Even the most prolific writers can find themselves with a serious case of “blogger’s block.”

When blogger’s block strikes, some basic keyword research can provide a fresh batch of blog post ideas.

A series of posts written around related keywords can also look good in the eyes of the search engines or prospects.

Using Keyword Tools to Brainstorm Blog Post Topics

#1: Google Related Searches

There are a number of tools that can uncover related keywords and ideas for possible blog topics.

One of the first and easiest places to start is on the Google home page. Start by searching for a phrase that you’d like your blog to rank in on search engines.

After conducting the search, click on “More search tools” in the left column and then “Related searches.” Google will return a list of related searches for the keyword or phrase for which you just searched.

Opening Related Searches on Google provides a list of possible blog post ideas.

For example, let’s say I wanted to write about blogging and needed blog post ideas. I would start by searching Google for “blog” and looking at the related searches. As you can see in the image above, related searches for the term “blog” include terms and phrases such as “free blog,” “create blog,” “blog software,” “WordPress,” and “Technorati.”

Each one of these terms could be turned into blog posts with titles such as:

• Five of the Best Places to Start a Free Blog
• Three Things You Must Do to Create a Successful Blog Post
• Why I Like WordPress
• How to Get Your Blog Post Listed in Technorati

#2: Google AdWords Keyword Tool

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is another place to brainstorm topics for your next blog post. A search on Google AdWords will bring up a much bigger list of search terms and will also provide insight into how often the term is searched and the competition for the keyword or phrase.

For example, a search for the phrase “how to blog” brings up phrases such as “YouTube blog,” “funny blog” and “blog calendar.” All three have a high monthly search volume yet low competition for the keyword. Blog post titles using these keywords might include:

• How to Create a YouTube Blog Post
• Five Things to Consider When Writing a Funny Blog Post
• Schedule Your Posts With a Blog Calendar

Google AdWords returns a list of related search terms that can be used to generate blog post topics.

#3: Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions

Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions is a powerful tool designed to help with content brainstorming. Enter a keyword and Wordtracker returns a list of 100 questions asked by search engine users that include the keyword.

For this example, let’s say that a realtor is trying to come up with a list of possible blog post ideas. Entering the term “Home” into Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions brings up a list of possible blog topics including:

• “How leasing a car affects qualifying for a home mortgage”
• “Home security systems and which one is the best one”
• “How do I calculate the value of my home”
• “Do it yourself home remodeling”

The search above also provides a number of topics not related to real estate to sort through such as “Can I make holy water at home or do I have to go to a church,” but who knows, there might be an interesting blog post in there somewhere. When it comes to writing blog posts, don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

Wordtracker provides actual questions asked by users searching their search engines. Many of these can be directly used as the title of a blog post.

Along with questions, Wordtracker Keyword also offers search results based on keyword connections, random trigger words and the top searched keywords. Each of these options pairs your keyword with various other search terms and provides results based on actual searches conducted through Wordtracker’s partner search engines. The results can provide a wide range of blog post ideas and topics you may not have considered.

#4: Google Analytics (or Other Traffic Analytics Program)

Analyzing the incoming traffic to a blog can provide a number of ideas for blog posts and highlight the opportunity to build upon popular posts and search terms that are bringing traffic to a site.

If our realtor notices that searches for a particular neighborhood are driving traffic to her site, she can capitalize on the opportunity by writing a series of posts about community resources and the real estate market in the neighborhood.

If you discover that an unusual or unexpected keyword is driving traffic, the brainstorming methods above can help unlock potential blog posts related to the keyword.

Google Wonder Wheels

Although Google has taken down their Wonder Wheels tool, I have to mention it because it was such a great brainstorming tool and comments in the Google help forum have left the door open (if ever so slightly) for its return.

Wonder Wheels provided a graphic display of related terms that could be clicked and searched in an ever-growing web of related keywords. As I wrote in an earlier post on Social Media Examiner, it not only provided a great brainstorming tool for writing blog posts, it also gave insight into the way Google connects keywords.

Hopefully Google will find it in their wisdom to bring it back in the near future because I personally feel that it blew the above tools out of the water.

Create a Resource

When done well, a series of posts written around keywords can give your blog a nice jump in the search engines. Always remember, though, focus on content first and let the keywords follow.

By providing a resource of topically related articles, you create a reason for others to link to your site and quality incoming links are key to top search engine rankings.

What do you think? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Keep reading to find out.

A bit of history

In an interview with Wired Magazine, Udi Manber, Google’s head of search, said that Google will make as many as 550 changes to its search algorithm this year. One of the bigger changes happened this past winter in what has been called the Panda or Farmer update.

According to a report by Sistrix.com, within days of the update, a number of very large websites saw their Google rankings take a drastic drop. Sites such as Ezinearticles.com and Suite101.com lost 90% or more of their visibility on Google.

This Sistrix table shows the domain and the percentage loss since Google's change.

Although a 90% drop in visibility may seem extreme, it was a direct result of Google’s attempts to weed out content farms (websites with high-volume, low-quality content) and those trying to game the system. In the process, a number of unsuspecting websites got caught in the fray.

For the average small business owner, stories like this can be concerning. It’s hard enough to move to the top of the Google search rankings, let alone keep up with the constantly evolving magic that makes Google work.

However, for those looking to build quality websites that achieve high Google search results, nothing has really changed. As always, the key is to focus on publishing high-quality content that readers will want to share.

Here are 7 tips to help your business move to the top of the Google search rankings.

#1: It’s all about the user

It’s important to remember that the reason for the continually changing algorithms and updates is that Google has one objective—to provide the highest quality, most relevant search results possible. If they fail to do so, competitors such as Bing and Facebook are nipping at their heels ready to take up the slack.

Google is not out to penalize websites or hurt website owners. They want to ensure that users find the information they seek on the first try.

When it comes to search engine rankings and improving SEO, start by looking at the site from the perspective of the user searching Google. Does your site provide the best, most relevant information for a given search term and if not, what can you do to fix it?

Google’s Amit Singhal, head of Google’s core ranking team, provided 23 questions to consider when evaluating web content. These are some of the same questions that Google is using to test algorithms and evaluate websites using third-party beta testers. The questions provide an excellent insight into Google’s perspective and a tool to analyze your website from the user’s point of view.

#2: Content: Focus on quality over quantity

In an earlier post I wrote on how to increase your Google ranking, I talked about using blogs to increase the number of pages indexed in Google. And while it still holds true that more pages indexed for a given search term gives you a better chance of achieving a high Google rank, it isn’t enough just to publish text optimized for keywords. The quality of the content is now a factor.

Using the list of 23 questions will help you assess the quality of your content.

Since the Panda update, Google has attempted to screen out those publishing high-volume, low-quality content. Now, in the eyes of Google, it’s better to have fewer high-quality pages then lots of low-quality pages.

Blogging is still one of the best ways to move up the search engine rankings as it is a good way to add high-quality information to a website. However, web pages or blog posts offering little of value can now negatively impact a website. Removing these pages might actually help a website move up the rankings or recover from a drop in ranking.

#3: Links: Focus on quality over quantity

Incoming links have always looked good in the eyes of Google. As a result, one way to move a site up the search engine rankings was to generate a high number of incoming links all pointing to a given web page.

As Google places higher and higher value on the quality of the content, this tactic is not as effective, and can even harm a website’s ranking if overdone.

For the small business website owner, this should come as good news. Instead of generating 50 articles with subpar content, website owners can now focus on creating fewer high-quality articles or incoming links, as Google is no longer placing much value in links from article distribution sites such as Ezine.com.

In another article on ways to improve your blog SEO with inbound links, I suggested that press releases were a good way to generate incoming links because distribution services often generated back-links as articles were placed on various press release syndication websites. This link-building strategy has also changed post-Panda update, as these links are not as highly valued as they once were. However, a well-written press release can still be very effective when picked up and reported by a journalist or major publication.

Focus on getting high-quality links from high-quality websites. Guest posting is still an excellent way to generate high-quality incoming links. If possible, try to wrap links in important keywords. For example, as a content marketing copywriter, a link around “content marketing copywriter” would be more effective than a link wrapped around my name.

