Blogging Basics 101

How do I install a ShareThis button?

The ShareThis button looks like this

When a reader clicks on the ShareThis button, they can choose the link they want to submit your article to (e.g., kirtsy, Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, etc.). It's an uncluttered and very useful.

ShareThis actually has it's own web site that walks your through setting this up on your blog. I'll point you to the pages you'll need.

• Blogger Plug-In
• TypePad Plug-In
• WordPress Plug-In

One word of caution: When I installed the ShareThis button on my TypePad blogs, I received numerous e-mails stating my sites were loading incredibly slowly. Once I removed the ShareThis button, things returned to normal. Instead of the ShareThis button, I use the FeedBurner option of placing these links in the footer of each post. I don't discourage you from using the button, but if you do, check with your readers to ensure the load time of your site hasn't been compromised.

Writing effective links for your audience and SEO

This is a short and simple tip. When you are writing your post and need to insert a link, consider how you are going to write that sentence and where you will include the link. For example, which of these is more effective (potential links in bold)?

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The top sentence is more effective for your audience because it tells you exactly what they need to do. It’s also effective for SEO purposes because search engine spiders are looking for unique word strings. Strings like “click here” or even just the word “here” linked to other files or pages are everywhere on the web. Make your pages stand out by being more descriptive with your links. Help the search engines catalog your site effectively.

How can I add a search function to my blog?

The search bar that I use for my own blogs is the Widgetbox Blogbar Search Bar widget. You would be able to find many options if you Google "search engine widget", but I'm going to explain how to install Widgetbox's search bar because a) I've used it and b) it does most of the work for you so it's incredibly easy to install.

Blogger

If you are using Blogger, the Navigation Bar at the top of all Blogger blogs has a search bar that allows users to search the blog they are visiting. If, however, you've removed the Nav Bar, you'll want to insert a search widget into your code so a search box will show up in your sidebar.

1. Go to Widgetbox's Blogbar Search Bar page.
2. Click on the Get Widget button.
3. A pop-up window will ask you which platform you'd like to add the widget to. Click the orange Blogger button.
4. Click Add Widget. You'll be re-directed to Blogger.
5. Select the blog you want to add the widget to.
6. Type the Title you'd like to give the widget.
7. Click Add Widget. The widget is added to your layout and you are re-directed to your Layout page in Blogger.
8. Click and hold on the element that holds the search bar and drag it to where you want it to appear on your sidebar.
9. Click Save.

TypePad

TypePad offers many different search engine widgets for your blog. Visit TypePad's Widget Gallery and choose the one that is right for you. The following instructions are for Widgetblox's Blogbar Search bar.

1. Go to Widgetbox's Blogbar Search Bar page.
2. Click on the Get Widget button.
3. A pop-up window will ask you which platform you'd like to add the widget to. Click the TypePad button.
4. Click Add Widget. You'll be re-directed to TypePad.
5. Select the blog you want to add the widget to.
6. Type the Title you'd like to give the widget (it won't be displayed on your blog, though).
7. Click Add Widget. The widget is added to your layout (it is added--by default--to the bottom of a column) and you are re-directed to a page that allows you to choose either View Weblog or Change Content Ordering.
8. Click Change Content Ordering and move the widget to the position you want it to appear on your blog.
9. Click Save Changes.

 

You have links to kirtsy, Digg, Del.icio.us, etc. at the bottom of every post. How can I get that on my blog? *UPDATED*

The footer I have at the bottom of the posts here at Blogging Basics 101 is from Feedburner.com. Feedburner is the service I use to distribute my RSS Feeds. It has an option called FeedFlare that allows a blog owner to easily provide links to popular social media outlets (e.g., kirtsy, Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, etc.) so readers can save, promote, or share any article they're interested in.

To set up a FeedFlare, you'll need to first set up your RSS feed through Feedburner.com. They have a Quick Start Guide for all the major blog platforms (Blogger, Typepad, WordPress, MySpace, etc.). Just go to the Guide and click on the link for the platform you use. They also have a Feedburner Help Center to answer any other questions you may have.

