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SEO Advice for Bloggers, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

At a current WordCamp conference, Matt Cutts, one of Google’s most outspoken authorities, weighed in with some advice for bloggers. Some of what he had to say was real news and some of it just reinforced common SEO wisdom, but it was all very useful information. The video of Matt’s presentation is shown below. If you don’t have an hour to watch the whole thing, I’ve also summarized some of Matt’s more notable points.

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RSS subscribers will need to click on the video link to watch.

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Juicy Tidbits

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Matt had a lot to say. Here are some of his most noteworthy observations.

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  • If you think Google hates your site, get over it. Algorithms don’t hold grudges.
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  • WordPress is very good for SEO right out of the box.
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  • The SEO Title Tag Plugin can be very helpful for your rankings.
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  • If you have a choice about how to structure your URLs, use dashes to indicate word breaks. If you use underscores, though, don’t bother making the switch. Just be sure to use one of the two.
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  • Put your blog in a sub-directory rather than the root in case you want to do other things with your site later. It might also get people to link to your home page and your blog separately for double the link juice. Just don’t name the directory “wordpress.”
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  • Be sure that post creation dates are easy to find.
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  • If you want to get listed in Google News, you need to have multiple authors.
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  • Full text RSS gets more loyal readers. Partial feeds just get more page views (not sure about this one).
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  • When considering video vs. podcast, check your rating on hotornot.com. If you got 6 or lower, go with a podcast. \':)\'
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  • Use a different stylesheet for mobile content.
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  • Having a lot of slashes in your URL, such as for the date, doesn’t cause problems in Google. It might still cause problems in Yahoo or MSN.
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  • Communicate with Google through the Webmaster Console. It’s a great way to monitor for any potential ranking problems.
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  • If you’re popular enough that people might want to hack you, think about making your wp-admin folder only accessible via a white list.
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Common SEO Advice

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Matt also provided a number of good tips that are just common sense when it comes to SEO. For those of you who might be new to SEO, here are the important ones.

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  • When writing titles and copy, use words that people might type to search for your post. Don’t forget synonyms and plural versions of those words. Put the same consideration into category names.
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  • File extensions make no difference when it comes to search engine rankings. Just make sure to never use .exe.
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  • Search engine spiders and visually-impaired users have one thing in common: They both like alt text on images and other media.
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  • When you’re moving your domain, use a 301 redirect to preserve your rankings.
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  • Don’t put too much work into meta tags. Google doesn’t pay very much attention to them.
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  • If you want to be ranked, make sure your site can be crawled.
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  • Decide whether or not to use www in your URLs and be consistent about it. The yes-www plugin is great for this. Also be sure to set your preference in the Google Webmaster Console.
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  • Query strings are treated the same as static URLs. Just be sure to limit the number of parameters to two or three.
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  • Supplemental pages need links to get out of the supplemental index.
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The real take-home lesson from Matt’s presentation, and one that’s echoed time and again by SEO professionals and successful bloggers alike, is to focus on content first and rankings second. If you have one, you will get the other. More importantly, it doesn’t pay to try and game Google’s algorithm.\n

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© Daily Blog Tips – visit the site for more blog tips!

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Two Free Logos for DBT Readers

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Having a very special look is very important for any blog. It will improve your branding and make the readers remember you more easily. The first step towards this one-of-a-kind look is the logo.

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Logo Design Works is a company specialized in logo design, and recently they started an interesting promotional effort offering 10 free logos monthly (worth $197 each one) for popular blogs around the Internet.

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In order to apply for the free logo you need to meet certain criteria (e.g., the blog must be in English, older than 6 months and so on). If you meet the requirements you will then fill out a questionnaire and they will choose the best candidates.

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I guess that they must be loaded with applications, so it might be tough to get selected. Fortunately I managed to talk with the person that is doing the online marketing for the company, and he concurred to offer two free logos for the DBT readers. Superior yet, the only requirement for these two blogs is that they must be centered around specific topics. The topics are:

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  • design
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  • small business
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  • marketing
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  • SEO
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  • blogging
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  • freelance
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  • productivity
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If you want the free logo just post a comment on this post. I will choose randomly two people tomorrow, and the winners will be announced as an update on this same post. All comments carrying a timestamp of September 3rd will be considered.