#4: Make the most of social media, social sharing and social search

It’s hard to tell exactly how much impact Twitter and Facebook have on Google search results, but at the very least we know that Google is providing real-time social sharing in the search results.

Google’s addition of the Google +1 button and the ability of Google users to block sites take this a step further. Although it’s still unclear how Google is using the +1 button in their algorithms, they have stated publicly that users blocking a site can have a negative impact on returns. This again demonstrates the importance of high-quality content.

If you don't have the +1 button but want to try it out, you can enroll in Google's experiment.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAyUNI3_V2c

#5: Let the search engines know you’re there

Once you’ve published high-quality content, it’s important to tell Google about the content and make it easy for users to find. This means that meta titles and descriptions should closely match the content on the page.

Keyword stuffing and intentionally filling meta descriptions with keywords that don’t match the page in an attempt to deceive will only hurt your search engine results. The closer the match, the better.

It’s also important to make the most of the SERP, the short paragraph showing in the Google search returns. Use this space to provide a clear description of the content and encourage users to click through to your site.

Be sure your meta description matches the post and encourages users to click through. This is what shows in the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.

#6: The truth behind duplicate content

It’s not that Google penalizes websites for duplicate content; Google just doesn’t show it in the search results. Remember what I said in the beginning about providing the best possible search returns. When it comes to duplicate content, that’s all Google is doing.

Instead of showing 20 pages with the same content, Google tries to present the most relevant and original content and omit the rest. Users can still view omitted search returns, they just need to make an effort and most won’t.

This only becomes a problem if you’re using canned content or directly publishing RSS feeds from other websites. Content of this sort might be seen as low-quality and result in lower Google returns. Hopefully the days of stolen web content and RSS scrapers will soon be a thing of the past.

#7: Don’t overdo the advertising

Too much advertising can also result in lower Google rankings. This again is a result of Google’s attempts to improve search results for the user. Google tends to equate an overabundance of advertising to lower-quality or “spam” websites.

Excessive advertising can also hurt your Google returns. Note how the actual content on this site isn't even visible above the fold. This website is also "scraping" content from Social Media Examiner which can also hurt search engine ranking.

Be sure that advertising does not interfere with the content on the page. This is especially important with advertising above the fold and within the text.

Google is constantly evolving, but the fundamentals of SEO will always remain the same. High-quality content that people want to share will always do well in the eyes of Google. Search Engine Land has put together a free guide that will help you gain traffic from search engines such as Google and Bing.

"Search Engine Land has created a Periodic Table of 'SEO Ranking Factors.' Notice the importance placed on content.

What do you think? What other ideas or suggestions do you have? Leave your comments in the box below.

If you’re looking for a social media monitoring tool, you’ve probably noticed that it’s quickly becoming a confusing landscape. For those who are new to social media and looking for tools to manage their presence, it’s difficult to know how to compare one vendor to the next. Here’s the skinny on where Radian6 fits into the picture.

Where does Radian6 fit into the social media measurement landscape?

Radian6 helps brands ensure that no post is missed.

We offer unequalled coverage of the social web and provide metrics to measure what is being said, and by whom. —David Alston, CMO Radian6.

Primarily, Radian6 is a monitoring tool. It can help you monitor brand mentions across the social landscape and the new Engagement Console offers you an end-to-end presence management tool.

Radian6 Dashboards

For consideration: Think about how much “noise” you have in your space. In order for monitoring to be actionable you want to keep in mind that for industries and brands that are targets for spammers it can take a considerable amount of work to filter and find the “meaningful” conversations. I experienced this problem myself, as CareOne and the entire debt relief industry are hounded by spammers and it required intervention from Radian6 to get it in line.

Tip: Many people start by putting in keywords that are used in SEO and paid search. To narrow your results, sort them by comment count. Because comments indicate more engagement, it’s more likely that the conversations are meaningful. Look for other words that are used frequently with your keywords and add them as modifiers to narrow your results to conversations, rather than spam bots.

The Engagement Console is a real-time social web client—more complete than Twitter.

What are Radian6′s greatest strengths?

“Radian6 offers users comprehensive coverage of discussions on the social web, covering hundreds of millions of blogs, comments, the public Facebook API and the full Twitter firehose. In addition to this coverage, Radian6 is scalable within an enterprise, allowing online comments to be assigned within the business, to customer service, sales, marketing and so forth. Radian6 also integrates with other enterprise applications like Salesforce.com and analytics like Webtrends, Omniture and Google Analytics.” —David Alston

You can scour more than 150 million public sites and sources including blogs and comments, forums, mainstream online news publications, public photos and videos.

In the landscape of monitoring tools, while competitors are on the rise, Radian6 has had a very comfortable and secure position in the market. I think this is because of two things. First, they entered the market early and got popular social media bloggers to test them out and recommend them. Second, they quickly gained popularity among enterprise organizations with big brand names as being the go-to choice.

For consideration: Radian6 is a very comprehensive tool that gives you a one-stop shop for engaging on your social channels. The workflow aspect is a key consideration for enterprise-level organizations. However, for smaller businesses or teams with one or two people it may be overkill. Additionally, their pricing model can get expensive quickly for larger teams. It starts at $1k+ per month.

Tip: Take advantage of the free tools out there for a while. See what you like best about them and see what they’re lacking. Create a list of absolute must-haves and nice-to-haves. When you’re looking at different providers you can use this checklist to make sure they have what you need. Anything they’re offering that isn’t on your absolute must-have or nice-to-have lists will likely end up being an unused feature.

If Radian6 is integrated with Salesforce, Webtrends, Omniture and Google Analytics, can they provide ROI data?

The short answer is no. Based on the integration David described to me, there’s no way to follow the conversation back to the revenue. The integration was mostly done from a customer service perspective.

“For Salesforce, it’s designed in such a way that, for example, if you find a customer service issue in Radian6, you can link the record of what you find in Radian6 back to the customer record. In terms of Google Analytics, Webtrends or Omniture, you can create an XML report of the 10 terms that get captured in Webtrends that you want to import into Radian6. You can then overlay the Webtrend data on those keywords with the information inside Radian6 and do kind of a pivot to sort by items like time on site.” —David Alston

For consideration: The level of conversion tracking was described by Alston as items like lead forms that are set up as goals within your web tracking software. In my experience, this type of conversion data is nice but unless it was an online sale it doesn’t attach to revenue.

Tip: While Radian6 doesn’t provide ROI data within its interface, it doesn’t mean that you can’t get to it through other channels. You may need to work with a consultant who can help you quickly identify where to connect the pieces to get to revenue.

What are Radian6′s biggest weaknesses?

There are a several things that I think Radian6 could do better.

Up-front Effort for Workflow Features

From a workflow perspective, it’s great to be able to assign tasks and tags to posts; however, to be effective, you need to create a system of tagging up front or you’ll end up with a large clean-up effort later. It was a great improvement when they released the Engagement Console which allows you to write macros. This cuts down significantly on the number of clicks it takes to assign a post and tag it. But it does take a lot of forethought and setup to get that working well.

David acknowledges that this can be a challenge.

“Because the Engagement Console was designed to optimize usage in a team environment, it requires users to think through the tagging, classification and macro systems they would like to use in advance. This takes an investment to create (we call it a “playbook”), but it’s definitely worth it once it has been set up. The latest addition of administrative functionality in the Engagement Console means a single super-user can help pull this all together for the team, thus saving more time.”

Two Interfaces

As a user you’ll find that there are two interfaces for you to use. The Engagement Console is where you manage your social media channels, tag posts, assign them and so on. I liken it to your HootSuite or TweetDeck interface on steroids. This is what you’ll likely use every day. Then you have the Radian6 dashboard which aggregates all of your stats into pretty little charts and you can get data based on specific timeframes.

I found it awkward that the Radian6 dashboard is web-based and the Engagement Console is a desktop app. I would have preferred to have them both as web apps.

No Smart Phone App

For those who manage their presence on the go, there’s one big missing piece of the puzzle. You can’t use Radian6 on a smart phone because there is no app. I asked David about this and he said to “stay tuned” but I’ve been hearing that for over a year now so I’m becoming a little skeptical on their ability to make it happen in the short-term. If I were at Radian6, this would be my top priority. For users, it creates a disconnect from presence management and forces us to use other tools on our phones.

