[stylist] {Disarmed} FYI for those with websites FW: [New post] All About SEO on WordPress.com

Sat Mar 23 16:38:21 UTC 2013

Hi Friends,
This is a Word Press blog on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you have a
website, this is a very concise piece on getting higher Google rankings,
which will bring more traffic to your site. It's on topic, because we write
to be read, and these tips can help.
Donna

-- The Heart of Applebutter Hill, a novel on a mission:
DonnaWHill.com

Read Donna's articles on Suite 101:
http://suite101 <http://suite101.com/donna-w-hill> .com/donna-w-hill

Connect with Donna on
Twitter:
www.twitter.com/dewhill
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/dwh99
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www.facebook.com/donna.w.hill

Hear clips from "The Last Straw" at:
cdbaby.com/cd/donnahill

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  _____  

From: WordPress.com News [mailto:comment-reply at wordpress.com] 
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 3:46 PM
To: dwhill at epix.net
Subject: [New post] All About SEO on WordPress.com

Elizabeth posted: "We get a lot of questions about SEO here on
WordPress.com, and no wonder -- you work hard on your site and want to get
the word out! SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO recommendations
are intended to help your site rank higher and more accurat" 

Respond to this post by replying above this line	

New post on WordPress.com News 

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 <http://en.blog.wordpress.com/author/eurello/>  	

All  <http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/seo-on-wordpress-com/> About
SEO on WordPress.com

by Elizabeth <http://en.blog.wordpress.com/author/eurello/>  

We get a lot of questions about SEO here on WordPress.com, and no wonder --
you work hard on your site and want to get the word out! SEO stands for
Search Engine Optimization. SEO recommendations are intended to help your
site rank higher and more accurately in search engines, like Google. Say you
write a blog about sailboats. When someone Googles "sailboats," how many
pages of results do they have to scroll through before they see a link to
your blog? The goal behind having good SEO is to increase your website's
SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking.

 many sailboats
<http://en.blog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/img_0232.jpg?w=560> 

On the busy internet, it can be tough to make your "sailboat" stand out from
all the others.

Ideally, you want your link to be on the first page of results. The best
ways to accomplish this are:

*	consistently publish useful, original posts about sailboats; and 

*	promote your blog in intelligent ways to people who are looking for
information about your topic. 

The more traffic your blog receives for sailboat-related searches, the
higher it will climb in Google's results. No mystery to that, right? But if
you look around the internet, you'll find dubious advice about how to
increase your blog's SERP ranking. Some of the suggestions you'll find are
just extra busywork, but some can actually end up hurting you with Google.

Common myths about SEO

Myth: I need a plugin for SEO.

Fact: WordPress.com has great
<http://en.support.wordpress.com/search-engines/> SEO right out of the box
-- you don't have to do anything extra. In fact, WordPress takes care of
80-90 percent of the mechanics of SEO for you, according
<http://vip.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/matt-cuts-google-seo/> to Matt Cutts,
head of Google's webspam team. All of our themes are optimized for search
engines, which means they are designed to make it easy for the Googlebot
<http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182072>
(and other search engines) to crawl through them and discover all the
content.

Myth: I need to regularly submit Sitemaps to Google so it knows I'm blogging
regularly.

Fact: Every WordPress.com blog has an XML
<http://en.support.wordpress.com/sitemaps/> Sitemap. To view your Sitemap,
type yourblogname.wordpress.com/sitemap.xml in your browser's address bar.
What you see there is code, so it's not meant to be easily readable by us.
For the Googlebot, however, it's a "what's hot" guide to the latest and
greatest on your site. WordPress.com also automatically sends notifications
to Google every time you publish or update a post or page. This is similar
to how your subscribers get email updates. Every time you post, you're
telling Google, "Hey! Check this out."

 XML Sitemap
<http://en.blog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/en-blog-wordpress-com_sitemap-xm
l1.png?w=560> 

Here's how this blog's XML Sitemap looks in Chrome.

Myth: The more tags and categories I use for a post, the better it is for
Google.

Fact: Using a bunch of tags and categories that have little to do with your
posts won't increase your site's visibility. Actually, Google doesn't rely
on tags or categories -- it can tell what your post is about from its
content (or it should be able to), as Matt
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A96yDPqa2rs&feature=youtu.be> Cutts explains
here. Plus, any post on WordPress.com with too many categories and tags will
be excluded from the Reader  <http://en.support.wordpress.com/topics/>
Topics pages. It's best to use only a few, carefully selected categories and
tags for each post -- those that are most relevant to what the post is
about. Likewise, avoid overly broad tags: "catamaran" is a better tag than
"boat."

Myth: Creating several identical sites about sailboats and making frequent
use of sailboat-related terminology in my posts will help me get a lot of
sailboat-related traffic.

Fact: Google frowns on duplicate content, and if you have multiple identical
sites, your search ranking will suffer for it. Also, while it's a good idea
to use accurate keywords in your posts and post titles, going overboard with
so-called "keyword stuffing" will hurt your SERP rank. Strive for clear,
natural-sounding writing that reads like it was intended for human ears, not
search engine crawlers.

SEO DOs and DON'Ts

Do:

*	Regularly publish original content. 

*	Use a few precise categories and tags. 

*	Write for human ears. 

*	Build your traffic in smart, organic ways. 

*	Choose simple, meaningful post slugs. 

*	Create a descriptive tagline. 

*	Include keywords selectively. 

Don't:

*	Start duplicate sites. 

*	"Stuff" your site with irrelevant, broad categories, tags, or
buzzwords. 

*	Write with search engines in mind. 