Once you've set up your feed via Feedburner, click on the Optimize tab for your blog's feed. On the left sidebar, scroll down until you see FeedFlare. Click it. Then you'll be directed to a page that shows you all the options you have for your FeedFlare footer. Pick and choose what works for you and your readers, then follow their instructions for installing it on your blog.

UPDATE: To add the kirtsy link to your feedflare, please follow the simple directions at kirtsy. Just scroll down to where it says kirtsy FeedFlare.

I often see on blogs that people say “these are the top ten searches used to find my blog" or something like that. How do I find out this information for my blog?

This information is found from your stat counter software. All stat counters that I know of have a link that will show you your search engine results. If you click on that link you will see the key words people are searching for to find your blog. Sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's creepy, and sometimes it's relevant. At any rate, it's always good to keep tabs on how people are finding your site so you can make any necessary changes to your content.

In addition, Daily Blog Tips has another article on checking the historical search data of your blog.

Is there a way for me to keep my blog from being indexed by search engines?

Most bloggers do everything they can to drive traffic to their site; they want their content to be indexed by search engines. However, some bloggers find it a little disconcerting to have strangers find them through seemingly unrelated (to their blog) searches.

If you would like to ensure that the bots from search engines do not index your site for search results, there are ways to do this. Vanessa Fox is an authority on SEO (search engine optimization) and has more information than you can shake a query at. Whether you're interested in optimizing your search engine rank or taking your blog or web site off the search engine radar, I suggest checking out what she has to say.

If you would like more information about how to take your blog off the search list, you can view this article at Google: How do I request that Google not crawl parts or all of my site?

Now, go out there and optimize those searches! Or, you know, don't.
 

Ten SEO Tips

Michelle from scribbit is back with us today. In fact, she'll be with us most of this week! She has generously agreed to let us re-print several of her articles here on Blogging Basics 101. We know you'll appreciate her input and advice as she's incredibly blog-savvy! BTW, if you aren't reading her on a daily basis, you should be. Check her out.

SEO, or search engine optimization, can be a mysterious thing so here are ten ways to increase your blog's presence on Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

1. Make sure the search engines spiders are crawling your blog, or in other words, submit your blog's URL to Google by going to Google's submission page. Go to Yahoo's submission page and MSN, and do the same thing (AOL is powered by Google and therefore if you're read by Google you'll be read by AOL). Everything I've read says that submitting to any other search engines is unnecessary. There are sites out there such as Submit Enginez that claim to allow you to submit to twenty or more search engines at once but I don't know if they are effective or necessary.

2. Make a plan about which keywords you'd like to use in your blog. Go to Google's Keyword Tool (or Digital Point Solution's Keyword Suggestion Tool or View Bids) which evaluate key words by the number of searches performed and type in a word such as "Alaska" and you'll see the various phrases that include the word "Alaska" and how popular each is. For example, you can see that "Alaska," "Anchorage, Alaska," "Alaska cruise," and "Alaskan" are the most popular and the relative price advertisers will pay for those phrases when placing their ads on your blog.

Run through various words or phrases that you feel describe your blog and see what combination gets a comfortable amount of traffic. Be careful, trying to compete against the most popular words is more difficult, so pick words that aren't obscure but that aren't at the top of the list.

4. Start "optimizing" your blog for those key words. Make sure your page title--or the title you see at the top of your blog page, on this page it says "Scribbit|Motherhood in Alaska"--reflects those key words.

On Blogger you can add this by going into your template and in the first line after the head tag where it says title followed by $BlogPageTitle$ type whatever key word phrase you'd like to use. On my blog I've targeted the words "motherhood" and "Alaska" so I added the phrase |motherhood in Alaska after my title. And it's worked. If you go to Google and type in those two words you'll see I'm the first entry.

