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Consider this Amandah’s Freelance Writer’s SEO guide to optimizing your company’s blog/website. Take the struggle out of optimizing your blog/website with these ridiculously easy SEO habits.

SEO doesn’t have to keep your management team up at night. Although there’s a science behind SEO, it doesn’t have to be tricky or complicated. Basically, you use keywords/phrases and tags within web content to drive traffic to your website. The caveat is to have well-written content and not a bunch of copy stuffed with keywords and phrases. Google’s not fond of that.

Ridiculously Easy SEO Habits to Start

1. Review the company’s current keyword/phrase and tags. Perhaps, it’s time to analyze the effectiveness of your current keyword/phrase and tags. If your company’s website isn’t receiving the web traffic you thought it would, it could be your keywords/phrases and tags.

2. Review web content. How well are the keywords/phrases and tags incorporated into blog posts, articles, and pages? Your optimization is too low. Or, the content may not be that compelling. Don’t forget about writing SEO headlines. It’s important to put the keyword in the beginning of the headline. If you’re using a secondary keyword, place it in the middle or end. It’s not a good idea to have the primary and secondary keywords next to each other.

3. Check out the competition. What’s your competition up to? How’s their content? Read their web content and compare it to yours. If their web content is better, it may be time to hire a freelance writer to revise your company’s.

4. Review the number of internal and external links. Perhaps, your company’s link building isn’t what it can be. If you don’t link to high-quality pages within your company’s website, you’re missing out on the opportunity to optimize the website. Also, it’s important to provide customers with helpful, high-quality external links that complement your company. 

5. Look for ‘stop words‘ within permalinks. Search engines disregard common words as the ones listed below. It makes no sense to have them in your permalinks. 

Sample List of Stop words

about
above
after
again
all
and
for
get
to

6. The company’s website doesn’t have a search engine friendly design. It’s important that your company’s website is clean and easy to use. More importantly, it needs to be search engine friendly. If images are used it’s imperative to utilize the ‘alt text’ feature that’s available in blogging platforms such as WordPress and Blogger. This provides a text description of images.

7. Your company doesn’t provide transcripts of audio and video. Let’s face it; some visitors may prefer reading a transcript of an audio recording or video. More importantly, developing these SEO habit will help your company help search engine index these materials. This can lead to more web traffic which can increase customer conversion rates.

8. Your company doesn’t take advantage of SEO services. If your company doesn’t have an RSS feed (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication), they’re missing out on web traffic. These are easy to maintain and code. They’ll update when new content is added to the website.

9. Your company doesn’t take advantage of SEO tools. Most companies use Google Analytics to analyze their website’s traffic. It’s easy to set up and use. You receive information on keywords and searches. It’s a great way to set up an ‘A/B’ test to see which keywords/phrases work for your company.

10. Pay attention to Google Panda. This is a job for your web master. Rather than having as many URLs indexed as possible, your company should have its best, highest quality URLs indexed. Have your web master remove all unnecessary, extraneous, low ranking, and duplicate URLs from the index. As mentioned in Point #4, link to high-quality external links. Google Panda is pushing everyone to put their best foot forward and publish high quality content. 

11. Stay up-to-date with SEO trends. Technology trends come and go. It’s important to keep up-to-date with the ever changing world of SEO. I myself am self-taught when it comes to SEO. However, I’ve been looking into SEO certification courses and programs. I just began my search.  

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Question: Is article marketing dead?

Answer: According to Jeff Herring, “No, it’s not.” However, the way you approach article marketing needs to shift if you want to attract the ‘right’ people to your website. These people will purchase your products and services.

Article marketing includes the following:

• Content creation includes audio, text and video. Content is king; however, building trustworthy relationships trumps content.

• Online visibility means people need to be able to find you online. It doesn’t matter how good your web design or layout is. If people can’t find you, no one will purchase your products and or services.

