Archive for the ‘SEO Tips’ Category
Basic SEO for Wordpress
If you own a wordpress blog you probably realize how important search engine optimization (SEO) can be to the success of your site.
Unfortunately the default settings in a wordpress blog are not designed to provide you with the best SEO results. Here are some easy ways to optimize your blog for the search engines.
The two most important things you can do on-site to better optimize your blog for the search engines.
- Change your permalinks. Default wordpress blog permalinks will have an extension that looks like /?p=123. Not only is this not optimized for SEO it doesn’t look good to your visitors and provides no information as to what the page is about.
You can change the permalinks so that the end of the url will look like http://yourdomain.com/name-of-post/
This is very easy to accomplish. Go to your options and select permalinks. Enter /%postname%/ in the custom field.
Now your permalinks will look much better and be more search engine friendly!
- Change Your Page Titles.
The first words in a page title are the most important in terms of SEO. Default titles in the wordpress blog begin with the name of the blog. i.e. “Blog Name, Blog Archive, Post Title”. For better SEO you want the title of the post to be the first words in the title of the page.In your header.php file locate this code:
<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ? > ? Blog Archive <?php } ? > <?php wp_title(); ? ></title >Change it to:
<title><?php wp_title(' '); ? ><?php if(wp_title(' ', false)) { echo '–'; } ?><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title >
Once you have completed these steps for “on-site” SEO your wordpress blog will be in a much better position with the search engines, but you’re not done yet. Work on getting as many high quality and relevant backlinks as you can. Submit your blog to directories and write articles with your links in the author resource for publishing in article directories. When you place your links in the resource use links to specific categories, not just the home page.
Google Supplemental Results
Google’s search results are now set up in a two-tier system. You have the main, or regular search results, and the supplemental results. Supplemental results will generally show up at the very end of keyword search results. The odds that your ’supplemental’ page will be available to someone performing a search isn’t very good.
Let’s see Google official definition from their webmaster page
A supplemental result is just like a regular web result, except that it’s pulled from our supplemental index. We’re able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.
To find out how your own website (or a competitors site) is doing in the two-tier system go over to Google and type in site:www.yourdomain, of course you will have to put in your actual url. If your pages are relegated to the supplemental results you will actually see “Supplemental Result” written to the right of the url below the description in the listing.
The most common reason that your pages may be in the supplemental results is duplicate content. Pages with little, or no content will also be placed in the supplemental results. Another possibility is that you may have identical title and Description meta tags on all or many pages.
The best advice is to take actions to avoid having your pages placed in the supplemental results in the first place. However, it is possible to get pages back into the main listings.
Make a serious effort to provide unique and original content on all your pages. If in question you may check your pages for originality at copyscape.com. Write a unique title and description meta tag for each page. If you have pages that consist mostly of images add text so that Google will ’see’ content. There are different opinions as to how much content you need on a page but 500 words or more is best.
When you work on your inbound links do not make all of the links point to your home page. Whenever you have the opportunity get backlinks to internal pages of your website. The lack of inbound links or having only reciprocal links has often been pointed to as a cause of pages being placed in supplemental results.
Finally, don’t give up or lose hope. Most all websites have pages listed in the supplemental results. Concentrate on providing good original content as that is, by far, the most significant factor affecting how your page will be treated by Google’s two-tier system.
Ituloy Angsulong sa Google!
How to Get a Good Backlink other than the Homepage?
I visited Marc page to see if there’s a latest news/update regarding the ituloy angsulong SEO contest and while browsing his blog, I saw one blog post that interest me it’s a “free SEO tools” by Jim Boykin.
I visited the page, and read some stuff regarding the tools and seo tips. Then I stumled on the topic “tips for finding the best pages to get links from” . This topic is new for me since I’m not a big fun of reading. LOL 
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So here it goes, how to find the best pages to get links from other than the homepage? Jim Boykin SEO tips, here is how.
There’s 2 main types of pages I’d seek.
The first type I’d find by asking, “What Page on their site is most relevant to the page on my site I’m seeking a link to“.
Here’s how I’d find that: I’d go to google and search [site:theirsite.com keyword phrase] to find the most relevant page. Relevance is a big factor. If I sell Green Widgets, and they’ve got a specific page on Green widgets, that would be a great page to get a link from.
The Second type of page I’d seek is the one with the most “power”…call it “backlinks”, call it “trust rank”, call it “quality indicators”….all of those.
Here’s how I’d find any websites most powerful inner page.
I’d go to Yahoo and search [site:theirsite.com]
The nice thing about Yahoo is that they tend to list pages in order of importance. Same goes for a “linkdomain” search in Yahoo (the best backlinks tend to be towards the top of results). This hold true for a “Site:” search with Yahoo. The best “internal pages” tend to be listed first.
These “best internal pages” tend to be the pages that have the most external backlinks to those pages.
The 2 step said it all, simple and easy way to get the best internal pages of a certain site, hope it helps. 
How does one build .EDU backlinks ?
Even if you believe it or not, backlinks from .EDU get additional credibility from Google than other sites would. .EDU sites are likely to be of high quality content therefore links from them are very nice things to have. Coupled with the fact they tend to be of high PR, traffic and with few outgoing links.
How to get a .EDU backlinks?
The key isn’t in just asking for links or trying to exchange them. You need to make it about them. Partner with a school, or feature a program or students in a program related to your site’s niche. Add relevant school profiles or reviews to your site, and even build an awards-style program over time. As you gain more credibility for choosing quality “winners”, it might mean something, and linking will be more automatic. Interview students or professors about programs related to your niche, and report the published interviews (reviews or whatever) to the school’s PR Director. Those are a few general tips that you can adapt to most niches. ~ Jennifer Mattern
Here is how you get a list of .EDU site, try to use this site:edu inurl:forums keyword , just replace the keyword with the targeted keywords. I used forums since community sites are the easiest way to get a backlinks. But most moderators now a days specially in .EDU community is filtering/administering the registration before you become an active member. Good Luck 
But don’t forget “good unique content” is still the king!