific to his website and application, but the subject material can be related to any search topic, or any geography.

As far as showing up on search engines, that is a really deep subject and this may not be the easy answer you seek, but the process typically takes weeks for the site to be included and begin showing up during searches, months for the search engine to determine what the site and all the pages within are relevant for and years for the site to become firmly established on search engines. Nobody, except the search engines themselves have any control over how sites are included or considered relevant. We’re talking about billions and billions of website domains worldwide, with potentially a seemingly infinite number of electronic documents to compare.

Here is the overview of the process that I provided to the client:

1. Website URL is submitted to search engines, (I submitted yours to Google, Yahoo and Bing).
2. Major search engines process the submission.
3. Search engines “include” the URL in their list of websites to crawl, (for example nobody knows how many websites Google has indexed, but it is believed to be in the order of 10′s of billions).
4. Search engines “crawl” or “spider” the website and catalog it’s content based on URL, Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, Textual Page Content between tags.
5. Search engines begin to display the website and pages of the site, during live searches, in the organic results, for what it considers potential relevant matches.
6. Search engines track the human click factor, to determine if the website and pages within are thought to be relevant by people actually searching for information.
7. Search engines track the quality and quantity of inbound links, (other websites that link to your website).

Ultimately a search engine’s number one goal is to return organic search results that are as accurate as possible, as quickly as it can. Your website and it’s pages are displayed in what the search engine determines to be the correct relevance order for any given key phrase inputted by a search engine user, based on the following factors:

• Person inputs a search query (search phrase or search word).
• The search engine quickly compares that search string to all it’s indexed sites, (this will be billions of sites).
• Search engine compares the URL (does the URL of the page match the person’s search query?)
• Search engine compares the Page Title (does any page within the site have a page title that suggests it matches the search query?)
• Search engine compares the Meta Descriptions (do any pages in the site have a description that matches the search query?)
• Search engine compares the Body Text (does the page contain the search string?)
• If the page is a match, the search engine compares the density combination of URL, Title, Description, Body Text against all other potential matches (millions or 100′s of 1000′s of sites).
• If the page is a match, the search engine compares the quantity and quality of inbound links against all other potential matches (10′s of 1000′s of sites).
• If the page is a match, the search engine compares how many real people have clicked through to the potentially matching sites, based on that search string? (1000′s of sites).

If several pages and / or websites have possible relevant matches, the search engine will also consider factors such as:

• How long has the website been indexed at the search engine? (older sites show up better).
• How long is the domain name registered for? (people that register domains for years at a time, are more likely to be serious and are in it for the long haul).
• Where is the website hosted? (this is especially important for geographic related searches).
• What is the average bounce rate of the site? (pages that nobody wants to look at for very long do worse, pages that people stay to look at perform better).

With that said (and I know that is a whole bunch of information to absorb), the fact that your site is ALREADY showing up on Page 2 at Google for as broad a search (and as valuable), as Fort Myers DJ is amazing. To put that into perspective, that means that Google considers YOUR website to be HIGHLY relevant for that term. So much so that it displays it in the Top 20 results of over 300,000 relevant matches. Imagine all the other web pages you might be competing against that have the words “Fort”, “Myers” and “DJ”.

As time goes by, you will be more an more impressed. Actually, based on my experience I’ll bet even right now I could find your website for a myriad of other RELEVANT key phrases. That is of course the main point… If you are searching for something, is YOUR page relevant for that term? Is it HIGHLY RELEVANT? Keep in mind that search engines ONLY KNOW TEXT. They can only understand words exactly as they are spelled, spaced, abbreviated, punctuated, etc. by the searcher at the end of a keyboard.

What I would suggest, is that if you open up a Google Site Analytics account, I can install the tracking code and you can then begin to see what Google thinks your site is relevant for and analyze your traffic.

If you find that your site is showing up for things it should not show up for, or not showing up when you think its should, there could be a very, very, good reason and we can then look at changing or adding to the site so that it does reflect what you want people to find it for.

Category : Blog