FYI: Write compelling articles and you’ll have something of value to add to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, your Blog, etc.

• Traffic generation matters. Even if you’re receiving 1 million hits per day, don’t stop utilizing article marketing because you want to continue to earn an income.

• List building: Who do you want on your list? It’s important to connect with the right clients and customers. Stop wasting time marketing to those who won’t purchase your products/services or can’t afford it right now.

Tip: Review the traffic rankings on Alexa. For example, Google is #1, Facebook is #2, Twitter is #9 and LinkedIn is #13. Post your articles to these websites or give a synopsis of your articles.

• Product creation:  What problems are you solving? You could solve your clients and customers problems by offering them a book, eBook, online or home study course, teleseminars and webinars, etc.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that article marketing is dead. What has changed is how articles are written. They have more of a ‘sales’ undertone to them without selling to your target market. Remember, most people are tired of being sold to. They want to know, “What’s in it for me? What problem are you solving for me? How does this benefit me? Why should I care?” Pay attention to the above criteria and you’ll be successful with article marketing.

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Many small business owners and solo professionals are D.I.Y enthusiasts or do it themselves because they haven’t found a business with the products and services (customer) they’re looking for or expect. I tend to fall into the latter. When it comes to web design, I cringe and run screaming from the room when I view web designs. I have no idea what web designers are thinking. I often wonder, “Where did you learn web design? Was graphic design a part of the program? What makes you think the layout looks good? How does a huge photo at the top of a website look good? Do you understand the meaning of white-space?” Finding a clean, chic, elegant, optimized and streamlined website is like finding a needle in a haystack; at least it is for me. That is, until, I discovered the ‘Foundation’ web design. It was neat clean lines and looked very professional and seemed easy to customize. Little did I know the web designer used an outdated timthumb.php file (had no idea what this was) that could potentially open up my website to uninvited guests known as hackers. I was flabbergasted. Luckily, Blue Host (hosting company) is vigilant. They noticed the ‘outdated’ timthumb.php file and patched it. I decided to delete the WP theme and use my former theme. I’m determined more than ever to learn web design.

Here’s the email I received from Blue Host regarding timthumb.php:

Dear customer,

This is a courtesy notice that we have found and corrected exploitable timthumb.php file(s) on your account. While we have corrected these files, we do recommend you ensure all potential exploits are corrected on your account. This is best done by updating all scripts, plugins, modules and themes on your account to the latest version.

As the owner of the account, you are responsible for keeping your hosted content free of malicious software. For technical assistance, you can also reach our chat team from Bluehost.com or by going directly to http://www.bluehost.com/chat.

The timthumb.php file is a script commonly used in WordPress’s (and other software’s) themes and plugins to resize images. The exploit allows an attacker to arbitrarily upload and create files and/or folders on your account, which can then be used for a number of malicious tasks, including but not limited to defacement, browser high-jacking and infection, data harvesting and more. After a site has been exploited, it may lead to becoming labeled a “Malicious Website” by Google or other security authorities.

Any timthumb.php file below version 1.35, but above version 1.09 is considered vulnerable, unless patched. To prevent being compromised, we advise you update all instances of timthumb.php to version 2.0, or patch the existing vulnerable files. Note that patching the files requires more in-depth knowledge of the PHP scripting language.

Additional information regarding the compromise can be found at the following two websites, as well as others; note that all external websites in this email are not affiliated with Bluehost.com in any capacity, and are for your reference only.

http://markmaunder.com/2011/08/01/zero-day-vulnerability-in-many-wordpress-themes/

http://redleg-redleg.blogspot.com/2011/08/malware-hosted-newportalsecom.html

How to protect your website from hackers

1. Use WordPress themes and templates from reputable companies. If you download ‘free’ themes make sure there is no timthumb.php or the file is up-to-date.

2. If you hire a web designer ask questions such as, “What is timthumb.php and do I need it? What is the security level of the web coding?” and other questions.