5. Turn your attention to other places key words are used in your blog. That means abandoning the cute, fluffy, catchy titles for posts that are so tempting but absolutely useless when it comes to SEO. Short, informative titles with effective key words are what you're looking for.

For example, last month I did a quick little post about getting a new camera. I took a picture, uploaded it and without much thought titled it My New Camera. Makes sense, right? Simple, personal, to the point. However it was quickly pointed out to me that a better title would have been "My New Canon Powershot SD 600." Now perhaps that's a bit long and involved but if I had titled the post "My New Canon Powershot" or "My New Canon Powershot SD 600" whenever someone searches for Canon or Canon Powershot I would be high on the list. The word "camera" is vague enough that I have little chance of finding the first page of Google with that in my title.

So avoid obscure titular references, quotes or phrases and incorporate key words that the crawlers will notice and write posts that will produce titles worthy of search engine notice.

6. Remember this same principle when linking to other sites. Do you notice how in this post whenever I have a link to another site I list the title of the article or site by name? It is common among Bloggers to incorporate links casually by writing click here but every time you post a link that way you've wasted an opportunity for the search engines to notice you.

So not only are nouns key words, proper nouns are key words too and mentioning your links by name grabs Google's attention.

7. This same principle holds true for images. When you have an image on your blog, such as on your sidebar, adding a title to the image is one more way to insert key words into your blog.

For example, on my sidebar at the bottom of that lengthy list of collapsible menus is "Buttons and Awards." Click on the plus sign to expand the menu and you'll see a long list of images. If you allow your cursor to hover over each image, you'll see that a title for the image appears. Now I haven't done this for each image, there are a couple I've forgotten, but most have titles that will appear.

Each one of these titles will be noticed by the search engines and will connect me to anyone searching for those titles.

To do this, use this html and type title="Whatever You Want the Title to Be" alt="Whatever You Want the Title to Be" in between img and src= in the html for the image.

8. Beware of using--for lack of a better word and to refrain from breaking this rule myself--dirty words or phrases. If you use certain words in your posts or titles, however innocently, the search engines make no differentiation and will catalogue you accordingly.

Now this may be fine with you, but then again you may not want visitors looking for questionable content, especially if you have pictures of your children and family posted. Because I discuss my life so openly I try to avoid using words that would bring unwanted visitors and so far my Google analytics tell me the most colorful search I've had is "my husband wears my pajamas." I'd like to keep it that way.

9. Avoid things that can damage your Google ranking. Rather than spend time listing the various things that can hurt your blog, I'll just refer you to this comprehensive article Search Engine Ranking Factors. Scroll down to where it discusses detrimental factors and make sure you're not doing anything so offensive as spamming your blog with keywords, stealing content, hijacking a URL or posting offensive content. All are red flags for the search engines.

10. Build up your links. No one knows exactly how Google sorts and ranks and crawls each site--it's a secret algorithm that is more carefully guarded that the recipe for Coca Cola--but links are a big part of it. The number of sites linking to you and the number of sites you link to are all measured and weighed as is the authority of an inbound link.

So the point is, if you have many sites linking to you--especially sites that are big and have authority--then your Google ranking will be higher. For example, a couple months ago I got a couple links from The Anchorage Daily News and it instantly improved my Google ranking on unrelated posts.

Finally, remember that SEO is more art than science. For additional reading, if you are a fluent coder SEO Guide for Beginners may be helpful (but don't be fooled, it's really not that basic) and Optimizing Your Blog for Search Engines is an article that talks about Section 508 and 301 redirect and sitemaps which will keep you busy with more techy details.

SEOMoz is a blog that deals entirely with Search Engine Optimization that frequently has helpful articles.

Problogger has many helpful articles with easily digestable information, a few of which include: Search Engine Optimization for Blogs, SEO Tip 1 Use Keywords in Titles, Formatting Images for SEO, and Search Engine Optimization for Blogger Blogs.