Tonight, while working on my eBook about search engine optimization for WordPress bloggers, I was more-than-pleased to discover that Adventures Online still holds the first 3 listings in Google’s results pages for “blog developer massachusetts”. Ya Hoo!

Google SERPs for Blog Developer Massachusetts on 2011-12-22

Last time I checked was March 26, 2011 (results are on the Home Page). Here we are 9 months later. Adventures Online remains in the first three (organic) listings AND this time there are 800,000 more matches being returned.

How’d I do that? Persistence, consistency, faith in using my keyword terms…

Where does your website rank in Google for your keyword terms? How do you maintain your rank in Google? Share your tips in the comments…

This Thursday at my BNI meeting we collected presents for Toys for Tots. We’ve done this for a number of years, and it was very pleasing this year to see that despite the economy members were as generous as ever! Super folks at the Marlborough BNI!

Here’s pics of us cutting it up before the gifts were taken out for delivery.

Katherine Wright, Mike Curtin and Me posin'

Dennis Maroney, Beth Bryant, Suzanne Spero and me showing off the gifts.

Photos by Emily Greenwood, EKG Networking, Marlborough, MA.

Last week, I posted questions for you to be able to test your SEO knowledge. Today, I post the answers.

It is impossible to do SEO without updating the pages at my website
TRUE - SEO is an intrusive process. Yes, some of the tasks like increasing your inbound links lie outside of the website, but equally-important tasks are re-working the words on your web pages and adding appropriate meta data to each web page.

It is good to have my web pages submitted to the search engines on a frequent basis.
FALSE  - This is strategy from a decade ago. Nowadays, you only want to submit the web pages that you have tweaked in order to improve their standing in the search engine results pages.

The geographical location of the server my website is on affects  the ranking of my website in the search engines
TRUE – Your hosting firm does not have to be in the next town, but, hosting your website in-country is most important. Remember that search engines are now producing “local” results. If your website is hosted with your friend in another-country, it is likely that your website will be listed as an option for your industry in that country and not the country in which you operate.

The directory structure of my website affects the ranking of my website in the search engines
TRUE – For best results use descriptive names for all directories and files, and limit the number of levels of directories.

I can help my SEO by setting up my blog at another website so that I can drive traffic to my website
FALSE – According to the experts from large search engine companies like Google that I have heard speak (and attended seminars and workshops, etc.), statistics show that although you can drive traffic to your website, you get a bigger bang for your efforts by blogging at your own website – and – you avoid putting yourself into competition against yourself.

I can significantly impact my SEO by using certain techniques each time I write in my blog
TRUE – The average WordPress blogger critically underestimates the value of their efforts using keyword phrases in their post and pages and manipulating the titles, descriptions, and keywords to the meta data of a post or page.

Flash adds no value to my SEO
TRUE - Flash cannot be read by the search engines and therefore, adds no value for SEO.

Choose the one best answer

When I guest blog or publish an article at someone else’s website, my SEO will be better if they provide a link to:

A.    My Home page
B.    My About Us page
C.    A topic-related page in my website

C is the best answer – Have other websites link as “deep” in your website as is practical. Next best answer is B, then A. You need to special request this because organizations are busy and don’t want to think and will automatically link to your Home page, which is not in your best interest.

When blogging, I’ll get the best SEO results by assigning………to a blog post.

A.    One category
B.    2 – 3 categories
C.    As many categories as are relevant

A is the best answer in order to gain the best SEO results. Search engines do not like duplicate data. When you create a post inside ONE category – there are really 3 versions of the post: the post, the post inside the category, and the post inside the (automatic) date archiving.  For each additional category you assign, another post is created (really believed to exist by the search engines). Too many copies of the same post and the search engines begin to think that you are trying to scam them… and then they start a whole new level of evaluation… You don’t want to go there

What has been your experience? What SEO tip would you add?

We’ve got that week coming up – the one between Christmas and New Year’s. Usually a slow week with regard to customer interaction, so, I plan business infrastructure projects for that week; upgrade software, research & test software; transfer one of  my websites, etc.

