Blogging for SEO

I really wanted to put “Walk The Line“, but it didn’t make sense for this topic. That topic would be CSS and the lists that appear in the site you happen to be working on.

There was an issue brought to my attention earlier concerning a list of links going down the page one at a time, whereas what they wanted was for it to read off like a sentence. Easily solved with display: inline; .

The actual call for it wasn’t there and it was becoming an awfully big burden for something that should be easy for this Delaware County realtor site. Apparently just calling for it in this line in the CSS made everything better. This entire call wasn’t even in there. Probably due to some mishap in the translation from the notepad to the actual CSS input area.

#relatedInfo li {
display: inline;
}

That one little line saved a lot of trouble. So check the line as you do your sites. Think it out calmly and look at the code.

Well ever since our word wrap, I have had some problems getting the weblink button to show an image. I noticed that most everyone else had not done this either which is why I set out to figure the problem out.

As you can see from this white water rafting in california website, I was able to solve the problem without editing the XSL file. Below is the css involved in creating this weblink image.

First I set out to make the container box, this allows the whole image to be clicked on as a link. Next I floated it right and positioned it so it was centered. I added a clear border (assuming your page has a white background). Next, I through in a non repeating image. And Finally tossed all of the weblink text to the left (so that the search engines still read it).

Hope this Helps,

Jeff

 #webLinkTop {width:380px;
height:200px;
float:right;
position:relative;
left:-30px;
border: 2px solid #fff;
padding:1em;
background-image:url(’/images/weblink.jpg’);
background-repeat:no-repeat;

}
#webLinkTop h2{
position:relative;left:-99999px;     height:220px;
}

Write as if your life depends on it.

Sounds simple enough, right?  You’d be surprised.  Some fledgeling writers hold back.  A lot.  This isn’t bad, really, but it could make your writing sound a little weaker than it could be.

Remember, avoid round-about language (things like “possibly”, “may”, “could” and the like) and go for the kill.  It’s better to tell someone that a plumber WILL solve their clogged drain problem than to tell them that they MIGHT solve it.

Also, make the subject act on the object rather than the other way around.  What does that mean?  “Billy hugged Sally”, not “Sally was hugged by Billy”.  Your sentences and, therefore, your content will be more direct and concise if you make sure to write that way.

Finally, keep it simple.  You can be descriptive, but don’t overdo it!  It’s enough to say that an apple is red and smooth.  You can even say that the apple is shiny.  You don’t have to talk about how “the light reflects off the skin of the crimson-hued fruit”.

If you can keep these few rules in mind, you’ll be a stronger writer.

Writing content can be quite strenuous when you’re faced with a greater amount of keywords to write for. So take your first keyword and write specifically about that. Short bursts of paragraphs help you say something about it but not everything about it. Now you just have to do the same for each keyword and then you have a body of content!

Reading an article in Smashing Magazine on site that show you how to expand your views on web design….The article was too long to post and lost it’s effect if I just copied and pasted it…..so I will post the link up for everyone, if they have not already seen it…..

I started reading this magazine because I am working on my personal portfolio site with work I did back in school and decided I wanted to share it for one and two wanted to get better at design…..

So check out the article……..40 Creative Design Layouts: Getting Out Of The Box

I worked on a web build today, and threw in some collapsing divs to show and hide the contact form. The website is for an electrician company based in northern california and is a great example of how to take a website to the next level, without alot of work.

Once you have jquery installed, simply link to it through your html file. Now link to a blank js file and start writing your own scripts based on the functionality of jquery.

Here is the code I used.

$(document).ready(function() {

$(’#contactBody’).hide();
$(’#contactForm’).hide();

$(’a#clickShow’).click(function() {
$(’#contactBody’).slideDown(500);
$(’#contactForm’).slideDown(650);
$(’#contentBody’).slideUp(500);
//$(’#footer’).slideUp(’fast’);
return false;
});

$(’a#clickHide’).click(function() {
$(’#contactBody’).slideUp(600);
$(’#contactForm’).slideUp(450);
$(’#contentBody’).slideDown(600);
//$(’#footer’).slideDown(’fast’);
return false;
});
});

Where #contactBody and #contactForm are the two divs I am working with. And #clickHide and #clickShow are the ids of the links that… you guessed it, open and close the divs. The numbers represent the speed at which the div opens/closes. See it is simple! Try it our for yourself.

