Some Handy Advice on SEO Plus a Cool Content Posting Schedule

Structuring your Site & Blog for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) We thought we have been talking about web design ‘? – for quite a while now and therefore we should share some valuable info on SEO and content marketing. So here goes.

By the way, if you want to read some awesome posts on web design, you should check this one out: Six Quick Fire Web Design Tips Every Web Designer Should Live By

When you are setting up your site structure/blog structure keep your initial list of top 4 and top 10 keywords in mind. You would want to build pages on your site and blog that directly relate to those top keywords. The reason is obvious: If you build the category pages that are highly searched you will be automatically populating your site/blog with those keywords ‘? which in turn with help with SEO. Here are some tips to enhance your blog for SEO:

• For each category page, have one block of text on the top of the page that summarizes what that category is about. Keyword optimizes this block of text (but do not stuff too many keywords in there or you will get slapped by Big G).
• At the very top of the category page have links to the most popular posts within that category. With blogs, posts and links get buried under new content; so you can continue to milk the good content by providing links to it in this way.
• In the same way, have links going out of your homepage to your most popular category pages.
• Put links to useful, relevant and valuable content on your site/blog even if it’s not owned by you. Be selfless and it will pay off hugely in the long run.
• Anchor text. Make sure your anchor text is (A) relevant to the content on the page it’s pointing towards and (B) in line with your target keywords.
• Make sure all your pages are being indexed by Google. What does indexing mean? Put simply indexing means that Google knows that the page exists ‘? meaning that it has ‘?indexed’ it in its massive database. Go to Google.com and type in site:yoursite.com. Check the section at the top of the search listing which says ‘?About X results (x seconds). Does this number correspond to the pages you have on your site? Does the homepage come up first?
• For your blog, you would also want to know if Google is being notified whenever there is an update to the blog. You can use http://pingomatic.com/ to serve that end. It’s free and simple.

And now, here is the cool content marketing calendar that we use here at Cactimedia. We try to get everyone to be content creators ‘? whether its web designers who can share their nuggets of wisdom on web design or the SEO folks or those really geeky developer guys.

Content Marketing

If you are not already, then you should start thinking about a content posting schedule. Trust me on this one, if you leave it all to randomness, you won’t really be able to do much content production and sharing. Having a posting schedule will not only force you and your team of web designers, developers and marketers to share and create good content, but it will also force their minds to stay on the lookout for ideas. Here is how we like you think in terms of content scheduling.

From the list below, choose 1 or 2 items and put them on your calendar. Then stick to it religiously.

Daily

• Put out something of value on Twitter.
• Share relevant news stories on Facebook and/or Google+. Use ‘?Google Alerts’ to automatically get notified in a clean and structured way about news stories and happenings in your chosen space.

Weekly

• Do a new blog post
• Add an album of photos on your Flickr and Pinterest profile. Don’t forget to tag smartly keeping it relevant to the content and to your target keywords.
• Share a presentation on Slideshare.com
• Participate in discussions on forums and answer questions on Linkedin.
• Add stuff to your site, edit it, clean it up.

Monthly

• Do in-depth research on a particular niche within your industry and write about it on your Blog, post a link on Facebook and Google+ and do a tweet on Twitter.
• Send out a newsletter
• Do a round-up of all that happened during the month and share it across all channels.
• Do an audio podcast and share it on your blog and other social channels. You can even slip this stuff into your newsletter if it is really valuable. But be warned, don’t make your newsletters too much about YOU! Be selfless.

Quarterly

• Publish a case study relevant to your industry.
• Do an interview with a Subject Matter Specialist (like a website designer or developer) and post the interview on your Blog, website and social channels.
• Produce a Video that’s viral and which solves a problem or explains something that hasn’t been explained in that way. The object of the video should be to create an Aha! Moment.
• Do a special quarterly newsletter.
• Get a designer and craft a cool and clever infographic.

Yearly

• Round up the whole year in your yearly report.
• Write an ebook.
• Built an app for the iPhone or Android.
• Do an experiment and make the results public ‘? draw conclusions and insights.
• Speculate on what the next year holds. Ask the experts and publish their answers.

 

Social Sharing icons…

Make sure you have social sharing buttons on your content pages so that people can market your stuff on your behalf.

Here are the links to set up these buttons for Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like

Twitter
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/tweet-button/overview

For WordPress
Add a whole bunch of these sharing buttons if you are using the WordPress platform with ‘?Sexy bookmarks’. Here is the link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks/screenshots/

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Edited By: Haniyeh Rasti Lari