3. Learn about web coding.

4. Use a reputable hosting company such as Blue Host, HostGator, etc. to ensure your website is secure.

5. Always check your website. Test out links. Review your pages and make sure everything looks alright. Update plugins or limit the amount you use. FYI: You could always install the WordPress Firewall 2 plugin which “monitors web requests to identify and stop the most obvious attacks.”

Rebecca

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If you use WordPress.org, you’re probably familiar with plugins. Make sure you don’t go overboard with plugins because your hosting company may not have the ‘space’ for your website if it contains a lot of plugins. Of course, you could purchase a ‘higher’ hosting package that gives you more space on a server. It’s something to think about. Anyway, here are cool and useful WordPress plugins for you to check out and use on your website.

If you’re worried about spam, WordPress.org has an Askimet plugin that catches spammers. For example,I have the following message on my WP Dashboard, “Akismet has protected your site from 21,271 spam comments already. There’s nothing in your spam queue at the moment.” I’ve been using WordPress.org since 2009 and never had a problem with Askimet.

To make your blog posts easy to retweet, use TweetMeme. It’s simple to download and upload to your plugins folder via your FTP system. Hint: Most hosting companies have their own FTP. But you can always use an external FTP.

How many times do you ‘thank’ people for leaving comments on your blog? If you don’t, consider using Thank Me Later which automatically sends a ‘thank you’ to visitors that leave comments on your blog posts. BTW: I wish I knew about this one because I was ‘manually’ sending emails to visitors. Better late than never!

Does it irk you when readers don’t leave thoughtful comments? Install Minimum Comment Length to improve the quality of comments left on your blog posts. Let’s face it; leaving a “Great post! Good post! Thank for the information!” doesn’t cut it. You want people to leave engaging, thought provoking comments.

Unfortunately, some visitors to your website may not have good intentions. Use WTC Comment Cleaner to strip out malicious and unwanted code such as css, javascript tags, etc. It’s good to have a ‘high level’ of security on your blog/website.

Some visitors may or may not appreciate the Comment E-Mail Verification plugin because they’ll have to login to their email and ‘verify’ their comment by clicking on the link that’s sent to them. Once they click on the link, their comment will be approved and automatically posted. This is a good way to engage visitors. No email is send if Askimet or some other plugin recognizes the comment as spam.

Do you have a newsletter? How would you like to build your list? Use the WordPress Newsletter plugin to ‘collect’ subscriber information such as name and email address. Please read the user guide to get the most out of this plugin.

Do you feel like a ‘head case’ when it comes to SEO? You could use the All in One SEO plugin or try HeadSpace 2 SEO. If you spend too much time worrying about SEO, HeadSpace2 SEO will make your troubles disappear. HeadSpace provides a video that explains ‘How To’ use the plugin.

How many times do you backup your WordPress website? Download and use WP-DB Manager to backup your files. You can backup, repair, restore, delete a backup, etc. with this plugin.

*Some of the plugins are compatible up to 3.2.1. If WordPress upgrades to WordPress 3.3, some plugins may not work unless they’re updated too.

Rebecca

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You may or may not be aware of Black Hat SEO. And, yes. There is something called White Hat SEO. Who knew SEO was colorful? Black Hat SEO is an unethical way to receive higher search engine rankings and has the following characteristics:

• Ignores and breaks search engine rules and regulations followed by most internet users.
• Presents information in an unethical manner to search engine users and spiders.
• Internet users have a poor experience thanks to Black Hat SEO optimization.

It’s important to create an ethical and overall good user experience  for visitors to your website. If you dabble in Black Hat SEO tactics, search engines will penalize you. Instead of using a short-term process like Black Hat SEO, use techniques that will help you in the long-run. It doesn’t make sense to gain a high ranking now, only to be knocked down later because of unethical web practices.

