SEO expert, Gab Goldenberg, continues his interview with About.com Web Logs and offers a variety of search engine optimization tips for bloggers at the intermediate level of SEO. You can read more about Gab at the end of this article.
Follow the link to read the Beginner SEO Tips interview with SEO Expert, Gab Goldenberg.
Should bloggers track keyword popularity and if so, what tools are available to help bloggers track them?
I wouldn't say bloggers need to track keyword popularity, which implies a measurement over time, as much as they should research keyword popularity from the get go. Most keywords don't change in popularity all that much, unless we're talking about a tech or other innovation driven field where new ideas, products, ways of doing things, etc. can grow popular over time while older ideas drop in popularity.
In the search marketing world, for instance, I'm hoping that "submarine crawling" catches on as a popular search, and I already see it sending me some traffic. For a more generic example, take the division between social media optimization and social media marketing. Rohit Bhargava coined the term social media optimization, and it briefly looked like it would become the de facto name for promoting content through social media.
Then other people started using the term social media marketing. Cameron Olthuis tried to clarify the difference between social media optimization and marketing, though it doesn't seem that caught on, since the two are still used interchangeably. If you look at Pronet's social media archives you'll see a historical evolution and transition from SMO being popular to SMM, and now it's balancing out with some people referring to SMO again.
So with emerging things like that, I'd say it's worth tracking popularity. You can use sites like Memeorandum for politics, Google Trends, Facebook's new Lexicon tool and generally just be aware of what's going on in your niche by reading other blogs and social media sites, like Sphinn or Small Business Brief.
Now if you're talking about researching keywords generally, there's a whole bunch of tools like Google AdWords' Keyword Tool and its more specific daily volume estimates "sandbox" tool. Unfortunately, the latter can be very imprecise at times, particularly for low-volume keywords, saying there's not enough volume to give estimates (because that's a PPC tool estimating how many clicks ads on a given keyword will get in a day). Tools will generally just give you ideas anyways, so if you're short on ideas, just being creative and brainstorming can work pretty well, too.
Besides that, bloggers need to consider keywords in light of their goals. Do they just want to distribute their ideas really broadly without respect for targeted traffic? Go for the super popular one-word keywords (also the case for people selling CPM ads). Do they want to make affiliate sales? Target product names and brands. Want to be a niche authority? Consider the newest ideas and go after those terms.
How can bloggers optimize their keywords within their blog posts (e.g., is there truth to recommendations that keywords included in links or in bold are better)?
It's pretty straightforward really:
- Put the keyword in the title.
- Have a variation on the keyword (plural, conjugation, alternate spelling, related phrase etc.) in the first paragraph and conclusion.
- Use a subheader or two (h2 or h3 tags) and use the keyword or a variant in them.
- Instead of h2 or h3 tags, you can use bold or italics for subheaders.
- Do NOT bold/italicize keywords throughout a post - it looks like textual acne and is really horrid. You're not improving your SEO that way anyways.
- If you have a picture that's about your topic, describe it truthfully, and don't stuff keywords into the 'alt' attribute. If they fit in naturally fine, but otherwise, don't bother.
- Use keywords in URLs; this is good in and of itself for a small boost, but more importantly some people will link using your URL as anchor text. So if your URL has keywords in it, those links using the URL as the anchor text will feature your keywords.
How can bloggers optimize their blog themes for searches?
This is a great question! Ideally, you get some custom programming to help you out. For instance, I have manual control over my site's navigation (except for categories), including positioning and anchor text. That's a plugin I had created specially. You can also do what Chris Pearson did with his sidebar, which was to feature the best posts in each category. You don't need to follow exactly his approach, but he's obviously funneling lots of link strength to those pages he wants to rank.
Short of custom programming, you can create a page that links to your best posts (including especially those you want to rank) and feature that prominently in your navigation.
Some of the posts you feature using your theme should also be those that link out generously to other bloggers. By continually sending them traffic, you'll stay on their radar, and if you have anything remarkable, they'll usually link on their own, or certainly do you a favour if you have a noticeable piece.
Besides that, making sure that all your posts are within 2-3 clicks from the homepage should make life easier for search engines trying to index your content. Note: depending on the context, I'm not usually a big fan of sitemaps that are easily visible to your human audience. It's more acceptable for bloggers, but with ecommerce sites you're asking for it. I wrote about how other people are stealing your keywords and how you can get theirs while protecting your own.
One final point: Jeffrey Smith can get a little technical, but he does very good things with search engine friendly web design and my friend, David Mihm, also does great seo focused web design.
