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Here is a PDF of the slides and my notes: click here to view them.
Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.
If you have any technical problems, please do drop me an email at helen (at) businessplusbaby.com
Thanks!
Helen
Hi Helen,
Thanks so much for your helpful talk last night, I learned a lot and it deepened my understanding of the subject too.
I hear from googling around that sitemaker is considered rubbish for seo, and you were very tactful on the matter last night! Moonfruit is due to introduce HTML5 this month, do you think this will ‘tidy up’ the messy code?
My other question; does changing your keywords mean that you are ‘starting again’ in the sense of google recognising your site and rising through the pages?
My other sites are http://www.pregnancymassage.me.uk http://www.biodynamicmassage.me.uk. I aim to write something once a week for one of them. The recently re-vamped http://www.pregnancyandparenthoodalliance.co.uk has more regular up-dates from therapists.
Thanks again
Kate
Hi Kate
You’re very welcome, glad it was helpful.
That’s a shame about Sitemaker 🙁 I wonder if some of these template website builders cut corners in this area because their target customer group probably won’t be aware of this issue. I don’t know if the introduction of HTML5 will tidy up the code at Moonfruit, I guess it could go either way. If you’re thinking of switching it might be worth just watching for a while and seeing what the reviews say before making a decision.
If you change your keywords you’re unlikely to be starting again from scratch. E.g. if you were targeting ‘pregnancy’ but now find that there’s way too much competition you might want to target something more specific like ‘massage in third trimester’ (I’m making this up, you’d need to do some research here!) All your previous work is not wasted as having a few articles around pregnancy in general will help make your site look like an authority. The other thing you can do is go back and tweak keywords and titles in some old blog posts e.g. if you have articles about massage in pregnancy you could edit them so they are specifically about the third trimester. Gradually republishing your old tweaked posts over a period of time will help too if you’re happy to do that – as long as your human readers wouldn’t find that odd or annoying (often they won’t even notice).
Hope that helps!
Helen
Hi Helen,
Thanks again for last night. Just a couple of things…re you mentioned being a “guest” on someone elses website, and I am wondering, to help both myself and Kate who does the pregnancy massage, if we were to be “guest speakers” on each others site?? (If Kate wanted to of course !!) we both have information important to parents, – both from a different angle but still of interest, but I am wondering, as I am only wanting to target local parents, and Im perhaps guessing Kate would be the same, as we are both different ends of the UK would it be of any benefit? And on that note, linking in with other websites, should I just stick to local sites?? Also, I have a word press website – how many plugins do you recommend per page??? thanks again, Joan
Hi Joan, it’s a pleasure! It would be a great idea to guest post on each other’s blogs if you’re both happy to do so. I wouldn’t worry about not being a local business as a backlink from a relevant, quality website is always worth having. And it’s amazing how often someone in Uttoxeter has a sister in Bedford! If you can get together with local bloggers too, that’s great but often you might find there aren’t that many good quality relevant websites in your town.
As for the WordPress plugins, it’s not just a question of numbers. I’d suggest only having a plugin if you need it and if you find you aren’t really using one a few months down the line, remove it. Often people add plugins because they look cool or clever but they don’t really add anything useful or valuable to the site. It’s also worth looking at the reviews of plugins before you install them – have people reported problems with them?
Hope that covers it, let me know if not!
Helen
You might also find this post helpful? http://businessplusbaby.com/2012/01/18/guest-blogging-for-business-bloggers-where-to-start/
Hello again,
Thanks Helen, I can see that I am going to have a very happy time doing some more keyword research!
One other question (I will stop eventually) is it worth sending articles to article directories for seo and if so, do the automated software thingumies work?
Joan, I’d love to swap blog posts, I’ll be in touch.
Warm regards and many thanks again
Kate
Kate, I can see you’ll be spending many happy winter evenings in front of a roaring fire with the Google keywords tool 🙂
Google reduced the value of links from article directories in the Panda update about a year ago, so links coming from article directories still have some value, but less than they used to have. I did put some articles on Ezine Articles as a test and I’ve only had a handful of clicks from them in about a year, so I don’t think they are very effective for me. Still, if you’re a fast writer and you have lots of articles that you can re-write to make them unique in just a few minutes each, it might be worth putting them on an article directory just to see. Personally I’d use Squidoo instead as it’s similar but I believe it’s more respected by search engines.
If you do use article directories a) read the Ts and Cs very carefully and b) re-write your articles so they are not a duplicate of articles appearing elsewhere on the web. Spinning software is something I haven’t used because I was disappointed with the whole article directory thing, but from what I’ve read they are becoming less and less effective. So if you use them at all, use with caution seems to be the advice.
By the way, you’d both be welcome to guest post here too if you can think of a business angle for your baby/toddler/pregnancy articles!
This is me on Squidoo http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/HelenLindop and this is me on Ezine Articles http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Helen_Lindop if you want to take a look.
Hi Helen,
Thanks, now that will really save me some time!
Many thanks for the invitation, I’ll have a think about a business related blog; probably best from fruit nation, I’ll be in touch.
Kate
Excellent! I’ll look forward to it.
Hi Helen
I have a couple of questions following last week’s webinar (very helpful indeed!) regarding redirects.
1) I have a site (almost!) built using Moonfruit and have pointed/redirected my domain name to this through 1and1. I’m not sure if this is a “masked redirect” but if it is, does this mean my site is harder to read/access by the SEO algorithms?
2) Is there any benefit in buying multiple domains and pointing them all to the same site, e.g. buying domains which comprise of search keywords such as http://www.helpwithadmin.com or http://www.ineedanadministrator.com?
Any light you could shed on these would be appreciated!
Many thanks
Sian
Hi Sian! Thank you, glad it was helpful 🙂 In answer to question 1), it depends on the type of redirection – see this article for all the info http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection.
I had to do a bit of digging for the definitive answer to question 2) and it seems like it’s not a particularly good idea – see http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-domains-pointed-at-one-site.
I also found a couple more articles which aren’t quite the same tactic as you mentioned in question 2, but they are similar so I thought I’d share those too:
http://blog.ineedhits.com/tips-advice/why-owning-multiple-domain-names-is-bad-for-seo-02539442.htm
http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-domain-names-pointing-at-one-website
I would suggest that you’re better off doing some detailed keyword research, thinking about the burning questions that your target audience would be asking and then writing some really useful articles that answer those. If you’re running a business services company, the answer is going to lead them towards outsourcing, how to find a good VA etc rather than how to do it themselves, of course!
Thanks for your detailed reply Helen, that’s a great help!
Hello! During the webinar someone asked if approaching a blogger ‘cold’ to ask if you could do a guest post was a little presumptuous? Well, leaving them a few comments first is a good way to break the ice – I talk more about this is this video… http://businessplusbaby.com/2012/11/19/commenting-on-blogs-is-good-for-business/
Hi ya Helen ….gosh didn’t realise all the comments on here!!! – anyway, here I am now, thanks so much for the invite on guest blogging, I will take you up on your kind offer (once I hear you on your webinar later so now what to say !!) looking forward to it x