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SEO Series: Link Building for Blogs, What is it?

Wednesday, November 11, 2011by The BW?D Team in SEO

Blog What? Design's "SEO for Blogs" Blog Series When it comes to SEO, inbound links are extremely important factors that guide your website’s ranking for various pages. Link building comprises any steps that you as a website owner might take to point links back to your website from another site.

SEO Link Building Examples

Link Exchanges – Asking a website owner to link to your website and vice-versa.
Guest Blogging – Guest blogging provides bloggers the opportunity to not only demonstrate expertise within a certain subject, but will also increase exposure and direct traffic to your website.
Link to Your Page – Simply setting up a page on your website explaining how someone can link back to you is an effective link building strategy.
Link Marketing – If you write for various publications or submit an article to another website or article directory, you are most likely including some of your personal information, in which case you may provide links back to various pages on your website.

Steps to Proper SEO Link Building

Create a List of Competitors – Before you begin your link building, you must create a strategy. This begins with drafting a list of your competitors. Make sure you realize the difference between search competitors and “real world” competitors. Your search competitors are websites that are ranking high and occupying the top positions for the keywords you’re targeting. “Real world” competitors however, are blogs with similar or highly related content, but that may not necessarily rank well. Remember, here we’re targeting SEO.
Check Competitors Stats – Use a link checking tool such as Open Site Explorer, Yahoo! Site Explorer, or Majestic SEO, to check the number of links and domain authority for each competitor. The competitors with the highest numbers are those you should set a goal to beat. This may seem like a daunting task, so it is always acceptable to start with a smaller goal – not necessarily aiming for the one or two top positions on any given search engine results page.
Target Links List – Gauge a target goal for your link building. This will be different for each website – a small private website may have less links than a larger website.
Enjoy the Networking Experience! – Remember, you are exchanging links with like-minded entrepreneurs such as yourself. Who knows where it will take you.

Tagged with: link building, marketingLeave a Comment

What Can Tidal do for Your Blog?

Friday, November 11, 2011by The BW?D Team in Content Creation

This month marked the launch of Tidal, a great new tool to help bloggers gain greater exposure. Tidal connects bloggers with top publishers and brands, including a portfolio of companies such as Conde Nast, Bob Vila, Zagat, and Neutrogena. The returns are great, including thousands of new readers sent from well established brands in addition to the potential promise for paid endorsements.

How Does Tidal Work for Bloggers?

For Small Businesses, Websites Should be Handled by Experts

Thursday, November 11, 2011by The BW?D Team in Digital Experience

The world of publishing is rapidly changing, with an increasing emphasis on digital publishing as opposed to more traditional print publishing. Companies must establish a strong online presence in order to compete in this new, digital world world. A strong online presence may begin with a creative and compelling company website.

To stay ahead of the competition, small businesses should choose to work with an agency, such as Blog What? Design, to create a custom website as opposed to attempting to take on the task in house, ending up with an inferior product in the process.

The Benefits of Working with an Agency

Experts in Website and Graphic Design – Creating a website by yourself is a challenge, especially if you’re not well-versed in web-site or graphic design. Agencies such as BW?D are composed of trained and educated designers and artists at your service. Your web presence is key to the success of your business. Your website needs to provide the proper and appropriate amount of content, while conveying your company’s personal brand.
Know the ins-and-outs of Social Media and SEO – Establishing and implementing a social media strategy for your small business is extremely important in today’s competitive publishing world. This is what agencies are for! BW?D will work with you on a personal level, getting to know your brand, and creating a social media plan using many different networks. Agencies are also specialists when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is what drives the placement of your company’s website in search engine result pages, and ultimately, you want your website to rank at the top.
Brand Strategy – Your brand needs to speak to its customers. A brand is a product or service that is recognized and trusted by its customers. Therefore, the products or services are often used, bought, and talked about. Digital brand development is a vital aspect of current digital marketing tactics because of the importance of differentiating yourself online from other small companies. BW?D is an agency, which understands how essential digital brand development is, and offers industry and competitor analysis as part of your businesses brand strategy.
Clean Code – You’re running a small business – you don’t have time to learn clean, efficient markup, the latest CSS tweaks, and especially the complex code behind your website! Let the experts take care of it. Agencies know how to create clean and efficient code. BW?D offers services such as custom coding and feature solutions, and code modification and repair.

Tagged with: small business, website design, website developmentLeave a Comment

Free Giveaways: What Can They do for Your Blog?