Black Hat SEO Techniques to Avoid

1. Keyword stuffing blog posts and articles. It’s important to use keywords and phrases that will help your website gain rankings; however, over-stuffing your website, blog posts and articles with keywords is frowned up.

2. Invisible text only search engine spiders can see. This is frowned upon as well. In actuality, it takes time to put keywords and phrases in white text on a white background. Eventually, search engines will ‘see’ what you’re doing and you’ll be penalized for it.

3. Using a doorway page. Another way some websites gain rankings is to have a ‘fake page’ that’s only visible to search engines.

FYI: White Hat SEO uses ethical techniques such as a reasonable amount of keywords and phrases, keyword analysis and other analytics, linking, backlinking, etc.

Using Black Hat SEO can backfire on you if you’re trying to establish yourself as an ‘expert’ in your business. If you’re trying to scheme and strategize search engines, who’s to say you won’t do this to your customers? Many people are becoming very conscious (aware) of how and where they spend their money. If you want to gain trust, avoid Black Hat SEO. You’ll only ‘drive’ clients and customers to your competitors. They’ll laugh all the way to the bank while you work on repairing your internet reputation. It’s something to think about.

Rebecca

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Clients and potential freelance writing clients often ask me, “Are you a web designer?” Some clients have viewed my resume and noticed my graphic design experience. They automatically link this to web design — they do go hand-in-hand. I’m interested in web design; however, I’m waiting for the day when web coding becomes more streamlined. Until that day, I’ll do-it-myself the best I can or hire a web designer.

If you’re a freelance writer with a graphic design background, tell clients they could build their websites on a budget. Most companies use WordPress which is a user-friendly content management system that’s easy to customize. You don’t have to get fancy (advise against it) with a website. Keep it clean and user friendly, offer unique and informative content (hire a freelance writer), and enjoy the web traffic.

How freelance writing clients build websites on a budget

1. Sign up with Weebly.com. Offers a ‘drag and drop’ platform, making it easy for you to customize your website. Weebly is free; however, you can purchase a domain through Weebly (uses Registrar.com) or transfer a domain. Weebly offers over 100 templates which can be customized to fit your needs. You can add media such as audio, video, and graphics; create a photo gallery. You can also create a ‘customized’ contact form specifically tailored towards your target audience.

2. Hola! Actually, it’s Yola. Choose a free plan or purchase one from $99 to $499 per year. Yola offers customers over 100 themes which can be customized to suit your business needs. Features include premium styles, site hosting, and analysis. Both plans include advertising credits for Facebook and GoogleAdWords. The $499 per year plan includes a consultation with a professional web designer.

3. It’s hip to be square with Squarespace. College kids created this platform in 2004 from their dorm room. Go figure! Squarespace costs $12 to $36 per month and includes hosting, a content management system, design tools, widgets, and add-ons; you can use your own domain. The Business Plan ($36/month) includes priority support, unlimited bandwidth, pages, and storage; management staff, and access to features such as FAQs, SSL, form builders, and member registration.

4. Snap to it with SnapPages. Like Weebly.com, SnapPages is a ‘drag and drop’ website platform. Choose a free plan (doesn’t include the use of your own domain) or the Developer plan at $30 per month. The latter includes features such as premium themes, 10 GB of storage space, use of your own domain, CSS control, project management tools, SEO settings, and much more.

5. Buildor Pro or BuildorLite. Obviously, the ‘pro’ has more features than the ‘lite’ version of Buildor; offers a 50-day free trial. Most website development companies have a 10-day or 30-day trial period. You build and design your website ‘in the cloud’ as opposed to a WYSIWYG environment. BuildorPro costs $10 per month and is billed through PayPal. BuildorLite is free. It may be helpful if you have an ‘intermediate or advanced’ knowledge of web coding.

Building a website doesn’t have to be a lengthy process. With the ‘click of a button,’ you can have a professional looking websites that attracts customers. Don’t overload your website with graphics and multimedia because it will look cluttered. Avoid bombarding customers with paid advertisements because this could deter them from visiting your website. If you like DIY projects, consider using one of the above website platforms. The alternative is to hire a web designer. Happy web designing!