I’d rather look for all of my stats on my smart phone, and using the Engagement Console means I have to get reporting in two locations, which is not my preference.

Pricing

There are three fees. One is a per-seat license. The second is a per–topic profile fee. A topic profile is where you tell it what data you want to pull in. If you want to separate data, there is only so much you can do within one topic profile. An agency managing multiple clients would need at least one topic profile per client and it’s the most expensive item on the list. The third fee is based upon the volume of posts that come into your topic profile.

While the initial volume range that comes with your topic profile is reasonably high, you’d be surprised at how quickly you can exceed it. You can use keyword refinement to bring this down. These are all monthly fees that make up your core price. While I think Radian6 is certainly the Cadillac in the space and their price indicates that, it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth the money.

Summary

Radian6 is a great platform that’s equipped with a lot of bells and whistles. From my perspective, it was clear the company is dedicated to continual innovation of the tools. To decide if it’s right for you, you’ll need to look at your list of absolute must-have and nice-to-have features and see if buying the “whole farm” makes sense for your organization. My feeling is that for most one- or two-person operations it may be a little overkill and pricey, but for corporate marketing teams I think it’s a reasonable choice.

Read these posts for more on measuring social media and its impact on brand awareness, looking to track social media metrics and 5 ways to use social data to grow your business.

What do you think? Are you a Radian6 user? If so, what would you add to the list of strengths? How about weaknesses? Did you switch from Radian6 to another tool? If so, which one did you pick and why? Please join the conversation and leave a comment in the box below.

This article will show you how to easily optimize your blog for search engines.

Let’s be clear on few points before we begin. When search engine optimization (SEO) is done the wrong way:

• It’s a spammy attempt to manipulate the search-engine traffic.
• It’s SEO experts selling a guaranteed top-10 placement.

When SEO is done the right way, it’s NOT guaranteed and it’s NOT immediate, but it is ongoing.

Now let’s cover the basics.

What’s your blog about? The topic you cover will, to a large degree, dictate your placement. If you said “real estate” or “automobile” or “website hosting” or “SEO,” you will have a LOT of competition. You could help things a bit by focusing on YOUR geographical area (as in “real estate in Pasadena, CA,” for example).

But remember, some topics are extremely competitive and therefore more difficult to crack, making it on the first, second or third page of the relevant search. This part is paramount because most Google sleuths don’t make it past the second page.

On the other hand, if your topic is obscure and very specific, PLUS the space is not densely populated with competition, you can conceivably end up as a top search result for that topic. This is assuming that you’ve implemented sound SEO practices. And that’s what this article is about.

Who are you targeting? Who is your audience?

Having a crystal-clear understanding of who your audience is and what THEY’RE searching for helps you narrow your focus and increase your chances of having an effective SEO campaign.

If all this sounds too complicated, you could just pay someone to do it. If you do decide to outsource SEO, you should set aside a minimum of $3,000 to $5,000 monthly for a dedicated SEO professional.

Now that you know the cost, are you a little more motivated to learn how to do it yourself? I would encourage you to ask around and get some quotes. Here is what you would be paying for:

A good SEO person will have varying degrees of proficiency in:

• CSS
• Data analysis
• Blogging
• HTML
• Copywriting
• Link-building
• Search engine algorithms

Those are the skill sets off the top of my head.

As I see it, you have three options:

1. Hire a dedicated SEO person/team.

2. Hire a part-time SEO expert who can dedicate a portion of his or her time to your page rank. This might be all that’s needed for most small- to medium-sized businesses. (Note: Page rank is a non-geeky way of saying “Google search-engine algorithm.”)

3. Learn the basics yourself. The basics will get you pretty far.

In this article I’ll focus on the last one—learn the basics yourself. So how do you do this? Well, you’ve come to the right place. An important part of any SEO strategy will be keyword discovery and implementation. This article will focus on those two factors.

Harvesting and Piggybacking

I recommend a three-step process in your keyword discovery process.

#1: Get into their heads.

A great place to start understanding what keywords are desirable is to find out what keywords are used by your comps (comps is a real estate term for comparable properties).

We do this by first inspecting what keywords are used on your comp’s web page.

In your browser, usually under “view,” you can “view source” of the webpage. Here’s how:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=erjqTugMviI

Takeaway lessons from the video:

• There will be a LOT of gibberish in there. But all we’re looking for are “meta tagged keywords.”
• Manual research allows you to get into your comps’ heads.
• View several pages to get a good sense of what your comps are trying to rank for.
• Repeat the process for another 3-4 comps.

#2: Piggybacking: Leverage Automation and Your Comps’ Research.

Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in a word or phrase that is relevant to your business.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG-42LmFKNE

Takeaway lessons from the video:

• Google Keyword Tool will return related phrases, often many that you didn’t even think of.
• You can export these results, view monthly search numbers and sort phrases by popularity.

After you’ve performed this on your top five comps, collected the data and exported your finding into a CSV file, you’ll have a pretty good idea of:

• What people are searching for (it’s almost never what you think it is)
• What your comps are indexed for
• Where you fit in

Now that you’ve harvested keyword information and effectively piggybacked on your comps’ research, you should narrow your list down to a manageable number (100 or so keywords).

The keywords that YOU are going to use should reside at the intersection of:

• Most relevant to you/your post/blog/website
• Most highly searched for
• Least used by your comps

Note: While recommendation #2 is a good guideline, do keep in mind that less often searched-for phrases tend to have higher conversion rates.

#3: Implement: Apply What You Learned.

It’s time to install and learn how to use a nifty little WordPress plugin called All in One SEO to quickly, easily and effectively utilize the information gathered during the harvesting and piggybacking research phase. If you’re not running a self-hosted WordPress website, this is not for you.

Download and install All in One SEO plugin. Click on the video for a little bit of show-and-tell.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5RhfJJWHK8

Takeaway lessons from the video:

• WordPress makes it very easy to add plugins; however, you shouldn’t install any plugins that haven’t been tested. Here are instructions on how to set up a WordPress sandbox on your laptop.
• Some plugins (like All in One SEO) are must-haves. Others should be installed only if absolutely necessary.
• All in One SEO will have to be configured globally, on per-post and per-page basis.

All in One SEO Pack Configuration—Global Settings

Plugin status:

You can enable it or disable it.

Home Title:

If left blank it will default to whatever you configured under Settings/General/Site Title in WordPress. However, don’t leave it blank.

Note: According to SEOMoz.org’s SEO ranking factors survey, page titles are one of the most important factors.

Entering a bad or blank title is NOT advisable.

Home Description:

While description ranks lower on the page rank scale, it’s paramount to have it filled out appropriately. Search engines will display the description immediately underneath your web page. There it’s best to have a human-friendly call-to-action type of message.

Check out how Barnes & Noble have a human-friendly call-to-action message.

Home Keywords (comma separated):

What are the main topics covered on your site? That’s what should be entered here in the order of relevance. For example “blogging, marketing, WordPress, writing,” and so on…

Note: Home keywords were abused in the early days of SEO (stuffed with popular but irrelevant search words), which resulted in search engines deprecating their importance.

Don’t overstuff. Spend a few minutes configuring and it might help. It certainly can’t hurt.

Canonical URLs:

Enabled by default and should be left as such. This helps with duplicate content, which is a HUGE no-no. If you’re not familiar with canonical URLs, and would like to be, read this Google webmaster blog post.

Rewrite Titles:

This controls the title-related settings underneath. We’re not going to cover them individually. “Title” is what you see in your browser’s window title bar. If set, all page, post, category, search and archive page titles get rewritten.

Why would you want to do this?

The default title generation setting for WordPress is extremely anti-SEO. Depending on your version of WordPress, the default structure will most likely look like this:

Category >> Blog Name >> Post Title

This is suboptimal.

You should allow the SEO plugin to rewrite it to something more SEO-friendly, for example:

Post Title >> Blog Name

Note: This is all about specificity. The post title is likely to have specific keywords related to the post itself. Therefore it should be the first thing a search engine “sees.”

WordPress, if configured correctly, can now assign an SEO-friendly name to your blog post (see below) without the help of All in One SEO.

Description Format:

Four available options, leave the default as is. It will grab the description from whatever is set at the post level.

404 Title Format:

The box sets the page title for your “page not found” error page. The default is “Nothing found for %request_words%”. Leave as is.

