Blazing Minds » Website SEO

How to Choose SEO Keywords

schemjo — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:45:06 +0000

When consumers use keywords to search for your type of business, do the results point to your company or your competition? Because the right SEO keywords essentially grab potential customers by the wrist and lead them right to your business, it’s up to you to make sure you facilitate the meeting between the user and your website. Relevant keywords bump you to the top of search engine rankings; without targeted SEO keywords, you could be losing business 24/7.

While keeping tabs on your competition is necessary, you don’t want to completely mimic your SEO efforts against the opposition’s strategy. Taking the time to select specific keywords for your business and website is key to edging out the competition. The following steps help you choose and implement the best keywords for your website:

Determine Your Site’s Platform

The best time to determine key elements of your SEO strategy is during the website design phase. Ask yourself key questions that force you to hone in on your intended audience and your content:

o What is your website’s focus?

o Who is your audience?

o What makes your website valuable?

Select keywords based on these answers, and conduct your own market research by asking current customers what words they would use to search for your website. Remember to use keywords that include products, services and general information.

Research Keyword Popularity

Once you’re armed with keywords and phrases that accurately describe your business, products and services, you’ll need to determine how many other websites use the same keywords, and how many people actually use those keywords in their search efforts. To determine the answers of these questions, go to the Google Keyword tool or a paid tool such as RavenTools to find out the amount of results each of your keywords or phrases return. Additionally, you’ll find out what keywords people actually use to search for your type of business and all variations of those keywords.

Keep Keywords on Your Page

You’re ready to dive in to the hard part – integrating your chosen SEO keywords and phrases into your content. First and foremost, make sure targeted keywords for a page are actually on that page. Use keywords within the title, in the content, in bold, in italics, etc. The key is to utilize your keywords in as many different ways as possible, without repeating words or using words that don’t pertain to your company or website. Search engines are smart; you’ll be banned if you try any sort of spam technique or deceitful tactic to gain visitors.

Other important elements for SEO integration include using META tags in the head section of your document, including common misspellings of relevant keywords, and using both singular and plural forms of keywords.

With a comprehensive SEO strategy, you’ll raise awareness of your business, increase your credibility and drive sales. It’s up to you to stay abreast of industry trends or changes. For best results, keep your keywords fresh to mirror evolving consumer search habits.

This guest post was provided by University Alliance and submitted on behalf of University of San Francisco. USF offers complete SEO training courses available 100% online and taught by leading industry experts. If you complete three of the required courses then you’ll earn an Internet marketing certificate.

Keyword Research – Why It’s the Foundation of Every Good SEO Strategy (eblogtip.com)
5 Excellent Websites to Check Keyword Ranking in Google (shoutmeloud.com)

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How to Choose SEO Keywords is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

A Question on blog Comments? Multiple Pages and Order!

Karen — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 10:08:10 +0000

I’ve visited a few blogs since I started blogging and over the last year my blog has grown in popularity and it’s comments, but the question is:

Is there a right or wrong way to display comments?

For those who are not sure what I mean by displaying your comments on your blog I shall try to explain…

On a [intlink id="blazing-minds-upgraded-wordpress" type="post"]Wordpress[/intlink] set up you have several options for your comments, one is that you can display your comments as the most recent comment at the top of the comments list or most recent at the bottom, another option which is useful for [intlink id="flipping-websites-fun-profit" type="post"]Website SEO[/intlink] is the option to split comments over pages, for example imagine you’ve got 40 comments on one post, imaging how big that page would look! So you can spread the comments over so many pages and does it make a difference in the SEO of your blog and help with the loading time with [intlink id="tips-bloggers-commentators" type="post"]Google[/intlink].

So now it’s over to my readers ….

Do you prefer to have the comments with the latest at the top or the bottom of the comment list?

How many comments per page do you think is just enough?

It will be interesting to see everyone’s responses about this

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A Question on blog Comments? Multiple Pages and Order! is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

Blogging! It’s Not Just About Posting About Website SEO..

