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Blogging and SEO

So now we're going to dive into organic ceo and again, especially for those of you that maybe just tuned in. I spent the last ninety minutes talking about the way you feed the search engine optimization engine really is that you produce lots of content, so we are going to I'm going to start off today or start off this session. I should say, I'm talking a little more about content, but now we're transitioning into not just producing it, but a little bit of how you deliver that that platform for delivering content um, I I run my entire business online presence I should say my sight in every, you know way is run on wordpress. So my, let me ask you guys, how many wordpress ok, so, yeah, the majority of the world really anymore is moved a wordpress. A lot of people still think in terms of the word press platform or software as a blogging tool on dh. It really is a it was always a content management system. So it's built, you know, using a system that polls, you know, all the content from a ...

database, which is what makes it different than, say, just static, you know, html pages that the first version web sites were built on anymore, I think, ah, business the content that we need to produce that we talked about, and really just what the expectations of what a website can do for somebody who's visiting, let alone, you know, the business now, I think requires us to have a little more technology, but the good news is a lot of that advanced, enhanced technology and functionality actually comes with maury's of management than then back in the day when we had to build these pages. And, you know, I remember one of my first web sites, you know, one of the biggest challenges every year was I wanted to put copyright, you know, at the very bottom, you know, and I would have to go through and change every single page of the when the new year came over round, right on dso just really, you know, that's a little silly example, but just the technology has come along that has actually made it so that once you're using this platform, once you had this technology set up, it really allows you or really, anyone in your organization now to create content that you're putting up there on the web. So a lot of the and for those of you out there in duct tape land that are watching a aa lot of the content I'm going to talk about in this session really is very word. Press specific now if you're using other content management systems like june la and you know some of the other square square space you know, some of the other systems a lot of what I talk about well actually apply but I really intentionally stay very wordpress focused because oh, I think that's what you should be using and so it's really just it's my bias towards saying, hey, you know, everybody in the world should be using that tool I just really, really love that tool you in the right combination of things can actually set up on I'm not saying that this really is a reason to not use a professional designer or somebody that can help you make things work better together make your sight faster but you know, somebody can actually get started with the word press the word press blogging software and a theme that that does a lot of things that that works well with wordpress for a couple hundred dollars on dh then add some hosting on top of that so I mean there's really no excuse now for somebody not having kind of that power? And as I said there's also lots of really great reasons to hire people to do custom names for you and to really make your site as effective as possible for your objectives but prices really no longer an excuse to not have you know that kind of tool so wordpress blawg is, you know, is so what? I'm going to go through this list of really what I think are, you know, sort of the standard content delivery tools that you should have. So the word press blawg, no question already a podcast again, I really believe that producing audio content is again like a lot of things not only gotten so easy, but people consuming it subscribing to it now has gotten so easy because everybody's got that mobile audio device in their in their pockets now, and I hear from people all the time that that say, you know, I've got an hour commute um, I go to the gym and run on the treadmill for twenty five minutes, I mean, this and and that's when they are actually squeezing in, you know, this extra content consumption, I'll tell you, the other thing I discovered years ago because a lot of people when they jumped off a podcast thing was big because they originally it started it because they thought they were going to kind of build this large listening audience and there's going to be all kinds of advertising dollars, and it was going to be almost replacing radio in a way, but one of the things that I learned really quickly on was I could send pretty much anybody I wanted to meet, um and you know, have a chat with I could send them an email that I use the subject line interview request um and then I would explain, you know, my podcast I explained that I what I wanted to do and I can count on one hand the number of people that I said no, we're just didn't respond I mean, you look at my books now and the blurbs of by people you know, like seth cohen and guy kawasaki and you know, those were people I've never met before that agreed to come on my podcast and essentially have a thirty minute conversation with me again I'm promoting their book, you know, they were hoping there'll be some benefit to that but then they then, you know, became actually allies and became friends and became colleagues through that process. So think about applying that you know, you may not have any desire to have seth godin you know, obviously is a marketer that was a pretty good person for me to meet, but think about your own industries there there are there influencers leaders in your own industry, you know, maybe potential people in your community that that you would even see as a prospective client that has, you know, that has something to say that would actually we I want you or would be desires of coming on actually in having you talking to every one of my shows is just twenty minutes I set up, you know, all the recording through skype used, you know, garage band, you know, teo, teo edit the audio's, and then I push him out to tow itunes s so that people can subscribe, and so it just really is another easy way to produce content, but I'll tell you that I would do it if nobody, even if nobody was listening because of the access that it gives me two people now. There's, no question, I mean, I've built a reputation and a brand, and so people are going to respond, you know, bigger names for the that I might want to get our going to respond, but I really do believe that that every single one of you could create a list of eight or ten people that you would love to have a conversation with, and that could be an access point. A newsletter I send out a weekly newsletter, I think that having some form of communication where you really are able to consistently communicate with a group of some segment of a group, a cz part of your content delivery platform is essential. We've talked over and over again about having e books that has to be part of your content delivery platform I I will tell you that I've no more than one of my books is a collection of eight or ten block post on you know, on a specific topic now a lot of times you have to create transitions you have to make you write some things that make it make sense, but it could be a really easy way to produce something that people really want um guess post another really, I think essential part of the of the content delivery platform two sided right? You I believe that every single one of you should be at ashley asking people to write guests posts on your blog's value that of course we talked about it yesterday maybe you get a little break, you get some extra content, right? But also typically and and again I wouldn't make it part of the deal, but typically those people will link to your site. One of the key things we're going to talk about in uh, this ceo section is the value of links from other index sites back to your side or back to your content. The other side is you should go out there and start in my opinion start