Basic blogging guide for SEO

I sometimes get asked by clients for a quick guide on how to create blog posts that help with website Search Engine Optimisation. 

So here is a very quick guide to writing blog posts for SEO:

• Create blog posts regularly (one per week is better than 3 in one week & non for the next two)
• Create one post for each subject (e.g. one keyword / search term) as prioritised in your keyword strategy* 
• Write approx 300 words (if many more are written, consider dividing the post into two or more)
• Write normally and don't worry about 'old school' keyword stuffing
• Title = approx 55 characters
• Meta Description =  approx 155 characters (but we are seeing examples where this can be up to 300 characters for some clients now)
• Meta Keywords = [ignore these, most search engines do too]
• Analyse the traffic to each blog post (where this traffic comes from, bounce rate, conversions generated, etc.)
• Do more of what work and do less of what doesn't

*What do you mean you don't have a keyword strategy?

Embedding a Google+ post inside a blog article

I find I'm using Google Plus more these days, so I thought I'd understand how to use the embed post feature. And as this blog is also run on Google's Blogger platform, inserting a G+ post into this blog seemed the obvious choice.

However was actually easier than I thought. By selecting the drop-down menu at the top of a top, you get the options as follows:

Then just selecting "Embed Post" you get access to the HTML code, that you then just copy and paste in the HTML editor of your blog.
Note: editing HTML might not be everyone's idea of 'easy' but for most technically proficient users this should be relatively simple.

5 ways to spot a crap Content Marketing agency

Content Marketing is this season’s buzz word. Like ‘Social Media’ was a few years back and ‘Web 2.0’ a few years before that… Content Marketing is apparently all the rage now.
Only there’s a big problem with that.

To try and fill the gap between client expectations and delivery of these, a bunch of agencies have recently cropped up offering: Content strategy, Content Marketing, In-bound marketing and the rest. You know the ones… they email you all the time (well, they fill up my ‘Promotions’ tab in Google Mail – which I now treat like a second inbox for spam) and make it seem like they are a reputable company and not just a bunch of people jumping on the latest digital bandwagon.

Yes, there will be the odd one out there who has actually done what they say and possibly for some brands you may have actually heard of. But a lot of them have either just re-purposed their existing Search Engine Optimisation efforts or may have worked out how to do the basics in Google Analytics (e.g. look at in-bound source URLs, print out a PDF of landing page bounce rates, etc.).
So here’s my tips on the ways you can spot a crap content marketing agency:

1. They send you an email such as “understand blogging basics” or “free website content review” when they've not even looked at your site
2. They don’t actually have any content creation and copy writing skills (they typically only offer to suggest blog posts or to analyse what you've already written)
3. They have spelling or consistency mistakes across their website (an obvious sign of poor content quality) 
4. Despite claiming to have been doing “Content Marketing for years” their own twitter feed and blog posts go back less than 12 months.
   (And watch out for the tell-tale sign of sudden flurries of blog posts all written around the same time, and then large gaps where they haven't been bothered)
5. They make wonderful sweeping statements like “you need to increase brand engagement” with no indication of how you actually do this, let alone measure it.

So. Did I miss any points? Let me know. 

Linking your blog to Google+

I've resisted the temptation to get serious about Google Plus over the last year or so, mainly as I didn't see much value in Google's social network. To me it just seemed a little errr... pointless. However to be serious about search engine optimisation, I really needed to have more of an understanding of the platform. (No, this is not an admission that Google+ is something I now use privately, just something I use professionally).

My first step towards using Google+ was linking this blog to my Google account. Usually this is a process of just checking a box in the back-end of the Blogger.com administration and off you go. However in my case this was a little more tricky, as my blog was created in an older Google account and my public Google+ profile sits under a different one. This was resolved by adding the account with my G+ profile to the list of authors and administrators of my blog and then subsequently going in a removing the older account.

Having then linked this blog to my Google+ profile, it was only a matter of days before I noticed that this link was recognised by Google's search results.

Meaning a picture of my face and a link to my Google+ profile was now evident.

Learning the art of learning

I have learnt a lot more in the last 15 to 20 years than I ever intended. It wasn't intentional... the aim was that I left school and university (actually, it was a Polytechnic until the last year I was there) then went & got a job.

I thought I was done with learning. I'd never really enjoyed studying whilst in the education system. I'd coasted through on the minimum of effort, didn't try to learn any more than I needed to and got distracted by cars, girls, TV & computer games along the way.