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UPDATE: We have the winners. Congratulations to Engtech and Kyle. I used this random number picker to draw the numbers.

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© Daily Blog Tips – visit the site for more blog tips!

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10 Effective Marketing Tips To Explode Your Sales

Marketing is a critical requirement for the survival and growth of your internet marketing business.\r\n\r\nIn internet marketing, there is a lot more to marketing than just advertising and making sales. The full definition of effective marketing is \’all the constant activities that are involved in ensuring that your internet marketing business and products continue to meet the requirements of your customers; and that your clientele base grows and your profits increase in the long term\’.\r\n\r\nIf you are keen to grow your internet marketing business and significantly increase your sales and make money online; you will need to use the 10 tips outlined below.\r\n\r\n1. Accentuate on the benefits of the product or service which your internet marketing business offers. Customers are willing to pay money for a product which will bring them some benefit or which will solve their problems after they have purchased a product. Your world wide web marketing business\’ website, adverts and sales page must clearly spell out what the customer will benefit from purchasing your product. If you do not clearly present these benefits to the potential customer, then how can they feel encouraged to buy whatever that you are selling?\r\n\r\n2. Also mention what your potential customers stand to loose if they do not purchase your product or service! People generally do not want to lose something or miss out on something which can solve their problem or bring them the results they want. Remind your customers what they will miss out if they do not purchase your product or service. The art of persuasion is very important in internet marketing, so use that and make the prospect want to buy from you.\r\n\r\n3. Continuously review your internet marketing approach. For your world wide web marketing promotional strategies to continue increasing your sales and grow your business; you need to constantly review them to make sure that they are working. Do not continue using a marketing tool which has not brought you any good results. Continue to try and test new marketing techniques. After you have identified the marketing strategies which are working for your internet marketing business, repeat them and continue to improve them while also looking for new tools to use.\r\n\r\n4. Use cost effective advertising which you can maintain for a long time. It is important to look for cost effective ways of running advertisements that are equally effective. If you can run an effective campaign for a long while, then you to get the results you want. Success in world wide web marketing depends on repeating that strategy which is giving you some good results.\r\n\r\n5. Your adverts must be stimulating, exciting and interesting. You want to keep your potential customers interest, you want to keep them on your website – therefore your internet marketing sales page must be captivating enough to keep them reading! Use active, \’inviting\’ and catchy phrases and words.\r\n\r\n6. Keep them small and effective! Your adverts must be small, effectual and catchy. Long and windy sales pages or adverts can cause you to lose customers. Internet marketing calls for adverts that can make customers swiftly decide to buy before they go to the next website!\r\n\r\n7. Have incentives and bonuses that will make your prospects purchase. It is very important to include some attractive bonus near the end of your sales page as this will make your prospects to purchase. You must give some valuable bonuses which the prospect will appreciate, and will make them take that final decision to purchase. In internet marketing, you would have worked hard to get the prospect to your website in the first instance, so you must entice them to buy!\r\n\r\n8. Offer packages that increase your sales volume. You must develop some technique of offering complementary products at a special price that will make your prospects purchase. Often, people purchase related products in a single transaction; and you need to offer some special packages which your prospects will see as a good bargain and will be encouraged to buy. Successful internet marketers use various techniques of offering \’special packages\’ and offers which customers just can not resist.\r\n\r\n9. Use testimonies! It is not enough to just offer your products without any supporting testimonies on how good your products are. Have an incentive for your current satisfied customers to give testimonies. Potential customers always need to hear that what they are about to buy has been useful to other people who have purchased the same product. Creating trust and confidence with your prospects is important in internet marketing; and you can achieve this by using testimonials in your campaigns and sales page.\r\n\r\n10. Continue to build your clientele. Your world wide web marketing promotional strategy must include an effective way of following up with your existing customers for repeat business. It is also very important for your strategy to include ways of finding new customers. Your internet marketing business will need a lot of prospects and customers to generate the sales you need for the business to be profitable.\r\n\r\nBy following the marketing tactics outlined above, you can easily and swiftly boost your sales for your internet marketing business. Go for it!Recommended Web site: Make Money On the internet\r\nAuthor: Daniel Millions