looking for some opportunities to guess post there are a number of very, very high traffic blog's that actually take a lot of content via guest post in some cases that might be a good place for you to start I would definitely start looking in places that are relevant to your industry, obviously because they're probably going to have readers know that doesn't necessarily mean a a site that writes about exactly what you write about a site that's run by a business that is maybe a competitors, but certainly for example, you know, craig in the in the travel industry, you know, there are lots and lots of travel blocks and people that write about travel andan some cases it's just about, you know what to do in italy and, you know, howto you know, travel efficiently or cheap or something, I mean, I would venture to say there would be a lot of those places that that would could take some of your knowledge on day would love it, and one of the things I would recommend that if you go out and get some of these opportunities, is that you also ask that the very least what you want is a link back to your site inside of your post so you can do it one of two ways you can you can actually have that, you know, it's part of the content you could maybe linked back to something that was relevant, another block post may be that you had written, or certainly in what they call a resource box or a bio or some thing you know, typically at the end of the post, you know, at the very least have that, um, links inside of and this is getting over tosto a little bit links inside of the body of a block post are some of the link back to your side are some of the highest quality in terms of the search engines, the some of the highest quality links that you can get. So you really want to go after those as much as possible? Let me ask you guys, anybody guess blogging right now? Where have you been and on your site? But I've also that didn't get you anything. Also, I've been asked a guest blogged for a couple of associations that I've spoken for. So the national association of profession, professional women, landscapers and a couple of industries like that, I now write columns, foreign blogged for them, ok, and are you? Does anybody guess bog you? Have you solicited any guest blogged post for your site? I haven't actually, this just reminds me of, you know, the value of going back and looking at the detail here, you're never finished marketing, so I was just writing down the names of some people that I'm going to ask guests blob for me, because all of us find that you know, delivering that volume of content is a bit of a challenge so you know, it certainly does take some of the pressure off if you can get some folks who writes indecent content there and let me remind the what I said in that first session two if you have your themes playing that to all of a sudden you can start planning the asks and I really I find at least when I asked somebody right instead of hey, would you write something? But, hey, would you write something on this? It seems like you just get I get quicker response and I get on and I think I think people actually appreciate that subject. Yeah, you know, being given to him. Yeah, no, I absolutely they do. Because if you give them a little bit of direction, you get something back a lot quicker is yeah, yeah. So let me just ask you last part of that then have you have you been able measure value and you're obviously getting links? Have you been able to measure any other value beyond that specifically? Yeah, some additional subscribers because you can find that, you know, those things were happening in the same day timeframe and looking at how many people are coming to the site and then are there some additional subscribers from there, okay, um webinars or online seminars? You know, another great content delivery? I would, you know, there's so many ways to do that. If you have your theme for the month, why not think about a presentation that fits inside your theme? It just gives you another reason to talk about that theme. I can't tell you how many presentation you know when I get asked, I get asked to do presentations a lot and a lot of sometimes they just want my traditional referral engine, you know, presentation or some times they give me something very specific that they want for their group, so I'm a really, really any I've said this before, but I never very, very rarely right one piece of content with one purpose in mind. And so if I get asked to do a presentation somewhere and I do the research, I create my presentation, I guess I can almost guarantee that it was gonna be a block poster to that comes out of that because I've had to learn something new or I've had to research something new. S o you know, I think in terms of maybe tear it turning, you know, a block post into a monthly presentation on dh obviously record that thing, you know, transcribe it, put it on your website. I know people that do ah we're going talk about google plus you could certainly use google plus hangout to do this to maybe having ah weekly live q and a hang out so you maybe maybe you propose a a question starter like we're going to talk about x or we want to know your thoughts on x so maybe you kind of give it a theme or a topic but then you invite people uh you know, the nice thing about google plus hangouts is that you you can make them closed so you can say I'm you know, ten people can come into this thing nobody else can see it nobody else can participate or you could make it actually public so you still invite who's going to be in it so maybe invite some customers to participate in it but then you anybody who's on google plus at the time can look actually google plus post the schedule of hangouts so if you actually you can click on a link on google plus we'll show you what hangouts are scheduled for that day so you may maybe some extra people find you you have an option to run it live on youtube, which I think is I really love because it not only opens it up to people that are on youtube it record it and saves it on dh so all of a sudden you've got, you know archived your google hangout if you want so what about offline? Go ahead chris on youtube I was thinking about video and youtube channel you know I guess would that fit into absolutely in fact that that should probably be on this list as you know, one of your core assets you know they're not everybody likes to sit and watch videos of any length but there definitely are people that that's all they'll do right? So I'm one of those people that it's hard for me to sit and watch a twenty minute video I just think my attention span you know it's just not there but but there definitely are people that again as I said that's all they'll do so having a youtube channel on dh producing lots of content that you can then run on your site or people can just view on youtube is definitely another way to do it and I know you know, I know a number of people that feel like they get a pretty good size audience by taking one block post a week and just recording it and that that's their podcasts you know then they uploaded tio have it you know, upload to itunes and people subscribe and listen that way and really, you know, once people subscribe to that content and that's one of the things that I think really sort of magical about the whole are ss subscription aspect is that that they then just it's automatically fed to to their to their iphone when they when they sync up. So, uh, anybody listening to the duct tape marking podcasts? Ok, a couple of you did awesome on drily again. That's, that's a that's sort of a choice thing, right? You know, some people are that's how they want to consume content. So a lot of this, you know, people look at this and say, well, gosh, do we really need it all these various forms and all these different places? And I would say, you know, if you came to me and said, I can on ly do one thing, you know, I would definitely say consistently blogging would be the first step. But one of your one of the beauties of this kind of overall content plan is that I think it does get you to start thinking mohr about asking guests bloggers about creating video about doing, say, the monthly or the weekly webinar or something of that nature. So people will come to you for different reasons and different times. And, you