Karen — Fri, 28 May 2010 06:40:47 +0000

I was talking to a friend the other day and we came up on the subject of blogging and their response was “blogs are just about tech, making money and website stuff like SEO etc! What is SEO anyway?”

So after explaining that blogs are much, much more, I decided to knock up a post, for those of you out there in computer land that when they hear the word “blog” it sends shivers down their spines.

OK. Blogs are much more than just for writing about how to make money and how to get loads of hits to your blog to enable you to get more money, yes I know I have been guilty in the past of blogging about SEO ([intlink id="handy-websites-seo-fanatics" type="post"]Search Engine Optimization[/intlink]), but, I don’t bang on about it every single post.

I do have my favourite subjects such as Twitter and it has been a popular subject here on Blazing Minds, but I would personally like to think that my blog has a bit of something for everyone and aren’t really afraid to remove myself from a set niche and go into the world of blogging with an open mind.

Blogging is fun, it’s a chance for the blog owner to vent their thoughts, or on some blogs their darkest secrets, other even use the blog as a way of getting their day-to-day chores off their chest. Some post recipes etc on a daily basis, some of my favourites

When it comes down to it, there are loads of SEO blogs out there and we’ve all probably read them and gleamed as much information from them as possible, but there are so many other blogs out there that deserve that illusion of only been there to make money removed from the thoughts of people who do not understand blogs.

So when someone says to you that blogs are only for one thing, then put them straight, send them to this post and other sites that are not in a set niche of SEO and making money from blogging, they’ll be surprised in what they can find

Picture courtesy of cambodia4kidsorg

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Blogging! It’s Not Just About Posting About Website SEO.. is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

Branding your company based on Web Searches!

Marcus Cronate — Wed, 05 May 2010 06:02:42 +0000

Something that probably didn’t occur to most business owners when they first started their business was; how many people would search online for my Brand? Generally speaking the answer would be none (if you are a new business). So should you do some research online first to see if there is a pot hole in the mainstream online world that you could fill in?

This is a possibility that could soon be effecting how companies brand themselves, and gives new entrepreneurial business owners a way in to compete with larger Brands. Google is a strange beast; with its search engine algorithm changing and being “beefed” up all the time. Currently there are about 200 ranking factors that Google uses to identify where websites should be ranked in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Page). Each one of these has a set amount of weight that identifies how important it is, so some are more important than others.

Your websites URL (so this one is: blazingminds.co.uk) is also in one of the ranking factors. This is believed to be one of the more important values as well. It has been argued that this ranking factor isn’t as important as it has been made out to be, but SEO’s like me still believe it to be very important. Recently I have been noticing some of these “smaller” websites appearing in the SERPS on page one for very competitive terms, even out ranking some big brand websites. One area that I like to think I know a thing or two about is the holiday district. Virgin Holidays are one of the biggest tour operators in the UK, and utilise internet sales very effectively. For the past 5-6 months Virgin holidays has ranked at number 1 for the term Caribbean holidays”, one of the most competitive terms in the “luxury holiday” industry. However over the past few weeks they have been overtaken by a much smaller company called “Caribbean Connection”. See image below (the sponsored links are covered, to save confusion):

This website rarely appeared on page one about 3 months ago, and now it is a strong holder of position one. Every now and then there is a tussle between Virgin and these guys but they still manage to pull forward. To be fair they do have a “nicer” site and it is their homepage that ranks for this term, but Virgin rank number 1 for practically every other Caribbean country holiday.

It is this sort of adversity that shows even the small business owner can trump a larger one online, with some good SEO know how and the sense to utilise the ranking factors Google has made public. Your URL could be the factor that helps you to appear at the top of Google for your businesses best selling terms!

Related posts:

Flash vs HTML5 for Web Based Applications

How to Choose SEO Keywords

The Importance of using Social Media when you Guest Blog!

