Promising SkiesJune 4, 2009
This past week I've spent working on my blogs behind the scenes tweaking some of the code. The biggest change I made was adding meta tags. This is code that tells the search engine bots what the blog is about by adding a description and keywords. Sounds easy, doesn't it? It turns out that there are character limits for each of the meta tags. If they are too long search engines will ignore or ban your blog. The meta tag for description must be worded properly, under 150 characters and cannot be just a list of keywords. The meta tag for keywords must be under 874 although you should use considerably less than that with no keyword repeated more than 3 times. Trade and brand names should not be used in your keyword tag unless you own them. Keyword spamming or using keywords that have nothing to do with your blog will get your blog banned from some search engines. I used an online meta tag analyzer to make sure my tags were correct. With that done I stumbled upon a site that explained back links, why they are important and how to check them.
Back links are those links coming into your blog from other websites or blogs. Ideally you want more back links than out going links on your blog. You get back links by leaving comments on other blogs or in forums and groups. You also get back links when your blog is referenced by another blog or you are added to their blogroll. However, I quickly learned that there are dos and don'ts for both back linking and out going links. Out going links should not go to a site that has been blacklisted by one or more search engines. Some out going links should have the 'rel=#nofollow' to tell the search engines not to check that link but you have be careful with using this as what it can also tell the search engines is you don't trust that link. There is also indication that one major search engine is going to start treating nofollow differently penalizing those who use it too much. This isn't much of a problem for my blogs but for someone writing a 'make money' blog there are some links you definitely should not use. Some back links cannot be controlled as anyone can add a link for your blog on their blog. Search engines understand that. You can control your back links with respect to which blogs and forums you comment on so choose these wisely. These types of comments must not be comment spam simply to get a back link!
All of my blogs have a lot of images but the search engines don't see the actual image so the image content does not get indexed. To get the search engines to index the image content I found out you have to use the alt"" portion in the image code. For example in the image above I changed the alt"" to alt"Promising Skies sunset". Now the image content will be indexed so if someone searches for sunset this image will be included in the search results.
Looking back over the last few day, I learned an awful lot about search engines! There are a surprising number of search engines each with their own way of evaluating your content. Your blog may appear as number 1 or on page 1 on one search engine yet on another may not appear until page 3. The ever present concern over page rank (PR) is Google specific so while it tells you how your blog is viewed by their bots, it says nothing as to how other search engines see your blog. Without meta tags the chances of search engine bots finding you are greatly reduced. You increase your chances of being viewed by search engine bots if you submit your blog to them. That is an invite for their bots to crawl your blog content and index it. I also found out that you get more attention from the search engines by regularly adding content to your blog but changing your template too often will get you less attention. Tweaking your template is better than doing a dramatic overhaul of your template. The best you can do is have good meta tags, submit your blog to search engines and keep creating good content on a regular basis. Once you've done all this focus on having fun blogging!
Garden Gnome
©2006-2009
This is a great summary! My own webmaster recently told me about the meta tags too.
ReplyDeleteI'd never know what that "Alt" field was for, though, so I'm very grateful to discover it here! :-)
I've got an analytic program on my blog that tells me where people have come from, to find it. I'm always especially interested in the search terms people use, when Google or another search engine find me.
You probably already know that they search on your blog post "labels" too. (What are called "tags" on my Wordpress-powered blog.) You'll be surprised at which of those end up bringing people in.
I've done a few posts on "free ebooks," and that's been one of the tags that brings in a lot of search traffic. My one post reviewing a book about Nellie McClung is another one -- I get a few hits a day from that.
And amusingly, after I posted a video of a friend feeding a baby raccoon she's helped rescue after its mother died, it gets several hits a day! So you just never know.
Did your reading tell you about bolding too? Bolding something important like (in my case) the name of the book I'm reviewing, and the name of the author? My webmaster said Google pays a lot of attention to bolding too, as long as it's not over-used.
Thanks Phyl! Somewhere along the way I had read that Blogger automatically added meta tags but when I checked the code of my blog I didn't see any. So I added the meta tags. Using the alt"" field really adds to how the search engines see your blog especially if it is graphic intensive. I knew about the importance of labels but did not know about bolding so that's something I will be using as well. Thanks for that tip!
ReplyDeleteIt's always interesting to see what search terms people use. Sometimes I just sit shaking my head in amazement while thinking "you can't be serious". OTOH something in that search term landed them on my blog so I'm not complaining :)