• Tweaks to WordPress
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• Blogging Tips
• Content Writing
• SEO

And a few others, but lately I’ve been reading a few SEO articles and forum posts and I gotta say, so many people get “good” SEO keyword research wrong.

Maybe not wrong, I suppose–just not well thought out enough.

You see, to truly succeed in whatever it is you want to do online, you must realize that 90% of the game is “Intelligence” (i.e. research).

Think about how this works in war. Assuming both sides have the same technology to work with, who would you say has the competitive edge, the ones who spend a lot of time doing reconnaissance and research into their enemy, or the ones who simply learned how to use their weapons and blindly jumped out of their holes shooting?

SEO is the same way.

You need to research what people are looking for. The problem is, so many people only do the job half way.

Okay, so what do I mean.

Basically, SEO is about finding what people are searching for online–yes, but it’s also about finding what people are searching for online which also returns very little results (i.e. competition). In other words, don’t go for the big piece of the pie unless you’re willing to put years and tons of work into content, backlinks, etc.

So for example, one of the reasons why I don’t blog on a consistent schedule is because I’m busy making money online. I make more money online doing other things than I do through my blogging endeavors.

Right now I’m starting the process where I’m building a niche website for my mother. She knows a ton about how to incorporate your business in Nevada, the best state to incorporate in. But simply designing a site is not enough; I need to drive traffic to the site and make it sustainable without much work from me down the road. I’m just too busy to keep going back and “working on SEO” for my mom’s site.

But with a little in-depth research into what people are looking for online, how they’re looking for it, what keywords they are using, and what my competition looks like, I can create a site which can get ranked relatively easy.

My mother’s target customers are people looking to incorporate in Nevada.

So typically what you’d do is head over to the Google Keyword Tool and do a search for that keyword and see how many people are looking for that keyword phrase online.

Here’s the snapshot:

Looks like there’s 9,900 searches each month for that keyword phrase. Now the next step is the part that so many people forget to do. Now we need to know how many sites we will be competing with.

So head over to Google.com and type in the search, “incorporate in Nevada” (with the quotes) and see how many returned results you get. I get 15,500.

That’s actually not that bad. But can we do better?

Let’s take a look at “incorporating in Nevada”. It only has 2,400 searches each month but guess what? When we head over to Google and type in “incorporating in Nevada”, the returned results I get are less than HALF.

That means I have just cut my competition down by over half.

So I might want to really try and target, incorporating in Nevada as my keyword because there’s a lot less competition.

There of course is a lot more to market research than this, but I hope this example made it clear how good SEO keyword research not only involves how many people are searching for something, but also takes a good look at who you’re going to be competing with.

If you want to rank near the top of Google, try to pick something you can easily rank for.

Related posts:

1. SEO Tips For WordPress Bloggers by Matt Cutts
2. Google Keyword Tool + Top 50 Google Tools Bloggers Can Use
3. 25+ SEO Tips For Getting Ranked Well In Search Engines

There are many more questions I could list out and answer, but one came in the other day which I’ve briefly mentioned before but felt maybe I should go into a little more detail on.

Question: Is it better to put my blog in the root of my domain, a subdirectory like /blog directory, or in a subdomain? Also, what’s the difference between them?

I know it’s a sucky answer, but there is no right or wrong answer with this one. Here let me give you the differences and then you can decide which option is best for you.

Here’s a quick look at the different URL structures these options come with:

Case for your blog in the root

Your blog’s web address is easier to remember and from my experience, it seems the top level domain (i.e. the root domain name) seems to be liked more by Google than subdirectories. Aside from that, this option might be good if your blog is the only reason why you have a website.

Case for your blog being in a subdirectory, like /blog

The best reason to put your blog in its own subdirectory would be if the main part of your website was set up to sell something or do something other than being a blog.

For example, let’s say you sell shoes online.

In this case, it would make more sense to create a website for selling shoes and then stick your blog in some subdirectory, like /blog, where people can click over and read what you have to say. Also, from an SEO standpoint, many times people who talk about your company might give you two links, one to your root domain and one to your blog. That’s link juice times two.

Case for putting your blog in a subdomain

This is a major change and decision.

Subdomains don’t work like subdirectories when it comes to search engines. A subdirectory (see above) is considered to be part of the website contained above the subdirectory whereas a subdomain is considered by search engines to be like it’s very own mini website.

So a link to http://yoursite.com/blog will give link juice to http://yoursite.com whereas a link to http://blog.yoursite.com will only give link juice to http://blog.yoursite.com and not http://yoursite.com.

I know, it’s a little confusing. Let’s look at an example to clarify.

Let’s take another look at the example of a website which sells shoes.

Your root domain might be an e-commerce site where people can search for the shoes they want and make a purchase. To help with your search engine rankings, it’s great if people link to you with words like, “buy shoes” or “insanely cheap high quality shoes”. These links are what helps Google determine what your website is all about.

Now let’s say your blog, which is contained in the subdomain blog.yoursite.com, is all about making money selling shoes online. Well, that’s not what your main website is about, right? That’s about getting people to your site and making a purchase, not about how they can make money selling shoes online.

Since your blog is contained in its own subdomain, it keeps all its own link juice for “selling shoes online” while your primary site keeps all its own link juice for “buy shoes here”.

See the difference?

In another example, you might want to put your blog in a subdomain vs. a sudirectory because your blog is about support issues or product service upgrades. You don’t want Google indexing your primary website as a product support site, right? That might happen though if your blog was in a subdirectory.

Confused? Comment below.

Related posts:

1. WordPress Management: Cleaning Up Your Root Folder
2. My Take On Blog Posting Frequency and Making Money
3. Start A Blog: Free or Paid? WordPress or Blogger?

And as any good experience does, I’ve been taught a lesson or two along the way and since my blog is mostly about things WordPress bloggers might like to know, I’ve been asked many questions over the years.

After thinking about it for awhile and also digging into my email / blog comment archives, I’ve noticed a few questions asked more than once by different bloggers, mostly newbies.

