10 Steps you can take to improve your blogs SEO

1. Name your posts well. Generally shorter is better. If you describe your post accurately in terms that people will search for they will find it. The title for this posts includes several keywords that people may search for so it is a bit longer. Rule of thumb, Google only sees the first 65 characters. Anything over that will be ignored.

2. Use strategic H1 tags in the top of your post. Repeat the Blog post title in an H1 tag at the start of the post. It not only helps the human reader, but Google looks for h1 tags Its also a good way to target keywords in a description for example.

3. Describe your blog post. Use a plugin like All in one SEO. Describe your posts well. Repeat the title and H1 tags for keyword targeting. Dont worry so much about the meta keyword tag, but focus on the wording in the description.

4. Name your images.Name your images. Keep it in line with the content you are using. I wont have an image for this post, but if you look at some of my older posts like Really Simple Brand Tracking, I have named the images with keywords related to the post. I’ve repeated this in the image, alt, caption, description, and title.

5. Use Tags in your post. Most blog platforms have the ability to put tags into a post. Implement tags in the template in either the beginning or end of the blog post. This is a great method of creating multiple keywords without using the meta keyword tag.

6. Use a Tag Cloud Plugin. This helps with keyword targeting. It also helps readers find posts they are interested in by a given tag.

7. Use a Twitter Plugin. Tweet your blog posts. Having a Twitter plugin on the blog will help with back-linking. Whenever possible tweet the whole url. e.g. http://webtechbc.com/blog/10-steps-to-improve-blog-seo/

8. Link your posts as often as possible. Whether you use, twitter, delicious, digg, or another service link to your blog post. Help people find it, most of these services allow for keywords and descriptions. I recommend being as descriptive as possible within 250 characters. Repeat your blog post title and h1 tags whenever possible.

9. Make your posts readable. Don’t write solely for search engines. Write with the reader in mind. There’s a fine balance between a readable document and search engine babble. Be genuine and unique. Keep your readers interested.

10. Go through your archives and update. Once a month go through your archives. Update descriptions, as you receive analytic data for them. If you get a large amount of traffic from an unexpected keyword or phrase, use that in your description. Take advantage of it.

Finally:
Maintaining a blog is hard work. Coming up with new content is also not an easy task. If you are the type of person that learns by doing, write a blog post about something new you’ve learned. Thats what my blog has become, an archive of new things I’ve learned at work. It also helps with my memory retention.

So I have a Brand Name. Now how do I track it?

There is a really easy way to track Brand names in Analytics with-out creating a complex report. Simply login to your Analytics dashboard and go to the appropriate website profile.

Find Advanced Segments under My Customization on the Analytics Dashboard. (Left hand Side).

Select Traffic Sources, in Green on the Left. And drag it to the dimension or metric dotted box.
A drop down box will appear beside the keyword box you just dragged over. Select “Contains”. In the text area to the right enter your brand name. E.G. “Webtechbc”

Next we want to Add or Statement for Medium.

The medium is the type of information you want. Like the medium that directed you to my website.

The result should look like this image…

Advanced Segments - Tracking Brands Names

Before you are done you have to give it a name and save it. I’ve called my Advanced Segment, Organic-Webtechbc.

This is an example of the type of data you will receive. I still need to do a lot of Branding work with Webtechbc so theres not much data in this report. It does how-ever give you a sample to look at.

Organic Keyword Report

Happy Reporting!

A great use of Custom Filters in Google Analytics is to track a specific keyword like your Company Name.

In my case I want to track any search for the name Webtechbc.

Login to Google Analytics: Go to the Website profile you want to add a filter to: Click edit under add new profile on the right hand side. Under Filters applied to, which should be the third row down in the profile table: Click AddFilter.

Name your filter. I’ve given it the name webtechbc: Select Custom Filter: In this case we want to Include. Under Filter field Select Campaign Term. Under Filter Name select: Webtechbc (E.G.). In this case you would use your company name, or a specific term you want to track.  Click Save report and you are done.

Custom Filter Campaign Term

This type of filter is great for tracking marketing campaigns, or keeping track of a specific brand name and from a specific source like google.

Google Insights SEO Keyword Tool

Google Insights analyzes search data over time periods, and tells you what terms are currently trending in a given market.

Lets say you are a photographer and want to name your images. Vancouver photo is a pretty generic term. While it is good to keep names shorter, you will increase your traffic by using terms that are searched for more frequently. I’m going to do a Search Term, search for “Vancouver photo”, using “Image Search”, “World Wide” and “2008 – Present”

Vancouver Photo Google Insights

The result is a table of data that show’s you when this term has been searched for since 2008.

From the results table I can tell that this term has not been used very often since 2008. I may want to consider using a different term. The results also show you Regional Interest, to show you which countries search for the term. The term “Vancouver Photo” has been searched for the most by people from Canada.

Because the time period table told me that this is not a very popular search term, I’m going to use something else. Below the Regional Interest chart is a “Search Terms” graph that shows me the Top Search Queries.

Vancouver Photo Search Terms

From the above table I see that photos of vancouver is a popular search term. From this I may want to name my image, photosofvancouver.jpg. Properly naming your images is a key ingredient in SEO, you also want to include the name in your alt tag, and description or caption tags.