Tuesday, November 11, 2011by The BW?D Team in Content Creation

One of the most powerful and effective marketing tools for you as a blogger is offering free giveaways. Giveaways are a great strategy that are not only fun, but attract current and future readers to your blog.

Two Blog Benefits of Blog Giveaways

Return readers – Readers who visit your blog will be attracted to the word “free.” This is nothing to be skeptical of – everyone likes free things! By offering your readers a chance to win something risk-free via your blog, you are providing them with a value-service. Once readers recognize this value, they will hopefully continue visiting your blog, and encourage others to do the same.
Appreciation – Since you are offering your readers with a chance to win a free item, they will feel the need to reciprocate the favor. This is known as the “law of reciprocity,” which states that people feel a natural obligation to return favors as a way of expressing their gratitude. Perhaps this favor will be returned in the form of reader subscriptions, or a fellow blogger may post your blog’s URL on their site. Learn more about showing appreciation, through four social media guidelines.

Now that you know the benefits of free blog giveaways, you may be asking yourself a few additional questions.

What should I give away, and where do I find items for giveaways?

Gift Cards and Purchased Products - Everyone loves gift cards, especially if the gift card is for a company relevant to your blog. For example: a fashion blogger offers an H&M gift card on his/her blog. If you have the monetary funds, you can always purchase a product yourself to giveaway on your blog. An example would be from one of our clients sites, called Kristen’s Raw, a blog dedicated to healthy eating.
Product Reviews – Write some product reviews of your favorite products. Businesses will often contact bloggers, offering them free products in exchange for a glowing review. You can use these free products as giveaways.
Etsy - Etsy is a website created for independent designers to sell their home-made designs. Visit the Etsy forums and post what type of giveaway you are looking for, along with a description of your blog and contact information. Many independent designers are looking for ways to promote their businesses.
Social Media Contacts – Post a blurb on Facebook or tweet about what type of giveaway you are looking for. Contact businesses you like, and see if they would like to donate in return for promotion of their business.

How should my users participate in giveaways?

Ask users to comment on your giveaway post in order to enter. From there, you can choose a random commenter.
Ask users to post the address of your giveaway post on their social media pages. Thanks to blog additions such as Disqus, and Intense Debate, you can later confirm these postings right their your announcement post.

Here are some additional sites that may help you with your giveaway:

Online-Sweepstakes.com – This is the best and biggest website listing for online giveaways.
Randomizer.org – Randomizer offers you a simple and easy way to choose your blog’s giveaway winner. The program will calculate a number for you, and find that post (your winner!)

Tagged with: free giveaways, tipsLeave a Comment

Transfer Your Blog, Keep SEO Intact

Thursday, November 11, 2011by The BW?D Team in CMSs

Thinking of switching your Blogger account to a self-hosted version of WordPress? Need to transfer a large amount of content from one blog to another? Here are some great tips, which will ensure the effective transfer of your blog, while keeping your SEO and data intact.

Transfer Tips for Bloggers

Compare and Contrast - Before beginning your blog transfer, prepare a list that will allow you to compare and contrast your old blog to your new blog. What kind of layout would you like for your new blog? What elements would you like to keep, and which ones would you like to change? Remember, a transfer gives you the chance to spice up the current layout if you choose to by working with an excellent team of designers and developers.
URL Check and 301 Permanent Redirects - Be sure to compare and contrast the structure of your old URLs versus your new URLs as well. You will most likely need to setup a 301 redirect in order to retain the SEO “juice” your old pages have accumulated. These redirects will ensure that if a user ever visits an old URL, they’ll be sent to the same exact page on your new website. Blog What? Design provides an excellent, automatic script to take care of such a transition for any Blogger to WordPress transfer.
Navigation Optimization, Page Titles, and Meta Data - If your new blog has been redesigned, make sure that your new primary navigation section includes the same links as the old design. The same goes for page titles, and meta data descriptions. Blog What? Design also provides for the seamless, and super fast transfer of these files no matter how large your databases may be.
External Links - Change links that affect your new blog. Don’t assume any of these links will automatically change themselves. Go as far as contacting bloggers who have placed the link to your blog on their site, and ask them to update it to your new URL. Otherwise, 301 redirects will take over the job.
Google Webmaster – Submit an updated site map to Google Webmaster Tools. Utilize the change of address function if you are migrating to a completely new domain.
Technical Issues – Towards the end of your transfer, do a once-over and check for technical issues such as duplicate content caused by URL structures. You want to make certain that all your content and page templates can be seen by search engines, and duplicate content can heart your overall SEO.