So I’d like to take a moment and do a Q&A session in hopes this article might help newer bloggers skip ahead in their learning curve so they can quickly forge ahead in their blogging endeavors. Realize, however, that every blog is different and what works for one person doesn’t always work for the next.

6 Blogger Questions and Answers

1. Should I go with a free blog or hosted blog?

This is probably one of the first questions bloggers are faced with when deciding to start a blog.

“Why pay money when I can get one for free?”

It makes me think of that song with the lyric, “The best things in life are free… (that’s, what I want)”.

However, as a blogger that’s not what you always want.

I wrote an article awhile back, called Start a Blog: Free or Paid? WordPress or Blogger?, where I talk about this question. If you really want a more in-depth look into this issue, check out that article.

The general answer, though, is to ask yourself “What is it I really want to do with my blog?”

Free blogs are good if you only care about your content and not much else. You could also toss in there that they’re good for those who are completely computer illiterate. But if you know even a little on how to get around on your computer and the Internet, that might not be a factor.

Hosted (paid) blogs are good if you’re looking to do more than just write articles online for the purpose of conversation. In my opinion, if you’re looking to make money from blogging and have total control over your blog’s design and options, then this is the option for you.

If you’re still unsure which to go with, I’d choose the hosted option if for no other reason than the fact that if you start with a free one and then one day realize you need a hosted blog (graduate up), you’re going to find yourself with a BIG mess in trying to figure out how to move your blog without losing search engine traction and blog subscribers.

Plus, web hosting for your blog is dirt cheap. If you can’t afford $6.95/mo. for something you’re going to spend many upon many hours working on, you need to rethink where you’re putting your money.

2. What’s the best way to secure my blog?

Buy WordPress Defender of course.

It’s impossible for me to tell someone with just one email how to secure their WordPress blog from attack. There’s more to it than simply installing plugins and keeping a strong password.

The best way to secure your blog is to first understand that you are a target–no matter what you blog about, and then take a little time and invest in learning what you need to do.

That is the best way to secure your blog… education and implementation!

3. Why is duplicate content such a big issue?

This might seem a bit complicated to understand at first, but I think with a simple analogy it will become crystal clear.

Let’s say you wrote an article called, “How I Met an Alien from Zibwaggy”.

You’d expect that Google would index your article in its search engine and most likely since there are literally NO other articles on the Web about this topic, you would be listed at the top of the search engine results.

But before you published your article, you had sent it to someone for a review and they liked it so much, they decided to steal your content and publish the article, word-for-word, on the their blog at the exact same time you published yours.

Who’s article should Google give original credit to?

Who’s should be listed first?

See the dilemma?

If you have duplicate content laying around all over the Web, it’s difficult for search engines to sift through it all and determine which article should be returned for that search. After all, who would use Google if for every search returned were duplicate copies of the same article.

You could have duplicate articles like this:

http://yourblog.com/how-i-met-an-alien

http://yourblog.com/archives/09/how-i-met-an-alien

http://yourblog.com/tags/space/how-i-met-an-alien

Google would not want to return all three of these to their users, just one. But which one is the right one to return?

The only way to be sure Google knows is if you tell it where to look and where not to look.

4. I want to start a blog to make money. What should I do first?

In this case, before you even start your blog you really need to take a close look at yourself.

Do you have that needed entrepreneurial spirit? Or are you just looking to make a little money without working too hard?

To make money online, you need to become a business minded person to some extent: study data, learn where to put money, how and where to advertise, etc. Trust me, it’s not easy at first (but it does get easier). Surround yourself in the beginning around people smarter than you and try to soak up everything they are doing and learn from them.

Above all, be humble. Realize that you don’t know everything, but then again, neither does anyone else. You rarely will make mistakes, instead you’ll simply be making progress.

Find your passion, discover the message you want to tell people, create a good story around it, and push yourself. And don’t forget that a good entrepreneur must first truly discover who they are.

5. Should I incorporate my blogging business?

If you sell something, I always advise to form either a LLC or corporation.

If you make money by selling other people’s stuff, I always advise forming a LLC or corporation.

So in general, if you do business online, I suggest forming a business structure. You’ve got to protect yourself and your assets. I don’t know about you, but I don’t keep up with every small change that happens in what’s lawful and what’s not; what’s going to get you in trouble with the FTC and what doesn’t.

If you’re going to make money from other people, form a business structure.

6. What are 3 important SEO considerations I should make when first starting my blog?

Okay, I did reword this question and narrow it down to 3 comments because, well, if I didn’t then we could be here a long time talking about SEO considerations.

The first is platform. I’d recommend a self hosted WordPress blog for that.

Next is crawlability. You want clean URLs (no parameters like ? or = in it), no flash on your site, and limited amounts of scripting, like Javascript.

Then it is all about how you focus your blog. You want to focus the site on just a few key areas of your business. In other words, focus your blog on a specific topic so it gets ranked well for that specific topic.

I must admit, I’ve have fallen short on item number three in the list.

My blog is about things WordPress bloggers might like to know (in general). But back in the early days of my blogging career, I didn’t know a whole lot about WordPress; so my blog was about things I did know, like real estate investing and being an entrepreneur.

As a result, I’ve noticed Google is a little confused on what my blog is about. I’m still working on splitting up parts of my blog into other mini sites… it’s on the list!

To be completely honest, the best SEO strategy for my blog and WP Blog Host would be if my blog was all about web hosting. But who writes a blog for SEO purposes only? Not me!

So there you go, six questions bloggers ask me from time-to-time.

What kinds of questions have people asked you about starting a blog and what is your response?

Related posts:

1. Start A Blog: Free or Paid? WordPress or Blogger?
2. A-List Bloggers & Everyday Bloggers, They Do Things Differently
3. 6 Things I Tell People Who Are Looking To Start A Blog

Matt heads up the anti-spam team at Google and frequently speaks about search engine optimization issues. The video is a little over 45 minutes but I have to say, it is well worth taking the time to watch if you’re at all interested in WordPress SEO.

Here’s the video and below it (for those with less time) I’ll highlight a few points Matt made which I thought you should know about. Rob Snell transcribed the speech if you’d like to soak it all in at your own pace.