This year, I have that week planned six-ways-to-Sunday – and – it is going to be a challenge to prioritize tasks and determine which can be left for another day. My list of To Do’s includes:

• Transfer my website
• Upgrade the WordPress® core software and all the plugins on my blogs
• Research MailWasher and MailWasher Pro
• Finish my eBook – SEO for WordPress Power Bloggers
• Learn about Kindle Direct® publishing and determine if it is a fit
• Certification Course
  • Write the specs
  • Write the syllabus
  • Define the registration process
  • Finish the plan
• Upgrade security software on production and development systems
• Catch up/meet for lunch with business colleagues
• Review my websites for outdated info and archive outdated info (copyright dates, event listings, statements like “for 12 years…” and “a decade ago…”)
• Add the WordPress Editorial Calendar to “Karen’s Blog” and start planning out the content as I have been advocating

What’s on your list?

Today I gave a presentation in my BNI group.  Last week I had been given a list of questions prepared by the group so that I would know what the members wanted to talk about. There were several questions about SEO.

I answered the questions by giving the group a mock quiz.

Test yourself and I’ll post the answers next week.

True or False

T     F      – It is impossible to do SEO without updating the pages at my website

T     F     – It is good to have my web pages submitted to the search engines on a frequent basis

T     F     – The geographical location of the server my website is on affects  the ranking of my website in the search engines

T     F      – The directory structure of my website affects the ranking of my website in the search engines

T     F     -  I can help my SEO by setting up my blog at another website so that I can drive traffic to my website

T     F     -  I can significantly impact my SEO by using certain techniques each time I write in my blog

T     F     – Flash adds no value to my SEO

Choose the one best answer

When I guest blog or publish an article at someone else’s website, my SEO will be better if they provide a link to:

A.    My Home page
B.    My About Us page
C.    A topic-related page in my website

When blogging, I’ll get the best SEO results by assigning………to a blog post.

A.    One category
B.    2 – 3 categories
C.    As many categories as are relevant

Congrats to Kevin Lister of Paradigm Strategies on the new look-n-feel of his website. Adventures Online worked on the website October through early December. The new website is based on WordPress blog software and includes a number of plugins and widgets.  Now that the website is in WordPress, Kevin will be able to update the content whenever he wants as long as he has an Internet connection. 

New look-n-feel for Paradigm Strategies

Wishing Kevin a bushel or two of fresh, new prospects!

See Paradigm Strategies.

After my recent post about the WordPress Editorial Calendar widget, it should be no surprise that today I am writing about how to plan content for your blog. Yes, for best results with your blogging, the content should be planned.

As a starting point, Designate each day with a content “type”. For example,

Mondays could be designated as “news-related” blog post day where you blog about a news item related to your industry or niche that was published/made known over the weekend.

Tuesdays could be designated to blog posts that fit in the “tips-tricks-n-techniques” genre

Wednesdays could be about the “latest, hottest thing” you have personally discovered this week

Thursdays could be blog posts related to “education” and learning about your niche – “How to…”, “Top 3 ways to…”

Fridays could be designated as “video” day – meaning that you create original video content or search the web for a video that is related to your industry or niche and post a link to the video and your comments.

Saturdays and Sundays – you are off or doing research, but, not writing in the blog. Unless of course, you have your content and are data entering it with future dates so that you can view it in the WordPress Editorial Calendar and make adjustments to the schedule.

Other blog content types to consider:

• Best blog post of the week by another blogger
• Contest day
• Facebook-driven offer day
• Partnership promotion day
• Trivia/Fun Facts day
• Client promotion day
• Podcast day

What are the content types you use?

One of my goals this year was to be more faithful and consistent with writing in my blog. An extension of that goal was to get my clients re-energized and re-focused about writing in their blogs. I was intermittently successful with each of those…I am still seeking consistency in blogging frequency. Which brings us to today’s topic.

I follow Daniel Scocco of dailyblogtips.com who sends out Daily Blog Tips (of course!). Recently, a guest post by Annabel Candy about the WordPress Editorial Calendar widget was posted in his blog.  Ms. Candy wrote about the 5 reasons bloggers will love the WordPress Editorial Calendar:

It makes planning blog posts easy

You can see your whole editorial calendar on one screen

It’s easy to reschedule blog posts

It helps you structure your blog content

It allows you to be more creative

The WordPress Editorial Calendar widget is a tool that helps bloggers get organized with their blogging efforts. The WordPress Editorial Calendar is primarily a scheduling tool. It lets you look at all your posts in Calendar format (rather than the straight text lists that we see in the WordPress Dashboard 20, 40, 60 at a time) in order to see when they have been/will be published. You can drag and drop blog posts from one date&time to another.

