Category: SEO

  • How to Find Content Ideas

    How to Find Content Ideas

    As a content marketer, you’ll need to constantly come up with content ideas to build, maintain, and grow your audience. This article will give you a couple of tips and tools to help you brainstorm great content ideas for your website or channel.

    Use Google Intentionally

    When doing Google research to find content ideas, always pay attention to the “People Also Ask” section in the search results. This might give you a new or different direction for your content.

    People Always Ask example within a Google search for “Content Marketing”

    Also, don’t forget about the “related searches” at the bottom of each Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Google uses its historical search data to give related searches that might be more specific than your original idea. Being specific is generally a very good thing – as it allows you to create more focused content that may stand a better chance of being ranked.

    “Related Searches” example from Google search for “Content Marketing”

    These will often give you very relevant and specific ideas for content that Google users are searching for.

    Google Trends will allow you to search historically for terms to see how the search volume has changed over time. This will give you a good idea about what terms to use and which to avoid. You can also compare two different terms to see which is more frequently searched for on Google.

    Google Trends results showing comparative search volume
    between terms “content marketing” and “inbound marketing”

    Answer The Public

    Answer The Public is a site that also uses Google search data – but ATP uses this data to show you questions that Google users ask that are related to your topic.

    ATP results: a visualization of related questions

    ATP gives you a detailed report with many visualizations related to key questions, prepositions, and comparative words.

    It also breaks results alphabetically for another way of brainstorming.

    Twitter trending topics always can give you a finger on the pulse of what is being talked about right now. Get the most up-to-date and current content ideas by visiting trending topics often.

    Getting content ideas on Instagram: the Explore Page

    The explore section of Instagram has collections of content that Instagram believes you will be interested in. If content appears on your explore page, chances are good that the content is popular among others like you.

  • Adding Open Graph Protocol (OGP) tags to your Blogger Blog

    Adding Open Graph Protocol (OGP) tags to your Blogger Blog

    The Open Graph Protocol is a relatively new way to turn any web page into a sharable social object by adding tags to identify key attributes for that page when shared on a social network like Facebook.  Before we look at these OGP tags and how to integrate them into your Blogger blog, let’s take a look at how website links are shared on social networks.

    Sharing Links on Facebook
    When you share a URL while creating a Facebook status update, Facebook scans that webpage and automatically generates a preview of that content which includes some useful information in addition to the URL you typed:

    • A TITLE for the web page you are sharing
    • A brief DESCRIPTION of the content on that page
    • An IMAGE from the page

    Once you publish your status, these extra bits of information become very important, as they will likely influence whether one of your friends will click on the link.  If the image looks intriguing, or if the copy seems interesting, your shared URL will likely be clicked on.

    However, sometimes when you share a link, Facebook’s automatically generated image, title, and description are either missing entirely or not very compelling. In the post below, notice that there is no associated image or description – just a title and url.

    As digital content publishers who want to make our content as sharable and clickable as possible, this can be a real issue.  Fortunately, Facebook provides a number of sharing best practices that can help.

    First Step: Learn about the Open Graph Protocol
    Facebook describes several open graph tags that it recommends integrating into your site to help Facebook generate previews.  The main tags which Facebook uses when generating previews are:

    • og:title – the title of the page you are sharing
    • og:description – a detailed description of the content on the page
    • og:url – the URL of the web page
    • og:image – the URL of the image you want shown
    • og:site_name – the name of the website you are sharing
    • og:type – the type of content you are sharing (blog, website, article, etc)

    The syntax for an open graph tag is similar to other meta tags used in HTML.  For example, the og:title tag can be written as:

    <meta property=”og:title” content=”Title of your Page”>

    Open graph tags are placed in the <head> section of your HTML file. For a complete description of each tag, visit the Open Graph Protocol website.