Notes From The Video

I. WordPress is great for SEO

Take a look at this snapshot from his slideshow:

By “mechanics”, Matt means how WordPress is built. It’s built intelligently for Google to crawl it (i.e. your blog) with ease and indexs what needs to be indexed. For example, the url structure by default uses hyphens “-” to separate words in the url, which is great for SEO.

II. PageRank

Matt defines PageRank as “the number of people that link to you and how important those links are.”

What exactly does a high PageRank do for you? Well, the more PageRank your site has means:

• The faster your site will be found.
• The deeper into your site Google will crawl.
• The more often Google will visit your pages to see if they’ve been refreshed.

Obviously, those are some things you really would like Google to do. Google also crawls sites in a decreasing order of PageRank:

III. Relevance & Reputable

Google wants to see that you’re relevant to something. If you focus in on a topic for your blog, it will learn that is what you talk about. In other words, don’t talk about a bunch of random stuff, otherwise may get lost in trying to figure out what exactly you want to rank for.

To build reputation, Matt mentions the following:

• Be interesting.
• Update your blog often.
• Provide a useful service.
• Do original research and reporting.
• Give great information.
• Find a creative niche.
• Write some code
• Live Blogging
• Make list posts
• Create controversy
• Meet other people in social networks

IV. Keyword Notes

- Matt mentions something I’ve said many times in the past, don’t “overstuff” your landing pages with keywords. If you write about furniture, there’s no need to repeat that word 400 times. After mentioning the word 2 or 3 times and perhaps have that keyword in your title and/or url, Googlebot catches on and gets the idea that you’re writing about furniture.

- Contrary to what many SEO bloggers think, bolding the keyword doesn’t really help much; instead, concentrate on a writing style that a human can read and not feel like they are being YELLED AT!

- When trying to optimize your article for a given keyword or keyword phrase, realize that what you might think is the best keyword for your article might not necessarily be the best or only keyword people will use to find your product, service, or article. Use the Google Keyword Tool to find alternative keywords people are using to find your product and try to incorporate those keywords into your article as well. Just be sure that when you insert those other keywords that after reading your article, everything sound and reads naturally – don’t forget to do that!

V. WordPress URL Structure

Matt gives a great tip on how you can do one little tweak to help with your SEO. First, try to incorporate your keyword in your blog’s title and next, change that word slightly in your Permalink structure to another word someone might use in the search box (for example use the word “Changing” in your title and “change” in your url permalink.

Another tip he gives us which is probably the easiest search engine optimization check you can do for your blog is to use the /%postname%/ permalink structure for your blog.

As it turns out, I already have a video showing you how to do this on the WP Blog Host television channel: Setting The Best Permalink (url) Structure For WordPress SEO.

Again I highly suggest you take a little time out of your day to watch this video if you’re at all interested in learning search engine optimization for your WordPress blog. I realize this topic isn’t much fun for many of you and many times you might think you have more important things to do (like read other blog articles or tweeting about your day), but consider how much time you put into building your blog. Isn’t it worth your time to learn something so valuable to you?

Got a question about SEO? Ask away.

The images above are snapshots I took from Matt’s video. I give him full credit for the images I used for this article.

Learn WordPress search engine optimization!
Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate

Related posts:

1. 25+ SEO Tips For Getting Ranked Well In Search Engines
2. Google Keyword Tool + Top 50 Google Tools Bloggers Can Use
3. The Ingenious Way To Use SEO

When I see old news reprinted I try to understand, after all we are taught that we should write for our audience, right? And if our audience are newbies, what are you going to do.

Anyway, back to our topic of SEO. I’d say the more common SEO topics have been covered pretty well, however, rarely do I see the following topics discussed as much as the more common SEO topics. They can all play an important role when it comes to getting and keeping your blog visible in search engines. They are:

1. Blog security
2. Your site’s TLD
3. Web server location

1. SEO and Blog Security

At first it might not seem like there’s much of a connection between search engine optimization and securing your blog, but the connection is real.

Like I mentioned in my article, WordPress Security: The First Thing You Should Understand, a simple Google search for “My Blog Was Hacked” will (now) return 716,000 results. Many hackers who crack into your website aren’t really there to simply crash your site, instead, they want to use it. Many times they’ll steal bandwidth and use your site to create dozens of spam backlinks to various sites.

What this has to do with SEO

If someone hacks your blog and uses it to create tons of spam links and Google finds out, you run a high risk of receiving one of those heart-stopping emails from Google informing you that your site has been removed from their search engine because it appears to violate their terms of use. So by securing your blog and thwarting possible hacks to your site, you can increase your chances your blog stays in the serps – which is the biggest SEO concern of all!

Still doesn’t seem like a big deal? Read this case study by Robin Harris, one of the bloggers over at ZDNet.

Don’t wait until it’s too late. I can’t stress enough the importance of securing your blog. If you need help with it, let me know.

2. SEO and your TLD

Wikipedia describes TLD as A top-level domain or domain name (TLD), is the last part of an Internet domain name, that is, the group of letters that follow the final dot of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is com“.

What this has to do with SEO

You want to show up in the search engine results where your target market is, right? Your TLD selection is probably one of, if not the most, important decision SEO-wise you are going to make.

Country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) are for websites and registrants of a particular geographic location. For example: .bz (Belize), .ca (Canada), .dk (Denmark), .ec (Ecuador), ie (Republic of Ireland), .uk (United Kingdom), .us (United States), .zw (Zimbabwe), etc.

.com is definitely the most widely used and is international. If your target market is either worldwide or in the United States, I’d say stick with .com.

As an example, if your target market / website visitors uses the Canadian version of Google, the Canadian version of Google is going to consider .ca websites highly important to this user.

3. SEO and Your Website’s Server Location

Here’s a big one not many people know about. The physical location of your website’s server is relevant in Google’s eyes.

I’ve already written on this topic, SEO Q&A: Does It Matter Where My Website’s Server Is Located? so I won’t regurgitate it all again.

Yes, I said regurgitate. I like it and think it’s funny, so it stays.

