Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on March 8, 2010
Wordpress is such a great tool for blogging and building websites alike. But do you sometimes get tired of reading the same old SEO tips for Wordpress? Yeah. Well I do too! This time I’m going to tell you about a couple of tips you won’t likely hear anywhere else. To be honest with you, I learned both of these shortly after I had already started blogging here. Which kinda sucked because it usually takes a lot more work to fix up your website after you’ve created a handful of blog posts.
These two search engine optimization tips are for making the most out of your permalinks in Wordpress. However, theoretically they can also be applied to other blogging platforms and content management systems. I figured both of them out by carefully studying what some of the most well-known SEOs were doing. Then tested them out for myself. I didn’t read them in how-tos, on any blogs, or in any books. It seems as if these are some the trade secrets you’re not supposed to disclose. I don’t know. But it did surprised me to see only the best of the best were doing it. Regardless, here are two awesome ways to use more effective permalinks in Wordpress – for the search engines, and of course, your users.
SEO Tip #1 – Change Default Permalinks
Now I know you’ve probably heard this one before, but I bet you weren’t told to use a Custom Structure, and you’ve probably never been told to set it like this: /%postname%.
You’ll will find your permalink settings under Settings >> Permalinks >> Custom Settings.
So what does that do?
It changes the default url structure of your posts to something like this:
http://www.nameofblog.com/name-of-post
Which has a few major advantages:
- Makes the URL easier to read by the search robots
- Makes it easier to read in the search engine results page
- Gives more weight to the words in the URL
You’ll likely notice most people optimize the permalinks in thier Wordpress blogs to look something like this:
http://www.nameofblog.com/year/month/day/name-of-post/
Compare that to our optimized URL:
http://www.nameofblog.com/name-of-post
Do you see how far away your keywords are from the root domain in the former? Can you see how unnecessary the directory structure and the date is? That doesn’t tell us or the search engine robots anything important about the post, and it also doesn’t include any helpful keywords. It’s really a waste!
Typically search engines give the greatest weight to the most prominent words in the URL, and considers each word slightly less important the further it is from the beginning.
Now let’s take it even a step further.
Do you ever optimize individual post URLs? Most people don’t. But with all else being equal, don’t you want to find an easy way to get a leg up on the other guy? Well, that’s what I’m going to show you next.
SEO Tip #2 – Optimize Permalink For Individual Posts
This step is pretty straight forward and is set on individual post pages, as shown below:
This allows you to customize individual blog posts and remove unnecessary words. For example, some times you might have a blog post title that gives you a default URL like this one:
http://www.nameofblog/i-think-these-were-the-best-cars-ever-made
And compare that to our optimized URL:
http://www.nameofblog/best-cars-ever-made
Can you see how many unnecessary words are in the former? Doesn’t the latter look a lot cleaner, giving only the important keywords all of the weight? From my experience, this is a much better way to structure your URLs.
Note: If you decide to go back and update your established blog, just be sure to permanently redirect the old URLs to the new ones using a 301 permanent redirect. That way you make sure the old link-juice gets passed on to the new pages.
Well I hope you’ve appreciated these two SEO tips for Wordpress. Please feel free to leave me a comment or subscribe to my blog if you liked this post!
Thanks!
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on March 2, 2010
Today, on the office Google Webmaster Blog, Google released their SEO report card which aims help Google’s product teams identify potential areas for improvement in Google’s product pages. Previously only released internally, this report card has been released publicly and includes a great deal of SEO related information.
The summary of the subjects covered include:
- Search Result Presentation
- URLs and Redirects
- On-page Optimizations
It’s a PDF doc; about 49 pages worth of interesting details. I encourage you to take a look for yourself, and you might even want to print it out!
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/google-seo-report-card.pdf
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on February 27, 2010
Yep, I’m giving these domain names away absolutely free! I have too many of them, and they are beginning to pile up. So it’s time to start cleaning house. So I’m giving them away on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Most of them are with Godaddy. So all you have to do it set up a Godaddy account, then we can transfer them into your account for free. I’m not sure if you can do the same with Domain Discover. Either way, I won’t charge anything for them. The only fee you might have to pay is to transfer them into your account. For the 4 Domain Discover domains you may have to pay around $7 to transfer from them to Godaddy, if you have to. That also comes with a free one year extension. So it’s still pretty much free.
