FoxBusiness.com published this deansguide article August 19, 2008
Warning the following post is constructed as a short taste or introduction to "SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make." If you are serious about your SEO, then consult the ppt file included in this post as your true detailed guideline.
WordPress WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco was broken down into two separate programs one for users (User Track) and one for developers (Developer Track). Since the only code I have written was on a old “Get Smart” decoder ring, I was upstairs with the users. The programs were broken up into 20-30-60 minute sessions; the first significant session was Stephan Spencer’s “SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make.”
The following is a very abbreviated version of the ppt presentation provided for you. Take your time and absorb as much as possible using this post as an “appetizer” to the main course
SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make by Stephan Spencer
With the fondest of memories, Stephan Spencer’s session was a full blast steam roller of terminology, technical strategies, and examples. It was like trying to follow that once famous T.V. pitchman the “Fast Talker” through the backroom of the SEO underworld. Spencer is obviously a brilliant man with expertise at the highest level in the SEO world–no arguing the source, this guy is a Babe Ruth in his field
The full ppt of Stephan’s presentation is here for those who are looking for incredible detail and great strategies.
A Few Mistakes Not To Make
1. Allowing Title Tags to be “auto-generated” by your blogging software is a mistake
Solution: Handcraft your title tags and never allow your blog’s name to be attached to the beginning of your post title or category tag
2. Multiple Homes for your blog is a huge mistake
Solution: You do not want to get page with multiple urls only one url. Make sure each page has one url that the search engines recognize as the place to go for that particular page or you will be fragmenting your SEO power for that page
3. Date Based Archive reliance hurts your SEO and most blog platform software organizes your pages by date
Solution: Internal organization of your blog content into categories as well as “implementing tagging and tag clouds across your blog is a much more search engine optimal approach.”
4. Only One RSS Feed and it’s for your blog and it is not optimized
Solution: Each category on your blog should have it’s own RSS feed so that people only interested in a certain topic can subscribe to that topic and get only the information they want rather than the entire blog. If you utilize tag pages then you should have an RSS tag specific feeds
5. Placing Your Blog url or RSS Feed url on a blog domain you do not own. This one is especially painful because I am on a wordpress.com subdomain rather than my own domain I own. Eventually I will have to abandon my deansguide.wordpress.com so that I can control my adsense or advertising revenue
Solution: Bite the bullet and start a stand alone blog with a domain you own. Anything less means you don’t control your possible income or rules of engagement
For a complete list of the mistakes and fixes, please reference Stephan’s ppt presentation
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