What this has to do with SEO

Long story short, Google wants its search engine to be the best search engine out there. To do that, they have to need to give you, the Googler, the most likely websites that matter to you and will solve your problem. One of the things it will note is your computer’s IP address (that is, it will take note where in the world you live).

Once Google knows where you live, it quickly looks at web servers in your general location and tries to find if any websites are hosted on them which are relevant to your search query. Therefore, if your target market lives in Arizona, it might be wise to try and find a web host which owns servers located in Arizona. Just don’t go choosing your hosting company on that criteria alone.

How I know this is true?

First, I own a few websites and through my site statistics (mainly when the sites were new and had less backlinks to them) I noticed people who Googled my targeted search terms were arriving on my sites. The server was located in Fremont, California – and guess where the vast majority of my early site visitors lived (as noted by their IP address).

Second, instead of showing you a bunch of screenshots from my previous statement, why not take the word of two Google software engineers (Greg Grothaus and Shashi Thakur):

Does location of server matter? I use a .com domain but my content is for customers in the UK.

In our understanding of web content, Google considers both the IP address and the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .co.uk). Because we attempt to serve geographically relevant content, we factor domains that have a regional significance. For example, “.co.uk ” domains are likely very relevant for user queries originating from the UK. In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server’s IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content.

Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog

As a side note, while I was drafting up this post one of our blog security upgrades customers emailed me showing me how someone tried to crack into his blog today. He was notified of the attempt via email and the intruder was locked out. You have to ask yourself, is adding security to your blog a priority for you?

Related posts:

1. SEO Q&A: Does It Matter Where My Website's Server Is Located?
2. 20.4 Ways People Scan Your Website
3. The 1st SEO Decision You Should Make To Rank Well In Google

Whoa, wait! Don’t go crazy and start changing your web hosting to other companies based on where their servers are located.

Here, let me explain.

Google Wants To Be Relevant & Knows Where You Live

When someone types a search query into Google, Google wants their search results to be more relevant to what you want and need than any of its competitors. One of the things Google will do (as do other search engines) is look up the IP address of the person who typed a search query in their Google Search.

Your IP address tells Google where your computer’s modem is located; say Las Vegas, NV USA.

What Google also knows and stores in its database are the locations (IP addresses) of web servers. That is, the computer which your website or blog sits on which your web hosting company uses, also connects to the Internet through a modem.

So just like your computer at home has its own IP address, so does the computer (or server) your website’s files are on.

What Google will do then, from my experience, is consider that if the Google user lives in Las Vegas and is searching for a landscape company, it will take into consideration a landscape company’s website which might be hosted on a server in the same city or surrounding area.

Now most of you who run a blog probably aren’t trying to geo-target your customers in one specific location down to which state they live in. You’re probably looking more at either targeting a specific country or anyone worldwide.

And if that’s the case, I’d suggest choosing your web hosting company based on things like the services and products they provide as well as other factors like pricing and technical support. I would, however, keep in mind that if my primary audience is located in a specific country, I would try to find a hosting company whose servers are located there. Not super important, but would be nice.

Of course if you plan to host a blog, you might want to take into consideration how well your hosting company knows things like blogging and WordPress so you can ask questions aside from the technical aspects of web hosting.

Conclusion

So to summarize, yes the geo-graphic location of the web server your site is hosted on has a small impact on how well your website will show in local returned search results. However, there are many other and more important factors to consider which might include your domain name, TLD, backlinks, and website content.

To illustrate, my family owns a local landscaping company here in Las Vegas. Our site is hosted on a server which is located in California. When I go to Google and type in Las Vegas Landscape Company, I find that we are in position #1.

We didn’t get to that position for Las Vegas Landscape Companies because of the geo-graphic location of our web server. In fact, our PageRank is only a whopping 1.

*Bonus Tip: If you plan to target your readers or customers by country location, you can tell Google where your customers are by using the Geographic Targeting option inside Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Related posts:

1. Lateral SEO Thinking: 3 Things Most People Don't Consider
2. The 1st SEO Decision You Should Make To Rank Well In Google
3. 25+ SEO Tips For Getting Ranked Well In Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results (source Wikipedia).

If you’re just starting out and have plans to build yourself a website or blog, one of your goals will be to get as high up in Google and Yahoo search results as you can. After all, that’s why you’re getting online – so people can find you.

Before you even start to build your website, the first decision you most likely will need to make is choosing a domain name.

When you research online about how important a domain name is in regards to search engine optimization, you typically will find a zillion articles which talk about how you need to try and insert your very best keyword you wish to rank for in your web address.

For example, if you blog about wedding dresses and you want people to find you through Google by typing in “wedding dresses”, the person who owns the web address weddingdresses.com would probably rank pretty well.

Ok, that’s the easy SEO gem you should consider before actually starting your website, but there is another consideration you need to make which can be even more important than the example above.

What is it, you ask?

Your TLD.

TL . . . what?

The 1st SEO Decision To Consider

Before you even begin to think of a clever domain name, you need to consider where in the world your customers or readers will be. It is there you need to make sure your website shows up.

The first thing you need to consider for your web address is your TLD. TLD stands for Top-Level Domain and you can read more about them on the ICANN site and Wikipedia. In essence, a TLD is the last part of your domain name (i.e. the .com, .net, .org, .ca., .co.uk, etc.), but ironically is called your top-level domain – yeah the Internet founders I think just like screwing with us.

Why is this important?

TLDs can be country specific. For example, in the web address http://weddingdresses.co.uk, the .co.uk is telling Google this website is for UK Internet users. For http://weddingdresses.ca, the .ca tells Google this site is primarily for Canada users.

Here is a list of the different TLDs and their assigned country.

Therefore, make sure your web address has the correct country code in it if you are specifically targeting customers which live in specific countries.

What If Your Customers Are Worldwide or Live In The USA?

The TLD for the United States is .us; however, .com is also indexed very well for USA website owners whose target audience lives in the United States.