If you are a search engine optimization specialist or a business owner launching a new website. Google insights can help you find market niches for your brand. I should point out that no tool can accurately estimate traffic. With Google Insights you will gain a better understanding of what people are and have been searching for in a given keyword. You can then create tailor your content or create content with those niches in mind.

Keywords

Google says they don’t use them. I’m trying an experiment on my site and am taking them out completely.

The key ingredients you do need for SEO are:

Great Content: Content Always Wins. Make it unique, readable to the human eye, and keep it coming.

Meta Description: Describe your website. Make a unique Description on every page. (this is important!). It’s one of the key ingredients that Google uses when ranking a website.

H1 Tags: Repeat your description with the use of H1 Tags. Search engines scan pages for H1 and use it as a means of ranking.

Here’s what google has to say on the use of keywords:

If you do decide to use keywords, don’t over-stuff them. Keep it simple, with-out repeating keywords. When using them, less is more.

How to Set-up Filters in Google Analytics

What is a filter? A filter is a way of excluding or including traffic as desired. You may want to exclude internal traffic from a specific IP address. Or maybe you have a a page that you don’t need to track statistics for, filters help control the data in a report.

You can create two types of filters:

Pre-defined: Which are filters commonly used by everyone and easily available inside Google Analytics.

Custom Filter: As it implies custom filters allow you to manipulate the data in your reports using custom settings.

On your accounts overview page in Google Analytics go to Edit. It should be on the far right of the account in question.

When you have clicked on Edit you will be taken to the Profile Settings Page. By default filters will appear in the order you publish them. If you wanted to change that you could also do that here under the assign filter order link.

First we want to create a filter. If your job was that of a Web Analyst, and you visit the company website multiple times in the day, you might want to use a pre-defined custom filter to exclude your data from the report. Obtain your IP address, if you are a web analyst you should already know how to do this. If not you can use a service like whatsmyip.org

Under Filters Applied to Profile Should be the Third table on the Profile Settings page. Click +Add Filter on the right side of the table.

We are going to Add a New Filter…

Google Analytics Filters Tutorial

For this example I am going to exclude all traffic on my reports from my IP Address. (dummy ip address).

Analytics Filter, Exclude IP Address

Save changes, and you have created your first filter. You may want to exclude a specific URL or IP Address Range. You can do this with a pre-defined filter.

My next tutorial will be Custom Filters.

I recently learned how to set up HST and Sales Taxes for Canada in Magento Ecommercer Platform.

Lets start with BC because thats the Province I live in.
Enter your magento administration panel.

Go to … Sales … Tax … Manage Tax Zones and Rates … Click on … Ad New Tax Rate.

For British Columbia the HST is GST &PST which is 12%

HST Set Up Magento

Next you will set up the GST for Alberta…

GST for Alberta in Magento Ecommerce

MB or Manitoba is 5 percent, NU or Nunavut is 5 percent, As well as Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan, And the Yukon.

New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia all have individual HST Rates that would have individual tax codes looking like this… You should name your rates in a manner that makes sense. E.G. CA-NS-*-HST

HST 13 Percent

Once you’ve made an appropriate tax rate for each province its time to set up the Tax Rules. Under the Admin Panel Tax Tab … Manage Tax Rules … Add New Tax Rule …

Magento Retail Tax Rules

This tax rule will be for … Retail Customer-Taxable Goods-Rate 1 …

Select … Retail Customers …Taxable Goods … And in this case All Tax Rates
Priority and sort order are up to you, but you can use 1 in this case.
Save the Rule.

Because Shipping is taxable by HST you also want to set up a rule for shipping. for the provinces that have the combined HST. E.G. Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and New Brunswick.

HST Shipping Rule

For Quebec the HST is Calculated by adding GST + HST. Create a new taxable goods rule like above, and set the priority for 2. That way it ads the Quebec HST and GST together to get the HST for Quebec.

This is a complicated subject. If after reading this you are still confused you can see how its done on this youtube video.

Here is a breakdown list that I found in the Magento Forum of HST by Province.

* BC – GST & PST
* Alberta – GST
* Saskatchewan – GST & PST voluntarily (unless is home province)
* Manitoba – GST & PST
* Ontario – GST & RST if have a “business presence” (unless is home province)
* Quebec – QST
* New Brunswick – HST
* Nova Scotia – HST
* Newfoundland & Labrador – HST
* Prince Edward Island – GST & PST voluntarily (unless is home province)
* Northwest Territories – GST
* Nunavut – GST
* Yukon – GST

One of the first things I noticed on the new version of DIYThesis 1.8 is its greatly improved from 1.7. They usually release improved new versions, however I did not like 1.7 and held off for 1.8. The reason being the page options on 1.7 included a huge form with all your pages and took forever to load. Often causing my browser to crash.

Some of the new features.
Robots Meta options on the Thesis Site Options tab include a lot more options now. With this features you dont need to write your own robots.txt file. It includes the options, noindex, nofollow, noarchive and noodp noydir. Very useful for people who are not web designers or coders and don’t know a lot about creating robot files.

Widnows Live Writer Support
Windows live writer lets you publish blog content from anywhere. It integrates mail, photos, Messenger, Movies and more. Not something I use so I wont go into to much detail on it. Windows Live Writer site

SEO Character counters under Home Page SEO