Preparing/Making your Blog Site

2Making your blog site: Blogger platform will be used

Things to know before making a blog

Your Target Audience

Understanding The Five W’sWho is coming to your blog?

What are they looking for or reading or doing? Or what

inspires and influences them? What are their goals and

ambitions?

When are they coming to your blog the most? (Time of day,

night)

Where are they coming from? (Referral, Search engine, Social

etc)

Why are they coming to your blog, why are they reading your content, leaving, signing up to your email newsletter etc…?

Why is this so important?

Create more relevant,resourceful and readable content that they want to read

If they’re looking for a solution, provide them with the best possible and honest alternative

Use the social media platforms to conduct a survey. Post questions to your fans on Facebook or followers on Twitter, or send a short questionnaire to your email subscribers asking them what they enjoy reading the most about on your blog.

Analyze your statistics in Google Analytics to see what pages your readers are drawn to the most, and what pages have the highest exit rates (bounce). What search queries are being used to find content

Post a reader’s poll on your Facebook page or in the sidebar of your blog

Host contests, offer them prizes, let them understand that you really care.

These are a few ideas and suggestions you can use to find out more about your target audience.

PLANNINGWatch out your visitors

Plan your content based on your visitors demand

Keep an eye on your analytics and webmaster tool data and set up a plan

Always be prepared to give some time to your audience by commenting, emailing and giving off newsletters

Check and make a plan to make changes to your blog and its features if needed

Watch out what other bloggers in your industry have been doing with their sites and get some ideas and set your own plans

Plan,Keep Planning

Maintenanceo Most people starts blogging with excitement but soon fails to continue

Reason: Ups and downs with blogging and lack of motivation

o Maintain your blogging and stay motivated to continue writing and growing your blog

1. Pace Yourself

Pace Yourself – you should consider your blog-life balance. If your blog completely takes over your life then, it will reflect in your posts. You need to get out and about, spend time with family and friends and also get enough rest to be a happy and productive blogger.

2. Re-evaluate your blogging goals

Do your original goals still apply and do they fit with your overall life plan, values and beliefs? If not then now is a good time to re define them.

3. Make time to regularly review, refocus and plan

Decide what you need to do and write yourself an action plan. Writing things down often helps to get them done.

4. Think BigTake some time to day dream about your blog. In a perfect world, imagine exactly how your blog would be? How would it look? What sort of response would you get from those reading it? And how would you feel about it? Thinking about what you can achieve with your blog is likely to make you much more motivated. Now you can start to work towards your dream blog.

5. Brainstorm Scribble down everything that you can possibly think of to write about or do for your blog no matter how ridiculous or absurd it might seem. Try and think outside the box of unusual things that you could write about or do to promote your blog. Once you have spent 10 minutes or so doing this, you can begin to work through and refine the list into a more workable action plan.

6. InteractInteraction is one of the key parts of blogging for many people. Don’t forget to interact with your followers and other like-minded people through social networks, forums and IFB. This is a great way to get inspired.

8. Blog about what you loveForget what everyone else is doing and concentrate on the aspects of fashion and style that you really love and that interest you the most. For example, If going to and reporting on all of the shows during fashion week exhausts you, is it absolutely necessary that you go? Perhaps you could cover fashion week from a different angle. By doing this not only will you feel more motivated to blog but you will also create something unique that is driven by passion.

NetworkingTry to be active in the following sites:

• FaceBook• Myspace• LinkedIn• Black Planet• Twitter

• StumbleUpon• Digg• Reddit

• Be active in all other Social Networking sites that you find like minded people from your industry.

Networking is very important for a new blogger and a must thing for the Pro’s.

Network with bloggers who have already achieved what you want – i.e traffic

Start building relationships through networking by guest blogging, using twitter, managing facebook groups and fanpage

Be useful, give first and then receive, make friends within your network.

Do everything positive to grab your networks attention towards your activities.

BrandingA Brand is a living entity

A Brand is the emotional response your company receives. The emotion behind what someone feels,sees,tastes etc when they come across your brand.

A memorable logo is just the beginning.

Tips To Brand Your Blog• Pick your blog’s name with care• Choose a memorable address• Give your blog a tagline• Select your blog’s theme >>>>>>• Determine the typeface• Choose your bloggers• Determine the topics your blog will cover.• Create a voice for your blog(Remember they must sound like a human being is

writing them. Who is the writer and what is his perspective?)

• Determine the language used• Select the blog’s main keywords• Consider post length• Write your blog legalese

How to make a blog using blogger.com

Keyword Research & Analysis using tools

Google Adwords Keyword Toolseobook free keyword tool

Why Keyword Research?

