With the roll out of the new Google +1 share button, chances are you will want to add this snazzy button to help optimize your website or blog. Installing the Google +1 share button is very simple.

Place this tag in your head or just before your close body tag:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js“></script>

Place this tag where you want the +1 button to render:

<g:plusone></g:plusone>

The button should look something like this on your website.

You can go here to create a custom +1 button and/or access some very helpful Google +1 button FAQs.

So you got yourself a fancy new blog!

You’ve meticulously narrowed down the categories, trained your authors, and chosen the perfect layout. Your content is going to be dynamic and exciting, you’ll show off your expertise over your competitors and throw in fun videos… But what about SEO?

A Blog can be a great way to bring in traffic, especially from people who are searching the web for specific How Tos, Demos, and other FAQs in your industry or specialty set. Blogs show off company culture, position you as an expert, and drive people back to your corporate site. And to be sure you are bringing in the most new readers as possible, Optimize each and every post that gets published so your content makes the Search Engines happy as well.

Whether you have a personal or corporate blog, here are SEO Recommendations to take into account for Search Engine Optimization whenever you post a blog post:

General SEO Recommendations for Blogging

1. Post Content Regularly – Content is King
   • The Number 1 thing you can do to Optimize your site is add fresh quality content
   • Google determines how often to come back and crawl the site based on the pace of new content on the site
   • Tip: If you write several posts at once, leave them unpublished and publish them once a week so every time Google (and visitors) come back, there is new content
2. Use relevant keywords when possible without stuffing. Make sure posts are readable for visitors.
   • To come up with ideas for new keywords, there is a free keyword tool available from Google Adwords
   • Look for words that balance Search Volume and competition (people are searching for the term frequently, but you can be competitive)
3. Take advantage of targeted location searches – Add geography when applicable. When discussing your location, refer to it as your “Houston Texas Headquarters” instead of just Headquarters
4. Avoid duplicate content – Google works to index sites with unique content and attempts to filter out duplicate, so keep your content unique
5. Remember that Google is deaf & blind – add descriptions on photos and videos, use alt text on photos
6. Cross Link to other parts of the site whenever possible – you don’t want Google (or visitors) to get “stuck” and not have anywhere else to go next

Checklist When Adding New Blog Content

1. Page Title – make the title of the post SEO friendly (don’t rely on clever but non-descriptive titles)
2. Meta Tags – Add Description & Keywords
   • Use a plugin like All in One SEO or WordPress SEO by Yoast
3. Use Headings
   • The formats for Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 4, etc. give Google an idea of the structure of your content (like an outline)
   • Also, words in these Headings get more weight than words in paragraphs on the page (these are sometime referred to as “fancy hits”)
   • There should only be one Heading 1 for each page and the title of the page will automatically be coded as the H1, so start with Heading 2 in your text
4. Add Alt Tags for all Images – put copy in both Title and Alternate Text
5. Add Cross Links to other pages on your site when possible
   • Look in the text and determine where you can cross link to other parts of the site
   • Be sure to link keywords (not “click here”) – what words are linked tell Google what the page is about. For instance, link “Contact our Web Design experts today” instead of “Click here to Contact Us”
6. Encourage Feedback
   • A great way to increase comments is to ask a question at the end of the post, the simpler the better
   • Another option is to embed a poll from a site like http://polldaddy.com to get immediate feedback from your readers
7. Share your posts
   • Google and Bing are incorporating Social Signals into SEO, so a link gets at least a small boost if it’s been Tweeted and Shared
   • Don’t be afraid to Tweet your posts twice – at two different times of the day, at least one day apart. The first can be the title of the post and the second should be an interesting fact or quote from the post (use the same bit.ly link to track clicks)

The bottom line is: post interesting content – this will generate readers and links to your blog. And have fun! Readers enjoy a human voice, especially if you are writing for a Corporate Blog and want to show off the brand persona of your company.

