Archive for the ‘Content Writing & SEO Tips’ Category

Knowing what keywords to optimise for

Is your website optimised for search engines? That’s great. The big question, however, is which keyword phrases your pages are optimised for – and do people actually type those terms into search engines?

Many websites naturally rank well for their own business name, brand or product names. Unless your branded names are incredibly common, it’s not hard at all to rank well for these, particularly if the words are part of your domain name or page URLs.

It’s the more generic keyword phrases your target market may be using that you want to know about, so you can optimise your pages for them and get new people (potential customers) who don’t yet know about you to find your website. You want to find the search terms people use when looking for the type of products/services you offer and target those.

(more…)

How often should you repeat your keywords?

Keyword density. That’s a term that refers to how many times you use a certain keyword phrase on a web page as a percentage of the total number of words on that page.

Some people offering SEO services hammer on about making sure your text has a certain keyword density (e.g. that 3% or 6% or whatever of your text should consist of your targeted keywords).

Well, guess what? That’s nonsense. (And don’t just take it from me, listen to Google. See Matt Cutt’s webmaster video below.)

There is NO magic number when it comes to keyword density in SEO.

(more…)

Should your blog show post extracts or full posts? [Survey Results]

Have you ever wondered whether you should set your blog homepage to show full blog posts or post extracts/excerpts only with a link to read more? Or maybe a combination?

What do most blog readers prefer? I asked myself this question recently and some quick online research didn’t give me a definitive answer.

I asked around on Twitter, but got mixed responses. So I set up a survey (in the form of a quick poll question, with an optional field for comments) to try to get a better idea of what blog readers prefer.

The outcome may surprise some. And the comments help remind us that everyone has different habits and preferences and that includes the way people like to read blogs.

Recommendations are at the end of this post.

(more…)

Full Posts or Extracts on Blog Homepage? Your Preference Please!

When you visit a blog, do you want to see only extracts of blog posts (with a link to read more), or full posts right there (so you don’t have to click again), or some kind of combination of both?

I was wondering if there’s a clear preference among blog readers. Asking around on Twitter resulted in a mixed bag of results, so I decided to put up a poll and ask more people.

Let’s try to get a clear answer to this question. Other people are wondering too. Once we know what people prefer on blog homepages, we can give our blog readers what they want.

To help me get to the bottom of this, please take a few seconds to answer my poll question:


I will blog about the results next week.

Thanks!

Guest Post on Canada’s largest Internet Marketing Blog

In March this year I was honoured to be invited to submit an article as a guest blogger to Canada’s largest internet marketing company, Search Engine People. My first guest post was published on Search Engine People’s high-profile blog on April 5th 2011 and has received some great responses.

The article identifies common website performance problems and gives a checklist of potential causes and solutions.

Read my guest post on the Search Engine People Blog here: Website Performance Troubleshooting Checklist.

Why would you write a guest post for someone else’s blog?

Having informative, well-written guest posts published on blogs of other websites or companies is a great way to:

(more…)