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Muppet Scat — Daily Show and SEO

This is kind of cool. Tonight on the Daily Show, John Stewart was talking about the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama and the Naval base near Manama. In this segment, he brought up this old clip from the Muppet show: He then told viewers to go do a Google search on Muppet Scat to see what comes up. It didn’t take long before Muppet Scat became the most searched for term on the Internet. Click on the screen shot below and see for yourself. muppet-skat By the time the show aired here on the West Coast, the online buzz had already begun. When I performed my “Mupet Scat” search, I saw that  one blogger — who used many of the same blog SEO techniques I wrote about earlier this month — had already been able to get his post on the topic to show up on first page of  Google results for that term. This provides yet another example of how powerful and immediate blogs can be for search engine optimization. Very cool indeed. View the Daily Show episode below:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M – Th 11p / 10c
The Buc Stops Here
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor
By the way, my heartfelt thanks to the Navy SEAL snipers and all the men and women in the U.S. military. I’m grateful that we have so many good people serving our country who are willing to do the really hard jobs that most people don’t have the skill or stomach to do. Keep up the outstanding work. Update: It took fewer than two hours for THIS post to make it to page one of a Google search on “Muppet Scat.” Plain and simple, SEO for blogs really works. Click on the image and check it out. SEO for blogs is fast

Five Tips For Getting Started With Blog SEO — They Can't Read What They Can't Find

The first step in getting someone to read your corporate blog is helping them find it

The first step in getting someone to read your corporate blog is helping them find it

If a tree falls down in the forest and no one is around to hear it, did it make a sound? Some say yes, some say no and people with better things to do couldn’t care less. But what if we replace the tree with your company’s blog and the forest with the Internet? Now you’ve got a brain teaser worth considering. Your business can have the best, most compelling  blog in the world, but if nobody ever reads it you aren’t making any noise. And if this is the case, what’s the point? Before someone can read your blog they have to find it. And the best way to make sure people find any kind of online content is to make sure it is search engine optimized. This month I had the privilege of attending Searchfest09 to hear what some of the industry’s leading SEO experts had to say about their industry (which is a LOT more interesting than you might think). SEO is part art, part science and part magic. It is something few will ever completely understand. Fortunately, you don’t have to become an expert to add some significant SEO punch to your corporate blog. There are a lot of great tools and techniques available that are easy to understand and implement.

Getting Started with SEO for Blogs

Use WordPress — WordPress is the Microsoft (and Apple) of blog platforms. It is easy to use and there are a lot of SEO functions built right in. In addition, because WordPress is built on an open platform, there are literally thousands of people developing cool plug-ins that you can add to make your blog do all sorts of wonderful things. And there are LOTS of great SEO plug-ins available. If it is a corporate blog, consider making it a part of your company Website (like www.koifishcommunicaitons.com and www.koifishcommunications.com). This way, every time you add a new post, it helps your Website’s search ranking as well. Even if your blog is already established somewhere else, moving to the WordPress platform is probably a smart investment. Be forewarned, however, it is a very good idea to identify a few WordPress experts and resources before you embark on your journey. Understand the basics — Do a little reading about things like title tags, description tags and keyword tags. Learn how to develop an overall keyphrase selection strategy. If your company Website is search engine optimized, learn the keyphrases used there as well and integrate them appropriately. The better you understand these these basic principles, the better your blog SEO will be. Install good SEO plug-ins — The All In One SEO Pack is a plug-in that will allow you to customize the title, description and meta tags for each post. There are several other tools that will do the same thing as well, but this one seems to be one of the most popular. Also, investigate tools that will allow you to customize the URL of each post to include your chosen key words. Keep SEO in mind when writing copy — When writing for the Web,  you are writing for two audiences — readers and the search engines. Your readers must always be your primary focus. They must find your content compelling and valuable. That said, there are a lot of simple things that can be done including:
  • Use Keyphrases repeatedly (at least three times) in your post
  • Use titles and subheads to reinforce keyphrases and make your copy more readable
  • Make title tags interesting and compelling
  • Make sure the copy in your title tag and description tag appears in your body copy
  • Invite readers to comment
The topic of SEO copywriting can’t be effectively tackled in a single blog post. It is a subject worthy of ongoing study. The best book I’ve found on the subject is “Successful Search Engine Copywriting” by Heather Lloyd-Martin. She also provides a lot of good information on her blog. Use Web analytics — WordPress has a great blog stats plug-in that provides you with a wealth of information about your blog and your readers. It includes a report on the actual search terms that were used to get to a particular post. This is a great way to see if your keyword strategy is working and to consistently fine-tune your process. In addition to the WordPress plug-in, it is fairly easy to add Google analytics to your blog as well. Google offers this same capability and it is always nice to compare and contrast multiple analytics tools, as none of these tools seem to be perfect.

SEO is a Journey

In reality, SEO for blogs is much like SEO for Websites. In fact, from a search engine perspective, it is exactly the same. The only difference is that you don’t have to be a programmer to implement the fundamental components into your posts. And a blog post written using sound SEO practices can sometimes jump straight to a #1 Google ranking for a particular keyphrase in a matter of hours. SEO for blogs does require a significant amount of extra time and effort but the payoff is huge. While it may seem daunting at first, it really isn’t that hard once you get the swing of things. Keep in mind that complete mastery of SEO is not attainable — even by the most experienced professionals. It is a continuously moving target. SEO is a journey, not a destination. And, of course, you can always outsource the creation, management or even writing of your corporate blog. If you choose to go in that direction, make sure that the person or agency you hire has a full understanding of the SEO aspect of blogging. If you’d like more information on this important topic, feel free to drop us a line.

Dean Rodgers

KoiFish Communications

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