know, think of your own content consumption. You know, there are times when, you know, we send out our newsletter, and, you know, we get x percent that that open it and read it every week, but I guarantee you it's a different it's, a different group every week, it's not the exact same people that opening every weekend. So sometimes I think we kind of think, well, gosh, I already wrote that blawg post already wrote about that topic. I mean, so people don't really want to read that anymore. I think I think you, khun, I wouldn't just duplicate everything you've done, but I think you can revisit topics over and over and over again because you're going to be hitting different audiences with them. So I thought I would share with you, um, before I kind of give you your action plan for blogging how I belong. I the software I use is wordpress. The theme that I you wordpress theme I use is called genesis on dh. The really, really talented designers at copy blogger jenesse our studio press really is the company there. Their theme company created what's called a custom child theme, so my theme is is actually had a little bit of work done on it. Um, but but it runs on the genesis framework. There are three plug ins that I heartily recommend and, uh, and use every day the first one's called contextually related. Posts and plug ins or just that's. One of the reasons wordpress software I love wordpress offer so much is because you have this whole universe of people out there it's open source software. And so you have this whole universe of people out there that khun build enhancements and plug ins and things that make it actually more useful. You know, some sometimes you can go overboard to you, see these people that, you know, they have all these bells and whistles added on because they can, so you could certainly overdo it. But what thes three, I think, are really important. What contextually related post does is every time I write a block post, it scans through my whole database and says, oh, here's five posts that it kind of about the same thing on dh, it automatically puts a link to all five of those posts at the bottom of today's post. So and I can tell you from looking at analytics that when somebody, when one of my block post, especially with one's particularly popular, all five or some percentage of those related post will show up back on the analytics again because people are reading and thinking, oh, I want to go there, and I want to go there, you've probably done that. Right when you go on there you go oh here's something else related to it on dh so it keeps people on the site it keeps people consuming more content it gives just mohr exposure to your content I'm going to go into actually depth and how I use this plug in because I think it's really important but the ceo plug in from a really, really brilliant plugger and plug in creator goes by the name of yost eso it you know that right out of the box the word press software actually is very, very much optimized for search but you actually have the ability to make it e really even mohr affect every single one of your block post every single one of your pages even mohr optimized for search the hosting that I use is also from copy blogger called company called synthesis and this particular there are a lot of host if you know if you're not really getting that much traffic there are a lot of hosts that are less expensive you know host gators won one in one eyes another one that that certainly gets a lot of blue host is another one that I've heard good things about um a synthesis is built exclusively for work pressed on dh so it really takes an entirely different approach to how it serves content on and all I can tell you is my site is fairly high traffic and I had issues with my side just loading very slowly and I went pretty big name hosts paid a lot of money for big name hosting on dh still couldn't get my side to speed up the second I moved it to synthesis it just cleared all the issues they backed the side up every day they can roll it back so when I make a mistake on tryingto edit code myself that I shouldn't be editing I think they could roll it back because I broke something so it's I think you can get a look I think you could get the starter plan for like twenty five dollars a month but I just really I really think that you know, if you're if you're going to invest in wordpress as your primary way to go then I really think it's it's worth paying the extra money so I wonder if you have any opinions on that mike because I know you probably get into that aspect yeah no, I don't never hadn't heard of synthesis I actually worked with host gator and I was going to ask you you said high traffic and that's something means different things that these people what what like was that a ten thousand unique visitors a day? What is over our psych hold? Well, I mean like I say we're kind of a mid range site we're probably in about thirty thousand a day yeah, so the difference you need serious house aiming for that obviously but quite frankly um I saw my sight slowing down and when we were getting five thousand today right? So you know, then there's cashing plug ins and all kinds of ways of trying to maybe cheap tio speed it up that some of the marked and some get and it's interesting because that that aspect really does go to search engine optimization too because people didn't go out there and search our google's clients right? And google doesn't want to give their clients bad experiences so if your site loads really slowly you're going to get nicked I mean they're not going to show your content and so site speeds actually become one of the important algorithm things that that the search engines are actually looking that um and I'll show you when I think maybe it's in this session actually a way you can check your side speed with some of the google tools and at least to know if you have a problem I mean, I may give you this whole list of things that were like this is all you know, foreign language to me how I fixed any of this but somebody that specialists that works on that are hosting company you know might actually be able to address that with you so you mention framework I know we're press you know, you you can just upload a theme you necessarily have a framework that's kind of a different beasts in itself, right? Yes, yes, and people probably a little more technical than that than me that can talk about that, but the difference in really in a framework is a framework actually allows you a lot more flexibility in what you can change and edit the genesis on what you can add. A lot of times, framework builders will actually build some of their own tools, like the sliders and things that you see on dh widgets that allow you to actually, you know, you could actually show def for widgets on every page you wanted. I mean, so there's there's a lot more there's a lot more functionality in using frameworks. I think the other thing that that I've really enjoyed and kind of jumping ahead to the mobile is the theme is inside of of the genesis framework is responsive as well, and so it adapts to whatever you're looking whatever device you're using. So instead of having a mobile theme or having plug ins that handles that theme, it actually it actually changes it for me on and actually, you know, you might put that I've got to believe we've got some programmers out there that can maybe even specifically talk about the benefits of a framework like genesis versus just a theme so it would be interesting to do you have anything to say on that one mike yeah no I actually have ah framework called page lines you've probably heard of that it's uh pretty user friendly a little bit more so than uh genesis or or thesis for somebody new who wants toe yet take control of it there's mixed reviews on all of them sure pending on your experience yeah but then you have themes that are um built so you get a custom very custom look but it's built on top of that so like a child theme for genesis that you can then go by and layer on top of that when you want to change go get another theme or what have you and and I'm I'm the the people that sell genesis or make genesis it's called studio press and they actually have you don't have to have the genesis framework to run their themes s oh yeah they're actually pretty good