Session #1
Confession: I ducked out of my originally chosen session when I realized it wasn’t what I needed. I’m sure it’s great for a lot of the people in the room, but it was more basic than I had anticipated. That means I missed the first quarter of this session, but I’m jumping in where we are. I learned more in the first 2 minutes after arrival than I did in 15 minutes of the the session. Yes, I chose wisely, my friend.
Search Engines are Dumb
You are your words!
Search engines find you via keywords.
*Wordle* Tool to see if your blog is on topic.
SEO is a process, not an event. It is a strategy that constantly changes.
Keywords change over time, but if you are already established as an authority on a topic your blog will evolve organically to fit.
There are different ways of saying the same things over and over.
One topic per post—don’t write posts that are all over the place, stick to one main idea.
Analytics: Find What Drives Business
Critical component that is not in your analytics—the people who are finding your search results and not clicking through
Understand what drives search before people even get to your results
Beware of keywords—some keywords drive traffic but not business (measuring conversions is critical)
Pay attention to which authors are driving traffic and/or conversions
Referring sources—pay attention to which of your efforts are driving traffic and conversions
Setting Goes
Ignite Old Content
Don’t just move foward…move back!
Go back and edit old posts—a post may be dead to your regular readers, but search engines still read it and rank based on updates
You can change the post title, but leave the slug the same—never change a url!
It’s Not Easy
Starting a blog is easy, but creating an effective blog that people use is not.
Most blogs are abandoned; most business blogs suck
Don’t just post or rehash press releases
Don’t believe that isn’t going to work—people are searching for you, your products or your services…be there!
I found you on Twitter when I was looking up info on #blogindiana. I followed you and have been really appreciating the live blogging. I wanted to go, but couldn’t. With your posts, I almost feel like I’m there.