Month: September 2009

Targeting your keywords to get search engine rankings

Post author By Jordan
Post date 2:28 pm
4 Comments on Targeting your keywords to get search engine rankings

Last week, we started our series on keywords: the words people use to find your blog. We looked at a few ways of identifying those keywords—and this week we’ll look at how we can put those keywords to work.

On your site

Use the keywords you’re targeting on your site. If the keyword is really integral to the site, you might try to find a way to work it into your blog name or even URL. In the Quick Guide to Google Analytics for Blogs, I mentioned a few more places to use these keywords.

Making it a label, tag or category on your blog
Making it part of the navigation, like your About or Contact page
Including it in the Title or Description of your blog
Writing a post that sums up (and links to) all your tips (if you do this, be sure to go back through the old posts and link to the new one, as well).

And of course, use it in the text. However, write your posts with people in mind, not just search engines—write to your audience, using the words they’re using to find you.

Around the Internet

Pages on your site are a good way to start using the keywords you want to target. But to really target these keywords, you should look at ways to get links back to your site using those keywords as the text of the links (the “anchor text”).

There are a few easy ways to do this—your friends’ blogrolls, for example. Also, blog carnivals and other memes are a good way to get links where you can choose exactly what that anchor text is.

Finally, you can try to create “linkbait”—something everyone will want to link to, share, use on their sites (with links back to yours, of course). There are many forms of this—awesome articles, fun quizzes, cool widgets. If you’ve got the imagination, you can probably find someone with the skill to create it for you.

Using the keywords that search engine users enter to find sites like yours tells search engines your site is relevant for those terms—especially when that “vote” of relevance comes in the form of a link from another site. Using the keywords you’re targeting both on and off your site will help people who are looking for sites like yours, find you.

What do you think? What other ways do you get links? How else can you use your keywords on your site?

Keys by Kit

Tags seo for bloggers, keyword research, targeting keywords, keywords, search engine optimization, seo, seo for blogs

Kids/Parenting

Important firsts

Post author By Jordan
Post date 9:46 pm
3 Comments on Important firsts

Rebecca has been hard at work on perfecting her walking. She’s gotten up to a record of about 8-9 steps, but most of her journeys begin (and end) with a single step.

Here are some of her first assisted steps, from about a month ago:

Hayden, not to be outdone, is working on some of his own firsts. Can you tell what this one is?

That’s right—it’s his first commercial jingle! He composed this all on his own (after hearing his parents quoting the Psych episode for about a week). Guess what he got for lunch that day?

What big accomplishments/career moves have your kids made lately?

Tags firsts, walking, commercial jingle, psych

Fulfillment

Reaching a mother’s limit

The other day I came across this across a post on reasonable limits from The Thinking Mother, Christine. Usually, when we mothers talk about reasonable limits, we’re talking about the limits to our children’s behavior.

But that’s not what Christine means—she’s talking about reasonable limits for her expectations of herself. She felt like she was pushing herself so hard, expecting so much of herself, that she had a hard time enjoying her life (emphasis added):

Some people think I do too many things. I feel like I don’t do enough.

Some people think I have accomplished great things but even when I win something that I’ve worked to earn I don’t always “feel” like anything is to be celebrated. I’m on to the next thing.

One impact that having a too-busy life had with me was I suddenly realized I had no time to feel gratitude for the good things that I was experiencing. . . . I started making some changes to try to slow down to enjoy this life I’m living rather than just moving on to the next appointment and the next and the next.

I totally agree—and this is something I can work on, and maybe we all can. I think that we have to set reasonable expectations of ourselves—recognize what we really can do in a day, what we know about a situation, where we are, allow for our challenges. Sometimes we’re pushing ourselves to do eighty, when we should really only do thirty—and we’re utterly disappointed in ourselves when we “only” get sixty. We have to reevaluate our self-expectations regularly, too.

What are your unreasonable expectations of yourself? How have you adjusted your expectations to match your limits (physical, mental, emotional, etc.)?

Photo by Rebekah

Tags expectations, limits, self-limits, self-expectations

MetaBlogging

Keywords: Are people looking for your blog?