The .com extension was created as a general TLD one can use if your target audience is not country specific, as is .net. This is typical with most blogs which are not used for a commercial business (e.g. a landscape company). So if you’re running a blog and you want your blog to show up in various country search results, .com is your best bet. Just keep in mind though that the person who runs a blog in the UK and has a .co.uk TLD and blogs about the same thing as you will probably find it a little easier for the UK searcher to find the .co.uk site over yours.

Confused? Are your eyes spinning and your head hurts while trying to digest all this?

Comment below and let’s chat.

Related posts:

1. Google Keyword Tool + Top 50 Google Tools Bloggers Can Use
2. SEO Q&A: Does It Matter Where My Website's Server Is Located?
3. Is A Google XML Sitemap Necessary?

If you have a question regarding SEO, please feel free to ask below.

SEO Q&A’s

What is duplicate content and how is it created?

Duplicate content is when different URLs show the exact same content. Many times, as in the case with most blogs, duplicate content is generated automatically.

Let’s take for example my article, 20.4 Ways People Scan Your Website. When Googlebot comes to my blog and collects and records a list of URLs on my site, it will notice the following URLs all contain the content of my 20.4 Ways People Scan Your Website article (links open in a new tab):

• http://wpbloghost.com/blog/204-ways-people-scan-your-website/
  (the article’s actual page I want Google to index)
• http://wpbloghost.com/blog/?s=20.4+Ways+People+Scan+Your+Website
  (found through my search box)
• http://wpbloghost.com/blog/2008/07/
  (found through my Archives [Update: I've since changed the way my archives work, but this is still a typical way you might find the same article])

And when my article is new, you’ll also find it on my blog’s home page, http://wpbloghost.com/blog.

Okay, so ya got duplicate content, great. Your next question then is:

Why is duplicate content a bad thing?

The best way to think of Googlebot and Yahoo! Search is to think of them as if they were a real human who likes to read and organize everything in a logical order so they can remember it later. They may choose to come to your website today and crawl 500 URLs, but what if 200 of those pages crawled were duplicates?

That would suck, wouldn’t it?

Now imagine for a moment you purchased a 30 chapter novel you’ve been dying to read. On the first day you couldn’t put it down and read 6 chapters before retiring to bed. You have fuzzy warm thoughts all night dreaming you were the hero and when you wake up in the morning all you can think about is getting back to your book.

Everything’s great; the weather is gloomy and cold out, it’s your day off work, and the aroma of your favorite coffee brewing stimulates your senses.

You pick up your favorite book and continue reading from where you left off, however, something is terribly wrong. Chapter 7 is exactly the same as chapter 3 – word for word. Then chapter 8 is new . . . but chapter 9 is the exact same as chapter 1?

“Why would anyone write a book in such a way?” you ask yourself.

How does the Platinum SEO Pack plugin prevent it (duplicate content)?

To the right you can see a snapshot of the “noindex” settings you can set for this plugin. By checking these you’ll be telling search engines not to index anything found in areas such as your Categories and Archives URLs (because they contain duplicates of the actual articles you want indexed).

It also might be a good idea, SEO-wise, not to show entire posts on your blog’s home page because that too would show duplicate content. This can be avoided by using the <!--more--> tag to split your post, or you could use a plugin like Post Teaser.

Is Duplicate Content Really That Bad?

This is a question I have asked myself repeatedly and to be honest with you, I don’t think it’s as bad as many SEO gurus lead us to believe. I realize that although I know quite a bit about SEO, I don’t dedicate as much time studying it as such people as Aaron Wall; therefore, I try to follow their lead.

However, in my 15 years experience online, I’ve owned websites with duplicate content and thus far I haven’t seen anything but success happen to those sites (i.e. promoted well in search engines).

I know Barbara already asked this, but is it really safe to switch from the all-in-one SEO plugin to platinum SEO?

Yes it is, however, I recently checked the settings for the WordPress plugin All-In-One SEO Pack and you know what, it includes most of the options Platinum does. I’d say if you’re not too skilled in messing with plugins and you’re at all worried, don’t even bother. Platinum SEO does offer a few more options but not enough to sweat over it.

I read about subdomains. One of my frustration about Yes to Me is that the domain is not SEO. Does this mean I can have domain like spirituality.yes-to-me.com?

Absolutely. This would be set up in your control panel. If you’re using cPanel, there should be a “subdomains” icon you can click on and from there you can fill in the blank form with the subdomain name, like “spirituality”.

This would then give you a subdomain spirituality.yes-to-me.com. Then when you go to your File Manager you should see a spirituality.yes-to-me folder with nothing in it. From there, you can install a fresh version of WordPress or design any kind of site you’d like in there.

And since subdomains actually have their own dns (i.e. web address according to search engines), search engines index your keyword “spirituality” as part of the domain name.

This should give you a slight improvement SEO-wise over creating a directory like yes-to-me.com/spirituality, which is the way most people are familiar with.

I talk a little more on how search engines index your domain name in my article Start A Blog: Free or Paid? WordPress or Blogger? if you’re interested in reading more.

Open Floor For Questions

If you have further questions regarding the topics I hit on today or if you have a SEO question you’re dying to get answered, fire away – I’m wearing my bullet-proof vest today!

Related posts:

1. 3 Sentences, Post 3: Web Development
2. 20.4 Ways People Scan Your Website
3. 6 Questions New Bloggers Ask Me

1. Should I go with a free blog OR spend a little money and purchase my own web hosting?
2. Which program should I use – WordPress or Blogger?
3. Where should I host my WordPress Blog?
4. Conclusion and open discussion.

I. Starting A Blog: Free or Paid Web Hosting?

If you’re thinking of starting a blog I can almost guarantee this is what’s going through your head:

I want to start a blog but I’m not sure if I’ll like it or not. Maybe I’ll sign up for a free blog on either WordPress.com or Blogger and see how it goes. Then after about a year or so I’ll decide if I should purchase my own domain name and web hosting.

Sound familiar? If so, here’s what you need to consider.

Free hosting, whether it’s for a blog or a normal website is never a good idea unless maybe you’re a kid just fiddling around on the Internet.

Do Not try to build a business online using free web hosting, that just doesn’t make much sense. Don’t get me wrong, as an experienced entrepreneur I do like to get things for free, but not when the deal ultimately will hurt me.