Branding your company based on Web Searches! is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

Why adding videos to your post for effect is GOOD

PotPolitics — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 06:19:08 +0000

Hi I wanted to Thank Karen for letting write a post about why I always like to add videos to my post. Now right off the bat you may think about increasing your bounce rate and I never really knew or cared about how long someone stays on the site but it does seem like an easy way to increase the time someone is on your site. But what I like about it is maybe I think I haven’t really got my message across or I’m trying to cast a certain mood on the post. Videos let me add one more dimension to my message , it hopefully adds to the emotional impact I’m trying to have people reach.

Sometimes if I’m pumped up I will add a song from youtube that I just heard on the radio, this is cool because you often get to add videos that just came out and people haven’t seen yet . I like vodpod because it’s easy to grab the code off there especially when the song has been blackedout on youtube.

I also recently noticed vodpod gave me my own little video vault . I don’t spend much time on there and all that but Vodpod does have a community on there of mostly young hip music buffs. Karen is down with the music scene so vodpod seems like a great spot to launch a video to get feedback on. Check it out Vodpod ‘s a cool site.

The main point I’m trying to get at is I found adding the right video especially if it’s a song that inspired me to write the post adds some extra flavor and hey if it helps your bounce rate all the better.

Ideally videos that YOU made using camtasia uploaded to youtube with your links in the sidebar then used tubemogul would be better but adding music videos has worked for me so give it a shot Thanks everyone

John Sullivan

PS now this post may seem silly and common sense but the reason I wrote it is because I don’t see many people doing it

Peace

Related posts:

How To Earn Money By Adding Videos on Your Blog With GoViral

How To Download and Watch YouTube Videos on your iPod

Conspiracy For Good – London Actions

Why adding videos to your post for effect is GOOD is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

Guest Posts on Blazing Minds in 2009

Karen — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 09:15:15 +0000

It’s been a fantastic year on Blazing Minds and since I started my blog there have been some fantastic comments coming from a vast amount of people and I’ve met some new friends via the comments and also met new friends who have been willing enough to spend a little time writing some great guest posts on the blog, so I would like to bring to you the guest posts that have been written here on Blazing minds in a range of different subjects including blogging tips, website seo, poetry and more.

Guests Posts

Monday Moan – Celebrity Big Brother

Poetry – Become One With Me

Are RSS Subscribers Still Relevant Today?

Do You Make These 5 Costly Blogging Mistakes When You Blog?

Blogging Tip: Save Drafts for a Rainy Day

Mission Red Lion Shirt as seen on Michael Jackson in This Is It

Greetings from Angus a New Guest Blogger

Engaging Blog Reader Participation

Why A Relationship With Your Blog Readers Is Vital

How to Get Traffic Your Website Needs

Related posts:

An Introduction to the Guest Bloggers on Blazing Minds

Blazing Minds Hits 1,000 Posts

Wow Blazing Minds Has Really Grown!

Guest Posts on Blazing Minds in 2009 is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

EntreCard to take action against bounce rates!

Karen — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:20:55 +0000

Now many users of the EntreCard system have said that is a long time coming, but according to the latest blog post on the EntreCard blog they are to “take action against bounce rates”

So before I get on to this, I’ll just give you a quick bit of info about bounce rates, a Bounce Rate is when a visitor lands on your blog and then leaves straight away without spending time looking around your blog and EntreCard is a terrible culprit for making you have a high percentage on your bounce rates….

So as mentioned by EntreCard they intend to implement a system that will decide if the dropper is a “drop and run” visitor, this is someone who is only there to drop on your ECard and then zip off to another blog, to get in as many drops as they can in the day without even reading your blog, shame on them! As mentioned in the EntreCard Blog:

Up until now, we’ve always allowed the “drop and run” phenomenon to take place. We figured if someone was interesting to the visitor, they’d stop and read, and it was best to let everyone go at their own pace. But now we are taking a slightly different approach, in an ongoing effort to increase the quality of Entrecard traffic across the board.

My problem with the drop and run phenomenon is that you are spending time writing an interesting post only for someone to stop by, drop on the ECard and bugger off! I write these posts not just for me you know but for others to read and show some interest by posting comments, not visit and say, “ok I’ve dropped, I’m off!”