But something has happened since then:

1. I now enjoy learning

2. I've learned to learn

3. I now learn so I can can tell others

Nobody told me how to learn, instead I had to work hard at it. This meant spending a lot of time reading, re-reading and focusing on truly understanding a subject.. enough to be confident that I could put it into my own words for others to comprehend it too. However, it has now got to the point that when I'm half-way through browsing through an article or online blog posting I suddenly think "oh, that makes sense... I need to blog about that".

Perhaps now I understand the Oscar Wilde phrase:

"It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it"

How to upset the Omnichannel masses

Oh dear, I fear I've just opened up another can of digital worms.

In my latest article for my other online column, I've had a dig at those that use the term 'Omnichannel' rather than 'Multi Channel' or some other existing phrase.
http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2013/04/02/omnichannel-what-omnishambles

But let's be honest... Omnichannel is a pretty crap word and to have a bunch of over-blown consultants walking around claiming it's the future is the online equivalent of 'The Emperors New Clothes'

In other words it is more than enough to get my back up and therefore is fair game.

What's the value of a single link?

Today I'm carrying out an experiment, to see what the value of a single link from my blog to a client site is actually worth.

Mactaggart & Mickel Homes

Having posted the link in this blog post, the aim is for me to measure:

1. How quickly a hyperlink to the site is recognised by the popular search engines
2. The direct traffic this delivers
3. The potential impact upon organic placements (if any)

Note:
I will post on any findings I undercover (if they are allowed in the public domain)

Becoming a top UK blogger

Blogging is its own reward. I blog here because I want to and for no other reason.

However, I was nicely surprised to be included in a list of one of the top UK online marketing bloggers; recognised not just for blogging but for my overall social sharing about online marketing.
http://www.toprankblog.com/2013/01/online-marketing-bloggers-uk/

This list was produced by Lee Odden from TopRank for his presentation to Search Engine Strategies in February and after its publication I was contacted by Lee for my perspective on the following questions:

Q: Please share one tip for others that are trying to stand out in the online marketing space. How do you become one of the most influential people about online marketing or whatever thing you want to be "known" for?
A: The best way to stand out from the crowd is to have a well thought-out perspective on a topic. It is not enough to merely copy what others say or even to aggregate lots of other sources. It’s your voice, use it. In my blog I try to go into some detail on specific subjects, which means I not only have to understand it, I have to be able to know it enough to explain it clearly to others.
(This actually helps me develop a rounded knowledge rather than just facts)

Q: Content is the vehicle for connecting with fans, friends and customers. Share an example of really creative digital content that you've seen from a UK company. It can be something you've worked on for a brand, or just something you've seen in your experience as a digital citizen.

A: For me, although 2012 was dominated by everything quintessentially British… The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in the rain and the Olympics where nearly every person in the UK was stunned at how well we did…. for content marketing it wasn’t a British thing that I was most impressed with. It was the Red Bull Stratos mission where Felix Baumgartner’s jump from space saturated digital channels such as YouTube (where it was shown across the world) and obviously across Social Networks. Red Bull has now completely turned itself from a drink (via being a lifestyle product) into a brand that creates its own events and consequently generates a whole raft of content behind it.

Getting recognised for being a top UK online marketing blogger is a huge accolade and one I'm incredibly grateful for, thanks.

Ecommerce and SEO advice : what to leave out

In my latest opinion piece for The Drum, called 'Search Engine Optimisation fundamentals for e-commerce sites', I have spent several hundred words explaining how ecommerce sites can use Search Engine Optimisation techniques to improve their organic rankings.

This is my 5th article in my online column about eCommerce and rather than it be a subjective piece, I wanted to produce a more factual article and dip into some technical elements too. However, in writing it there was quite a lot of SEO topics that I missed out, mainly because I wanted the article to be understood by the majority of The Drum's readers, who are more likely to be creative and marketing types rather than those at the sharp end of online site optimisation.

So what did I miss out? Well here's some things I didn't cover:

1. Webmaster tools insights that are relevant to online retailing

2. Micro formats, such as the star ratings for products that can then get fed into organic results

3. Canonical references and robots.txt techniques to reduce crawl bleed

4. Multiple sitemap.xml files for content, catalogue, etc

Was I wrong not to include these? I don't think so. Besides, it would then have meant I couldn't write this article :-)

Writing an ecommerce specific blog

Here on my blog I cover a range of topics, from digital strategy through to tactical online marketing things.
I like this range, as it means I'm able to dip in and out different subjects that take my fancy (or get my goat).