So how can having a free blog hosted on WordPress.com or Blogger hurt you?

Drawbacks To Free Hosting In General

Awhile back I wrote an article entitled, 8+ Drawbacks to Free Web Hosting (link opens in a new tab) which you might find informative. The article shows how free web hosting is limited by such things as:

• Bottlenecks – Your hosting/website is shared on 1 server with LOTS of other websites.
• Low Bandwidth and Limited Disk Space.
• No Personalized Domain Name.
• Little Support and more . . .

You’ll Lose All Your Momentum & Lose Backlinks When You Upgrade

If you really feel the need to experience blogging before you purchase a hosting account and are dead set on testing first with a free account, give it no more than two or three weeks tops. If you blog for too long what you’ll find is people will start reading your blog, bookmarking your pages, subscribing to your articles, and linking to your website.

That’s great, right?

Of course! But what happens when you realize you’ve grown beyond a free account? What happens then?

I’ve been blogging for only a year now (update: a few years now) and have attracted tens of dozens of links and I’m indexed well on Google for a few searches which brings our company business. Could you imagine what would happen if my blog was hosted on a free account and today I decided to move over to a real hosting account with a new web address? I’d lose any search engine traffic I had achieved, dozens (if not hundreds) of websites linking to me would now have broken links, and people who have bookmarked my site may lose touch with me.

Ask any blogger who uses a free account and wants to switch to a paid hosting account what the #1 thing is which holds them back from making the move. I can almost guarantee the above scenario is it!

Free = Bad SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

To better index your website, search engines look at your domain name’s DNS hierarchy. Basically what this means is search engines like Google and Yahoo will look at the web address to your website and translate it into a binary code it can read (0s and 1s).

It then breaks down your web address and assigns an order of importance for the purpose of locating and addressing your website in the search engine. Let’s take a look at this hierarchy.

For this first example, let’s say you decided to pay for your own web hosting and domain name of www.your-blog.com. Here’s how your domain’s DNS hierarchy will be indexed by search engines:

Alternatively, if you choose to host your blog on WordPress or Blogger, your web address will look something like www.your-blog.wordpress.com and here’s how it will be indexed:

This means you’re doing a lot of work to help WordPress index their site better first and then work to help index your website in search engines.

II. Should You Use Blogger or WordPress?

Well if you just read the information above then by default you would go with WordPress as Blogger is only offered free and not bundled with any paid hosting (as far as I know).

But to give you a more adequate answer as to why you should use WordPress vs. Blogger as your blogging platform, I’d like to point out 5 good reasons.

1. The majority of bloggers use WordPress. It’s ok to be different (in business), but because so many people use WordPress it will be much easier to find help (and you can always email John and ask questions).
2. Simplicity of commenting on articles. Have you ever tried to comment on a blog using Blogger? It makes me want to pull my hair out! With WordPress your visitor will simply read your article and comment using the form at the bottom. Nice, easy, simple, and promotes comments and community.
3. You can do a lot of cool things with WordPress. Because of the popularity of WordPress and being that its source code is open, thousands of people constantly write programs called plugins which you can use to make your site truly unique and fun. With Blogger, you’re pretty much stuck with what they give you and a few customized themes.
4. Your blog can be converted into an actual professional-looking website for a business very easily, not so with Blogger.
5. When you host a WordPress blog (i.e. you purchase web hosting), you can do some pretty cool things with your .htaccess file, such as setting up redirects.

III. Where To Find WordPress Web Hosting

This one is easy. If you’re reading this, you’ve arrived at a great place to have your WordPress blog hosted online – WP Blog Host Web Hosting (link opens in a new tab).

We have gone to many lengths to make sure all your blogging needs will be taken care of in order to start blogging right away.

All our hosting plans include an option to easily install WordPress within your web hosting control panel. And if you ever need help, I’m always here to assist.

IV. Conclusion & Discussion

I think I’ve made a pretty good case that the best choice for starting a blog in most cases will be to go with a paid web hosting account using WordPress as your blogging platform. Hosting costs what, $7 per month. If you can’t invest $7 a month in something you’re dedicating a huge chunk of your time to then you might want to think twice about starting a blog.

There are other blogging platforms out there which I did not mention in this article, like TypePad, Movable Type, b2evolution, etc. However, at this time the two most popular are WordPress and Blogger.

If you’re wanting to start a blog and have questions, please comment below. If you’re a current blogger, which blogging platform do you use and do you like it?

Related posts:

1. 8+ Drawbacks to Free Web Hosting
2. 6 Things I Tell People Who Are Looking To Start A Blog
3. How To Choose The Best WordPress Blog Hosting Company

#1 on Google, and ok, maybe Yahoo!

That’s what Web Entrepreneurs want – and we all compete for it.

Here are some SEO guides I go by when optimizing a website.

Keep in mind though you should always first make sure your website is designed well for human navigation and readability; SEO is secondary. Googlebot doesn’t buy from you, humans do.

When thinking about search engine optimization, I always design with the notion that search engine algorithms change over time. Therefore, even if something today doesn’t have a huge impact on SEO but it seems logically it might, I use it when possible. I try not to assume, but always plan.

Please note this article has a lot of links. Ironically, I didn’t do this for SEO but rather educational purposes.

SEO Tip 1 – Using keywords and phrases in your content

Search engines crawl your website’s content, links, and headers to look for keywords and phrases that match what a user typed in the search engine box. So if someone goes to Google and types “how do you catch butterflies” and you have an article with that exact phrase in your content (or even better, title or header), you stand a decent chance of getting indexed well for that search term.

They say Content is King. Web crawlers love to spider your content, so a large portion of your SEO will take place there. Keywords and Keyword Phrases are your best bet. Read more here and here.

SEO Tip 2: Sub-domains

A little less known SEO trick is the use of sub-domains. Sub-domains use their own dns and are indexed differently than normal directories.