Rebecca

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Question: Which web browser is better and faster, Firefox or Google Chrome? I’ve been a loyal Firefox user for many users but have been told Google Chrome is faster and more efficient. I read an article on the internet about Google discontinuing support for the Firefox toolbar. Maybe it’s time for a switch.

Answer: With the onset of Google+ about to take over the internet ‘cyber’ waves, you may want to ‘test drive’ Google Chrome. I am.

I began testing Google Chrome last Saturday and admit it seems faster than Firefox. I’ve used Firefox for many years. Before that, I used Internet Explorer and dabbled with Safari. I’m enjoying Google Chrome because it seems to load my log-ins and websites faster. I don’t tap my fingers on my desk and count, “One, one thousand; two, one thousand; three, one thousand; four, one thousand; and so forth. I can get in and out and do what I need to do without any fuss.

Firefox has served me well, but it seems to be slower than Google Chrome. I appreciate the constant updates from Firefox; however, it doesn’t seem to be faster. Then again, maybe Firefox can’t handle the multiple toolbars I use such as Yahoo, Ping, and AVG. I could probably delete one or two of them. But, I enjoy listening to internet radio; one of the toolbars has an app for it. Google Chrome has many internet radio apps; however, I’m not sure if they’re available on a toolbar.

Change can be good — it can be easy. I imported my bookmarks from Firefox to Google Chrome with ease. I haven’t bookmarked anything with Google Chrome, yet.

I’m amazed at how fast Google Chrome loads. One of the issues I’ve had with Firefox is receiving the following message, “Firefox is still running” when I close Firefox but try to reopen it because I forgot to check one of my email accounts or research something. How can Firefox still be running when I closed the browser? This has been frustrating. When I close out of Firefox and want to reopen the browser — it takes multiple tries before it opens. I haven’t experienced this with Google Chrome. I can close and open the browser without any problem.

I haven’t completely abandoned using Firefox. Like I said, “I enjoy listening to internet radio.” It’s easy to click on the app on the toolbar and select stations or search for new ones. Also, Firefox can be customized more so than Google Chrome. For example, I use add-ons like SEO for Firefox and others. For now, I’ll toggle back and forth between Firefox and Google and keep testing and comparing. Stay tuned!

Rebecca

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Savvy-Writer.com is my creative, freelance, and ghost writing website. I also have an animal/environmental advocacy and personal development websites, respectively. By the way, creating and maintaining blogs/websites that you’re passionate about is another way to showcase your writing ability. You can submit your blog posts as writing samples to editors and organizations.

Anyway, I use a program called Zemanta which finds links to blog posts and or articles that complement or match your topic. Lo and behold, I received an email from a guy who responded to a pingback that was created because I listed a link to his blog post on my personal development website. The website owner graciously approved the pingback because I didn’t write a negative or condemning blog post. However, he’s more ‘conservative’ when it comes to certain topics. Next time, I will take more time to ensure links and websites match or complement my websites.

Lesson: Before you list links on your website, make sure they complement or match your blog post and or article topic. If you receive pingbacks or trackbacks, you can delete them. Or, you could check them out to make sure they’re not spam. Delete pingbacks and trackbacks that aren’t helpful.

If you receive pingbacks to your blog posts, “Remember, you don’t have to read it, just delete it.” If the blog or website isn’t in alignment with what you’re writing, delete the pingback. There’s no reason to send an email voicing your concern. This will create negative energy and you don’t want that. Do you? However, if the pingbacks are in alignment with your blog and or websites, send an email “thanking” the blog owner for mentioning your blog posts. I receive many emails from blog/website owners “thanking me” for featuring links to their posts and websites on Savvy-Writer.com. Of course, I send the owners emails that have the following words in then, “Your Welcome!”