Paged Format:

This string gets appended/prepended to titles when they are for paged index pages (like home or archive pages). Leave it alone.

SEO for Custom Post Types:

WordPress version 3.0 introduced the ability to create your own custom post types in addition to the default two (post and page).

I really haven’t used this, so I can’t offer much in terms of practical advice. If you would like to learn more about it, visit WordPress.org Custom Post Types pages.

Custom Post Types for SEO Column Support:

Related to above, disabled by default. Leave it alone.

Use Categories for Meta Keywords:

This is for those bloggers who are hyper-strategic about their category names. If you’re like most of us, you’ll leave this one alone and add your keywords manually for each post.

Use Tags for Meta Keywords:

Checked by default, it causes the tags you set for a given post to be used as the meta keywords for that post. What this basically means is that your tags and your keywords don’t have to be entered in both places. In fact, if you enter the same word in both the Tag and the Keyword field, you might get dinged by Google.

Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page:

Related to the third type of post we mentioned above. Irrelevant unless you’re using custom posts. Leave it alone.

Use No Index for Categories and (Tag) Archives:

This is kind of a non-issue especially if “Canonical URL” is configured. It tells Google NOT to crawl duplicate content.

Autogenerate Descriptions:

This is very cool if you can squeeze all your relevant keywords within the first 150 characters of the article.

Capitalize Category Titles:

Other than visual appeal I know of no special benefit of doing this. Google doesn’t care if your titles are uppercase or lowercase but it looks pretty.

Exclude Pages:

Enter any comma-separated pages here to be excluded by All in One SEO Pack.

This is helpful when using plugins that generate their own non-WordPress dynamic pages. Forums are a good example. You may decide to manage the way your forum gets “indexed” using forum-specific tools.

Additional (Post, Page, Home) Headers:

These are not required for basic SEO practices. They’re used with various webmaster tools but otherwise uninteresting.

Log Important Events:

This is for developers only. Once the global settings are all done, every time you write a new post, you’ll have to configure All in One SEO tool on per-post basis. No worries though, this one is quick and painless.

All in One SEO Pack Configuration—Post Settings

All in One SEO will place itself on the bottom of your WordPress new post configuration.

Title:

By default, the title will be generated based on your setting under Settings >> Permalinks. You should configure /%postname% under “Custom Structure,” which will generate the appropriate post title automatically.

If, however, you decide to enter a custom title here, it will take precedence over any other. Why would you want to do this? Post title ranks high on Google’s “importance” scale and stuffing your title with keywords might better your chances.

Description (Meta):

You have 160 characters to describe your post for search engine meta analysis. Use them wisely. Remember our Barnes & Noble example? This should be a human-friendly call to action. Include most relevant words first.

Keywords (Meta):

Put your most important keywords (search phrases) up front. Your hard work during keyword harvesting phase pays off right here.

Note:

Your keywords should be relevantly spread across the main body of the article, tags, meta description, keywords, etc.

Enable/disable on per-post basis:

Self-explanatory I hope. Use it in case you want to hide from Google.

All in One SEO Pack Configuration—Page Settings

Page Settings has a few more options than Post Settings. Let's work through them.

Title, Description and Keywords and Enable/Disable are the same as before.

The new settings are:

Title Attribute:

Has no or minimal effect on ranking. It’s basically a tool tip when you hover over a link.

Menu Label:

This in effect renames your page without renaming the URL.

Keyword research and configuration are some of the most important aspects of a well-run SEO campaign. In fact, they’re among the top most important things you can do.

If you had to choose your top three most important SEO strategies, what would they be? Leave your comments in the box below.

To help you take your blog to an entirely new level, here are 7 tips from the best-of-the-best in the blogging and social media arena. Every expert below has created a thriving blog with tens of thousands of subscribers who engage with their posts on a regular basis. If you want to know how to create and grow a successful blog, make sure to take notes (and take action)!

#1: Measure Your Blogging Success

“If you’re blogging for business, rather than blogging about your cat, baby, fashion addiction, or crush on Taylor Swift, you need to set some success metrics,” says Jay Baer, founder of Convince and Convert.

Without a statistical measure of your blogging progress, adding content to your blog on a regular basis can be an incredibly lonely proposition. Is anyone out there? Does anyone care?

However, within the business blogging arena there are a wide variety of potential metrics to gauge your momentum. It’s imperative that you select the most relevant ones that match with your blog’s purpose.

The first step in that process of course is to know why you’re blogging. This sounds simple, but it’s shocking how many bloggers aren’t clear on the core business rationale behind their blog initiative.

As I see it, you have 3 options:

• Blogging for Content
  This is the scenario where you are writing a blog with considerable emphasis on search optimization, attempting to drive traffic to the blog via strategic content creation and keyword inclusion. Your metric is search traffic.

• Blogging for Commerce
  Related to the first, but commerce-oriented blogs are more interested in conversion events than in traffic generation. Funneling traffic from the blog to some other web destination (typically a corporate site or lead form) is the primary objective. Here, your metrics are leads and conversions.

• Blogging for Community
  These blogs seek to build a consistent readership that interacts with the blogger(s) and advocates on behalf of the content on other social outposts.

Determine the main reason why your business has a blog and pick success metrics to match.

#2: Pursue Guest Blogging Opportunities

One of the best ways to get exposure for your blog is to blog for other people. Rich Brooks, president of Flyte New Media, offers some great advice to start building relationships for potential guest blogging opportunities.

“Find the influential bloggers in your related industries,” says Brooks, “and read their blogs. As appropriate, leave intelligent, thoughtful comments that further the conversation. This can drive traffic to your blog and may open up opportunities for guest blogging at their blog as they become aware of you through your brilliant insights. However, this must be a win-win for it to work. If you leave comments for completely selfish reasons, you can expect limited results.”

#3: Reframe How You Look at Business Blogging

“I often hear people complain that they don’t have time to write on their business blog or they don’t know what to write about,” says Denise Wakeman, founder of The Blog Squad. “Yet a blog is one of the best tools you can use to distribute your message across the web.”

One way to move away from this mode of thinking is to reframe how you look at blogging. It’s not about writing on a blog; it’s about taking advantage of a powerful marketing tool that works for you 24/7/365. Then, schedule writing time so it doesn’t slip through the cracks in the course of a busy day or week.

Here’s a 4-step process to get you started:

1.     Block out your writing time on a calendar.

2.     Plan your content in advance. Create an editorial calendar and plug in your topics 1 to 3 months in advance.

3.     For each of your blog categories, list a minimum of 5 topics you can cover related to your company, products and the solutions you provide.

4.     Pop them into your editorial calendar as prompts so you’re never at a loss for ideas when it’s time to create content.

#4: Add Keywords to Your Blog Titles and Posts

Rob Birgfeld of SmartBrief says keywords are the secret sauce to a successful business blog.

“It’s easy,” Birgfeld says, “to write blog posts on whatever topic springs to mind. But chances are your blog was created to help achieve business goals. In order to reach those goals, take data from your search engine marketing efforts and develop an editorial plan around your top-producing keywords.”

Gather your top 10-15 keywords or phrases and write blog posts specific to each one. Keep the content compelling, but be sure to sprinkle the selected keyword (and synonyms) throughout the post.

Most importantly, be sure to include those all-important keywords in the blog title and in the tags that you select. Not only will a keyword-driven blogging strategy help you build and plan out your editorial calendar, it will help you reach company goals via proven search engine marketing data. Thus providing you with something that’s hard to come by in social media: An easier sell to your CFO.

#5: Interview the Best in Your Industry

Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, suggests, “Hire a videographer and go to the biggest trade show in your industry. Interview all the leading book authors and thought leaders.”

When you do this, you’ll end up with tons of content you can release on your blog over months. And chances are, when the big names see your video, they’ll share it with their fan base, driving new traffic to your site.

Here’s Mike Stelzner interviewing Scott Monty of Ford at Blog World 2010. This is a great example of attending the best events in the industry and connecting with the influencers.

#6: Create Persuasive Calls to Action

“You’ve got anecdotes, case studies, top-ten lists, provocative insights and more on your business blog. Hats off to you. That’s a huge achievement, particularly if you’ve been publishing a blog for a year or less. But what’s your call to action? And by that I mean, what step is a visitor prompted to take after landing on your blog?” says Debbie Weil, expert blogger and author of The Corporate Blogging Book.