*	Purchase or exchange meaningless "backlinks." 

*	Buy into SEO fads. 

*	Worry too much about SEO at the expense of writing good content! 

Myth: One effective way to improve my blog's SERP rank is to purchase or
exchange links (sometimes known as "backlinks") with as many bloggers as
possible, so that there's a lot of traffic going to my blog.

Fact: If you blog about sailboats, the more sailboat-focused sites and
articles that organically link to your blog as a fantastic source of
sailboat info, the better. On the other hand, Google won't be impressed if
it sees a ton of links to your sailboat blog from blogs about, say,
marketing, basketry, lipstick, electronics, or SEO tactics.

Think of it this way: Google wants people to use its search engine as much
as you want them to visit your website, so its goal is to return the most
useful results for any given query. The more tactics bloggers come up with
to fool Google into ranking their sites higher than they deserve to be, the
more Google corrects its search algorithms to screen out such bad behavior.

Paying for backlinks is a case in point: in April 2012, Google introduced
its controversial
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577406751747002494.h
tml> Penguin algorithm that improved screening for this bad practice, and
many bloggers with excessive backlinks found that their SERP rank plummeted.
The moral of this story is that while SEO fads might bump your site
artificially for a bit, in the long run, they won't work.

Myth: SEO requires a strategy and possibly an expert.

Fact: SEO is mostly common sense. While large organizations might need to
hire a specialist to help them reach some very specific SEO goals, bloggers
and small business owners can do everything required for good SEO on their
own. Google is very transparent about its process -- it has a
<http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.goo
gle.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf>
guide for SEO best practices here, and it shares any new changes in its
methods on  <http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/> its blog.

So, what can you do to increase your SERP rank? There are some simple steps
you can take to make sure your content is properly indexed.

Smart ways to increase your SERP rank

*	Make sure to use short, easy-to-read
<http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/new-post-screen/#post-title-and-url>
post slugs that accurately describe what your posts are about. On
WordPress.com, the post slug is the last part of your post title, which you
can edit to be anything you like. For example, the slug "/buying-sailboats"
is better than "/how-to-buy-a-beautiful-inexpensive-sailboat-on-Craigslist"
or "/354." 

	 post slug
<http://en.blog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/exploring-the-reader_-find-your-
fans-and-follow-yourc2a0faves-e28094-blog-e28094-wordpress-com-1.png?w=560> 

	The post slug for a
<http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/reader-tips/> recent en.blog post.

*	Create
<http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/general-settings/#changing-your-si
te-title-and-tagline> a descriptive tagline for your blog that explains what
your site is about. For example, a strong tagline for our sailboat site
might be "On sailboats, sailing, and sailors. Ahoy!" 

*	Use narrow and specific keywords that will help interested readers
find your site. If you yourself were looking for information on this
subject, what search terms might you try? Be sure to use those terms once or
twice in your post, assuming they are relevant. But don't use them fifty
times. 

*	Be sure to publish new posts or update your content regularly, even
if you have a website. On WordPress.com, most sites are set up in a
standard, blog-style format with a reverse chronological list of posts on
the front page. However, many of you use
<http://en.support.wordpress.com/using-wordpress-to-create-a-website/>
WordPress.com for websites consisting mostly of static pages. This type of
site is not updated as frequently as a typical blog, so if you do have a
website, it's beneficial to have a blog component that you update more
often. Link to that "posts
<http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/front-page/#setting-up-a-static-front
-page> page" from your site's front page, whether by using
<http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/> a menu tab, or by using the
<http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/recent-posts-widget/> Recent Posts
widget in the sidebar of your front page. Because most new visitors land on
your front page first, providing an obvious link to your most recent posts
will help Google see that your site is current and active. 

	 website with blog
<http://en.blog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/twenty-twelve-your-favorite-word
press-theme-updated-and-polished-for-2012-1.png?w=560> 

	An example of a website-style layout, with a blog component and
recent posts widget.

*	Focus on building  <http://learn.wordpress.com/get-famous/> your
traffic in smart ways. Seek out other blogs on your topic (or sharing your
point of view) and leave substantive comments. Use
<http://en.support.wordpress.com/publicize/> Publicize to promote your blog
to your social media circles. If you're more of a general interest blogger,
involve yourself in the WordPress.com community by participating in the
challenges over on The Daily  <http://dailypost.wordpress.com/> Post. 

 sailboat <http://en.blog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/sailboat1.png> 

Follow these tips, and it will be smooth sailing for you and your blog! 
Image via Cheri Lucas

If you're ready to get a bit more advanced, you can use webmaster
<http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/> tools (provided by Google
and Bing) to collect more data about how visitors find your site. This can
help you make decisions about which topics to focus on in future.

In the end, remember that while it's admittedly a lot easier and less scary
to tinker around with SEO than to make yourself sit down and write, there is
no shortcut to building a popular site. The surest way to improve your
site's ranking is to regularly publish interesting, creative content that
people want to read.

Elizabeth <http://en.blog.wordpress.com/author/eurello/>  | March 22, 2013
at 3:00 pm | Tags: Google <http://en.blog.wordpress.com/?tag=google> ,
Search  <http://en.blog.wordpress.com/?tag=search-engine-optimization>
Engine Optimization, SEO <http://en.blog.wordpress.com/?tag=seo> , traffic
<http://en.blog.wordpress.com/?tag=traffic-building> building | Categories:
Better  <http://en.blog.wordpress.com/?cat=172474> Blogging, HowTo
<http://en.blog.wordpress.com/?cat=1921>  | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-3SQ 

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