My non-profit friend Emily asked me for advice on setting up a blog.
I recommended she use WordPress (it’s what I use in this blog) for the following reasons:
Cost — WordPress is mostly free (you will have to spend $10 to $20 on hosting stuff (explained below)
Flexibility — WordPress is open-source and has many different developers supporting it with widgets and plug-ins.
Google Loves It — WordPress appears to be indexed by Google faster than other blog platforms (including, ironically, the Blogger platform which is owned by Google). This quick indexing is important in terms of Google sending you free traffic.
7 Easy Steps On How To Set Up A Blog Using WordPress
Here’s a 51-minute video tutorial by blog pro Chris Abraham explaining how to set up WordPress.
In it, he explains everything you need to get WordPress set up — they include these 7 highlights (in that order):
Getting Your WordPress Account — Username, password, naming your blog (At first, your blog name will be [TheNameYouChoose.WordPress.com] (later, you can register a domain name and point the blog to it so that “WordPress” is not in your URL)
Activating Your Blog
Understand the WordPress Dashboard
Setting Up A Theme (the design) — He uses the Neat themes: I use Thesis/CopyBlogger (note: you can the theme any time)
Inserting A Picture Of Yourself
How to Register A Domain Name So That It Doesn’t Include “WordPress” — Abraham shows how to register a name through GoDaddy and then how to adjust the settings on WordPress. After that, your blog will be available for viewing at the new URL you registered (I’m a big fan of GoDaddy because they’re available by phone to help you with this integration). Note: This will cost you $10 on GoDaddy and $10 on WordPress.
How To Post A Blog Entry — This can be done in Visual mode (looks like MS Word) or HTML mode. He covers such keys to posting asL
My Search Marketing Expert friend Dan Rosenbaum was kind enough to let me share a summary of the SMX conference he attended recently.
Here are 5 Search Marketing Tips he learned from the conference:
1. Don’t bother creating separate site to appeal to Bing and Google.
Back in the Bad Old Days, it was considered a good idea to code your website in such a way that it would appeal to the half-dozen or so search engines — each of which wanted to see something different.
Now that Google gets the majority of searches, people don’t do that so much anymore. But with the rise of Bing, there was some concern that Bing might be focusing on different signals than Google.
Rand Fishkin, of SEOMoz, showed some experimental data that implies that although Bing and Google are probably weighting their results somewhat differently, the differences are not enough to warrant any particular effort to change the way you’re producing your site.
2. Post a Video Sitemap. Really.
If you have much video on your site, Google was very clear on this point: create, post and maintain an XML video sitemap in addition to your standard XML sitemap. This is, frankly, in Google’s own self interest, as the launch of Google TV nears.
But if Google is telling you that it will be indexing video sitemaps aggressively, why wouldn’t you make the minimal effort to post one?
3. Relevant content is more important than ever.
In late April, Google made some significant changes to its algorithm in what it’s calling its “May Day” update. Perhaps the major change is a greater emphasis on content relevance, especially in the “long tail.”
Put simply: if you want to rank for “frigidare bar drawer refrigerator”, it will not be enough to use some overly SEO-ed boilerplate or even a manufacturer-supplied product description.
Relevant, helpful, original content will rise to the top faster than before.
Or so they say.
4. Content farms and paid links are in great peril.
As part of May Day, Google reps went our of their way to say that links from mass content generators like Demand Media — or any form of paid links — will have their relevance reduced to near zero. (I’ve heard anecdotal evidence about paid links.).
If you’re relying on either one as a source of backlinks or content, expect your rankings to drop severely, if they haven’t already.
5. Expect more “real-time” results in SERP pages.
You may have heard about Google’s “caffeine” update. Caffeine is more an change in the speed that the index is updated than it is a change in the way relevance is calculated.
Where 10 years ago, Google updated its index every few months (yes, really!), the Caffeine update now puts changes into the index as soon as the crawlers detect them — which can be quite fast indeed.
The change has been being rolled out over the past year; it is now active in all data centers in all regions globally. It’s one way that Google can now include tweets in its SERPs.
There was more, of course: a ton of information presented about interesting social media tools, advanced techniques in SEO-friendly site architecture (of special interest to e-commerce sites), real-time search (and the importance of fresh content), and link-building.
If you’d like to discuss any of this, or any other search or content issues you may be facing, please don’t hesitate to work the keyboard or your phone.
If you’d like to find out more about Search Marketing Expert Dan, go check out Danrosenbaum.com.
Did you know that one domain name could easily get you 5-times as much search engine traffic as another similar-sounding domain name!?
Picking the best domain name for your business is an important decision…especially given that search engines will examine your domain name to determine how much traffic to send it.
To pick the best domain name for a search engine, you’re gonna have to consider:
What words or phrases are your prospective customers typing into search engines?
Should a search engine know about your location?
How many domain names should you own to maximize your traffic from a search engine?
What’s the importance of “Micro-Sites” or “Campaign-Sites”?
And more!
Search Marketing Consultant Lana Goldenberg With Her Two Kids
To help answer those domain name/search marketing questions, I reconnected with my old friend Lana Goldenberg the other day (we worked together at Topica and Hot Topic Media).
Lana is now a Search Marketing Coach and was kind enough to share her thoughts on how you should approach using/choosing a domain name that Google and search engines will value.
And she even offers you a freebie consultation — Enjoy!
The Best Domain Name For Your Business
Q: Hi Lana. For starters, does the name of a web site (i.e. the domain name) make a difference in how the Web site shows up in the results of Google or other search engines?
Short answer – yes.