So what will EntreCard be doing about this, well this is what they have said on their official blog:

Starting soon, “dropping and running” will no longer give you credit. We are developing a proprietary algorithm to determine whether or not you engaged in the blog you visitied in some way. If you did not engage in the blog, you will not get credit. We won’t be disclosing exactly the algorithm we use, so that people can’t game it easily.

So it seems that something is been done, but will this cut the amount of view to a blog showing the EntreCard widget? Probably, but isn’t it better to get a few less visits and gain visitors that actually appreciate your blogging, only time will tell when the new system is finally implemented.

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EntreCard to take action against bounce rates! is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

Some Handy Websites for all you SEO Fanatics Out There

Karen — Sat, 09 May 2009 06:00:57 +0000

I was going through my bookmarks recently on FireFox and noticed some handy sites that I would like to share with all my readers, you may already know about some of these already, but, for those that haven’t seen these sites then they are certainly worth checking out and may even help with your future endeavours with your websites SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Firstly a great little website, but not to take to seriously is PageRank Prediction the title says it all really, it’s a simple pagerank checker, just enter your website address and the site will try to give you your pagerank on the next Google PageRank update, I’ve found it to be around 80% accurate though, so give it a whirl!

Next is the first in the “Graders” websites, the Website Grader measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

The second “Grader” is one which is quite fun and is the Twitter Grader, will give you a grade out of 100, show followers, following, Summary of the Twitter, history and tweet cloud, all good fun and useful tool to see what a new follow is really doing!

Finally a website tool for those of you trying to improve your websites keywords, the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, is a must, just type in the keywords that you would like to improve on and Google will search through it’s database and try to give you a good selection of keywords that may help improve your keyword on your post or website, I do find this very useful for some posts and it has improved my posts in the past, it may even help you with Google Adsense, but it is trial and error, so give it a go.
Technorati Tags: FireFox, Twitter, Website SEO, Pagerank, Google, Google AdWords, Google Adsense

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Some Handy Websites for all you SEO Fanatics Out There is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

Blogging from home made me a millionaire!

Karen — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:04:36 +0000

I bet the title certainly grabbed your attention didn’t it, but this is what you find on the internet these days, people claiming that they have made millions from sitting at home and blogging their proverbial backsides off!

Well, is it possible, I would like to say yes, but, I have to say NO! I have worked hard with my blog with it’s SEO and keyword related tips n tricks and I can quite honestly say that I’m not a millionaire, far from it, my blog bring in a small amount every month with Google Adsense and affiliates such as TradeDoubler, Amazon, iTunes etc bring in minuscule amounts.

So really if you want to quit your real job to make “millions” from just blogging then you’ll have to work all hours.

Don’t get me wrong I do know a few bloggers that have had some success with a work from home venture, but, I don’t think any of them would say that it has made them a millionare, but hey, I may be wrong…

Related posts:

Back home from my Holiday in Dursley, Gloucestershire

Why You Should Subscribe To The Comments You Have Made On A Blog

The New Year’s Resolutions You Should Have Made (But still Can)

Blogging from home made me a millionaire! is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

Do EntreCard Visitors Cause your Site to Have a Bad Bounce Rate

Karen — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:06:55 +0000

Now I have been using EntreCard for a long time now and I must be one of the few “Droppers” that actually visits a site, stays for a while and even leaves a comment if the posts interest me, but the problem is those “Droppers” that speed drop!

The trouble with speed droppers is that they land on your site hit drop and then bugger off! Which is not really good for your blogs bounce rate, ok, I may be sending this right over people heads right now, so I would recommend reading the Wiki about Bounce Rate to find out what it is, but to cut a story short, bounce rate is the amount of time a visitor stays on your blog before moving onto another site etc.

The aim is for you to try to analyze and reduce your Bounce rate, but with EntreCard dropping this is a hard task, due to the problem with speed droppers, there is not much you can do about the EntreCard droppers that just drop and run, but there are ways to improve Bouce Rate with other visitors, so it’s a matter of a little work to get a better Bounce Rate for your blog.