To find the best keyword for SEO

To understand competition

To plan Offpage SEO and Link Building Strategy

To find the best keyword to advertise To find topics for

blogging

For planning your social media marketing

For planning and designing you site

structureFor copywriting and

writeups for your website

Goals of Keyword Research

Find global search volume for specific

keyword

Find country based search volume for specific keyword

Find the competition of the keyword

Find the PPC Bid price of the keyword

Find local search trends

Find easy to target keywords

Find effective keywords

Find hard to target keywords

Global vs. Local Monthly search volumes. The difference here is that one shows you only the local area you set up (defaulted to United States) and the other shows you volume for the entire world.

Be cautious using Global when you really mean Local, otherwise you’ll get keywords like “handy” instead of “mobile phone” showing as they have a lot of volume, even though only Germans call it a “handy”. Adjust your local settings here:

Example: Mobile Phone

Local Search Trends is also pretty cool, as it takes data from Google Insights and displays it directly in the keyword tool. The bars that are shown represent the previous 12 months’ search trend. Here’s an example for “summer olympics 2012″ which clearly shows that interest in this topic has been increasing, just as we would expect.

Things To Watch Out For With The Google Keyword ToolSearch volume is really just a suggestion. Lots of studies have shown that the numbers here aren’t entirely accurate. But it’s useful to compare volumes to find out what term is searched more often. Here’s a personal favorite example: “CRM solutions” vs. “CRM software”:

In Brief

• Broad match = Contains all the words, may be in any order, and may include other words

• Phrase match = Contains all the words, in order, and may include other words before or after the phrase

• Exact match = Contains only these words in this order

So what’s most useful when it comes to predicting traffic?

• the most realistic estimate of possible traffic is the exact match search volume data.

• For phrases of at least 2 words, I generally use Exact match type, which I find gives the best indication. I rarely do keyword research for single words these days, and if I do, I’ll use my judgment to estimate the likely search traffic from between the Broad and Exact match results.

Using Google Keyword Tool

Paste <100 keywords here

Select your desired target

audience

Hit Search

Shows results of exact keywords used

Select appropriate category if required

Shows related and peripheral keywords

Here is how you should be goingThe keywords which have largest number of searches and smallest competition is the best one to target for your website or blog

• Keyword 1: Low Demand and Low Competition ----- Worthy to Target.

• Keyword 2: Low Demand and High Competition ----- Won’t be profitable to target

• Keyword 3: High Demand and High Competition ----- will be hard to dominate

• Keyword 4: High Demand and Low Competition ----- Preferred Ones. Begin with these keywords.

What To Select?

GAKT

Underneath the search field is a checkbox as shown below:

If you’re looking for how many people search a specific keyword, stay with [Exact]

Make sure this is checked; otherwise you will get a huge list of keywords that may not actually apply to your business.

Then numbers underneath Global are the amount of searches all around the globe averaged out over 12 months.

Searches in the Local column are referring to the location that you specified in the beginning. By default, they’re showing the number of searches in the Unites States averaged out over 12 months.

Some Helpful Tools For Keyword Research

• http://ubersuggest.org/• http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seo

book/ - make a free account to try

• keywordeye.co.uk - make a free account to try

• http://www.semrush.com/ - make a free account to try

• http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/ - make a free account to try

• http://www.keywordspy.com/ - make a free account to try

• http://www.wordtracker.com/• http://www.wordstream.com/• GAKT – Google Adwords Keyword Tool

http://www.google.com/trends/http://www.marketsamurai.com/http://www.google.com/shoppinghttp://www.shopping.com/http://www.ebay.com/http://www.amazon.com/http://shopping.yahoo.com/

From Web Analytics & WMT’s

*Important

Don’t forget to take keyword ideas from Instant Search and also from related search query at the end of the Search result page(If any)

Identifying and building your initial keyword list

• Identify your products and service• Identify your brand value• Identify your competition• Identify your target markets (B2C vs. B2B)• Identify you potential products (Verticals)• Get your keyword data from:– Google Webmaster Tools– Google Analytics or other Web Analytics Tools– Google AdWords PPC Keywords– You competitors’ keywords

Before You Start

• Product or Service Keywords (MP3 Player)• Brand Keywords (Sony MP3 Player)• Modifier Keywords (Portable MP3 Player)• Entity Keywords (MP3 Player Shop)• Geographic Keywords (MP3 Player Shop in Dhaka)• Demographic Segmented Keywords (Pink MP3 Player for

Women)• Call to Action Keywords (Buy MP3 Player)• Educational Keywords (How to buy MP3 Player)• B2B Keywords (MP3 Player Wholesale)

Keyword Types

• Modifier (Portable)• Brand (Gucci)• Geographic (Dhaka)• Demographic (Men’s)• Call to action (Buy)• Educational (How to)

Identify KeywordsPre-words Core-words Post-words

• Major Product (Bag)• Major Service• B2B Keywords

• Entity (Shop)• Geographic (Dhaka)• Demographic (Men’s)• Call to action (Buy)

• Leather Bag• Ladies Leather Bag

• Ladies Leather Bag Shop• Ladies Leather Bag Shop in Dhaka

• Gucci Leather Bag Company in Dhaka• Buy Leather Bag in Dhaka

The first step is to start writing your list of keywords.