Anything I left out? Let us know in the comments! Happy Blogging!

Photo thanks to Flickr user avatar-1

All in One SEO Pack – This is the must have plug-in for your WordPress Blog. It allows you to:

Customize title tags, meta description tags, keyword meta tags
Automatically generates meta descriptions from excerpts or first paragraph
of your post.
Allows you to have tags become your keyword meta data as well.
Allows you to have tags become your keyword meta data as well.
Solves duplicate content issues.

A couple other plug-ins that will help make WordPress a bit more SEO friendly:

Headspace – http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/

SEO Title Tag – http://www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/

Dofollow – www.semiologic.com/software/wp-tweaks/dofollow/
Allows you to remove “evil nofollow attribute” from your comments. Just plug n’ play.

ShareThis – http://sharethis.com/
A plug-in that will display a “Share This” button at end of your post which allows your
visitors to easily share a post/page with others. Plug-in supports both e-mail and
posting to social bookmarking sites. Just plug n’ play.

Twitter Tools – http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress
Integrates your WordPress blog and Twitter account. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Enter twitter user name and password and select options.

Subscribe To Comments – http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/ Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

Math Comment Spam Protection -
http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/plugins/math-comment-spam-protection/ This plugin asks the visitor making the comment to answer a simple math question. This is intended to prove that the visitor is a human being and not a spam robot. Does require adding code to comments.php file.

This set of tools was presented by David Wallace of
SearchRank

Jonti Bolles

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

If you need help in starting your blog, the teams at Houston Web Design teams at Schipul will help create your blog site with the correct plug-ins and tools to manage your presence.

Schipul Blog Design and Hosting

We have started offering Blog design and hosting to help you get your feet on the ground. It’s fast and easy to do and you get the same great Schipul service and expertise. Plus you can become the beacon of information that may one day take down a respected journalist.*

Don’t believe me? Check out the Schipul Blog for more info

“71 percent of all journalists get stories from bloggers,” said Dallas Lawrence at the Central Michigan PRSA Social Media event on November 14th.

Hold the presses! If your voice is worthy of making headlines, why isn’t Schipul helping you make your voice heard?

Now I know blogging does sound a bit dirty to the untrained but the power of it in terms of SEO is really amazing. Some of our clients blogs generate the most referral traffic to their regular site than search engines.

So think of your blog as a door to door salesperson only without the overcoat and jaded disposition.

We do provide Blog training as well, in fact we had one today. Were you here? If not you can read about here on the Schipul Blog

So remember, don’t let Granny school you in the ways of the blog and once you have your blog up and running maybe you can try your hand at a mashup challenge with Granny Teller below;

Granny Teller Mashin it Up

*Ok we are totally kidding about that part

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

Technorati is finally throwing their hats into the ring of Blog Ad Servers and at first glance that makes us very happy. Their new service is called Technorati Media

What is Technorati?

Technorati is the ‘leading blog search and destination designed to showcase and bring consumers to blog content…’ Basically Technorati is to blogs as what Google is to regular search. So what does that mean to you and me? Well,think of it as Google setting up its own ad servers. Oh wait, they already did that

How Can You Get Involved?

Much like other services you can either place or run ads. Do you have a blog and don’t like Google AdSense or Federated Media use Technorati’s ad server services. If you are a blogger and want to run ads on your site check out their Publisher page. If you are looking to advertise on Technorati Media visit their Advertisers page

Of course we can help you weed through the muck and set up either service for you. If you have any questions about this or anything SEM/SEO related visit us at http://www.schipul.com/sem or call 281 497 6567

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

What is Tumblr?

Well, think of it as cross between a blog and a twitter account. Or a cross between a vlog and a micro-blog. Too confusing? Think of it this way; another great way to generate traffic to your site. How? There are a myriad of ways so lets break it down

Should I use Tumblr?