So the question is will a bad Bounce Rate affect your Google search ranking etc? Well some say yes and some say no, so I’m too sure myself, but it is a thought that you have to take with you when blogging or even building your home page on your website, will the content cause your viewer to stay or just shoot straight to another website, before giving you blog/site a chance.

I personally am considering the thoughts that EntreCard is damaging my Bouce Rate and overall search engine rankings, but then again, it helps my Google Advertising with hits etc, so I’m 50/50 at the moment, it’s a “time will tell” situation, so I think I may wait to see how the next Google Page Rank goes and how the searches are coming in before I do anything major..

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Do EntreCard Visitors Cause your Site to Have a Bad Bounce Rate is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

What Happened to the Saturday Six!?

Karen — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:42:05 +0000

First of all, my apology to those of you that stop by for the Saturday Six yesterday and for my lack of posting since Wednesday.

This was all due to my very busy schedule, I have been working on the SEO and website design of the Remergence website and the release of a Best Of album, so this has taken up a lot of my valuable time, the SEO work is now complete and now it’s just a wait for fans to choose their favourite tracks.

So hopefully now I can get back to my usually blogging, the Saturday Six will be back next week, so remember to suggest a them via my Twitter and if you are an a EntreCard user then the chosen EC user of the selected theme will get 200 ECs.

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What Happened to the Saturday Six!? is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

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An easy way to check a dofollow blog in a simple step

Karen — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:10:21 +0000

If you are interesting in getting backlinks from blogs where you post your comments then probably the best way is to post comments on a blog that is “DoFollow”.

A simple way to find out is to download a FireFox plugin called “SearchStatus“, this is an extremely handy plugin, not only will it highlight all the Nofollow Links on a page so that you can see what is a DoFollow link, but, it also display a websites Google PageRank, It’s Alexa rank and it’s Compete Rank.

It also have loads of other features such as showing a sites whois listing, Meta Tags, link report and much more.

So if you are serious about for commenting on DoFollow blogs then this is a FireFox plugin that I would personally recommend SearchStatus.
Technorati Tags: backlinks, FireFox plugin, DoFollow, Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete Rank, Meta Tags, DoFollow blogs, SEO, website seo

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An easy way to check a dofollow blog in a simple step is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter

Don’t lose out on comments when using Google Blogger!

Karen — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:25:19 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Now I’ve been to quite a few Google Blogger accounts to comment on, but, have found that a lot of bloggers using Blogger only allow Blogger users or OpenID to add a comment to their blogs, this IS bad!

You are loosing comments on your blogs by not allowing other users to add a comment, I know several people who said to me, I can’t leave a comment, because I haven’t got a Blogger account or an OpenID account.

So my recommendation is to all those using Google Blogger for your blogs is to go to your control panel, select comments in your settings and change to the option of “Anyone” and if you are worried about bad comments coming through, just set on your word verification and your comment moderation options.

You will notice that after a while and if your post is of some interest you will start getting more comments on your blog.

So please don’t loose out on comments on your blogs follow the simple steps above and open your comments up to a wider range of readers, we all like to comment and don’t like it when we try to make the effort and get stopped doing so..

Related articles

Newbie Bloggers: Commanding Authority With Your Blog (famousbloggers.net)

Google’s Blogger Is About to Get an Overhaul (mashable.com)

Google’s Blogger platform gets a new-look Dashboard and Post Editor (downloadsquad.switched.com)

Related posts:

A Question on blog Comments? Multiple Pages and Order!

So You’re Guest Blogging, But Are You Replying To The Comments?

Why You Should Subscribe To The Comments You Have Made On A Blog

Don’t lose out on comments when using Google Blogger! is a post from Blazing Minds Copyright 2008-2011. Please link back when using this source material.

If you enjoy reading my blog, then please support me with a donation and Follow @BlazingMinds on Twitter