Post author By Jordan
Post date 2:22 pm
1 Comment on Keywords: Are people looking for your blog?

Keywords are the words people type into search engines. Do you know what keywords people are using to find your blog? How can you make sure your blog ranks for the “right” keywords?

This is keyword research, the foundation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When you work on your site using the words that people would use in search engines to find sites like yours, you can work to improve your search engine rankings.

Choosing Keywords

Choosing keywords is part art and part science. For the science part, one easy, free tool is the Google External Keyword Tool. If you’ve already chosen a niche, you should have a start on the topics and areas your blog will cover.

Once you have a few keywords to feed into the Tool, it will generate related terms, so you can find the real search terms people use. If you call it “sing at home mom,” the tool’s going to tell you that most people say “stay at home mom.”

If you can’t come up with a list of keywords on your own, the Tool can also read your site to generate relevant keywords—but be careful which page you pick (my main page right now would bring back a lot of keywords on lawn maintenance 😉 ).

I know that my cute tag line [mom’s search for meaning] isn’t going to bring a whole lot of visitors (the Tool reports “not enough data” for that keyword). Keywords like [how to be a happy mom] and [mother fulfillment] also don’t get a lot of traffic. Perhaps my best bet is [moms encouragement], which has a few hundred as the traffic number, and no advertiser competition.

While we’re talking about natural search results here, and the advertiser competition has to do with the paid ads on the top and sides of the search results, you have to also look at the competition. I mean, you actually have to look at the other pages that are already ranking for those words and see if it looks like they’re trying to stay there.

If you want to rank in the top ten, [mom blog] is going to be a challenge. But maybe [knitting sahm blog] or [puppy sahm blog] or [motoX mom blog] (ooh, I’d like to see that one) would be a little less competitive.

So an ideal keyword will be:

high volume (so you get visitors)
relevant to your site and niche (so your visitors won’t be disappointed
not too competitive (so you can rank high without working for a year)
not too long (the longer it is, the less competitive it is, but the harder it will be to incorporate it into your site.

Next week, we’ll take a look at what you can do to improve your ranking for relevant keywords.

Keys by Kit

Tags search engine optimization, seo, seo for blogs, seo for bloggers, choosing keywords, keyword research, keywords

Fulfillment

Watering our grass

(No, this isn’t a follow up to the situation with the neighbors who told the police, city council and mayor that we’ve neglected our lawn for three years.)

I was already planning this post when Lindsey commented on the post earlier this week about whether the grass is always greener:

My dad says something along the same lines, “If the grass looks greener on the other side . . . (dramatic pause) water your grass.” I’ve always loved that saying:)

That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about today. We’ve alluded to this conversation before, but what do you to water your grass? What do you do to put things into perspective, to remember how much you love this life you’ve chosen?

We started with some steps to fulfillment in motherhood (and I’m still working on posting about all of them!), but I’d love to hear what you do or think about to keep yourself happy (or just sane).

Lindsey’s comment can start us off:

. . . . I can’t believe how much more I’ve grown as a sahm, than while I was at college learning and working. And heck, my kids like me best of anyone; I don’t want to go spend my day with people who don’t like me as much as they do. Does wonders for my self-esteem:)

For me, watering my grass is as easy as making the conscious effort to look for what is good in my life instead of focusing on what I don’t have.

I think most of us find (choose!) fulfillment in the little things.

These days, those are things like Rebecca’s hip-swaying dancing, her first signs and words (I swear today she said “dance”!), her snuggles and her toddling first few steps. Not to be outdone, Hayden melts my heart when he lays his head on my shoulder and asks for kisses; when he lays on his bed, throws open his arms and calls for hugs (and giggles the whole time); calling out every letter he can identify (“H for Haydie! M for Marty! Y for Cougars!”); the way his little legs seem to get longer every day.

Beyond the little things, I also think taking “me” time every day helps—even (especially!) if it’s just a nap.

How do you water your grass? What do you do to enjoy the present and the little things? What do you do or think about to keep yourself happy?

Photo by Aaron Vidal