Lately I’ve seen a lot of the sites I do get great ranks. A technology repair and sales site I did not too long ago is getting 223 first page placements, with well over 350 cumulative placements. However, page placements aren’t everything. We do quite a bit more than other SEO companies do in order to please our clients; we offer site builds, we look for strategies to assist conversion, we do everything we can in order to try and get the client what they want. Our customer service department has some of the most upstanding people I’ve met - they do great under fire, know our system extremely well, and are all-around as helpful as they can. So I’ve compiled a list of things that SEO cannot do:

1. SEO cannot guarantee users will visit your page. While the same office technology site has received 223 first page placements in the last two weeks, it has only received a little over a hundred page views. Maybe it showed up in a search but wasn’t exactly what the user wanted, or the store owner lived in Calilfornia and the user was a Japanese citizen, either way it’s not guaranteed that all 223 of those first page placements will result in the user going to the page.

2. SEO cannot guarantee that users will purchase from you. They will visit your page and look at your product, but at the same time they might be waiting on their paycheck and will wait before purchasing from you, or perhaps they were just browsing. It is the job of the web build to cause the user to purchase - how the product is presented, the price, etcetera. Our optimization pages will outline what the product is, why the user needs it, and give it a sales approach, but other than that, if the user doesn’t need/want it or can’t afford it, they probably won’t buy it.

Now, with this in mind, you are probably wondering why you should get SEO in the first place. That list is much longer:

1. SEO can give you a greater amount of first page placements. The first page on the search results page is usually the most clicked and most visited, as it is keyed to be exactly what the user needs. This will increase your exposure, allowing more users to see what you have. You may even get repeated visitors - ones who bookmarked your page (social bookmarking, by the way, increases your placement even more!), and decided to come back because they can now afford what you have to offer, or maybe someone who used to live in Japan and moved to your area and can now use your service - whatever the reason, repeated visitors are always a good thing to have. And first page placements can help them re-find your site if they were to forget its URL or didn’t bookmark it the first time they came.

2. SEO can increase the relevance of your site’s material. Maybe in the past your site was too general - but now that you’ve added keyword enriched content to it, users know what’s going on, and that helps them know what you’re all about, why you are the best, and why they should choose your service.

3. SEO can get the word out about your business. Social bookmarking and network has created a new wave to the Internet in that word can spread like wildfire about your great and awesome service, or maybe that fantastic and insightful blogpost you made. Take Google’s Chrome; it wasn’t out for but a few days and already it has hundreds of news articles written about it and Google’s tactics at marketing it. The download site itself already has a rocking 1600+ bookmarks on Delicious and growing; no doubt as the fire keeps burning, the amount of social bookmarks will grow exponentially.

4. SEO can help you build your presence on the Web. Presence is important, whether in person or having a cyber presence, as, similar to #3, it makes it so that more people know about you. More people will search for your business when they hear about you through word-of-mouth (certainly the greatest marketing resource out there!) to find out what you’re all about, thus increasing your presence even more as more people educate themselves about you and your business. Do you think Yahoo! got popular off of just free email? Certainly the Dot Com boom helped, but word of mouth certainly gave their domain billions (yes, billions) of hits a year around the globe. That’s quite a bit of presence.

Notice that I’m careful with the word guarantee in the list of things that SEO can do. Nothing is necessarily guaranteed for SEO; there are probably hundreds of sites with business similar or even just like yours, all competing for first page placements. This isn’t to say that SEO won’t help your rankings; it will, and greatly. I personally feel that the time, energy, and money placed in SEO is just as important as that which is placed into the web development itself. Even though SEO can’t guarantee that users will purchase from you or visit your page, perhaps it will at least help, and every little bit counts. Getting that first page placement can be difficult, but it can happen and it can certainly put you and your Internet presence on the road for greater things.