Category: Blogs

Posted on

You Really Must Use American Speaking Ghost Bloggers

Here is an excellent case in point. I just got this email in my inbox. I have not edited a single thing, just changed the names and removed the links.

Hi ,
We are Dhxxxxj and Hxxa (names changed to protect their identity from ridicule by Nancy McCord) from Bangalore , India . We work from home as a full time bloggers.
We started blogging since sept2006. We have around 7 blogs on which we write the posts.

Please find the list below

URL list removed to protect the innocent clients who have bought their services

Please let us know if you have any writing opportunities
Thanks
thanks!

Man, that’s scary isn’t it. That could be your ghost blogger if you use just any firm or a possibly a low bidder from a resource like Elance.  I have highlighted the problems so you can tell at a glance where the errors are:

We are Dhxxxxj and Hxxxa from Bangalore , India . We work from home as a full time bloggers.

We started blogging since sept2006. We have around 7 blogs on which we write the posts.

Not only is grammar wrong, spacing is wrong and verb usage is wrong. If you want to spend a lot of time rewriting your blog posts you could pay about $5 a post to get this kind of content. Better yet, you could hire my firm where we employ only American speaking professional college educated writers. 

Many of our writers have college degrees, some several years of college, some that are just short of graduating, and some with higher level college degrees. Sure, you will pay more, but you will not have to waste your time correcting your blog posts, you will build readership because people will understand your message, your blog posts will make a positive impression about your company’s professionalism, and on top of that you will have well written engaging content. The choice is yours.

Find out more about our American speaking premium level ghost blogging program.

Posted on

Blogging SEO Tips from Google

Matt Cutts the engineer from Google who speaks to the webmaster community has posted slides of tips for SEO blogging. When Google talks I listen!

Here’s a link to the blog post. When he posts a video on the topic I’ll embed it in another post so keep an eye out for it.

Matt likes WordPress for his own blogging and so do I. Although in the slides it is hard to understand his input, the video will clearly be more exciting. In the slides and video he will talk about how PageRank is calculated and information on inbound links and their importance for organic placement for blogs. The slides are a teaser, but the real meat will be the video.

Posted on

Overriding NoFollow in Links and Comments

I had a commenter recently who brought attention to the fact that he would not comment on my blog again unless I removed the nofollow in comments and commenter links. He made a good point but created an interesting problem that I thought I would blog about today.

First, about a year ago or maybe even more, WordPress, Blogger, and Typepad inserted into their source code an automatic nofollow in the source code of all comments and links left on a blog. There was no setting in the control panels to override this option.

However I for one encourage comments and do not have problems with people linking to a legitimate site if they leave a legitimate comment on my blog. But, how to override this global setting without access to a control panel to do so. Lucia’s Linky Love WordPress plug-in takes care of this problem. You install the plugin and then configure how many times a user needs to comment to have Linky Love turn on a dofollow tag in the comments and enable dofollow in any links they post.

This is an excellent tool to encourage regular visitors to comment and for them to get something back in return for commenting as well as removing spam comments and posters.

I have enabled Lucia’s Linky Love on my blog, so I invite you to be a regular participant and receive link love as a reward!

Posted on

SEO Blogging – Top Professional Blogging Techniques

Blogging is big business but there are definitely ways to do it better than others. Here are my top tips for blogging like an SEO pro.

  1. Make sure your blog post title contains your top keywords. Sometimes even this style may be best- keyword then a hyphen then the post title. Review my blog post title above as an example.
  2. If and when you include hyperlinks in the blog post, make sure the hyperlink text (that’s the content that is underlined is keyword rich. Here’s an example: make sure to visit our website for search engine optimization pricing and our client results. I like to not only use keywords in the hyperlink, but also force the browser to open the link to a site off my blog in a new browser window. This way I will not lose the customer from my site.
  3. Make sure to use the link title field in WordPress. For the link listed above, I get even more keyword traction by inserting in the link title field the same keywords as in the anchor text. This is a simple but overlooked feature to help build keyword density in a blog post.
  4. Keyword density is important for a blog post done for SEO purposes. I try to repeat the top keyword phrase at least three times in a post done for search engine optimization purposes.
  5. Keep the blog post short and sweet and focused. The shorter your blog post, the better your keyword density will be, but don’t stuff you keywords. Remember you have to say something in the blog post too, not just string out keywords. Offer something of value to your readers.

Many people who are doing blogging for SEO do not want outbound links. Here’s were we differ on perspective. I will never link to a competitor, but I do routinely link to information rich sites so that my blog readers will get real value for following my blog. I do not feel that I am bleeding off search engine optimization capital by linking. From my perspective a blog is about linking to great informational sites on the topic you are blogging about. If you want to link and it has meaning to the blog post do it. Don’t take too hard of a line on outbound links. You want other blogs and websites to link to you right? It is a reciprocal two way street.

Another reason why you should consider the judicious use of quality information rich out going links is that Blogger has targeted as “spam blogs”, blogs that mainly link back to one website over and over. It may be a better long term “Google Tactic” to spice up your links so Google will not perceive your blog site as a “spam blog” site.

Got any other great SEO blogging tips you want to share? Add them by clicking comments below.