    How Facebook “Sees” your Page
    To understand how Facebook ingests a webpage to generate a preview, use Facebook’s Open Graph Debugger.  This helpful tool will allow you to enter any URL and get a “scrape” of what Facebook finds when it scans the page.  It will alert you when there are issues that need to be addressed. 


     It will also generate a preview to show you how your page will appear if a Facebook user shares it on their timeline.

    Time to Fix your Blogger Blog, OG style
    In a previous post, I discussed the use of Title and Meta Description tags, which are very important for your blog’s SEO.  I also described a method of optimizing how Blogger generates title tags to improve your blog’s SEO.  Read these posts before you go any further!

    Because Blogger dynamically generates the pages in our blog based on templates, we thankfully do not need to manually add OG tags to every blog page/post.  That would be a major headache!  Fortunately for us, we can update a few lines of HTML code in our blog’s template that will automatically update all our pages and posts – including any new pages and posts we create in the future.

    What we’ll be doing is telling Blogger exactly how to handle the TITLE, META DESCRIPTION, and OG tags on 1. your blog’s home page and 2. your blog’s various posts and pages.  We will do this by using IF statements. 

    Here is the code you will insert into the <HEAD> section of your Blogger template:

    <!–START CUSTOM CODE–>

    <meta property=’og:url‘ expr:content=’data:blog.canonicalUrl’/>
    <meta property=’og:title‘ expr:content=’data:blog.pageTitle’/>
    <meta property=’og:site_name‘ expr:content=’data:blog.title’/>

    <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;’>
    <title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
    <meta property=’og:image‘ expr:content=’data:blog.postImageUrl’/>
    <meta property=’og:type‘ content=’article’/>

    <b:else/>
    <title><data:blog.pageTitle/> – PUT ANY ADDITIONAL TITLE COPY HERE</title>
    <meta property=’og:image‘ content=’PUT YOUR IMAGE URL HERE‘/>
    <meta property=’og:type‘ content=’blog’/>
    </b:if>

    <b:if cond=’data:blog.metaDescription’>
    <meta property=’og:description‘ expr:content=’data:blog.metaDescription’/>
    </b:if>


    <!–END CUSTOM CODE–>

    Select this code and COPY it.  Then read on.

    Important note: before you start editing your blog’s HTML code, you’ll want to make sure that you are happy with the template you are using.  Because we’re going to customize the code associated with a specific instance of a template, it is important to realize that if you ever change your template for any reason, you will lose the work you’re about to do!

    Time to Get Geeky: Come Edit Your Template’s HTML with Me
    Ready? Let’s do this. Go to Blogger and click on your blog.  Click on the “Template” button on the left hand menu. 

    Click on the “Edit HTML” button and be prepared to feel a surge of geeky neuronic energy course throughout the synapses of your brain.


    Take a deep breath.  Repeat to yourself: “It’s just a text file.  It’s just a text file.  I can handle this!”

    Now very carefully find the <title> tag that exists in the code.  Select the title tag code and everything inside it.


    Delete it.  Then replace it with the code I gave you earlier in this post.  


    Be sure to carefully EDIT the parts of the code marked “PUT ANY ADDITIONAL TITLE COPY HERE” and “PUT YOUR IMAGE URL HERE”.

    This code creates og:url, og:title, and og:site_name tags that are dynamically generated from Blogger’s page url, Blogger’s page title, and your blog’s title. It then creates og:image and og:type tags (IF the page is a normal post or page).  Otherwise, it creates og:image and og:type tags for your home page which are different.  Finally, it creates an og:description tag that is populated from the meta descriptions that you create for your pages.

    Once you are done, click “Preview template”.  If you have made any errors or broken any of the code – it should give you an error message and tell you what the issue is.  If your preview looks good, then click “Save Template”.

    You’re Not Done Until You Test Your Pages!
    To test your pages, go back to Facebook’s Open Graph Debugger and try your pages out. It will give you a preview of how each page will look when shared.

    Yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

    Acknowledgements
    I’d like to acknowledge the help of the following two blog posts which helped me greatly in patching together the above code that both improves SEO and adds OG tags to Blogger posts and pages:

    Adjust Blogger Title Tags to Improve SEO by Muhammad Faisal
    and
    How to Add Open Graph Protocol in Blogger Blogs by Muntasir Minhaz

    Thanks guys!




  • Optimizing your Blogger Blog for SEO

    You’ve got your Blogger blog up and running, and now you need to ensure it shows up properly in search engines.  As explained in the assigned reading in the Google SEO Starter Guide, you’re going to want to create <title> and <meta> description tags to help describe the content of your blog to search engines.

    Title Tags

    A title tag is a snippet of code placed within the <head> section of an html file.  It can appear anywhere between the <head> and the </head> tags.  There can only be one title tag per HTML file.  The syntax is simple: you have an open tag <title> and a close tag </title> and everything  in between becomes the content of the title tag.

    <title>This is a page title</title> 


    Note that only the first 65-70 characters will show up in a search engine result.

    In addition to the information in the Google SEO Starter Guide, if you do a few Google searches, you’ll find a treasure trove of excellent resources on writing title tags.

    15 Title Tag Optimization Guidelines For Usability And SEO
    Title Tag SEO Best Practices
    How to Write Title Tags For Search Engine Optimization

    Optimizing the Title tags on your Blogger Blog

    You may have noticed that Blogger already automatically creates title tags for your blog pages. This is done with a bit of dynamic code that Blogger inserts into the title tag of each page.  If you go to Blogger and click on “Template” and then click “Edit HTML”, you will be able to see this code already in place:

    <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>


    On your blog’s home page, the page title is simply the name of your blog.  You will probably want to add some more copy here, especially if your blog title is a little esoteric or not immediately understandable.  

    On individual posting pages, the title tag is the name of your blog followed by a colon (:) and then the name of your post.


    The problem with this is that only the first 65-70 characters of a title show up in search results listings.  If your blog is called “The UNI Digital Advertising Blog”, and you write a blog post called “The magical powers of Google’s Hal Varian”, then your Blogger page title will show up like this (I’ve put the first 65 characters in green and the characters that will get left out of the title listing in red):

    The UNI Digital Advertising Blog: The Magical Powers of Google’s Hal Varian


    See what happens?  A very important keyword gets cut off!  So if a user was searching for “Hal Varian”, they might skip this search result because they don’t SEE their keyword in the title.

    To remedy this, many have recommended changing the code in your Blogger template to switch the order so that your blog post title goes FIRST and your blog name goes second.  

    Here’s a link with the code you will need:
    Adjust Blogger Title Tags to Improve SEO

    I wanted to add the hashtag (#unidigadv) to my blog title, as well as a little blurb about the blog (“all things digital, mobile, and social”).  I followed the directions in the blog post above and here is what my code ended up looking like:

    <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;’>

    <title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>

    <b:else/>

    <title>#unidigadv – <data:blog.pageTitle/> – All Things Digital, Mobile, and Social</title>

    </b:if>


    Now the page title of my blog contains some extra keywords, and my blog post page titles contain the title of the blog post FIRST, followed by the name of my blog.


    UPDATE: I tweaked this code to also include Facebook Open Graph Protocol tags in it – so instead of using this code, go to my OGP post and use the code from that post.

    Meta Description Tags

    A <meta> tag provides metadata about a web page.  Meta tags also are placed in the <head> section of HTML files.

    There are many different kinds of meta tags, but the one most relevant to SEO is the meta description tag.  This tag gives a brief description of the content of the web page:

    <meta name=”description” content=”Here is a page
    description that describes what is on the page
    “>

    Meta description tags are often directly used in search engine results pages in the two lines describing each search result.  Note that only the first 150-160 characters of your description will show up in the result.  Here is an example of a search result entry for SEOmoz:

    There are lots of good resources on writing Meta Description tags as well:
    The Meta Description Tag
    Meta Description SEO Best Practices

    Optimizing the Meta Description tags on your Blog

    You’re going to thank me profusely for this tip – I found a way to customize your Meta Description tags in Blogger WITHOUT editing your template HTML code!  