SEO Tip 3: Permalinks

Anyone who blogs knows what I’m talking about. A permalink makes your web address look pretty and understandable by humans. So for example, the following two links point to the same article on my blog:

• http://wpbloghost.com/blog/?p=118
• http://wpbloghost.com/blog/2-keys-to-beating-your-competition-in-business/

You see, the first link tells Googlebot ?p=118 is important to your article. The second link, however, tells Google 2-keys-to-beating-your-competition-in-business is important to your article. Which do you think someone is going to type in Google’s search box? “?p=118″ or “2 keys to beating your competition in business?”

Kyle over at Hack WordPress has a great article on the subject.

SEO Tip 4: Get A Google XML Sitemap

In my last post Is A Google XML Sitemap Necessary? I talked about how a xml Sitemap doesn’t necessarily affect your search engine rankings unless your site is not being indexed well. I think since it can’t hurt, go ahead and get one just in case a key page on your website is having problems getting indexed. Obviously, if the page isn’t getting indexed, it won’t show up in a search.

SEO Tip 5: Optimizing Your Web Page’s Title

This is probably one of the easiest things you can do which gives you a HUGE search engine ranking advantage, but so many people get it wrong. Each of your pages should have their own title and when possible, put a keyword or phrase in there.

Let’s look at the following two title examples I could use for the WP Blog Host About Us page.

1. WP Blog Host – About Us
2. About WP Blog Host – A Full Service Web Hosting Company For Bloggers

The first example has no keywords while the second contains: Web Hosting, Company, and Bloggers. Looking at the second one, I’m sure I can improve on it still.

Side Note: In my opinion, this is the fastest way to get a key web page from your site ranked well in search engines (i.e. matching up your page’s title to what people type into a search box).

SEO Tip 6: Include <meta> Tags

For the most part, Google pretty much ignores the famous <meta name=“keywords” tags. However, other search engines, such as Yahoo!, still reference these tags to help digest and index your website. So don’t forget to omit these.

On another note, Google as a proven track record of tweaking their indexing algorithm. One day they may start referencing the keywords tag again in some new way to index and rank your website, so you might as well drop them in your code.

SEO Tip 7: Use the <alt> Attribute For Images

When you use images on your site, be sure to include the <alt> tag. Many times, people do an image search in search engines and these tags will all of a sudden become important parts of your website’s code.

Plus, Web crawlers can’t crawl images, but they can crawl your <alt> tags.

Once again, I’d like to stress the importance of designing for humans and not search engines. For example, people who are blind typically have Web browsers speak content to them and for images, will read the alt text. Just describe the meaning of your image and that usually will have a SEO impact.

SEO Tip 8: Check Your Template’s Uses Of The <h> Tags

This is a little trick I figured out a while back that not many people know about. The header tags (<h1>, <h2>, and <h3>) are important to Web crawlers. What you put between them ranks higher in importance than normal content – hey this reminds me of only reading the bold print back in my college days.

If you run a script on your Web server, such as a blog, forum, or image gallery, it’s likely that your h tags are being misused by your default template. Let’s look at an example.

Near the top left corner of my blog you’ll see a heading in my sidebar called “About This Blog.” Looking at my blog’s code, you will find *About This Blog* is nested between two h2 tags as follows:

<h2 class=”widgettitle”>about this blog</h2>

So what my blog is telling Googlebot is the term about this blog is an important term to be noted. Is it though?

Nope.

Words like entrepreneur or web development should be my <h> terms. So why haven’t I changed this yet? Because I’m saving those changes for a post I’ve got in the works which is about speeding up and customizing your WordPress template once it has found a home on your site.

SEO Tip 9: Flash Sites Look Nice, Index Poorly

Flash sites can be fun, but you gotta be careful when designing an entire site in flash because spiders currently have issues when crawling and understanding flash sites and menus.

SEO Tip 10: Avoid Duplicate Content

Ideally, only show the same content once to Googlebot. In case you didn’t watch it on my Videos To Help Craft A Better Website & Attract Attention article, I present it here again for your viewing. Popcorn anyone?

SEO Tip 11: Use The Correct TLD For Your Website’s Target Country

TLD stands for Top-Level Domain and refers to the .com, .uk, .ca, .gov, etc. that you see at the end of domain names. To learn more, Raj explains it well in his article entitled, What Is A TLD Domain Name?.

Using the correct TLD for the country in which you plan to do business in is of high importance when it comes to search engine optimization.

For example, if you own a landscape company based in London, England, you’re going to want your domain name to end in the .uk TLD. When someone from the UK goes to the UK version of search engines and types in “landscape companies,” they will most likely be taken to .uk websites.

It is not necessary to find a web hosting company in a specific country to obtain a particular TLD, though some TLDs come with restrictions, such as .gov.

As an example of the many TLDs that are out there, you can view the TLDs WP Blog Host offers for domain names here (opens in a new window).

SEO Tip 12: Keyword Domain Names Rule!

When signing up for a domain name, keep in mind domain names weigh heavily on SEO and could get your site indexed near the top of the SERPs (search engine results page).

I always say design for humans, not search engines; however, if you can come up with an easy to remember domain name which includes a keyword for your website, that’s gold. For example, if you do landscaping in Las Vegas, a great domain name to have is lasvegaslandscape.com.

I happen to own a Las Vegas landscape company and no, our address is not the one listed above, however I still managed to incorporate those words.

The address is modernlandscapelasvegas.com and happens to be listed #1 on most search engines, including Yahoo!, Google, and Ask for the search term las vegas landscape company. I mention this only to show you that all these tips do work.

SEO Tip 13: Get Your Site Listed In DMOZ

DMOZ, The Open Directory Project (ODP), is a Web directory you can list your website’s url in but is so important I chose to make this its own separate tip.

First, just take a look at its PageRank. As of the writing of this article, it’s an 8 out of 10 – not so shabby. Second, and probably the biggest reason for getting your url referenced in DMOZ is the fact that its directory is downloadable and search engines, such as Google, download it and use this directory for searches.

Needless to say, that then is a great place to have your link submitted to. Here’s an article explaining it in more detail.