theme designers did you get somebody weighing in coming in we have something do muffin points out you really need to consider site speed if you're utilizing responsive designed to create your website because google has proclaimed this is part of their ranking yeah so that's an important thing let's the uh one of your network taylor says framework like genesis adds another layer for s e o and security I only develop with genesis now in use child names for the aesthetics on ben three eighteen media. From a development standpoint, frameworks are easier for updating and customization. They can get pretty dense with codes. You might have to get a web designer into doom or extreme changes. Yeah, yeah, tradeoff. Sincere concern, right? Yeah. No, that was great. Great. Well, tell those guys to stay. Stay put. We'll we'll come back to them. That's. Awesome. Okay, so that again, that's really? You know, that's what I'm doing so sometimes people I get, I get asked those kind of questions all the time, so sometimes people it may or may not be the way that you'd run yours, but that's what I'm currently doing so you're blawg action plan. First thing I would have you do if you're not reading blog's subscribed to twenty or so blocks using feed lee or, you know, one of the tools we talked about earlier feed bin all top, you confined him another side. I forgot to mention to it's a great resource called topsy it's. Probably my favorite blawg search engine. Um that's. Probably not what they would build themselves as. But if you go to top scene put in any kind of any subject, they'll show you some of the most popular blawg content written on that subject on dh the way they actually rank it is by you know how many people have retweeted it how many people have shared it in various places how many comments that got so it really is it's ah it's kind of it's not just a popularity as much as it's an engagement measurement as well andi it's actually another piece to put in kind of you're listening and you can get you can start seeing some metrics on your own logs you know, if if if you could follow you know how often they're being retweeted how popular on log posts are another thing I like to tell people do is start getting in behalf of commenting go out and find so of these twenty blocks that you subscribe to I'm guessing at least ten of them were going to be relevant to your industry or have you know, maybe readers you know, some of might be your customers some of them might be your competitors but go out and start actually leaving blawg comments and I'm not just talking about great post good job I'm talking about actually relevant you know, conversation on post that that are writing about things that are meaningful to you well here's what I found from particularly people just getting started you're not going to get I mean don't leave your link you know, to your site in there I mean it's not you're not going to get any any true s ceo value out of that but what what back linking these days has really come down to networking getting links as really it's you know it's not about buying or exchanging, you know it's about organic networking so one of the first steps in my opinion and doing that is actually going out and making relevant comments on other blog's because what I find is that I know in my case you know, a lot a lot of times people are writing what I think you're kind of smart things also who is this person you know, check him out and I'll see what they're writing about and in some cases I you know, I may write a block a comment on their block I mean, so um get I think I get in the habit of, you know, finding some of these that you that you want to make comments on it could be journalists that again, you know, every journalist in in the world now is writing a block because there, whether they like it or not, their publication told him they had to or their reap publishing their content online and they have commenting opened up got recruit a tw least three great guests, bloggers and three guests blogging opportunities so I'm giving you actually homework here okay? To get you started this craig, did you have a question when you were a reference the twelve teams to come up with for block poses do you promote those externally or you using them internally you know it's not necessary that you promote them externally in some case in my particular business I do have blawg post about it you know we send out some you know, things they were looking for guest bloggers and that you know maybe so we do some things that maybe I don't necessary use it as a you know, promotional tool per se but I don't mind telling people what I'm going to be writing about and I think there could be instances where you might want to actually publish I mean I published my entire schedule on my block you know at one point in a guest post and I think there could be particularly if you're trying to recruit guest bloggers are guest content there could be some really valid reasons for doing that but definitely I used it internally obviously right yeah do you have any blogging type questions out there from the the blogosphere way have one from money t and this is kind of a more like uh necessary your own blogging but is it okay to comment on your competitors blog's I think it is I mean I I hope you're not suggesting you go there and like basham or say this you know, this post is really stupid or anything of that nature but certainly um I think it's a great idea on dh could actually turn into a potential strategic partner I mean again I would I would certainly not use that as a way to alienate anyone or just to try to correct the person or something if you thought but order order you know another thing you see people do quite often is is say, hey, this is a great subject I just wrote about this yesterday and then they you know, put a link to their blogging there you know, I think there's etiquette in those types of things I mean I think if you know when somebody posts a common on mine that that does have a lincoln it I mean if they truly have contributed something, you know, a value that's going to value the conversation I I don't have a problem with that onda certainly thinking that come what you're calling a competitive er I think they're gonna be a great way to sort of reach out I mean, maybe the competitors wouldn't think so, but I'd give it a try. What questions from one from the rain the store how often should guess bloggers post well the how often how many questions were so hard? Because they're all really relevant you know? I'll tell you what I do is I have one guest post a week on dh that's because you know, the dna of my bloggers really always been me but there are some some very well trafficked boggs is dozens of people are posting dozens of times a day I will save from a search engine standpoint there is that balance of more content actually does draw more traffic so there certainly are people if they're really trying to build traffic that will take the approach of having more guest bloggers but I think if if it's your business I mean it's not you know, a lot of those sites that you see maybe that people wanna copy there truly just media sites is what they've turned into, right? But if it's your business and you're primarily trying to promote, you know, your expertise or your business, you know, I would think you would you maybe want to have a you wouldn't have you wouldn't want to have the predominant amount of content uh, necessarily written by guests thank you. Uh stayed open you create says are your newsletters archived in searchable like your blogged? If so, what do you use to do that they actually are and we actually you I use infusion soft as my email service provider on dh it automatically archives our newsletter, so when we send it out it creates a web version of it on dh then we have a link that we have a page that we post all of our past newsletters, so yep probably a lot of people who have wondered how the what the mechanics are of how you've taken a guest blogged post I know there's, you know, when you could get somebody to email teo and you've got to go through and there's plug ins that would let you approve it to get back and access as a contributor. Yeah, that's, great, there actually are some, um, there actually are some really good playing. If you really want