What obvious callouts do you have to attract a visitor’s eye after he or she reads your latest blog post? Think about it. Your blog reader, if a first-time visitor, has most likely typed in a keyword phrase and ended up on your blog through search results.

Readers may not even know that it’s a blog. So you’ve got their attention, at least for a few seconds. This is your real-time moment to prompt your visitor to take the next step. If I sound all salesy here I don’t mean to. This is permission marketing 101. It’s offering something unanticipated but relevant at the exact moment your visitor is looking for it.

Here are a few ideas for persuasive calls to action from Debbie Weil’s Social Media Insights Blog:

• Download our white paper
• Join us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
• Ask us a question
• Download our e-book
• Sign up for our free webinar
• Request our toolkit
• Sign up for our e-newsletter
• Request a demo

#7: When it Comes to Video Blogging, Forget Acting

“I remember the first time I was on camera,” says David Garland, founder of The Rise to the Top and author of Smarter, Faster, Cheaper. “I was trying to be someone I wasn’t… with an awkward spray tan. (Stop laughing.)”

For some reason, our personalities can sometimes change when on camera (something about that scary lens). What the audience craves is to see the real you. All the good stuff, quirks and everything else.

Try this. Invite someone over with whom you are VERY comfortable. Have him or her ask you a question and simply answer it. Then, have the person hold a camera and try it again. Rinse, wash and repeat until you feel comfortable. When you talk into the lens, picture that person. It will make all the difference.

Here's David Garland interviewing Mike Stelzner about the success of SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Want to Learn More About Blogging for Business?

If you’re not fully leveraging the power of blogging, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Most businesses are just now getting started with blogs.

There’s one easy way to take your blogging efforts to the next level. By attending the web’s largest online blogging conference, Blogging Success Summit 2011 you’ll become empowered to use blogs to gain more exposure, better engage customers and grow your business.

The great part is you’ll be learning from 23 blogging experts. Join Technorati’s CEO, Scott Monty, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Michael Stelzner and experts from McDonalds, Cisco, Southwest Airlines, Sony and Procter & Gamble as they reveal proven blogging tactics at Blogging Success Summit 2011.

It’s the web’s largest online blogging conference. Go here for a free sample and to learn more.

Now it’s your turn! Have you used any of these great blogging tips already? Do you plan to implement any into your blogging strategy right away? Share your thoughts and comments with us in the box below.

All photos from Shutterstock

There are a lot of obvious elements you need to include to make a blog reader-friendly: quality, compelling content, good navigation, a contact page, an about page, focus and clarity about the subject of the blog… and there’s a lot of not-so-obvious or overlooked things that can really help make a blog stand out if they’re implemented.

While I do have my own list of do’s and don’ts included, I decided to get input from other smart, savvy bloggers. I posted a request on LinkedIn Answers and received many great do’s and don’ts. I’ve grouped the tips into five categories: Planning, Content, Design, Marketing and Engagement.

#1: Planning Your Business Blog

Do: Know your “Big Why” – Why are you in business? What is your purpose and ultimate goal for serving others? Clarity about your purpose, your goals, your ideal client and how you transform people’s lives will help guide all the content on your business blog.

Do: Know what you mean when you say successful. Are you trying to get more sales? Develop relationships? Inform current customers? Having a specific goal for your blog will shape the rest of your strategy. From Cordelia Blake

Do: Keyword research before starting a blog. First, compile a list of keywords (and, more importantly, keyword phrases) you think your business should rank for. Then, go to Google Keyword tool and type in those phrases to find out how many actual searches are done per month. You would be surprised how different Google’s list may turn out from your own. Use the list Google suggests as your starting point. From Boris Mahovac

Use the Google Keyword Tool to find keywords that have a large number of searches.

Do: Define your target audience and develop a content strategy that they will find interesting, entertaining or informative. Don’t focus too closely on product. As a Twitter friend once said, “If you make dog food, don’t talk about dog food, talk about dogs.” From Heidi Cool

Do: Give it time. It takes a while to build real relationships. From Christopher Gronlund

Don’t: Hide the author of the blog. Make sure you have a real-live person behind the blog. Add his or her photo, name and role in the company. It’s OK to outsource to get help, but for the most authentic connection, have a real employee available to guide, answer questions and provide a true look inside the organization. Even if you only have a few people in your company, this is vitally important. From Phil Gerbyshak

#2: Your Blog Content

Do: Be real.

Don’t: Be stuffy, dull and pompous or use bizspeak jargon. A blog isn’t a lecture hall or a billboard (i.e., one-way or solely self-promotional communication), but is ideally a place for people who are hungry for good information to find you and start to see you as a reliable and trustworthy resource. From Caitlin Kelly

Do: Find an optimal posting schedule that works for you. The more you post on your blog, the more traffic you’ll attract. But more than frequency, focus on posting quality content consistently and constantly.

Do: Establish an editorial calendar that helps you plan for future articles and topics. Set reasonable deadlines. If you know you can’t publish daily, don’t establish that as your goal.

Don’t: Publish junk just to keep up with your calendar. It’s better to miss a post than to post gibberish. (Heidi Cool)

Do: Keep the Four E’s in mind when writing your blog posts: Educate, Entertain, Engage and Enrich. Mix it up to ensure your message is delivered in the way that your ideal reader wants to consume it.

Do: Create Scannable Content. People have different reading patterns on the web than they do on the printed page. They tend to scan down web pages rather than read every word. So give them what they want! Break up your content with shorter paragraphs, headings and bullets. Add images. Incorporate video. From Chris Cree

Do: Create compelling, keyword-rich titles that address your audience’s needs. From Rich Brooks

Do: Use a variety of post types. Some posts can be a quick paragraph, while others are a deep dive into an important issue. Posts can be based around a video, or based around text content. If you mix things up you’ll keep the blog interesting, expand your list of post ideas and fight the tendency for blogger burnout. From Kyle Deming

Don’t: Get too self-promotional. At least 80% of your content should focus on helping your audience. (Rich Brooks)

#3: Blog Design

Do: Blog on your own domain, period. It should also be under “yourdomain.com/blog” subdirectory rather than “blog.yourdomain.com”. This lends some of the search engine goodwill earned by your blog to your root domain. From Scott Allen. (Just about everyone made this recommendation.)

Do: Customize your templates and menus to make it easy for readers to explore page articles. Make good use of categories and tags. (Heidi Cool)

Do: Give your blog readers the tools to amplify your message to their own communities. Have retweet/tweet buttons, Facebook Like button, Digg, StumbleUpon and other relevant social sharing buttons on your blog posts. This falls under marketing and engagement as well. When designing your blog, make sure you include plugins and widgets that can support spreading your content far and wide.

Don’t: Hide author, contact, and subscription information. Make sure you have pages that are easy to find in the navigation so your reader can find out more about you and your company and can contact you with questions and feedback.

Make it easy for your audience to connect with you.

Do build an opt-in mailing list and autoresponder. Don’t rely solely on an RSS feed for your readers to get your blog updates. Most people do know what an RSS feed is; they do know how to opt in to get email. I see this mistake on 90% of the blogs I review. Check out Feedblitz, Feedburner and AWeber for email delivery of your blog content.

#4: Marketing Your Blog

Do: Build time into your schedule to market your blog. You’ve got to put some effort into steering people to your blog posts so that they actually find the great content you’re creating. (Chris Cree)

Do: Automate syndication of your blog posts to your social profiles. Make sure your posts are showing up on your Facebook page, Twitter stream and LinkedIn profile, at minimum.

Do: Find the right balance of keywords. Keywords are important for improving the ranking of your blog in search engines and for increasing visibility and readership. However, more is not always better. You want your blog post to read like a conversation you’re having with a person face to face. From Emily Madsen

Do: Repurpose your blog content in multiple formats and syndicate it on other content-sharing sites. Recreate your content in audio and video formats in order to leverage your time and extend your reach on the web.