However I've now been asked to write a blog specifically on digital commerce for The Drum.

You can read my first post here:
http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2012/12/11/basic-facts-e-commerce-12-essentials-online-trading

My aim is to keep both blogs going, but to obviously focus my online retailing thoughts on the new platform.

Integrating Facebook into my blog (correctly)

The keen-eyed amongst you (who read this blog via the original website, not one of the syndicated places or on an RSS reader) will see that I have an updated "Tell your Facebook friends" area on the right side of each page.

Previously for about a year this held a very similar function that let you "like" my content (but to be honest, most of you won't have noticed the difference). The main aim was that when you clicked on the thumb icon it would link to your Facebook account, with the secondary aim that this blog could eventually build up more than 25 followers... so I could claim a 'Facebook vanity URL'.

Why? Well, because this was the first time I had done something like this, integrating my public self with my private self in the popular social network that I share with my friends. It was more a "let's try it and see", rather than "let's try it and build followers".

However, there was one rather large problem. It didn't work.

Yup, for some reason when users clicked on the old link, it instantly told them they "liked" this blog, but that was it. It didn't register them as a follower within the Facebook page I had set up and it most definitely didn't display any blog postings into the page.

But that has now been corrected. I have not-only changed the code behind this button to correctly register any interest from my loyal or passing readers....but also any posting that I submit to this blog now automatically gets fed into the Facebook of those who expressed their interest (So if you do want to show your appreciation of the regular content I put here, please be aware that you will also get it piped into your Facebook account as well!).

The downside is that I have not retained the goodwill of those who previously liked this blog... so I now have to build up these numbers again from scratch.

Measuring Social Media activity across your business

If you work for a larger company with multiple divisions (and marketing initiatives) then there is a good chance that you have more than one piece of social media activity going on at once.

There's also a pretty good chance that these different initiatives are not connected and may even be duplicating effort (or worse, working against each other).

So what do you do?

1. Audit all activity
Firstly, do an audit of all activity involving social media across your company.  Create a list of everything from those business Twitter accounts in the USA office, through to those Facebook Pages created by the German Marketing team.

2. Measure reach, impact and engagement
How? Well, for reach, its a numbers game. With services such as Twitter its easy to see the number of followers an account has and its just as easy to record the number of Facebook 'likes'. Counting up the number of people who have 'like'd each clip* or are following your channels on YouTube is obvious. Also most blogging platform now either provide statistics for the number of visitors to your blogs or allow you to integrate Google Analytics or other stats package into each page.
*YouTube also allows users to give each clip a 'thumbs down' plus has basic stats built into it now

However measuring impact and engagement is a different matter and I would therefore suggest you look at these methods as a starter:

• Twitter: 
• Look at the number of re-tweets each account gets, this will give you some idea of how valuable the followers regard the postings.
• Measure clicks on hyperlinks. You can do this either by looking at your referrer information in your site analytics package (assuming the links point back to your own site), or if you use a service like Bit.ly which integrates with Twitter, this will show you the clicks on each Tweet.
  Hayden's tip: Use Google link search to see how many people hyperlink to your Twitter account e.g. http://goo.gl/6hkt
• 
  
   Facebook
• 
  
  Look for the amount of comments and 'likes' on postings. Obviously the more followers you have, the greater the likelihood of having comments and 'likes'...
  Hayden's tip: To get a real measure, work out your average number of responses per posting and divide this by your total number of followers.. and then measure this over time.
• YouTube, Flickr, etc.
• Both these sites allow commenting on each respective file uploaded and YouTube even allows video responses to be posted. Reviewing this feedback over time will give you some idea of the content that people find interesting (in a positive or negative way - so remember to )
  Hayden's tip:
• Blogs
• Comments are the obvious way of measuring engagement with your blog content and because they are easily spider-able by search engines and social tools, you can use a variety of methods to understand the quality of the people contributing to them (e.g. http://socialmention.com/)
  You can also use your analytics package to measure more factors about engagement such as the amount of time spent on each page (paid for analytics applications may even have a specific way of working this out, such as this method from WebTrends)
  Hayden's tip: Again use Google to measure the number of inbound links to each blog: e.g. http://goo.gl/tjTn

There's obviously lots of other social networks to assess and the ones you audit and measure will depend upon the countries your business is active in. But without first taking stock of your entire social media presence, there's no way you decide which efforts are working and which are not.