to just automate the process or semi automate the process, there actually are some some wordpress plug ins that that would allow people to create their own account, and then they had add their own author box so all of that would be put in there, and they would actually have the ability to to just enter into you would give them what would be called, you know, editor, you know, rights inside of wordpress, so they couldn't delete your theme where you were changing things. Actually, they couldn't even publish the content. It would just stay in draft form on dso then they would put it in there, you know, using hopefully what would be their knowledge of the word press. Admin panel and then save it on dh then you would have you know somebody that could edit it could go through it approve it could fix it you have need be andi I think that that's ah that's probably the that's probably one of the best ways if you're going to generate a lot of content and I actually have installed these plug ins on a couple sites but I can't I can't remember the names of women uh you know do you have a company want to share well gravity forms is one of the ones that comes up and you can actually set it so that they never go to the back end yeah and then you know so it's really a form exactly yeah that's created and so they're essentially just submitting their data which is the post and the draft yeah yeah yeah that's a that's a really good approach there a couple of that I built actually were for multiple author site so there pretty much everybody on the site was a contributor on dh so there are some really pretty great plug ins for that but yeah that's that's that's great I'll tell you we way haven't automated that process we actually do it all by hand because we're doing one a week and we do pretty heavy editing on them as well I'm feeling a little energy drain way really not too sure maybe this would help a little bit anything there's something like anybody get up and see if that helps any o d j dance way, way, way out there dancing. I certainly hope so. All right, let's, talk about us. Ceo it's actually, not that here's. The good news, it's actually not that complicated comes down to writing about those things that people are searching using the same words and phrases there searching for. There are some on page factors that actually make your content rank higher, getting links back from other sites authority. Actually, google starts, you know, is calling it these days there are some specific things that are related to local I mean, if you if you're a local business and you want people that are out driving around the streets of your town to find you, then there are some specific things that you might need to address and focus on is well, okay, first off, you know, when people talk about the search engines, we're really talking about what's really almost come down to two things right now, right? Google obviously is the monster. This is a few months old, but I suspect the heads and change too much. Sixty seven percent of all searches done through google being in yahoo's search results or act. Really now coming out of the same engine even though you could go to two different places and that represents that everything else you know represents two or three percent of all all search so the default a lot of times when people talk about optimizing for search is they're talking about optimizing for google in many cases is in default now I will say this um microsoft has has been pretty aggressive in their relationship with facebook on dh I do think that the I do think that I think yahoo is still struggling but I do think that you're going to see some growth out of being first off the bing search experience is actually I think they're doing a great job I think it's actually a better search experience then then google right now if you facebook when how many of you have facebook graph search opened up anybody have graph search ok so graph search is a something they're rolling out that will actually allow you changes the whole search functionality inside of facebook now you can go there and search for your friends or what not but what graph search is going to do is open up the ability to search the entire web inside of facebook and teo search eso now you can say I'm going to san francisco my friends in san francisco who like thai food on it will actually search through your friends in san francisco who have have recommended or like the place to fit that category so it's going to make search functionality I think much better inside of facebook but the thing that's interesting and certainly this story yet to be told is if people inside of facebook will change their behavior to actually search the web inside of there but you could if you go in right now or I should say if you have graph search and you go in and you type and say like you know small business marketing okay? It might say, well here's a couple like duct tape marketing might come up as a page that's focused on small business marking for example they might also give you results from the web on dh so you're essentially your own bank inside of facebook and so I think again the stories will be certainly too early to be told whether or not people will actually change their behavior that way but there's definitely there definitely is a change I think in behavior that's already happening that we're getting less reliant on search search engines I should say and so we're asking our friends and we're asking our networks for recommendations as opposed to strictly turning to search engines and so again we'll see but I think that I would keep an eye on ding I wouldn't write bang off that's for sure right now so in terms of ceo its research it's optimization and its authority authority those are really the three steps now for some of the folks out there, the purest ceo folks, I'm not sure that's even industry anyway more because content and socialists becomes such a essential part of it, but some of the purest ceo folks would certainly tell you they're one hundred seventy three other steps involved in this. But for most small businesses, if you're focused on writing content, keyword rich content if you are making sure that that content is optimized and then you're going out there and networking and getting other sites to link back to your content, you're going to do pretty well. So the good news is you're foundational content. You're twelve themes you did keyword research it's a great starting place, ready to say what you know we've already decided we're going to write about that, right? So in a lot of ways, that is your that is the foundation of your key word research. Now what you might want to do is go back to the google keyword tool and actually put in your content themes and start looking for the top five. So if you've developed your content themes right, so go back to the keyword research, term and tools and come up with your top five related search terms, so there's a probably be longer search terms mohr, keyword specific you know, long tail is another term that people use and come up with five or so for each theme that, you know would would actually be great block posts or maybe even individual pages. But I'm going to focus on block post, so for me, you know what? I put up their marketing consultant. So one of the terms that came up there was a web marketing consultant or internet marketing consultant or something. So that might be an example that I would write a block post about, you know what it means in this particular case, you know what it means to be an internet marketing consultant or what's the difference between or how to choose a great internet marketing consultant, right? So you can use that tool again to drill into the volume the competitive use that you can actually use that tool to do searches so fine you can actually. So let's say you drill down your five terms. Ok, then what the next step I would do is I would actually then say, who were the top two? You know, what are the top ten pages ranking for that term right now? And I would go in fact, if if we were sitting here, I would create a working together would create a spreadsheet. One column would be your themes then to the right of that, what are the five key word phrases? And then to the right of each of those what did the top ten you are girls