#5: Engaging Your Audience

Do: Make time to respond to all of the comments you receive. A primary purpose for business blogging is to build a strong relationship with your audience. When you reply to their comments, your readers will appreciate your personal interest and this will build credibility and trust in your expertise. From Sydni Craig-Hart

Do: Spend as much time engaging as you do creating content. Some of that can be on your own blog replying to comments, but a substantial portion of it MUST be on other blogs in your industry. Competitors are a touchy situation—you really have to take it on a case-by-case basis. But for vendors, clients, industry associations, industry thought leaders/authors/speakers, you should definitely identify all of them and be engaging on a regular basis. (Scott Allen)

Don’t: Disable or heavily censor blog comments. Commenting is one of the best ways to engage and you may get called out if you filter out all negative comments. Use negative comments as an opportunity to respond graciously. (Kyle Deming)

Do: Have a clear plan in place for handling criticism and negative comments. Take the high road and respond to these comments carefully and politely. (Heidi Cool)

Don’t: Take for granted you know what your audience needs. Survey and ask them what three things they struggle with in their business. This one exercise could have you supplied with relevant blog posts for weeks. But also, you’ll be providing great information to your readers to keep them coming back for more. From Terri Brooks

Create simple surveys with SurveyMonkey.com.

Do: Be as authentic as you possibly can. People know when they’re being fed a party line or propaganda. We know when we’re being marketed at or PRed at. Be as real as the circumstances allow. From Erica Friedman

What would you add? Do you have some business blogging do’s and don’ts that are not covered here? Leave your comments and ideas in the box below.

Would you like some tips to help your blog appear for specific keywords? If so, keep reading…

Why Search Matters for Blogs

In an earlier article, I talked about the importance of blogging and search engine rankings. However, once you’ve got the blog up and running, the next thing to do is to start optimizing your posts for the search engines. Although search engine optimization (SEO) can be overwhelming to the newcomer, once you understand a few basic concepts, you’ll soon find it’s really not that difficult.

Good SEO copy and a search engine–optimized website accomplish three things:

1. They’re easy for the search engines to read
2. They’re easy for the target audience to find
3. They’re easy for people to read

Everything you do to optimize a post is based around those three basic concepts.

So with that in mind, here are six things you can do to optimize your website or blog posts for the search engines:

#1: Start With Quality Content

The first and most important thing you can do is to write a good, informative post that is accessible, easy to read and appeals to your target audience. In the old days of SEO copywriting, web pages were stuffed with keywords to the point that it hurt the actual content. Aside from the fact that the search engines have caught on to keyword stuffing, readers are going to quickly bounce from a page that doesn’t provide the information they were seeking.

Information of value is also much more likely to attract incoming links. When search engines see other websites linking to a web page, especially if it includes relative content, they determine that the web page holds information of value and move it up the rankings.

SEO starts once you’ve got a solid blog post.

#2: Determine Targeted Keywords

Think like your target audience. Which words will they use to find your post? Once you’ve written your post, it’s important to decide how you want readers to find you. These search terms are your keywords. With a well-written post, the primary keywords are often obvious.

However, there are a number of tools available to help with keyword research. One of the most interesting tools I’ve found is Google Wheels.

The great thing about Google Wheels is that it gives you an idea of how Google thinks. When you enter a search term, Google returns a “wheel” or web of related terms. You can then click on each of these related terms to create more wheels. Using the wheel, you can quickly find related keywords that should be included in your post or meta information.

Google Wonder Wheel shows related keywords for the search term "SEO."

For example, the phrase “SEO tips” returns a Google Wheel with related phrases such as “SEO tools,” “meta tags,” and “search engine optimization tips” — all keywords that occur fairly naturally in this very post.

To find Google Wheels, expand the left-hand column on the main Google search page and look for "Wonder Wheel."

With a little revision and by including these terms in the meta title and descriptions (see below), you can include these keywords in your optimization. When Google sees related keywords in all the right places, it can easily determine the information on the page, thus improving the chances that the page will receive a higher search engine return.

#3: Write Strong Meta Titles and Descriptions

Meta titles and descriptions tell both the search engines and the reader what’s on the page. The meta title and description also show in the search engine results, so they need to convince readers to click through to the website. Good content management systems and blogging programs include a place for meta information.

In WordPress, premium themes such as Thesis or Studiopress include fields to directly enter the meta titles, description and tags. You can also use plugins such as the All in One SEO Pack, which adds meta fields. Other platforms such as Blogger require some basic coding. Whichever platform you use, the meta information is a vital step in optimizing a web page for the search engines.

Good meta descriptions match the content on the page. Primary keywords should appear at the beginning of both the title and description. Title tags are limited to 72 characters and title descriptions approximately 165 characters. Anything longer will be cut off in the search engine results. While it’s acceptable to use a number of keywords in the meta information (as long as it reads well), don’t overuse terms. Repeat a keyword more than twice and the search engines may actually penalize you for keyword stuffing.

While the general consensus is that Google no longer looks at the meta tags, other search engines might. It can’t hurt to add a few keywords to the meta tags. Focus on the primary keywords and don’t overdo it. Five or six of the keywords recommended by the Google Wheel would serve well for meta tags.

#4: Analyze and Revise

The next step is to analyze your copy, determine which keywords are rising to the top and make appropriate revisions. The problem is it can be hard to tell which words the search engines will recognize as primary keywords. Fortunately, there are a number of tools available to analyze a web page and show you primary keywords or keyword density.

Most free tools require you to publish the page before you can run an analysis. SEOCentro’s Meta Tag Analyzer provides a detailed analysis of a web page or blog post. It shows the relevance of the meta content to the information on the page, how it will appear in the search engine results and an in-depth keyword analysis including keyword density.

Along with keyword density, SEOCentro analyzes meta tags and their relevancy to the page content.

Textalyser.net and Live allow you to analyze copy and determine selected keyword density before publishing. With both of these tools, you’ll need to determine the primary keywords based on the density of the term. When looking at keyword density, it’s important to keep it below about 5%. Any higher and you might be penalized for keyword stuffing.

I personally use Scribe for SEO to analyze a web page or post before publishing. Although a premium tool, Scribe will not only makes suggestions for revision, it identifies primary and secondary keywords and provides tips for moving alternate keywords to the primary position. The latest version of Scribe also includes built-in keyword research and link-building tools.

Once you have a clear picture of how the search engines see your page or post, you can go back and revise to emphasize or change desired keywords.

#5: Internal and External Links

It’s important to include both internal and external links in your post. Internal links help the search engines index your site, identify primary keywords and can increase the page rank of linked pages. When linking to other pages on your site, it’s important to link related keywords instead of phrases like “click here.” Linking by keyword tells the search engines that there’s related content on the linked page.

For example, near the beginning of this article: “In an earlier article, I talked about the importance of blogging and search engine rankings.” A common SEO mistake would be to link to the term “article.” “Article” has little to do with the content on both this page and page to which I’m linking. However, the phrase “blogging and the search engines” includes keywords important to both articles.

External links or links leading to pages outside your website do a couple of things. Like internal links, external links help the search engines identify important keywords. Even more important, they can help create incoming links from other websites. When you link to another site, the blogger or webmaster will usually see a “trackback” or incoming link. If you offer related content, it’s possible that your colleague might find information of use on your site, and in turn, link to one of your articles. Incoming links from relevant and reputable websites are highly valued by the search engines. Actually, they’re probably one of the most important factors when determining search engine ranking.

Just like keywords, you don’t want to overuse linking. Too many links and it becomes spam. You also want to be sure that you’re linking to quality websites both in the eyes of the search engines and your readers.

#6: Optimize the URL

One of the easiest yet most overlooked elements to optimize is the URL. A simple URL that includes a couple of keywords helps the search engine determine what’s on the page.

• URLs such as “www.yoursitename.copm/2010/09/12/post143″ tell the search engine very little about the topic at hand.
• A URL such as “www.yoursitename.com/seo_tips” not only provides two highly targeted keywords for the search engines, it’s much easier for your reader to remember when looking for your article.

A real-world example:

An analysis of the text up to this point in this article (using Scribe for SEO) shows the following primary keywords:

• the search
• blog
• posts
• SEO
• engines
• tips
• optimize

Not really the words I wanted to highlight. “The search” comes from my repeated use of the phrase “the search engines.” I would much rather see “search engine optimization tips.” It’s important to note that when I ran my analysis, my meta information looked like this:

As you can see in the meta information, I’ve included the phrase “the search” in both the custom title tag and the meta description. I need to drop “the search” from my meta information so that it reads:

Custom Title Tag – “SEO for Blogs in Six Easy Steps”
Meta Description – “SEO isn’t all that complicated. These six easy tips will help you optimize your blog posts.”