The digital PR toolkit

In recent posts I've provided my thoughts on the convergence of digital PR, Marketing and Conversion.
Post 1: Discussing how the roles now blur
Post 2: Covering how SEO is no longer just for marketing
Post 3: Showing the AIDA customer acquisition process
Now I've gone into a fair amount of detail about the process of customer acquisition that they all contribute to and the overlapping roles they play in this process. But now I'm going to cover the respective digital tools and methods that each role can use, based on the model that I created in my previous posts.

The first one up is digital PR and to illustrate this I've provided the diagram below with the simple key:
The things you can do on your target site are within the circle and the tools used off-site are logically outside it.
(Note: I've also tried to group these tools near to similar or relevant ones both on-site & off)

The respective digital PR tools that I believe you can use are:

On-site:

• Keyword targeted content
  Are you producing content that whilst being readable also focused on specific keywords typed into search engines?
• Blog/Editorial
  Have you considered that writing a blog - with whatever name you give it - will also creates great content that user like to read - as well as for search engines - and that could deep link to interesting useful content around your site?
• Analytics
  If you don't know what works (gets more traffic, converts more users, etc.) then how are you going to do more of it?
• Press & News Content
  If you're not using this on your own site to highlight your own successes, then you should. If you don;t want to set up your own content managed press area on your site, then either create one using a blogging platform or even just take a relevant feed from your PR company's site.
• Community
  Providing forums or even just a place for users to comment on articles and blogs gives a sense of community to visitors. Rewarding frequent ones goes a step further. These user generated comments are not just great content to read and spider, they are great PR fodder.

Off-site:

• Link building
  Encouraging sites to link to yours in their news items and articles (although try to avoid reciprocal links)
• Social News & Social Bookmarking
  Posting your Press Releases to Digg, Delicious, etc. is a way of getting your story to a wider audience
• Email
  Both one-to-one and more general email marketing techniques can be used to announce news to those who want this form of communication.
• SEO
  This speaks for itself and I've covered this already in a number of topics. But if your PR company doesn't already understand and use SEO techniques......
• Feeds & syndication
  An RSS feed empowers those who want to pull this information and consume it (or re-publish it) in their own way, rather than via email or traditional means.
• Social Media Press Release
  Consider posting your Press Releases online, with other useful information such as: RSS feeds, links to previous relevant releases, imagery, audio & video, etc.
• Blogger engagement
  Look for them, understand them, communicate in a relevant manner and build up engagement with them.
• Twitter
  Make sure you are promoting your releases via this important medium. Also use it to build up a community of followers who you can ask things of (e.g. feedback).
• Social Media monitoring and tracking
  Listen in to blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc and find out who is saying what.
• Photo sharing
  Use sites like Flickr.com to build up an online PR image library
• Video sharing
  Use sites like YouTube.com (although personally Vimeo.com is my choice) to build up an online collection of suitable video clips.
• Facebook
  Its pretty easy these days to build up a Facebook presence and grow a community. Its also quite easy to integrate Press Releases (potentially with comments allowed) and other content from different sources into this popular social media site.
• Online surveys
  This is a quick way to understand if your content is reaching it required audience and finding out what other information or data they would find useful.

Changing my blog design - again

Last week I posted on how I had found the design settings in Blogger (the Google-owned blogging platform I use) and had settled on a new design.

Well... following feedback and my own opinion after a week of usage, I'd decided to change it again to something more easily readable than white text (and grey hyperlinks) on a black background.

Hopefully you'll find this design theme easier on the eye....

What your emailed press release says about your PR company

As a blogger and reviewer of books in the in the Internet industry, I get dozens of press releases emailed to me each week.


Some of these are from individuals who are either trying to do their own promotion or very small PR agencies (usually one-man-bands). However the majority are from bigger PR and communication consultancies who think they understand the online / email medium.... and most quite simply don't!


Lets just take the way I am addressed in these emails as the most obvious example of what I mean.

Here's a list of genuine titles I have been given in emails:

1. Dear Mr Sutherland Hayden
   A clear case of them getting the first name and surname fields in their mail merge software mixed up #fail


2. Dear Blogger
   To not even bother to find out my name makes me want to read further..... not! #fail


3. Dear Madam
   Errr.... not the last time I looked! #fail


4. Dear Press2.0 Communications in a digital world
   A hint: The name of my blog isn't necessarily my real name. #fail

There are, of course, a few more.... but you get the point.

Note:
If you are sending out Press Releases by email, at least have a bit of professionalism when you do it or risk looking a complete amateur.

unofficial blogs and their effect

Having read about the blog of http://ebayinkblog.com/, an unoffical blog of an Ebay staff member, it got me thinking about how unofficial company blogs can end up being the most useful source of company information to customers and employees alike.