that rank currently for those search terms and from that spreadsheet, you know, obviously you still you still got to create the content, but from that spreadsheet, you've got your sort of your your full action plan in a way for how to create content that is going to be very valuable in terms of search. Now what you do with those you or else is that you then have to do some some competitive research on those to find out what sites are linking to them. It's ok, you know, one of the things that happens when you look at those girls, depending upon your search terms, you might find that you know, the top five articles published in ink magazine, ok, well, you're probably not going to knock them out of the top five, right, but what you find quite often, and so maybe you change your term a little bit and you go back and look ok, what are the top two? Ten? And they're right, so it is just a little there's there is a there's art and science to this part of it, right, but you also might find some sites that I don't really get that much traffic, necessarily. They're not any, you know, they're not doing anything different than you necessarily on dh. You could probably knock him out of there. So let's, move on to the optimization piece. Okay, so I'm going to go through. And this was in a lot of ways. This one would be better if I had my computer open here and I we could open up my admin and inward press and I could show you, you know, the back end of me actually doing this. But I want to tell you about some elements that are extremely important. I use that I already told you about the ceo plugging. So what this is is a on the screen is, you know, that's the snippet, right? What? What? Google calls the snippets. So if you do a search and you see the top ten organic results, right? That's what? One of them looks like you recognize that from search engine, right? So that blue is the hyperlink that green is the actual you, earl. And then that in the black is the description. Ok? And that's, you know, that's that's how they show it in the results and those top two, um, are essentially that's the title. So the page title, the second is the girl, I mean, that is what it is. Google doesn't change into those they are again what they are, the description is actually a little bit up for grabs, I mean, if you actually dictate what should be said in there and somehow google decides that it makes sense, they'll put what you that they'll use that description, they also sometimes I see where they just if they make a determination, what the pages about, they create the description so you don't have full control over that. But using the ceo plug in from yost that I talked about what'll happen is when you install that you'll see under your block post a couple extra boxes you'll see the ability for for youto ad your own title, your own description, you could actually input keywords that the thing that the post is actually about, and so you're actually adding what you know, search engine folks called meta data, which is so it's not seen on the page, but it actually gives important signals to the search engine. So by using that plug in, I actually take on there you can do even mawr, I mean, you can you can use some other tools tio actually analyze, you know every word in your blawg post and it would give you recommendations that, too, like scribe, for example, is a tool that would would analyze, you know, all of your content and give you recommendations on how to optimize it even further. But I find that if you take a least, these steps you're you're going tio see your your content showing up consistently, so change the title. So by default, wordpress makes the the title whatever you write is your headline, right? And what I typically do is I write a headline that I want that I want I wanted to grab people, you know, I wanted to be an ad for the things, so if people tweeted or share it, you know, in places it will actually make people think I want to know what that's about, but I changed the title to be what I've really optimized the page for, because a lot times my headlines would make very good asio content because there's something sort of, you know, I use a lot of adjectives in him and make him really big, and they're not the kind of thing people would search for, but people read it might go, oh, I want to know what that's about you know, seven insanely ways to do something like that, you know, something of that nature, which is going to really get somebody there but it's not going to be a ceo content? So I'll change the title by the fault I changed the girl quite often because of you again by default, you are all well, just be that your head, right? So then you have this big, long, you know, with all kinds of dashes headline or I'm sorry, you're out, so I will typically add my shortened because you can edit it in the editor, I will shorten that to be something that is very key words specific, you know, it's it's short, so it's easier tio to use, but it also has my key words and very intentionally, and then I will write my own description, which you can do, and because a lot of times what the description of do is they'll pick up the first sentence in your post or, you know, or they'll make a determination. I view that description it's probably not doing that much for me and ceo terms, but I view that description as the ad. For the content right so I write that thing to very much be about here is what this is about because I want because when you said when you've done this probably four right you go in your search and you're kind of glance and down through the results and you read that you know you read that description to kind of go yeah I want to click into this so I rewrite the description a cz well and the plug in as I said allows you to do all of these things now couple other factors any time you put an image into a post you actually have the ability to describe that image they called the ault attributes lt attributes on dh it was actually created because back in the day when we had really slow internet speeds a lot of people would turn images off because images took a long time to load on dso you you actually the html code created that attributes so that you could describe what the image actually wants what they were looking at a picture of in there so you actually I don't know that it's huge but it's one of the factors you should actually describe your pictures a cz well a lot of people skipped that step and I try to put some of the key word phrases in the picture not stupidly I mean it has to somehow relate to what I'm writing about you know um and relate to the picture itself is well but you definitely want to add that type so we're going to some I think for photographers it's very important because if you let's say you have a gallery and you have you know baby one baby to write I actually rename all my pictures tio san diego newborn photographer or uh you know le mesa senior photography so the each one each of my pictures has key words that people will search for which I have found helps a lot yeah, absolutely and that that really goes even for uploading like to flicker in tow other sites where you might upload images because actually if people reap especially if you give them the right to republish those images all that description data goes with it a cz well, so you really, really great point the last two site map and speed google or actually all the search engines now have come together and they all use xml site maps on dh all that means is it's a basically it's a form of software or actually a file type that that sends. So when you post a new block post, it just sends it to the search engines, right? So they don't have to come get it you know, anything new content you're producing? The good news is the ceo plug in from yost comes with an ex ml site so and what a sight map does you know, back again back in the old days we used to his side maps is kind of navigation everybody's had a site that was visual on the site so you could click through and find all of the various pages but now it's just really used almost as an internal tool, but you want to make sure if you're using that plugging or some other xml site map that you are using those and that you've submitted your site maps on going talk about that I think in the next you might be in this