Friday, January 14, 2011

Using SEO to Get Your Selling Blog Noticed

Using SEO (search engine optimization) to get your selling blog noticed by google isn’t rocket science, though it may seem like it at first. To put it simply, SEO is using keywords throughout your blog entries in order to get your blog noticed and indexed by google and other various search engines.

At this point, you may be wondering what a keyword is. Keywords are the words and phrases people type into a search engine in order to find more information about that particular topic. When they type in the subject they’re looking for into the search bar, they expect to get a list of websites that have mentioned that word or words.

For instance, if you want to find fabric on sale, you type into your search engine “fabric on sale.” Of course, that will bring up thousands of websites. These websites are listed in order of how many times they have written somewhere on their various pages “fabric on sale.” The age of a website or blog also helps with getting it higher up in the search engine, as well as one way links to that blog or site. (More on that later).

The first thing you need to do is to draw up a list of keywords for the items you sell on your blog. It’s always good to brainstorm with your family and friends on this list since we all think of differently and thus, may think of different words or phrases. You can also use this handy tool. Check the option “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms.” And my oh my, what a wealth of information that handy little bugger will give you!

Once you have a list of your keywords, you’ll then know what to write about on your blog. Don’t cram all the keywords into one entry, though. It’s best to concentrate on one or two keywords or keyword phrases and write specifically about them. For the clients I write for, I usually write between 150 to 200 word entries, using a couple of the keywords or keyword phrases twice throughout each entry. By the way, more is not better in this case. If you smother your blog post with that keyword several times, the search engines will consider you to be trying to unfairly get higher rankings and they’ll blacklist you. You definitely don’t want that!

Another way of getting your keywords out there – without it being counted against you by the search engines as being too much – is to take advantage of categories or labels. On the Blogspot platform, it is directly below the box you type your entry in – i.e., “Labels for this post: e.g., scooters, vacation, fall.” Type in your keywords in that box that your particular blog post revolves around.

Two other quick and handy ways of getting your keywords on your blog post, but without fear of being blacklisted, is putting your keyword or keyword phrase in the title of the blog entry and naming any photos with those keywords. When you save a picture on your computer, label it as the keyword or keyword phrases it revolves around. Then, when you upload it to your blogging platform, it will include that in the title; the spyders that crawl websites looking for keywords will index and add those use of keywords to your tally of keywords.

Seeing is believing, so right click on any picture on a blog. Go all the way down to “Properties,” and then check out the very end of the line that has “Location” on it. Sometimes this is a very long line, so simply highlight it and carry it all the way to the end of that line. Near the end of that long line – before the .jpg or .gif extension – is the name of the photo that the person who uploaded the picture named it on his/her computer. You might as well take advantage of that extra place to put your keyword in!

Before I continue on with any more tips, please post any comments or questions in the comments section. I’ll try to answer them as best I can. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll try to find out for you!

For Part 2, please see SEO and Links.

17 comments:

  1. Wow, I did not know that about the photos, never thought to name them.

    Cathy

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  2. What a wonderful article! Thank you so much for all of the great information!

    *prim hugs*
    Debbie K

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  3. Fabulous information Tracy, thank you so much! I've heard of SEO's but to be honest never really understood what the big deal was, now I see! Thanks for all the tips about where to add your keywords, think I'll have to go back and rename some of my product photos now! Does it help to add your own name or your company name to your labels after each post so that when people search for you by name, you will show up higher in the search engines? Didn't know about the "black listing" either, very good to know! I am excited to hear what else you have to tell us, I'd ask more questions but as they say "You don't know what you don't know"! Thanks again for sharing your knowledge with us, Deb

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  4. Deb -

    If people know to look for your name or your company's name, then by all means put it in each of your entries. That way if they type, for example, "Paxton Valley Folk Art" into the search engine, you'll definitely show up right away.

    If they don't know your company or website by name, it'd still be a good idea since you have "folk art" in the title of your company's name. In that way, every time you make a new entry about something new you created and now have on sale, you can always put in the blog entry something like: "Here's the latest from Paxton Valley Folk Art..." And then you'd put the keyword or keyword phrase of the item you're selling! You'd not only get your keyword or phrase out there, but you'd also get more bang for your buck by putting "folk art" in the entry, which is, I'm sure, something that people will put into search engines when they're looking for folk art to purchase.

    Hope that explained it clearly. If not, let me know!

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  5. By the way, I'm so glad this post has been useful to you guys!

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  6. Me too Tracy:) Thanks tons gal. I've always seen SEO and wondered what the heck it was. This is great info.
    Carol

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  7. Thanks Tracy,,,anxious to read-on..

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  8. Tracy,,

    Is there a difference between keywords and tags? I've seen where blogs are spotlighted as "Tag Free", what is that about?

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  9. Hi, Ronda -

    I think "keywords" and "tags" basically mean the same thing, but they may not. Like on Etsy, for example, what I consider "keywords," they consider "tags.". Then blogger here considers them "labels."

    I'm not familiar with a "Tag Free" blog. Not sure why someone would want to do that. Even if they weren't concerned about SEO, I would think they'd want their readers to know the categories they have on their blog, so their readers could more easily search out subjects. So maybe "tags" in that instance means something else.

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  10. WOW! This is REALLY helpful to me! I've been looking for an easy to follow explanation of how to work with the SEO. THANK YOU!

    Now, my question. I don't have a blog (yet) but assume most all the info applies to web sites too. In naming pictures, we usually do something like 123dSilly_Snowman. This is our item number, the initial of who made it as there are 3 of us and then the item name. In order for the "spiders" to find "Snowman" do I need to remove the other information in the name?

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  11. I've been looking for this kind of information forever. How nice of you to take the time to write all this down for everyone. I'm a new follower who wishes I'd found your site sooner. Lot of great products AND this, too! Wow.

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  12. Darline -

    I'm glad the post was helpful to you!

    Yes, what you name pictures applies to websites and not just blogs. Thankfully you can still keep those item numbers and initials. Just put an underscore before the item like you did to separate "silly" and "snowman." (i.e., 123d_Silly_Snowman), though I would occasionally put "for_sale" in there somewhere. (123d_Silly_Snowman_for_sale). That's what I'm doing over at my teddy bears and raggedies blog. It's kind of awkward to blog about handmade teddy bears (plural) for sale when the post is just about one teddy bear. So sometimes I name the pictures "handmade_teddy_bears_for_sale."

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  13. Thanks for the information. Do you add the photo name when uploading to the host you use? I noticed on my blog that when I right click on the properties and continue with your instructions that I only notice the name on the pics I used from photobucket but could not see the name on the ones I just uploaded directly from my computer . . .?

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  14. Whenever I save a photo to my computer, I label it as the keyword(s). Thus, whenever you upload the photo to a site online, it should still retain the name - somewhere - that you named it when you saved it to your computer. I hope that makes sense, or maybe I'm not understanding your question right? Let me know. :)

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  15. very helpful info. I found your blog by the link site that you used for someone else's blog...love the visit.

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  16. Hi, Robin - so glad to hear the info is useful to you. Thanks for visiting. :)

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