These transfer suggestions will help you to determine an effective strategy for your blogs content and URL changes, with intact SEO. You don’t want to lose your blog’s rankings or traffic due to a poorly executed blog transfer. Make sure to carefully consider each step, to ensure a smooth transfer, and contact Blog What? Design to take care of the transfer from start to finish, today.

Tagged with: Blogger, how to, SEOLeave a Comment

SEO Myths: Five that Bloggers Need To Know Now

Wednesday, November 11, 2011by The BW?D Team in SEO

Blog What? Design's "SEO for Blogs" Blog Series There are many SEO myths currently circling around the web. As a blogger, it is important to know the difference between web analytics myths and truths.

Five SEO Myths Dispelled for Bloggers

Using old SEO will improve your blog – This is false. Technology is constantly changing. As a blogger, it is important to keep up with the current technological trends. Instead of hanging on to old SEO tactics, use your time and money to invest in other concerns such as working on your content, fixing technical issues on your website, or building links.
Paying for links is bad and can get you banned – This isn’t necessarily true. On one hand, you may generate links to your blog or website by paying for products and services such as advertisements, press releases, sponsorships, etc. On the other hand, when paying for these products or services, you are always taking a chance. The good news – experts say that Google is unlikely to ban anyone for strategically placing paid links.
Bad links won’t hurt your website – This is partially true. A few bad links won’t harm the reputation of your website, but an overwhelming amount just might, especially if you don’t take action. Make sure to protect yourself against unwanted SPAM by moderating the comments on your blog and keeping your address out of bogus websites through bad link building.
Using meta tags has an impact – This is false. A meta tags is HTML markup that is inserted into a header or a web page after the title tag. Meta keywords haven’t been used for several years, and won’t impact the success of your website unless Google chooses to utilize them in the search results.
Keyword density isn’t important – This is 100% false! Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword phrase appears on a web page, compared to the total number of words on the page. Search engines use algorithms to determine how relevant the content is on a page, in which keyword density is a huge determining factor. But be sure not to over-stuff your post! Google can also pick up on the fact that their system is being abused, as well. Between five or eight iterations of your keyword is a good rule of thumb, and be sure they’re spread out from the beginning to the end of your post.

These are just five of the top SEO myths, now dispelled. To ensure the success and quality of your blog, make sure you know the difference between SEO myths and SEO truths.

Tagged with: SEO, seo for blogs seriesLeave a Comment

Privacy Guidelines for Bloggers and Digital Publishers Today

Thursday, November 11, 2011by The BW?D Team in Privacy

In an ever-growing and ever-changing digital world, many question privacy, and its place in digital publishing. How private is the content you search for, produce, and publish on the web and how much personal information should you consider publishing?

It is commonly known that Google, along with other large data companies, put together an advertising portfolio for you based on factors such as your online search data. This means these companies take note of the search terms stored in your browser, and suggest ads related to your specific interests.

Four Copyright Myths Dispelled for Bloggers

Wednesday, November 11, 2011by The BW?D Team in Content Creation

As a blogger, it’s important to have a basic understanding of copyright law so that you can properly and confidently maintain ownership over your work. Here are five very common copyright myths dispelled to ensure that you remain protected without added worry.

Common Copyright Myths Dispelled for Bloggers

If it doesn’t have a copyright symbol, then a post isn’t copyrighted. This is false! Since 1978, law does not require you–the content producer or blogger–to mark your work with the copyright symbol in order to remain protected. Instead, a piece of work is copyrighted once it has been developed into some tangible form of expression i.e. a blog post, a book, or a painting. This tangibility can actualize even by clicking the save button or typing out a few sentences in a form.
If a piece of work is not registered, then it is not copyrighted. This is partially true. As stated above, a work is copyrighted once it is a tangible form of expression, but registering work provides you with extra protection. For example, if you are planning to sue another party who has allegedly stolen your work, then registration is necessary. For information on how to register, visit Copyright.gov.
If you do not actively protect your copyright, then you’ll loose it. This is false. Unlike a trademark, a copyright is valid for a very specific period of time, and unless you give up your copyright through written consent, it will remain within your “ownership” until well beyond your own death.
A Creative Commons license is a new form of copyright. A Creative Commons license allows you to keep your copyright, but permits people to copy and distribute your work, as long as they provide you with credit.

Since copyright law is very intricate and highly detailed, this list should certainly not be considered comprehensive. As a blogger, however, the truth about these common copyright myths will leave you feeling better protected and more secure as a blogger or digital publisher.

Blog What? Design: What will you publish today?