Simple answer is Hell Yeah! The long answer is yes and here’s why; it can help you generate more traffic to your site and here’s how;

A simple way is to post little summaries about your site and/or news about services or products. You can also post links to sites that you like or links to news about new innovations in your industry and your take on it.

You can also set up your account to capture traffic from other sites such as Twitter, Digg and YouTube to name a few. The biggest plus I can see for our clients is to import your RSS feeds as a Tumblr stream. Sound confusing? It isn’t. Your Tendenci site comes equipped with fully functional RSS built right in. For instance if we wanted to promote all the articles on Schipul.com we would import our articles RSS link http://www.schipul.com/en/rss/articles/ (you can easily change schipul.com to your own URL to get the same feed for your site. Don’t use articles? Maybe you post a lot of events or jobs, simply go to your RSS index page and copy the link to that particular section of your site http://www.schipul.com/en/rss/index/. Again, substitute your own URL instead of scipul.com in the previous link to get to your page.

Once you import your feed it takes Tumblr a little bit to gather that info and display it on your page so don’t get discouraged.

Why Tumblr Works

The great thing about Tumblr is you can choose to have your RSS feed as just a link or links with summaries that gives not only users a point of reference but it also gives search engines that coveted content they so desire and it isn’t considered duplicate content.

Try Tumblr out and let us know if it is helping your site

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

First thing you need to do is have an idea, this is crucial and will matter a whole lot in the success of your blog. If you are a client of ours you already have an idea on what your blog should be about – your business. Once you have your idea you’ll need a Blogging service. There are a few options available to you at various price points. Lets work from the ground up

Free Blogging Tools

WordPress

Warning: The ease of creating a new blog on WordPress can be addictive.

WordPress has made it so easy to create a blog that you may find yourself creating one with every great idea you have, that is why I have close to 1 million blogs. Just kidding, but it really is that easy. Click on the big ‘Sign Up’ link and then choose a blog name and like that you have a blog! They offer upgrades for a fee so if you want to change your blogs CSS you can at minor charge.

WordPress just announced that they are now giving their free users 3 gigs of space – woohoo!

Blogger

Blogger is a Google service that is also easy to create a blog and easy to use. One big negative about the Blogger platform is the ‘Next Blog’ link at the top. This link seems innocent enough and I’m sure the powers that be had good intentions in mind when they added it. The problem with that link could send you to a porn site.

Windows Live Writer

I can’t say enough good things about this stand alone blog tool. I find it a pain in the neck to log in to all of the blogs I use. Having to log in to various sites constantly is a pain in the neck. Windows Live Writer allows you to set up all the blogs you write to in one little package. Setting your blogs up in Live Writer is as simple as logging in, except you only do it once. If you have multiple blogs on different services you simply click on the ‘weblog’ tab and choose which blog you want to post on. There’s no logging out and logging in.

Adding content is as simple as Word and most of the shortcuts are the same. You can add photos, video, and embed YouTube or SlideShare type code. Even inserting a map is a snap. Yes that is GooglePlex brought to you by Microsoft Virtual Earth

This is currently a PC only program at this time

Non-Free Blogging Tools

TypePad

This site is published using TypePad. Its a great tool that offers a variety of functions such as being able to tweak the design. The above ones will let you do that but you have to pay them for that. TypePad has a lot of built in functions to help you maximize your exposure.

Moveable Type

Build as a ‘Professional Publishing Platform’ Moveable Type is a pay for use service as well.

TypePad and Moveable Type do offer free services for non-profits

Blog with Passion

There’s that word again ‘passion.’ In order to be successful in anything in life you need to be passionate about it. If you take your company seriously and want to succeed blogging about it should just be an extension of your day. You already tell your clients and everyone who will listen how great your company is and how good you are at doing what you do. Blogging shouldn’t be a hassle and as I’ve laid it out above it is very easy to do.

Of course there will be a learning curve and this post is not an exhaustive list of how things are done.

