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Attention all bloggers: WordCamp is coming to the Triangle. Sharpen your blogging skills and meet other members of the NC business community at this all day event at NCCU in Durham on Saturday, June 13, 2009.
Andrew Miller of YourSearchAdvisor.com made a fantastic presentation at WordCamp in Richmond last week. Here’s a summary of Andrew’s best practices for optimizing search.
THE BACKGROUND
Reassuringly, Andrew pointed out that search engine optimization is:
- Not Rocket Science or Voodoo
- Not Free Traffic
- Not “Set It and Forget It”
Too true. Managing search is like caring for a useful pet, perhaps a sheep dog. You want to herd the audience to your content. Andrew called it a “funnel to capture intent.” His metaphor is probably better.
THE 3 PILLARS OF SEARCH
Many pundits try to explain the quantum mechanics of search, but Andrew’s summation seems as good as any. Ranking in search rests on three pillars:
- Accessibility - Can the search engines find you?
- Relevance - Who related is your content to a particular search?
- Credibility - How can the search engines tell if you are an expert?
ACCESSIBILITY
Andrew touted the benefits of Sitemaps to create visibility for search engines. These are not the site maps that viewers may use to find pages on your website. Sitemaps (capital “S”) are code documents that index all your content and provide instructions for search engines.
Andrew noted that many tools exist online to help you generate Sitemaps including Google Webmaster, Yahoo Site Explorer and Sitemaps.org.
RELEVANCE
Want to boost relevance - take a look at the stats for your website or blog. What are the entry keywords - that is, what did people search for that led them to you?
Focus your content on the keywords and concepts most dear to your audience. Use your keywords liberally - in links, headlines, body copy and elsewhere.
Write for humans, not search robots, and you will also keep the audience you attract.
CREDIBILITY
Links from other websites to your content, also called incoming links, build cred with the search ‘bots. One sure fire method to build incoming links to to circulate your content widely.
For example, we’ll repost this blog on ActiveRain, the portal for real estate professionals. We also use Feedburner and other services to notify all the search engines when we post and distribute the content to blog aggregators everywhere.
Finally, Andrew mentioned another of our favorite things: deploying an AddThis button on web pages and blog posts. AddThis and other social buttons give your audience a wealth of ways to share and save your content, including bookmarks, email, Facebook and Twitter.
All this enables more sharing of your content and more external links back to you.
SLIDE SHOW PRESENTATION
Andrew conveniently included his slides in an online slideshow.
WordCamp is great for bloggers of all stripes. Thanks to Matt Walters for organizing WCRVA.
Look for more details soon about WordCamp RDU for folks in the Triangle area of North Carolina.