one still uh two web master tools yes, some quick clarification there's a little bit of confusion about how you're changing this description are you talking file naming or all tag naming? I think that was actually for the pictures but then for the descriptions what do youse again to edit those ok, so it's the cia once you install the ceo plug in from yost, you'll actually see automatically some extra boxes under your editing screen and one of them will say title one will say keywords one will say description ok, so by default the word press plug your wordpress software actually creates those based on what you write but when you use this plug and you actually had the ability to change all of them and that's what I have appeared, so I changed the title of my posts using the plug in you I changed the earl of my post usually you and that's just part of the word press admin panel the you can actually change you can actually add h one h two, which is basically outlining the post and that's typically in the word press editor and the visual editor anyway, in the description I used the ceo plug in to change images actually or done in the word press admin panel so when the way it works now is you you you add an image and then it once you've done that it gives you ability teo teo, add the description and you know all the all the data that you want for the image and then you click insert in here so that's all done in the admin the site map comes from the ceo plug it on and then speed the very first step go check the google speed inside just just put that term in google speed insights and it'll take you to a google tool that will actually analyze you put in your you earl and it'll actually analyze your site for speed for all the elements and give you a whole bunch of information doesn't make any sense, but but it will also give you kind of like critical issues you know, three or four critical issues that that they see on your site and that might be worth that might be worth doing a little research on it might be an easy fix or it might be something that you probably need to get a consultant for also with the plague in by yo yo yos before it was kind of this finding one key word per block post was kind of a foreign concept and this plague in really helps because you put in one key word and I think you can like, analyze and it'll go through your content you know actually give you like green red yellow to see if you've optimized for that one particular keywords that's really helped me out yes oh so you get I mean the keyword optimization is one of those you'll get lots of different opinions on you still want to write fried balls I always say that you want to write for, you know, real people but getting some suggestions that might say, well, you know you haven't used your phrase here or you could use it a different way you know it's still in a way that would make the content read just fine but would actually give you a little juice great thanks alright next pieces connection getting links, writing great content can't let you off the hook on that one of the best ways to get legs has the right stuff people want a link to obviously going out there and network so part of that blogging sharing other people's content you know all of that you know that you do out there online is one is really to me how you start getting links I mean I made it a habit almost every day to share ten or twelve block post from other people in twitter and in facebook and in other places and and I I know for a fact that some of those people linked back to my content and share my content you know, some of it's reciprocity some of us you know, we they feel like it's good content but it has to be part of the sharing habit guest content we've already talked about it is a great way to get links your guest either they content you right over the content that your guests right they would typically link back to it comments is not necessarily a great way to get links but it's a great way to get traffic that may turn into links in my opinion obviously make sure that all of your social profiles are optimized with with links to not you know links to your e books links to your block I mean linked inlet she put in like six links in your profile and they could be you know, two different pages in different parts of your site so make sure you're taking advantage of all that free real estate to be linking back to your site there's a lot of debate about this, but I still think online press releases is a great way, tio, to generate lots of links. You know, kelly was promoting just her appearance here with me, and I must have seen, I don't know, two dozen, um, press release, you know, alerts that came through, you know, my my listening station on dh, some of those turn it will turn into traffic. Some of the I don't know if any have turned into any kind of interview or anything that's, usually rare. Yeah, turned it so you tell us what you did. So I put together a press release just announcing the fact that I would be here guest instructing. And when I submitted the press release the company who did the press release, they actually have ah blogged on advertising and marketing, and he that bloggers actually on all top. Okay, it's referenced on all top, which is important because it's linked to heavily and he contacted me and asked if he could do an interview just talking about business to business marketing and what's going on in the industry today in particularly in california. Awesome and obviously links and maybe a little traffic and think about those you know again people differ on opinion on that, but I think you all I think that that ought to be I think I even talk about is part of the pr tomorrow but you know, routinely submitting press releases through there some of the online sites is still a great way to get links and traffic and and some notice um I'm going we've covered a lot of this but you know, right at least list post I did want to make that comment list post are still like him or not seven ways to do this fifteen resource is for this I mean, they're still extremely great ways to get links because a lot of people really liketo link to those sharing other people's content um I'm going to talk about that too later so I'm gonna wait on that one guest content either you go out there and find two places that you can write for two places again right for you I love topsy for finding guest opportunities if you go toe top seed that side I talked about earlier topsy dot com and you put in your you put in the words guest post and then like marketing when you'll find sites that actually are promoting the fact that they want guest posts um and the last one and this one's a little chewy topic we were talking about that earlier a lot of chewy stuff today is there's a relationship between your content and google plus on anybody who thinks google plus is, you know, is dead and over. I mean, it may not be like the happenings place that facebook is every single day for a lot of people, but it's, google, and it is going to be tied to search, so claim your google, google plus profile, build your google plus page just because it's real estate that you can own and then you need to know in the space of today's, you know, presentation, I can't tell you exactly how to do this. The good news is, if you type in google author authority duct tape marketing, I've written an entire post on exactly how to do this, but you want a link, your content to your google plus profile, and at some point in time, if you do that, you may be rewarded with this. So this is a search for I can't even remember what it was for to tell you the truth, but my content shows any of my content that shows up now for my blawg shows up with those additional elements on it. So my picture a link tow other content by me shows at that given moment I had twenty three thousand two hundred ninety eight google plus I was in google plus circles s o you think what I think of your own case do a search on something related to marketing these days on dsi the conte and it comes up like that you'll see probably three of the top ten results now will come up like that and and ask yourself when you see that if you're drawn more to that particular result um and this is it doesn't happen overnight. I think when I first went through the process of linking my blawg