I also went back and revised the copy so that I had fewer uses of the phrase “the search engines.”

When I run the analysis again, I can see that “SEO” has become my only primary keyword. I’m not quite happy with that, though; I want “SEO tips” as my primary keyword, so I’m going to change my title tag to read, “Six SEO Tips for Blogs” and delete “easy” from my meta description so that it reads, “SEO isn’t all that complicated. These six SEO tips will help you optimize your blog posts.”

This slight change is enough to make both “SEO” and “SEO tips” primary keywords.

In this case, changing the meta worked because I had already come close to my desired keywords through the natural process of writing on the topic. I could also refine even more by going back to my original article and increasing or decreasing the number of times a keyword is written or possibly highlighting selected keywords using bold text.

Although SEO may seem overwhelming and it may seem like the rules are always changing, remember what I said at the beginning of this article.

• An optimized blog post is easy for the search engines to read,
• It’s easy for the target audience to find and
• It’s easy for the target audience to read.

If your blog posts and web pages stay true to these three points, you’re already way ahead of the SEO game.

What are your favorite SEO tips? Is there an SEO tool you’ve found valuable in your blogging? Leave your comments in the box below.

A great blog post respects the needs of three distinct entities. It educates and informs your audience (your subscribers and visitors), optimizes for the search engines and sufficiently energizes you so that you do a good job creating it.

Every blog post should address the following five components to ensure it hits the mark for your audience, the search engines and you.

#1: Has an Engaging Title

The title is arguably the most important element of any post. Engaging titles that spark curiosity are more likely to be clicked. When this is combined with strategic keywords that affirm the topic of the post, you have a winner.

Tim Ferris recently wrote a post on the art and science of headlines to increase the click-through rate. The idea is simply to generate curiosity, such as Why Are You Single? Perhaps It’s the Choice Effect. You’re wondering what the Choice Effect is all about, aren’t you?

Many of us don’t have Tim’s fan base, so we need to develop a catchy title that also includes keywords that will get indexed by Google. Brian Clark with Copyblogger does an excellent job of this. One of his generally accepted SEO copywriting tips is to place these keywords near the front of the title.

You should occasionally test your titles to determine what resonates most with your audience. I’ve personally found that titles that respond to a specific need, such as How Often Should I Blog?, will result in higher traffic with my targeted readers than those that are deep and thought-provoking.

#2: Offers Easy to Consume Content

When you organize your content so that it’s easily consumed, you tap into a secret of blogging. The more readily your content is assimilated in the minds of your readers, the more favorably it’s received—and remembered.

Here are some ways to accomplish this.

• Blog for Your Audience: As you develop your blogging style, always consider the needs of your audience. My audience is the same as that of Social Media Examiner—business professionals and marketers. They expect me to get to the point quickly and avoid technical jargon.
• Learn to Write in AP Style: If you scan any news source, you’ll notice the paragraphs are short—only a few sentences. This is one of the hallmarks of Associated Press (AP) style of writing, which many journalists consider to be the standard. These guidelines will give your posts a professional appearance and make them easier to consume.
• Use Subheadings: This helps both you and the reader. I tend to write my first draft quickly for flow and readability. Then I go back and organize with subheadings, while also reorganizing and eliminating entire paragraphs so that my readers don’t have to.
• Create Lists: Lists are the ultimate organizing tool, which is why they’re frequently retweeted—thereby attracting valuable links back to your blog.
• Use Italics and Bold Text for Emphasis: If someone reads your blog post word for word, it’s usually after skimming it first. Help readers do both by emphasizing key points with italics, bold text and, with care, all caps.

#3: Mixes Content Types

Delivering great content requires a mix of qualities that keeps your readers coming back for more. The key isn’t always the quality of the message, but how it’s delivered. Improve how you do this by employing these 5 practices.

• Offer Your Opinions: If you’re an expert in your field, then your opinion is relevant. Who do you respect more, the waiter who says everything on the menu is excellent, or the one who looks you in the eye and recommends her favorites (or suggests avoiding some dishes)?
• Use Multimedia: Make it a point to use images, screenshots and video to communicate your message with more punch.

These contextual forms of communication enhance your message while also breaking up the text to improve the appearance of your post.

• Link to Your Research: Data has greater credibility when it comes from a reputable source, such as the Pew Research Center. A link to that source raises your credibility by showing you’ve done your homework.

Data from respected sources such as the Pew Research Center will validate your perspective.

• Provide Practical Examples: Examples of situations where you’ve had direct experience are powerful, although it’s important to provide details such as names and places to validate that credibility. Just be sure you get the proper permissions first.
• Take Out the Trash: Make the effort to edit out anything that doesn’t support your title or enhance your post. Include details to create a mental picture, but leave out anything else that detracts from your story.

#4: Is Search Engine Optimized

Learning search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessary aspect of blogging if you expect to build a sustainable reader base. While SEO can get complicated, you can be very effective by simply tuning into your audience and writing for them. Trust your gut and write for people and SEO will take care of itself.

These are the key elements of SEO that deserve your attention.

• Excerpts: The excerpt of your post is the brief description included with the return of search results. A well-chosen description encourages click-throughs. If you don’t build an excerpt, the first couple of sentences of your post will be used as a default. Get in the habit of summarizing your post in the first couple of sentences.
• Keywords: Learn the common words and phrases being used by your audience. For example, do they use the term entrepreneur or small business? It’s a distinction that has to be made so that you can be found when they’re searching for your expertise.
• Links: The SEO pros universally agree that inbound links to your blog are vital for achieving a high ranking. How do you get these links? The most reliable way is to write amazing content that people want to link to.

One tip is to link to the keywords (known as anchor text) in your post that are aligned with the words you expect to be used by someone searching for your expertise. The classic mistake is linking to click here instead of more relevant keywords such as small business marketing, or whatever relates to your expertise.

Additionally, you naturally want to link back to your previous posts to encourage your readers to hang around longer. This increases the likelihood they’ll respond to a call to action, such as subscribing to your blog or newsletter.

• Tags: Tags are handled differently in every blogging platform. Just be sure to use tags that are relevant to the post you’re creating, as well as the audience you’re blogging for. Darren Rowse of Problogger suggests no more than a dozen tags for each post to avoid undermining their effectiveness through dilution.
• Categories: Categories obviously help your blog visitors go deeper into the subject matter or topic that interests them most. Google also indexes your categories for the same reason, so choose your categories carefully. You’ll note the categories here at Social Media Examiner were intentionally limited to just eight to be relevant now and in the future.

#5: Encourages Interaction and Action

While blogging is indeed a platform for broadcasting, the ultimate objective is to encourage engagement and interaction, namely in the form of comments. Just as an engaged audience gives a speaker feedback on his live presentation, the comments to your blog will do the same.

You can and should learn from every single visitor to your blog by responding and seeking to better understand his/her point of view. The reason for this is that every commenter represents the perspective of many others. The more you learn, the easier it is to focus your efforts on what’s most relevant to your audience.

Why else do you want comments? Because comments are social proof that your blog is a happening place. And this encourages more traffic and subscribers to your blog.

To encourage more comments, you may not only have to remind your audience to do so, but show them as well. Write a post on commenting and use your blog as an example.

Show your readers exactly how to comment, and even go a step further to describe how to share your post by retweeting or using the Facebook Like button.

As you begin to engage your audience, you’ll want to move them closer to helping you accomplish your blogging objectives. For example, you may ultimately want to sell your ebooks. A preliminary step toward that is to encourage more subscribers to your list. Then when the time is right you can reach out to your list to provide higher-value content that monetizes your blogging efforts.

There is no such thing as a perfect blog post. However, if you follow these recommendations, you’ll be sure to enhance your blog for you and your audience, as well as the search engines that work on everyone’s behalf.

What do you think? What else makes for a great blog post? Leave your comments in the box below.