Rebecca

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In case you don’t know, Facebook has a fan page feature that allows you to communicate with your readers. How well you communicate with your ‘fans’ could determine how successful you and your book will be. Most authors (public figures) are creating Facebook fan pages for their ‘fans’ and aren’t really participating in the conversations that are taking place on the page. This could work against you.

There’s no doubt that a Facebook fan page is a fast and easy marketing tool. You can post your latest YouTube video, links to your latest book, teleseminars and webinars events; radio and television appearances, book signing events; hold a contest, and provide other pertinent information for your ‘fans’ to share with their friends. It’s an easy way to generate income. However, if you’re constantly selling and selling, and not giving your fans anything else, they could leave you and your fan page high and dry.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Author Facebook Fan Page

1. Take an interest in your fans. Let’s face it, without your fans (consumers) your book won’t be #1 on the New York Times Best-Sellers list. Unless, of course, Harry Potter comes along and waves his magic wand to make it happen. Take an interest in your fans. A “thank you” here and there will go a long way.

2. Post relevant information besides your own. It’s all right to post other links besides your own. Who knows, you could end up with a great business partnership because of it.

3. Engage in conversations. What do your fans want? What do they like about your latest book? What don’t they like about it? Be transparent and become a part of the conversation.

4. Stop posting ‘automated’ content on your fan page. If you don’t have time to post thoughtful comments or information, hire an intern or part-time person to do it for you. Fans may not appreciate the ‘coldness’ of your fan page.

5. Be active on your Facebook fan page. How active are you on your fan page? When you create your writing schedule, make sure to include time for social media. You don’t have to spend hours each day — 15 minutes per day will do. Of course, if you’re a social butterfly, be as active as you want to.

Rebecca

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How much time do you spend on social bookmarking for your freelance writing and other websites? Have you considered purchasing a social bookmarking software program? It could be worth the money if it generates a ton of traffic and sales. The best part is you’ll more free time to do whatever it is you want to do. That’s a sweet deal!

Social bookmarking drives traffic to your freelance writing website. This means you can earn revenue from selling your own materials such as books, eBooks, apps, teleseminars, webinars, workshops, web designs (for authors and writers) or promote products and services of others that resonate with your website. You can easily increase your page rank and web presence.

According to We Build Your Blog, “Social bookmarking is a way of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs online. You might have the best product in the world, but if you can’t generate the traffic you’ve just got a nice website on your hands with no customers.”

How much time do you spend creating backlinks by posting thoughtful comments on blogs and forums? If a social bookmarking software can do some of the work for you, it could be a worthy investment. The alternative is to hire a part-time intern (paid or unpaid) or hire a part-time member of your staff. However, the reason you probably became a freelance writer is to be work from the comfort of your own home and without any co-workers. Purchasing a social bookmarking program may be the best route for you.

Social bookmarking tips

1. Get over your fear of internet marketing.

2. Provide quality and relevant information.

3. Use keywords and phrases tailored to your freelance writing website.

4. Make sure readers can easily share your content.

5. Don’t blatantly sell to people — this is a turn-off.

6. Interact with visitors to your websites.

Blogging complemented with social bookmarking will increase web traffic to your freelance writing website.  Make sure you continue to provide well written, informative articles and blog posts. Don’t oversell visitors because this could deter them from visiting your website. Remember, a freelance writing business is about marketing and solving problems. The latter is very important.

Rebecca

Related articles

• 4 Free Automatic Bookmarking Tools – Automated Bookmarking (shoutmeloud.com)
• Freelance Writing and Wanting to be a Writer (jacobtullos.wordpress.com)
• Web and Phone Apps for Authors and Freelance Writers (savvy-writer.com)
• What Social Marketing/Bookmarking for SEO means to you as a Blogger? (shoutmeloud.com)
• List of Top Social bookmarking Sites in India: (bellwort.wordpress.com)

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