content to my google plus profile, I would say it took about six weeks before I started seeing some of these results, and I do think that I do think that they are actually using the fact that I have a fair amount of google plus, I mean, a fair amount of google plus circles I think probably does give me a bump, but but they're clearly sending a signal that what they're saying is authority has become a really big part and for them authority means that other people are plus one in your content, retweeting your content, linking to your content so that's a step just again, we could spend probably an hour on just going through that step that's a step you've got it, I'll just tell you I'm not commit to researching and figuring out how to do, and like I said, I've written in a complete tutorial on exactly how to do it as well I'm gonna end with just local stuff today um a couple things if you're a local business and you want to generate traffic or or customers on ly locally you need to be putting local content on your page so that's the place where obviously you want to mention suburbs you want mentioned things happening in your town you want to maybe even having events page you certainly want to put geographic information all of your address may be driving directions there just really lots of things that you can start adding even some of your internal links instead of saying you know, kitchen remodeling you know you'd say kansas city kitchen remodelling for example so so really giving clear signals claim all those local profile so the google plus local yahoo local being local they're all creating directories and they've all give you the every business the ability to claim that profile in some cases enhance it add product shots you know, put your your l they probably it's probably already built. In other words, if you've had a telephone for you no more than about six months they probably have your business and your address and your phone number in there, but you get the ability to claim those as your own so you can then enhance them and claim that and correct mistakes I mean, if you've moved in the last year, you know there's a good chance their address is wrong and those google is tying those two reviews, but clearly they're being used when somebody goes in search particularly when they go in and search on their telephone they're using those directories there's a couple places I would tell you you can get some help one is get listed dot or ge and actually just got bought by most mosey dot or but get listed dot or ge is a free service that you can put in your girl and it will give you in fact, I've got a screen shot it will give you this is we had just moved so twenty nine percent really low score because they still hadn't caught up with our change of address, but what it will do, a zit will go through and say, yes, you've claimed your google play front. Oh, you need express update local ys you're not up to help your good on foursquare, you need to go and claim your profile, so show you all the places to claim your profile where you have, where you haven't give you the ability to enhance and keep your your listings up to date really important for local search. Another tool I'll tell you about is that it's called ubl and stands for universal business listings I think they're up to about ninety nine dollars a year, but it's a service that will actually you give it your name, address, website address and it will submit two hundred of these local directories and you know, a lot of them were used by phone book companies, a lot of music by direct mail companies but but having accurate and consistent what they call citations, you know, across all of those directories extremely important we're going to something yeah if you if you over invest in locally does that pigeonhole you as being a you know too much of a local business when you're actually servicing yeah, I don't have a great answer for that because I don't know, you know, over invest necessarily I would say for if you're not a local business it's not really that essential I would go through the step of maybe get listed dot or because you might as well claim all those profiles anyway, you know, foursquare and people could check in, you know, just you can get some extra juice out of that, but I wouldn't if your intent is to do business all over there world or at least all of the country which is your intent, right? Yeah, I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time worrying about local content and things of that nature I don't know that you get pigeonholed, but it's just not it's not a focus I mean you want to make sure people realize you're a global business all right, so I gave I gave I gave you guys lots of notes right? Be nuts of action steps lots of things that you got to do so um don't you know don't freak out you know this think in terms of a long term approach he said earlier ceo is easy yeah and yeah exactly have a small example I had a water documentaries right about the upcoming water crisis, you know, very interested in it so I just decided I'm gonna put a top tune post out there didn't really think about key words or anything and went and then put it up and it went researched it and they got a fair amount of traffic through the google key word and then I go and go to google and type in and I'm number two just like that so I mean like you said it's not that difficult to really start right? Well and especially, you know, a lot of people are in businesses that aren't necessarily that highly competitive I mean, in terms of the search terms and you could really do well there, I think we're in a we're going to ask something or, you know, I was uh I guess my question is about the social tools do you feel like you have to use all of them or because would it be better to do one or two? Well sure that is roiling. Do you mean networks? Well, yeah, yeah, so like, do you have to be on facebook linked and crack? Now, you know, I think that you ought to go claim profiles on all of because they're not going away it's free real estate, right? But if if you're real concern is gosh, I'm limited on time. Then I would at least try to surmise which one's going to have the highest pale, which to me the answer is which one has the highest percentage of prospective customers? Which ones do my customers use? Right? And then you go deeper, I think I think, you know, if the time is limited limited, you're better off actually making one of them pay off, and you, I think you guys were going to jump in with some some comments from the world out there where to start, we have one earlier that we didn't get to that was kind of wanting to talk over all over about content and kind of theming your year and all that and the rented a store earlier today said I sell clothes on ebay that end there niche was plus size and petites and expended all women's clothes, but I want to go back to just into their niche, so when their volume when they are writing and creating all this content how many themes is too much? They were looking to block. I'm not just plus size and petites, but the green movement being frugal, having a clothing budget in your finances, uh, becoming too broad, how do you make sure that your content is not just exploding into things that are helping you? Yeah, well saying that that is part of the when we're talking, period, I mean there's, lots of things that people might be interested in, right? And so when we're talking about purely what's going to serve your business, I think you do want to actually get concentration in several subjects and that's, you know, where it starts paying off it's, not just that one great block post that gets you that it's actually the four block post that you interlink that people then think are valuable, that they come back to so the the answer, really, that question is what I would ask him to do is think in terms of still that eight or ten themes, but then think, ok, where would green fit into that? You know, and see if they could put one under their major themes. That because that's ok, but but try to make him fit in their major themes. I mean, they're they're in a business to that. That certainly has very seasonal themes available to him as well. And so, you know, I would probably will almost make that a cornerstone to you know what to wear in winter.