    Your Blog’s Main Description Tag

    First, for the main Description tag on your blog’s home page, go to “Settings / Basic” and edit your blog’s “Description”.  Whatever you write here will automatically be included in the meta description tag on your home page.

    Description Tags for your Blog Posts
    Before you can start writing these, you need to enable Meta tag descriptions in “Settings / Search Preferences”:


    Just click “Edit”, and click “Yes” when asked to “Enable Search Description”:



    Now you’re all set. When writing a blog post you can now click on an option called “Search Description” located in the “Post Settings” menu on the right hand side of the screen. Write your meta description copy for that post and click “done”.  

    It is best practice to write meta description copy for each of your blog’s posts. Just try to summarize your blog post in 150 characters or less.  Make it readable and try to include important keywords.  If you don’t, then Blogger will not include a Meta Description tag for that post.  

  • Title and Meta Description tags for SEO

    You’ve got your blog up and running, and now you need to ensure it shows up properly in search engines.  As explained in the assigned reading in the Google SEO Starter Guide, you’re going to want to create <title> and <meta> description tags to help describe the content of your blog to search engines.

    Title Tags

    A title tag is a snippet of code placed within the <head> section of an html file.  It can appear anywhere between the <head> and the </head> tags.  There can only be one title tag per HTML file.  The syntax is simple: you have an open tag <title> and a close tag </title> and everything  in between becomes the content of the title tag.

    <title>This is a page title</title>


    Note that only the first 65-70 characters will show up in a search engine result.

    In addition to the information in the Google SEO Starter Guide, if you do a few Google searches, you’ll find a treasure trove of excellent resources on writing title tags.

    15 Title Tag Optimization Guidelines For Usability And SEO
    Title Tag SEO Best Practices
    How to Write Title Tags For Search Engine Optimization


    Meta Description Tags

    A <meta> tag provides metadata about a web page.  Meta tags also are placed in the <head> section of HTML files.

    There are many different kinds of meta tags, but the one most relevant to SEO is the meta description tag.  This tag gives a brief description of the content of the web page:

    <meta name=”description” content=”Here is a page
    description that describes what is on the page
    “>

    Meta description tags are often directly used in search engine results pages in the two lines describing each search result.  Note that only the first 150-160 characters of your description will show up in the result.  Here is an example of a search result entry for SEOmoz:

    There are lots of good resources on writing Meta Description tags as well:
    The Meta Description Tag
    Meta Description SEO Best Practices
  • SEO and SEM Tools

    I recently had the opportunity to spend some time working with Doug Drees, the Director of Search Engine Marketing at Mudd Advertising (formerly with Target Click Marketing – the UNI student startup!).  

    We talked a lot about both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns (also known as “Pay Per Click” or PPC campaigns).  He shared some excellent resources with me that I am passing along to you!

    (Special thanks also to Greg Jass)


    SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

    Rankerizer

    Monitors and tracks your Google, Yahoo, and Bing rankings for keywords
    http://www.rankerizer.com/

    Rank Checker

    Checks your search engine position ranking for any keyword
    http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/keyword-position.html

    SEO Tips from Location3.com

    http://www.location3.com/category/seo/

    Screaming Frog

    A desktop app that spiders your website/blog from an SEO perspective.
    http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

    SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING


    A great series of articles on Pay Per Click campaigns

    Keyword Mixer
    Quickly creates various combinations of word lists
    http://keywordmixer.com/


    Local Keyword Tool
    If you’re looking for new keyword ideas, this tool will help you.
    Pay-Per-Click Blogs
    Keep up with the latest happenings.
    http://www.ppchero.com/