Comments. Share and Share A-Like

You need to be vocal in the blogging and social media communities. One way to generate interest in your blog is to comment on other blogs that share a same interest. Give a little, get a little. Its just like networking, people need to know you exist before they know who you are. The tips I laid out in the previous post will help people searching for what you are talking about but some people don’t know how to find you.

What if You Get Bad Comments?

Its up to you if you want to allow bad comments to be shown on your blog. One true thing about business is that you can’t please everyone. Some people can be malicious when they are angry and some can actually give you some constructive criticism. You need to make the call on what you deem acceptable but I think any open dialog is a good thing. What’s the old saying? Any PR is good PR

So to sum it up – Blog and Ye Shall Receive

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

I think its time we address the 800lb Gorilla in the corner -
Blogging. Some of us like to blog, some find it mildly
annoying, some downright detest it and some don’t even know what it is or how to
do it. Whichever category you fall in one thing must remain abundantly clear;
Blogging will drive traffic to your site*. Let me repeat that; Blogging
will drive traffic to your site*. I’ll get to how easy it is for you to
blog in a second, first I want to talk about that asterisk.

Has PageRank Become Obsolete?

Google seemingly changed its own rules this past July when it started to
index pages faster, particularly blogs. Before, a page was given a rank based on
merit such as backlinks for Google to reference, a system called PageRank. To make things quicker the Google System blog states
that ‘Google could use the ping feature of the blog search engine to get
notifications when a site is updated.‘ It doesn’t work for all blogs they
say. That may sound like mumbo jumbo to some so don’t worry if you don’t
understand it. Lets just say ‘Google Sees All.’

There is a lot of speculation as to why Google is doing this. Google’s
position is that it is trying harder to give users better search results. By
providing more relevant content Google can better serve its client base. Others
are talking about Technorati’s influence on blog search and Wikipedia’s user
generated content pulling in a lot of search results. There’s no shortage of
ideas on why they are doing what they are doing. We’ll let them figure that out,
for now you need to leverage this change in protocol.

Your Site and Your Blog

The biggest reason to start blogging is to leverage this recent change. Your
site may be new and not getting indexed as fast as you would like. By blogging
you are speeding up the process but you need to do it correctly in order to
succeed. If you create a blog and brand it ‘Company Blog’ you need to be able to
tell the search engines that this new blog is associated with your company. It
may have the same colours and logo but search engines don’t really care about
that stuff, they can’t see it. What they are looking for is a relationship and
the way they find that is through your content. Your content should direct
readers back to your site. This is very easy to do; link keywords in your blog
posts to sections on your site. If you have a post about Widget A link the
widget name to your widget page on your site. This associates your blog to your
site – one way. You’ll need to link from your site to your blog to complete the
relationship. Google doesn’t like one way streets.

We always sign off on every blog post we do on this blog with links to our Search Engine Marketing page
on Schipul.com. This
associates our keywords with our blog and site. Using this tactic we have been
able to take a new unranked site to a PageRank of 6 in a very short time.

Tips & Tricks for Successful Blogging

As with any site your blog should be optimized so people can find you. We
tell our clients to use direct headline tags with keywords and blogs are no
different. If you sell a widget and the widget has a benefit label your blog
post ‘Benefits of Widget.’ By using your keywords in your
headlines you are telling Google that this information is important. Google uses
real time search queries on particular topics to display
results. Knowing that you should use titles that not only grab the attention of
the search engines but also readers eyes. Think of blogging and websites as a
newspaper. You want to get the message out and you need to get people to read -
make it concise and to the point.

Remember you are trying to drive traffic to your site by creating a
relationship with your site and your blog. You should be passionate about it. If
you aren’t then save your self some time and try something else like
Pay-per-Click

I’ll show you how easy it is to blog in the next post

UPDATE

Our first blog post
from an hour or so ago is now indexed on Google

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul -
sem@schipul.com