For visual bloggers, I think this is an excellent tool. For bloggers who are also planners this is an excellent tool.

How can you be successful with the WordPress Editorial Calendar widget if you are a blogger who struggles to stay true to your blogging frequency goals?

Well, this tool forces us to be disciplined. It is a scheduler, not a blog post writer, so, we will still own the responsibility to come up with the topics and write the blog posts – but – once we get those pieces defined, we can data enter the posts, and then we will be able to see at a glance the ”content” we are offering. Seeing that, we will be able to evaluate our work – Are we blogging about the topics that are of interest to our target audience? Are we taking the target audience on the trip that we intended? Are the topics in an order that will help our audience quickly and easily understand - or - is it going to be a bumpy ride?

WordPress Editorial Calendar Screenshot taken from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/editorial-calendar/screenshots/

Seeing the posts and the flow of topics will help each of us fine-tune our blogging goals and answer lots more marketing questions as we move through the year.

Read the article by Ms. Candy: 5 Reasons You’ll Love the WordPress Editorial Calendar

It seems that the retirement of Adobe’s Flash® is coming sooner than later. This week, a business colleague sent me a link to an article on CNN.com (Adobe abandons mobile Flash development, report says) which reported that Adobe is abondoning its attempts to get Flash® to work on mobile devices. In addition, it says that Adobe sent an email to its partners…

“And with that e-mail flash, Adobe has signaled that it knows, as Steve Jobs predicted, the end of the Flash era on the web is coming soon.”  [bold added by me]

Portion of home page at the Adobe Flash website 11-13-2011

The article goes on to say that Adobe will focus “on alternative application packaging programs and the HTML5 protocol. ”

“Flash became a dominant desktop platform by allowing developers to code interactive games, create animated advertisements and deliver video to any browser that had the plugin installed, without having to take into account the particulars of any given browser. However, with the development of Javascript, CSS, and HTML5, which has native support for video, many web developers are turning away from Flash, which can be a resource hog even on the most advanced browsers.”

And if your website is Flash-based?  What do you need to do?
You need to convert your website using other web-development tools that will give you a similar look-n-feel. Converting your website means having your website re-developed by a web developer familiar with the latest versions of web-development software tools like CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and HTML. Each of these tools now has video capabilities that when combined, create powerful videos for your website.

If you want your website to be seen on mobile devices, you will convert your website sooner than later. If that is not a priority, you can plan ahead and have your website converted over the next year or two. Either way, your website needs to be re-developed. [Which is a good reason to call us 508-480-8833... Shameless plug..but hey!]

Caution: HTML5 is a radical upgrade from previous versions of HTML. The HTML5 protocol is very new and you should ask your web developer about their experience with HTML5. Even if you don’t understand everything they say, look at their body language to determine for yourself their level of comfort with HTML5.

It was  a week ago that I re-committed to myself to get back to writing in my WordPress blog – at a minimum twice per week. This is my second post this week – but – I’m not writing just to meet that number. I am writing because I realized something important while we were having the discussion about Why blogging is important. Oprah would say that I had an Aha! moment.

One of the aspects of blogging that we talked about was: What stands in the way of writing in our blogs even when we have blocked off the time? We explored each of the answers and classified them as reason or excuse…

In the midst of that conversation, I discovered that while I like to share information via my blog, sometimes I need/want  to do research, and that casts a “homeworky-task” shadow on the joy of blogging. I sometimes don’t meet my commitment to blog because blogging “responsibly” is a task.  Derrr. That’s when it dawned on me.

Of course it is a task. BLOGGING IS WORKING ON YOUR BUSINESS. And as a solopreneur, I gravitate towards the tasks that give me the most joy…the stuff that I wanted to do so badly that I started my own business to ensure that I could and would..and those tasks are working-IN-the-business tasks – a happy safe place for solopreneurs. I had to laugh…as a solopreneur, it is such a familiar intersection of friction…working ON the business vs working IN the business.

And so now that it is reduced to textbook…blogs are Social Media. Social Media is part of Marketing. Blogging is a marketing task. Just like showing up in LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, I need to show up in my blog because my business is worth it!

I knew that. I was just reminded and was able to re-frame the “task” of blogging.