Just beware, at some point each domain name will only be redeemable for a redemption fee + renewal fee. So around $100/ea. As of today, none of these domains are at that stage. All of the ones in my previous post are, though.
Available Domain Names
Expired But Redeemable Domain Names – Domain Discover
Domain Name – exp. Date:
- RateTeams.com – 1/27/2010
- MarinersForums.com – 1/28/2010 - gone
Domain Names Expiring Soon! – GoDaddy
- SeattleSEOService.com – 3/7/2010
- StartEmailing.com – 3/15/2010
- SocialNik.com – 3/24/2010
- SocialNik.net – 3/26/2010
- SeattleSEOCompany.com – 3/27/2010
- SEOShowDown.org – 3/30/2010
- TechPik.com – 3/30/2010 - gone
- TechPik.net – 3/30/2010 - gone
- TechPik.info – 3/31/2010 - gone
- TechPik.org – 3/31/2010 - gone
- ShortSaleForum.net – 4/3/2010
- SeattleSportForum.com – 4/10/2010
- SeattleSportForums.com – 4/10/2010
- SEOmars.com – 5/11/2010
- SEOminars.com – 5/11/2010 - gone
- SEOminars.net – 5/11/2010 - gone
- SEOminars.org – 5/11/2010 - gone
Domain Name Expiring Soon! – Domain Discover
- CellPlanFinder.com – 6/3/2010
Just let me know if you want any of these FREE domain names so we can transfer them into your account.
It would be a lot easier on me just to give them all to one person, but to give more people an opportunity at this free grab bag, I think it’s fair to only offer 1 free domain name each. However, if one domain name has multiple extensions, you can have all of the corresponding domain names too.
I know, some of these names are pretty corny. But that’s what happen when you are up every night until 4 in the morning working on the computer. You come up with a lot of off-the-wall ideas. Kinda like this one. But hey, the late night madness is my loss and you’re benefit; with absolutely no catch!
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on February 26, 2010
I have a few great domain names and a couple of stupid ones expiring soon. In case you are interested. You can either put them on back-order or ask me to recover them for you. Unfortunately they are all expired-redeemable right now, so It would cost me about $100 to recover them. If you want to take a chance you could put them on back-order through Godaddy or another registrar and get them at the normal price when they become available. Or have me recover them for you and transfer them into your name for about $100. I won’t charge you anything on top of what it costs to recover them and put them into your account. So let me know.
Here’s the list:
- seahawksforums.com
- steelersforums.com
- playerrate.com
- rateplayers.com
- newluv.com
I just really don’t need them. I have been offered money for seahawksforums.com and steelersforums.com in the past. I just don’t have time to track those people down again. Those two are somewhat seasonal domains. The exact keywords in the URLs are actually searched for a lot more often during the season than shown using the Google keyword tool right now.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on February 23, 2010
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it – Google Alerts is a free service offered by Google. Obviously. Google Alerts allows you to set up email updates based on keywords of your choice. You are then notified whenever Google discovers new stories or mentions of the specific keywords or phrases you selected to monitor.
Here are 5 great reasons to use Google Alerts:
1) The Obvious: Reputation Management
Now this might be work for those of you who have common names such as Bryan Smith or Jennifer Johnson. However, if you have a name like mine (Wesley LeFebvre), you can rest assured almost all name mentions are actually about you. Which makes reputation management pretty easy.
2) Industry Research
Another great way to use Google Alerts is to track the latest industry trends, job opportunities, company news, and individual industry leaders. I don’t think these need too much more explanation.
3) Brand Monitoring
If you’re in business, it is always a good idea to see who’s talking about your brand. Whenever someone mentions your brand this give you the opportunity to engage with them. Nearly ever time I mention a specific brand on this blog, a representative from that company acknowledges the mention by either commenting or tweeting my post – depending on what I write. They are obviously using Google Alerts or a similar service.
4) Track Your Competitors
There are several reasons you might want to track your competitors. One great reason is link building. There are some obvious benefits to knowing where your competitors are getting their links from. Some other reason would be to track news mentions, product releases, and new service offerings, among other things.
5) WOW Your Clients
This one is probably my favorite. I read it somewhere awhile back, thought this was a remarkable idea, and I have been doing it ever since. This is such a great way to impress your clients, past or present. Use an important news mention as a great reason to catch up with an old client, which of course, can lead to new business. And what if you impressed one of your current clients by catching a negative mention about them or their brand and offering ways to remedy the issue before they even knew it existed. It’s really simple to set up, and going that extra mile really shows you care. You could even do this for your family and friends.
