Jan 03, 2016
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Blog & Feed Search SEO
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimizing for Blog & Feed Engines Yahoo News & Blog Search
– Sorted by relevance. Only top 4 get onto News SERPs Google Blog Search
– Sorted by relevance. No way to submit. Only a matter of time before it ends up in the “One Box”
Technorati– Sorted by date. Tagged posts featured in sidebar.
Feedster– Sorted by date.
PubSub– No immediate SERPs. Delivered only in RSS.
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimizing Your 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
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
SlashdotheadlinessyndicatedonNanodot.org
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimizing Your Blog Rejig your internal hierarchical linking structure
– Tag clouds & tag pages (e.g. UltimateTagWarrior plugin)– Related Posts (e.g. Contextual Related Posts plugin)– Top 10 posts– Next & Previous posts
Build inbound links– Add Technorati tags to your posts (must claim your blog first)– Get onto bloggers’ blogrolls– Trackbacks & comments won’t help with link gain
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Tags pointto Technoratitag pages
Tags point tointernal tagpages
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
This tag pagecontainspost content
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
No tag cloudon sub pages
This tag pagecontains nopost content
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimizing Your Blog 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” plugin)
URLs– Rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores– 301 redirect from yourblog.com to www.yourblog.com– Maintain legacy URLs even after switching blog platforms
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
#8 for “webmarketingblog” aftercreating acustom titlefor the homepage
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Great namefor the blog!
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
“SEO Title Tag” plugin for WordPress Free & open source Allows you to override the title tag with a custom one (defined
through a custom field in a post or a page) Allows you to define a custom home page title Reverses the order of the blog name and the title, or drop the
blog name altogether, or replace it with a shorter nickname Puts the tag in the title of (UltimateTagWarrior) tag pages Uses category’s description as the title on category pages Has an Options page in the admin to change settings Download at www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin.htm
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimizing Your Blog Anchor text
– Make the post’s title a link to the permalink page– Use Neat-o tool (webuildpages.com/neat-o) 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! Heading tags
– category name on category page– Yes for post titles, no for dates!
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Neat-o tool
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Post title is anchor text
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimizing Your Blog
“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. Adhesive plugin
Author profile pages & author links (for group blogs)
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Sticky post
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Author profile
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Optimizing Your Blog
Emphasis tags within posts (bold, strong, etc.) Rel=Nofollow
– All links in trackbacks, comments, and in posts where you don’t vouch for the site
– Where the link would be reciprocal Pings
– Lets the feed search engines know you’ve updated– pingomatic.com, pingoat.com, pings.ws, feedshot.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Blog SEO
It’s child’s play!
My daughter,SEO-in-training
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
#10 for “neopetcheats” within2 weeks, andwith only 1 link!
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
More Gritty Details about RSS
1-click subscribe buttons “Add to My Yahoo” link in SERPs Tracking Customization Link gain
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Make It Easy to Subscribe
1-click add to your favorite aggregator– “Add to ____” buttons– Link tags for autodiscovery
• e.g. <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="http://feeds.stephanspencer.com/scatterings" />
– Make your listings in the Yahoo! SERPs display the “Add to My Yahoo!” link
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
“Add to My Yahoo!” link in SERPs
Add your feed to your My Yahoo! Page Ping Yahoo! with your updates
– e.g. http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://www.whatever.com/rss)
– Or just use Pingomatic More info at
– http://my.yahoo.com/s/publishers.html
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Track Subscriber Behavior
Subscribers from User-Agent field in log files– e.g. User-Agent: Bloglines 2.0 (182 Subscribers)
Reads through “web bugs”– e.g. <img
src="http:www.company.com/cp/.5424Cafaa903cf09ecafb231662ca053c4c56” border=0 size=1 width=1>
Clickthroughs through clicktracked URLs– e.g. http://www.company.com/rss.php?
88288Cafaa903cf09ecafb231662ca053c4c56
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Personalized/Customized Feeds
Best practice for users– Subscription form with interests tickboxes– Allow the user to stay anonymous if they so choose– Give them the option of subscribing via RSS, or email, or both
Personalized feeds not ideal from an SEO standpoint– Because you’re not reinforcing the same items across
multiple sites.– Offer standardized feeds for your affiliates, other webmasters.
Make keyword-rich as a value-add.
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Subscribe toa feedpersonalizedto you
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Capture the Link Gain Encourage links through RSS directories/engines
submission (www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/), trackbacks, pings (Technorati, Pingomatic,…),
Clicktrack your links and pass the link gain– 301 (“permanent”) redirect, not 302, or link gain may not flow– Most ads and affiliate links suffer this fate– Warning: Feedburner use 302, not 301
Pay attention to each item title; it’ll become link text Keep your RSS feed URL at your own domain
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Taking It Further
Great ebook: Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS (Marketingstudies.net)
MarketingProfs.com’ Thought Leaders Summit on blogs for marketing– email me for a free copy of the executive summary, podcast,
and transcript: [email protected] Download the Powerpoint from
– http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/blog-feed-search-seo.ppt