SEO Tip 14: Use The <title> Attribute For Links

This one I’m bad about and forget to use all the time. When creating links, it’s a good idea to use the <title> tag. This tells the Web crawler, such as Yahoo, what this link might be about and what it can expect to find if it follows that link. Here’s the example code:

<a href=”http://www.securepaynet.net/Hosting/Legacy.aspx?ci=1782&prog_id=442543″ title=”web hosting by WP Blog Host”>

At this moment, SEO-wise this probably has very little, if any, value for you. However, every search engine is different and it’s impossible to say if none of them use the title tag to help index your site.

Plus, you never know what Google and Yahoo might decide to change next time in their algorithms. We just might find that one day this attribute weights heavily in your search engine optimization.

SEO Tip 15: Googlebot Can’t Read My Javascript Menu. What To Do?

Javascript brings great interaction to your website, the problem is, Web crawlers can’t read it.

So if you design your navigation using Javascript, make sure to include a “noscript” tag as an alternate menu. This way, Web crawlers will skip over your Javascript menu but read the html version and you’ll still be awarded brownie points by your friendly neighborhood spider.

SEO Tip 16: Using WordPress? Use A SEO Plugin

For those who use WordPress as their blogging client, the All-In-One SEO Pack Plugin has long been known to be the plugin to get for optimizing your WordPress blog for search engines.

SEO Tip 17: Link Exchanges And Getting Linked To

Most, if not all, search engines use hyperlinks to help determine a website’s reputation. The more relevant links pointing to it, the more votes that are cast to increase its PageRank.

If starting a new website, one way to help search engines find you is through exchanging links with other similar websites. So if you provide landscaping services in Phoenix, Arizona, try finding and exchanging links with similar websites in your area, such as a gardening tips website based out of Phoenix, Arizona.

Do be careful, though. There is a whole topic on how you need to be careful buying, selling, and exchanging links. You can read more about it here and here.

Skelliewag has a great article on how to attract links. It’s good to note, though, that one way links pointing to your website are the best kinds of links SEO-wise (i.e. similar websites that link to you but you don’t link back).

SEO Tip 18: Directory Submissions To Bring In Some Backlinks

A Web Directory is a place that lists websites under sub categories and is where you can go to submit your website’s url. Make sure you submit your site in the right category.

SEO Tip 19: Name Your Directories and Files Wisely

As mentioned in Tip #12, domain names are of high relevance in SEO, so don’t forget this rule when naming files, subdomains, and subdirectories on your site.

For example, WP Blog Host also provides incorporation services for businesses. Once this Web page is finished, I will be dropping that page into an *incorporation* folder rather than a *services* folder because “incorporation” is a keyword people will use to find this service.

SEO Tip 20: The 411 On Keyword Density?

Some people have this notion of the more times you mention your keyword, the more weight it will carry and the better indexed your page will be for that term. On the other hand, others say after you reference a word once or twice, the repeated references have no SEO value.

If you’re curious about the topic in more detail, try reading here:

• The Keyword Density of Non-Sense – An article about how keyword density is of little importance.

Personally, my tip here is don’t focus on repeating your keywords more than 2-4 times. Focus more on where and how they are used and write so your content reads well for humans .

SEO Tip 21: Feed Googlebot New Content

It’s not uncommon to see early on some of your Web pages indexed by search engines only to find out a few months later only your home page is showing up in searches.

Many times this is due to content never changing on Web pages. One way to combat this is by updating your website’s content from time-to-time. Blogs are great for this.

SEO Tip 22: Write A Press Release

Ok, I pounded my head against the table a few times trying to figure if this one was truly a SEO technique. In the end, it does attract links to your site so I felt it had some SEO influence for your website, but probably not a lot. This technique can also be used by writing articles for other companies (and linking back to your site) and guest posting on blogs.

SEO Tip 23: Don’t Be Too Concerned With <NoFollow>

Don’t be too concerned (SEO-wise) about leaving links in places where your link will have the NoFollow attribute assigned to it, that link will still have some SEO value.

No, Google and other search engines won’t give your website a backlink credit (because it’s not suppose to follow that link), however when the page gets spidered by a Web crawler, links will be considered of higher relevance and this person’s page (with the link to your website) may show up in the SERPs (search engine results page).

SEO Tip 24: The Best Way To Leave A Link In A Comment Section

If you blog like me, you read other people’s blogs and comment; sometimes, you might even leave a link or two. When leaving links in a comment section or new forum thread, there are two ways to leave a link – see example below (links open in a new tab).

• http://www.topseotricks.com/improving-your-link-popularity-with-directory-submissions.html/
• Directory Submissions For Attracting Backlinks

Both lead to the same place, however the second one is much clearer to readers and straight forward for our pal Googlebot to digest. Like in Tip 24, the nofollow tag won’t necessarily give you a backlink credit, but it will help the website owner’s SEO for that page and as a result your link may get his page referenced in the SERPs for that keyword phrase (which happens to lead people to your website).

SEO Tip 25: Link To Your Own Web Pages

As noted above, links are considered important to Web crawlers. It’s perfectly fine if those links are links to your own site. Just be sure those links are relevant to the content.

Bonus Tip: Starting A Blog? Don’t Choose Blogger.com or WordPress.com

Start a blog the right way and don’t go with a free Blogger or WordPress account – trust me, not only will it save you a lot of headache trying to transfer everything over when you do decide to use a real hosting account, but switching to a paid account from a free one has major SEO implications for you.

When you decide to go with an actual Web hosting account, you will be assigned a new domain name. When you transfer your blog articles over to your new domain, guess what? All the links and momentum that your free Blogger or WordPress blog has gained will be lost.

No more links pointing to your blog. No more PageRank. No one can find you immediately in search engines. People you personally don’t know no longer know about you. You have to start attracting links all over again.

When I brought this topic up in one of the forums I frequent, ishkey made a great comparison between free and paid hosting and how search engines read your domain. Remember, free hosting has its drawbacks.

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And if you need to get online, start here.

Related posts:

1. SEO Tips For WordPress Bloggers by Matt Cutts
2. Lateral SEO Thinking: 3 Things Most People Don't Consider
3. Is A Google XML Sitemap Necessary?