These are only a few great ways I use Google Alerts. I’m sure there are many others too.
Do you have a creative way you like to use Google Alerts? How about a favorite service? I’d love to hear some other great ideas.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on February 18, 2010
I just noticed ActiveRain.com added the nofollow attribute to outbound links on free profiles. I’m not really sure when this happened, but I estimate it was within the last month or so.
Well that’s another great “free” link-building resource down the drain. For $19.99/mo you can pay for dofollow links by signing up for their Outside Blog subscription. That membership will allow you to show your ActiveRain blog posts publicly as well as dofollowing your outbound links.
When social networking communities build a subscription based service with the only real benefit being dofollow links, should they be penalized for selling links?
Should they be encouraged to dofollow or nofollow across the board?
I don’t know what the right answer is.
What do you think?
Side note: Usually when a new social networking community launches without implementing nofollow on free profiles, they are only doing it in order to draw in the herds of members who understand what a dofollow link means. Then, once they have enough members to show the venture capitalists or whomever, they quickly add nofollow and force you to pay if you want to continue receiving link-juice from them. Unless you have unlimited funding and marketing dollars, you kinda have to dofollow links in the beginning..
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on February 16, 2010
Did you know, by default, your new Wordpress installation is not visible to the search engines? Yep it’s true!
Until you check the box under > settings > privacy, changing it from:
“I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors”
to
“I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers”,
all of your blog pages, posts and links are nofollowed.
Which means Google and most of the other search engines will never find them.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on February 12, 2010
Do you know how to submit a press release? Well, it’s actually really easy. And if you’re short on cash, there are several free press release websites to help you get started. You probably won’t get picked up by any of the major news sources by submitting a free press release. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still plenty of reasons to do it.
Just take a look at ever major company, nine times out of ten they submit regular press releases.
Here are several advantages to submitting a press release:
- Shows professionalism
- Could be picked up by a major news source
- Includes a link back to your website
- Will likely get picked up and referenced on several other websites
- Provides exposure in front of an entirely new audience
- Helps with branding
So when should you submit a press release?
- Release of a new product
- Offering new services
- Launching a new website
- Opening a new office
- Establishing a new partnership
- Hiring a new executive
- Offering a new special
See, there are plenty of really great reasons to submit a press release.
Here are a few press release websites to consider:
- prweb
- prlog
- 24×7pressrelease
- free-press-release
Just try to be sure whatever you have to say is truly newsworthy.
Do you have a favorite press release website?
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on February 9, 2010
Ironically, my last blog post was a recommendation to post to your blog regularly – at least once a week – and yet it has been over a week since my last blog post. What’s up with not taking my own advice?! I’m just glad I called myself out before someone else did.
I’m primarily a one person business, and when I get busy, blogging is the first thing to go. Not that I think it is very wise to let it slip, but writing was never my strong point, so it is so easy to. Plus this website doesn’t make me any money.
My experience makes me extremely suspicious of other one-man businesses who claim to be the best in their industry, while blogging ever single day about how smart they are. Do these people actually have any clients, or do they just have a bit book smarts and a whole bunch of time to blog?
Or.. is it actually a lot easier than I’m making it out to be?
How do you find time to blog?
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on February 1, 2010
Lately I’ve been rather busy with appointments, proposals and client work. So I’ve had a difficult time finding time to post to this blog regularly. Which is a good thing actually. However, I was really starting to see some momentum here, and it’s kind of a bummer to watch both Google traffic and return visitors drop off so quickly.
I have found you need to post to your blog at least once a week to gain some momentum in the right direction, and twice a week is almost twice as good. For some blogs posting daily works, but I don’t particularly like to subscribe to blogs that post daily because I like reading from several different sources throughout the week, and only like to read one 3rd-party blog post daily. When one blog takes up my entire RSS feed reader inbox I end up deleting them. But that is just my preference. With that in mind however, I don’t want to want to post to this blog more than I’d want to read it.
The bottom line: If you are trying to grow a blog quickly, then I recommend you post to it a minimum of twice a week. This helps feed the googlebot and keeping it coming back for more, as well and delivering frequently updated content to your readers. I.E., more search traffic and more return visitors.