Take down the different keywords that you believe would be most relevant to your website.

Think like your customers/visitors – how would use those keywords to search for a website that has the same information as your website

However vulgar and politically incorrect terminologies may destroy your websites reputation or ranking, so don’t use them as your keywords

Do not include stop words as your keywords

Stop words are those words that are commonly found over the different websites but are not recognized by search engines.

Source “Stop Words” - http://www.link-assistant.com/seo-stop-words.html

With these strategies one will be able to short list their initial list of keywords

Things You Should Consider

TRY TO USE YOUR MAIN KEYWORD IN THE DOMAIN NAME. IF THE GOAL IS TO SELL BASEBALL CARDS IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, TRY SOMETHING TO THE EFFECT OF BAYAREABASEBALLCARDS.COM

BE SURE TO PREPARE FOR BRAND RECOGNITION. IN ALL BUSINESSES, EFFECTIVE BRANDING IS ESSENTIAL; CHOOSE A NAME THAT IS PRECISE AND EXCITING AND THAT WILL ALSO LEAVE A MEMORABLE THOUGHT IN YOUR CUSTOMERS MIND.

AVOID USING UNWANTED CHARACTERS. UNDERSCORES, HYPHENS, DASHES AND OTHER SPECIAL CHARACTERS DEDUCT FROM YOUR SEO SCORE.

FORGET USING NUMBERS. NUMBERS ARE TREATED LIKE SPECIAL CHARACTERS, SEARCH ENGINES DON'T LIKE THEM - HTTP://WWW.DEBTCONSOLIDATION247.CO.UK/

ALTHOUGH DIFFICULT, TRY OBTAINING A SHORT NAME.

CHOOSE A CREDIBLE NAME. IN LINK BUILDING EFFORTS, YOU'LL WANT TO HAVE AN ATTRACTIVE NAME SO YOUR LINK AFFILIATES WILL BE PROUD HAVE IT ON THEIR SITES

GO WITH A .COM EXTENSION. IT SEEMS AS THOUGH THE SEARCH SPIDERS FAVOR .COM OVER ALL OTHER OPTIONS. THE ONLY EXCEPTION TO THE RULE IS IF YOU'RE ELIGIBLE FOR A .ORG, .EDU OR .GOV EXTENSION.

BUY THE ADDITIONAL .NET, .BIZ EXTENSIONS FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF LINKING BACK TO YOUR .COM SITE. IT FIGHTS OFF POTENTIAL SITE COPIERS AND ALSO ASSISTS IN BUILDING INBOUND LINKS.

REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN FOR OVER THREE YEARS AT A TIME. THE ENGINES PREFER LONGER REGISTRATIONS AS THEY BELIEVE THE SITE WILL BE AROUND FOR A LONG PERIOD OF TIME.

SEO Friendly Domain Selection Process

Exact Match Domains No Longer Rank As Well

Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google is going after "low quality" exact match domains (EMD) to ensure they do not rank well in the Google search results.

Minor weather report: small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality "exact-match" domains in search results.29 Sep 12

Matt said this algorithm update only impacts 0.6% of English-US queries.

New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. Unrelated to Panda/Penguin.29 Sep 12

Warnings About EMD’s

Low quality EMDs are pushed belowLow quality EMDs are pushed below, except for .GOV sites.

Keyword: Online Money Making

Low quality EMDs are pushed below

Keyword: SEO Consultant

Quality sites are not affected, but it does not take many indexed pages to make a site look good in Google.

Website planning & Site Structure

Home l

Category l

Sub-Category l

Topic l

Content

Improved User ExperienceThere are key elements of an optimized website design that will enhance the user experience:

Help them get oriented: When new visitors arrive on your website, they’re wondering, “Where am I?” A confused visitor is a poor prospect. So you should help them get oriented right away and show them how to navigate your website.

Make it quick and easy to move around: As a rule of thumb, see that they can hop over to any page on your site with no more than 3 clicks (the fewer, the better).

Don’t over-optimize: Google recommends building pages for users, not search engines. Over-optimizing your site by loading it with keywords can disrupt the user experience, and cost you sales.

Session 2 Ends