But many brand and marketing managers responsible for social media don’t quite understand what social media monitoring is and why it’s important. Here’s a quick primer:

Social Media Monitoring Is Listening

Listening to online conversations is technically done without ears. Using search engine technology, social media monitoring tools scan the Internet looking for documents that contain keywords you select. They return those results in some sort of order that allows you to see where people have mentioned your brand, company, product or whatever you specified.

Seeing these results reveal which websites or blogs you should visit to either see what people are saying about you or actually participate in those conversations. Without monitoring, the conversations are happening without your knowledge.

Social Media Monitoring Can Be Free

The easiest way to start monitoring social media is to sign up for some free tools and services. Google Alerts allows you to search for a word or phrase just as you would in a regular search, and then notifies you when something new pops up on the web with that search term. You can subscribe to email updates of the new search results or add them to your RSS subscriptions. (If you don’t know what RSS is, watch “RSS in Plain English,” a video from CommonCraft.)

You can also search for your company or product name on Twitter to see real-time conversations that include mentions or discussions of your brand. Add Technorati to the list and your monitoring will cover the majority of blogs as well.

Paid Social Media Monitoring Solutions Are Often Worth the Investment

The one drawback to the free monitoring solutions is that manual work will be required to quantify the results for your executives or report your findings. Paid social media monitoring services like Radian6, Scout Labs and Techrigy pull all those conversations together into an organized, web-based dashboard and allow you to pull charts and graphs that explain the information with very little work on your part.

One big benefit to many (but not all) of the paid solutions is their ability to analyze sentiment and tone of the conversations through fancy computer algorithms using natural language processing. What this means is that you can log in to your service, see that there were 250 conversations mentioning your brand this week, and of those, 83 percent were positive, 10 percent were negative and the other 7 percent were neutral.

Paid monitoring solutions offer dashboard experiences like this one from Radian6 which makes monitoring your brand easier

Monitoring Is Only the First Step

Finding and cataloging the online conversations about your company is just the tip of the iceberg in social media monitoring. Once you know where conversations are taking place and what is being said about your company, you can then participate in the conversation. This is critically important for companies because today’s web-savvy consumer requires direct access to the people behind the products and services they buy or shop for.

Let’s say you find a customer upset about the service she received at your place of business earlier today. Letting the individual mouth off to her friends who have a natural predisposition to either agree or jump on the bandwagon of hate only guarantees your company will be thought of negatively by those involved in the conversation. However, social media case studies show time and time again that entering into similar conversations with a simple, “I’m sorry you had a bad experience. What can I do to help?” shows the disgruntled fan—and her bandwagon-jumping friends—that you’re truly interested in improving the situation. The customer response is almost always something like, “Wow. I didn’t know you were listening. Thanks for offering.”

Smart Monitoring Can Build Your Business

Please don’t think that social media monitoring is limited to mitigating online detractors. By analyzing the conversations around not just your company, but also your industry or even competitors, you can gain a significant market advantage and actually drive business.

Let’s say you’re monitoring mentions of your nearest competitor and uncover a trend that people are complaining that their product (say, a coffeepot) is great but not durable. You then change your advertising campaign to trumpet the fact your coffeepot lasts three times longer than the competitor’s.

For another example, suppose you have a national product that has inconsistent sales patterns from region to region. Your social media monitoring shows you what people in the Pacific Northwest say are the best and worst qualities of your product, but the answers are different in the South. This consumer intelligence helps you better market your product based on geographic and cultural specifics which can be the difference in customers choosing you or your competition.

Last but not least, sophisticated monitoring can even reveal individual customers who are at the point of making a purchase decision, enabling you to reach out and help them make a connection to your product at the absolute perfect time.

What Are You Waiting For?

Now that you have an idea of what social media monitoring is and what it can do for you, dive in. Start a Google Alert for your company or product. Add one for some general industry terms your customers might use when discussing your category. Add one for each of your competitors. As you feel comfortable, add Twitter and Technorati searches, then branch out and start exploring other social media monitoring tools. At the very least, you’ll have a better idea of what people are saying about you.

What social media monitoring tools are you using? What are your thoughts?  Please leave a comment below.

Here are seven powerful blog posting habits:

Tip #1: Clear Targeting

The first rule for creating effective content for your business blog is to completely understand why you’re blogging. Have a thorough understanding of your ideal reader’s (your customer’s) profile and of your core message as it relates to your business. If you have a really clear idea about who you’re writing for, it’s going to be easier to write. Your blog posts will be on target and on purpose. You won’t be meandering off into subjects that are irrelevant to your audience.

Tip# 2: Know What Your Readers Want

Always write with your reader in mind. Write as if you are answering the question “what’s in it for them?” Your readers are asking themselves all the time whether this blog is worth their time to read. You’re more likely to keep them interested if you’re “walking in their shoes.” Address your readers’ major issues and concerns. If you don’t know what they are, ask.

Tip #3: Edit Often

So many blog posts start off with, “The other day, I was thinking about…” or “You know, summer’s almost over and….” A blog post is not an essay and it’s not poetry. Get to the point right away. Follow the rule of KISS = Keep It Simple, Sugar! (or Keep It Short and Sweet). That means you can actually write less.

Write short, declarative sentences and omit all unnecessary words. This means read and reread your posts before you publish. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t been trained as a journalist or taken a lot of writing classes. If you can write an email, you can write a blog post. However, your blog writing will improve when you reread before publishing to be sure you have taken out all unnecessary words.

After you click the ‘publish’ button, read your post again. Often this is when you will catch typos or grammatical errors you didn’t see before. Show respect for your readers by having clean copy. It doesn’t take much for readers to abandon your blog; some might unsubscribe simply because your spelling is sloppy. In the online world, your words are all you’ve got.

Tip #4: Create Keyword-Rich Headlines

Write compelling headlines by using strategic keywords that are relevant to your topic. Keywords are often touted as gold by search engine optimization experts who want to charge you an arm and a leg for their services. But let’s make a complicated issue simple.

Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal reader. If this reader was searching Google for information or solutions to a problem, would she find you? Make a list of all the words or phrases she might use to search for you, your business, and your solutions. Those are the keywords and key phrases that you want to use frequently on your blog. When you write a headline for your blog post, use these keywords. This alerts the search engines as well as your reader about what’s important in your post.

For an in-depth discussion on writing effective blog post headlines, read Chris Garrett’s post on How to Create Headlines that Go Viral with Social Media.

Doing keyword research from time to time will help you stay on top of what your prospects want. You’ll find out exactly how readers are looking for the information you’ve got. Use the free keyword suggestion tool at WordTracker to make this simple. Your post headlines can also make it easy—or difficult—for people to find the information they want. Headlines should be as descriptive as possible. Don’t be vague. You can be cute (but not too cute), as long as what you’re putting in the headline clarifies what you’re really writing about or what the reader is going to learn.

Remember, it’s all about your readers. It’s about helping them find and use the content you are giving them. Blogging is going to be a fruitless exercise if your readers can’t get what they want out of reading your blog.

Tip #5: Write Great First Sentences

Write an optimized first paragraph using the same keywords you used in your post headline. Make your point right away rather than leading into it. Use clear keywords in the first sentence of the first paragraph, and then summarize them again before you close your blog post. Always close by asking readers for their comments.

Tip #6: Keep it Short and Spacey

When writing, keep paragraphs short. They should be one or two sentences at most, and then break for a new paragraph. White space is your friend. Sometimes just one sentence can be as effective as a paragraph. You want lots of white space between paragraphs on your blog.

Remember, most readers are in a hurry. Text on a computer screen is also harder to read than text on paper. You want to make it as easy as possible for your readers to grasp your message quickly.

Tip #7: Use Bulleted Lists

Use bullet points and lists as often as possible. This makes your post easy:

• To read
• To scan
• To understand
• To remember

Research shows that people prefer things to be easily digestible and chunked down for them. It’s easier for them to remember your message if you’ve given it to them in a list of three to five items. Some online writing experts also recommend keeping lists to an odd number of bullet points, but the important part is to use lists whenever you can.

There are many ways to ensure you have great blog posts. These seven tips provide a good starting point and checklist to help you stay on track and create content your readers will devour and that will move them to action.

What other tips would you add to this list to write better blog posts? Share your best blogging tips in the comments below.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/ / CC BY 2.0