Let’s say your sell organic strawberries online. (I will make up a generic example). Your business name is Picadilly Farms, so you choose PicadillyFarms.com as your website. Your neighbor down the street also sells organic strawberries, and his website is OrganicStrawberries.com.
All other things being equal (and there are many other factors to consider), when your potential customers search “organic strawberries,” Google will display OrganicStrawberries.com higher than PicadillyFarms.com
Q: Is a shorter domain name better than a longer domain name (all other things equal)?
The length of the domain name doesn’t matter, as far as I know. It’s much more important that your domain name is relevant to your business.
So back to the organic strawberries example, if I had to choose between the short domain picfarms.com vs. the longer domain OrganicStrawberriesCalifornia.com I would hands down select the longer one.
Q: Will a Web site with a cute name get more or less search engine traffic than a descriptive name (e.g. which domain name would work better for a flower shop in New York: “RozesAreRed.com” or FlowersOfNewYork.com?)?
To answer this question, you have to get into your potential customers’ minds.
Do they search for “Rozes Are Red” or for “Flowers in New York”? Most likely, FlowersOfNewYork.com will be more relevant to their search.
That said, let’s say Rozes Are Red is the tagline of a massive PR or advertising campaign you are running this fall. Your customer can’t walk by a bus stop without seeing the words Rozes Are Red.
With this much visibility and top-of-mind awareness, you can assume that Rozes Are Red is going to become a top search term in Google. In this case RozesAreRed.com is just fine for a domain name.
Q: What should a business owner consider when selecting the best domain name?
There are a couple of approaches here.
First, you definitely want to reserve your business name as the domain name, and possibly even your first and last name, just for strategic reasons.
Second, get into your target market’s heads and think about the words or questions they are “googling” to address a particular need.
If you are a chiropractor specializing in back pain, your ideal clients are
probably googling “back pain” or “lower back pain” or “pain relief.”
I would recommend incorporating at least some of these into your domain name. So maybe you are able to reserve ChiropractorForBackPainRelief.com based on this information.
Q: What tool do you recommend people use to see what relevant keywords
people are searching on?
Recently we were trying to decide on using “business storage” vs. “commercial storage” on a client’s website. We entered both keywords into Google’s tool, and saw that “business storage” gets searched about 5 times as often as “commercial storage.”
The decision to use “business storage” was a no-brainer based on these numbers.
Q: If a business owner already has a Web site, should they look at their own traffic from search engines to see what keywords are being used? How do they do that?
Yes, you can see the keywords in your website statistics. I recommend installing Google Analytics on your site (note: Check out 3 Easy Steps To Using Google Analytics to learn more about setup/implementation).
Google Analytics is free and will give you the keywords along with many other useful pieces of data.
You may also have a similar tool included with your web hosting.
Q: Is it a good idea for a business to just register a bunch of domain names that match the most searched on keywords (e.g. FlowersOfNewYork.com, FlowerDelivery.com, SendFlowers.com, WeddingFlowers.com, FlowerGifts.com, etc.) and then redirect traffic from all those sites to RozesAreRed.com?
Yes and no. It is a good idea to register the domain names that are relevant to your business. However, just redirecting these domains to your site does not do anything to help you be found online.
Google frowns upon redirects and prefers that you have real and relevant content on each of the domains.
Q: When should businesses use more than one domain name (for the same
customer set?)?
If you are PicadillyFarms.com from my example above, you may want to grab OrganicStrawberries.com (assuming it’s available) and create a site that describes your expertise in organic strawberries, such as:
the reason someone would choose organic strawberries
recipes that use organic strawberries
the best season to come pick organic strawberries on your farm
and other valuable information.
Assuming the organic strawberry business is a profitable one for you, you can use this niche site to increase your visibility for organic strawberry lovers.
It’s an interesting business niching strategy as much as it is a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy.
Q: What’s a “Campaign Web Site” or “Micro-Site”?
In the example above, OrganicStrawberries.com could be considered a Campaign Site or a Microsite.
Large companies routinely create Microsites for new products, offerings, or to support their offline advertising efforts. Auto manufacturers may have separate websites for each model under the umbrella of the corporate brand.
Q: So, let’s say that the business settles on WeddingFlowers.com as their domain name (they’re focused on providing flowers to weddings anywhere in the U.S.). How should they structure their sub-directories (i.e. http://WeddingFlowers.com/_____________) or sub-domains (i.e. http://_____________.WeddingFlowers.com?
The structure of the site would follow the structure of their business. They may want to create sub-directories by wedding themes: WeddingFlowers.com/traditional-wedding, WeddingFlowers.com/outdoor-wedding, and so on.
Q: Are there any search engine marketing (SEM)/SEO books that you recommend people read?
Kurzweil is a visionary (reading machines for the blind, text to speech technology, music synthesizers, a bunch of artificial intelligence stuff) and he had a few nuggets of valuable insights/data points in the interview.
Kurzweil keynotes at Stanford Singularity Summit Stanford Singularity Summit May 13, 2006
I encourage you to read the entire article, but here were my favorites:
…”technologies will be another billion times more powerful per dollar in 25 years and 100,000 times smaller in size.”
“We’ll reach a tipping point in about 15 years where we will be adding more than a year each year to your remaining life expectancy.”
“There has been 18 percent annual growth in every form of information technology for the past half century as measured in constant dollars, despite the fact that you can get twice as much of it each year for the same cost.”
“…there are 5 billion cell phones for 6 billion people…”
“Information-based technologies are affordable only by the rich at a point in time where they don’t work very well. By the time they are perfected, they are almost free.”
“The number of bits we are transmitting on the Internet is doubling every year.”