So today, I found it quite strange to hear of reports that Carphone Warehouse has blocked access for some its staff to an unofficial blog. Now, this isn't just any old blog. Its one set up by the Communication Workers Union to update its members who work for Charles Dunstone (note to other unions: it also acts as a PR tool for the union and a source of useful information for journalists).

It seems that a few CPW sites (e.g. Preston & Irlam in Manchester) around the UK have had their access to the site blocked, as well as several others including Argos.com and Tesco.com.

From: http://carphoneworker.wordpress.com/

Once again, we have not been contacted by the company to explain why this might be. Indeed, we still have not received any written communication from the company explaining why they censored the site at Irlam, or why they decided to uncensor it.

Now, I know that the Carphone Warehouse doesn't particularly like blogs, but isn't this going a bit too far?

Some light reading

Here are a bunch of things I haven't had time to fully digest and comment on today:

• The 10 major (US) newspapers under threat:
  http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1883785,00.html
  
• Touching story from Steven Levitt's blog about children
  http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/one-more-reason-to-be-nice-to-your-children/
  
• Business Week's Twitter-sourced reasons for the decline of print media
  http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/mar2009/db2009039_236056.htm
  
• The digital plan of Lord Carter
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7934990.stm
  (Note: I happen to think in the PRS vs YouTube battle that "Big You" will win eventually, perhaps once the artists realise they're getting b****r all money now and even less chance of it in the future)

blogs have more impact than social networks

A report of a survey done by Buzz Logic & Jupiter Research back in the Autumn of this year shows that over half of all US blog reader (sorry, it doesn't seem to have a global reach) find blogs useful for purchase information. (Full press release here)

And suprisingly, blogs have more impact on purchasing decisions than social networks because blogs are more trusted!

Its even better news for niche blogs, as of those who found blog content useful for product decisions, over half of them (56%) said niche focus blogs and "topical expertise" sources were key. Unsuprisingly this information was most useful for technology-related purchases:

So had blogging actually come-of-age now?

Well it seems that for a certain segment of the population that answer is "yes", as blogs now rival search as a means of navigating to information that influences their decisions.

Wordle graph of my blog

I'm always on the look-out for ways to chart/graph/depict complexity. I was therefore please to recently stumble across http://www.wordle.com/. By typing in the feed from this blog, it creates the visual representation you see above.

A better quality version of it is available here on Wordle's site.

Press 2.0 - 1 year later

Well, its been a year now since I wrote my first posting for this blog and what a year its been!

(Not forgetting that personally, I've: got married, moved house and now we have a child on the way)

There have been almost 25o postings to the blog. These have covered various topics based around company & customer communication methods, whilst still trying to keep up with my per subject of the demise of mainstream media.

So, what have I learned along the way? Well, here's a few thoughts:

1. Blogging (almost) daily is hard work.
Maintaining a reasonably professional blog requires a certain discipline to keep abreast of technological, social & communication practices. It then takes more effort to actually type stuff up into (semi) coherent thoughts and perspectives. This is especially true when you have a full-time consultancy job and a company to run. Several times now I've found myself tapping away in the office gone-midnight in an effort to piece together an article to automatically schedule a publish in the morning. However, that said.... its been a good experience and I'm still enjoying it.

2. Its slightly easier to post about different (but related) topics
I have to admit that I've found it easier to produce postings about multiple subjects on a regular basic. For example: by discussing ecommerce market growth projections on one day and video newspaper initatives on the next, it allows me to investigate different issues that are still inter-linked by my passion for all things digital. Also, I'm sure I've strayed completely off-topic sometimes, but hopefully my readers have enjoyed the occasional tangents taken.

3. Getting comments is a very satisfying experience:
Its nice to know sometimes that not only am I getting visitors (I do track usage via some Google Analytics code inserted into every page), but that they are actually reading what I write. I'm particularly grateful to: Tristan, Ellify & Boudewijn for their feedback - both for their comments via the blog and also separately [thanks chaps].

So... what hasn't worked? Well certain things haven't exactly planned out as I hoped. For one thing, I haven't entirely stayed true to my original aim of treading that line between the 'Press' section & 'About Us' part of the company website and the mainstream media. But then, as my thoughts and understanding have evolved, so has this blog.

Proof perhaps then that life isn't necessarily what you set out to get from it; but it turns out being what you put into it.