10 Technical SEO tips to improve site SERPs and traffic
SEO is not just about keywords in page content and link building; SEO has to be implemented in technical side too. If you are thinking of improving your SERPs and traffic, you need to follow the below mentioned SEO technical tips.
(1) Make sure you 301 redirect http://yoursite.com to http://www.yoursite.com (or either).
(2) Sort your site duplicate content issue by 301 redirection from http://www.yoursite.com/index.php to http://www.yoursite.com (goes with all page extensions like /.asp, /.htm, /.aspx and so).
(3) Have your site page URL search engine friendly. A page URL should not look like www.yoursite.com/innerpage?id=203. Have it with the desired page name, something like www.yoursite.com/203/your-name.
(4) If your site has N number of page and also if you post couple of content every day then it is recommended to have dynamic web sitemap & XML sitemap.
(5) Improve your site speed by resolving errors and optimizing image size.
(6) Have unique title for all dynamic pages. You can hardcode the system to have the page name in titles (Services or products).
(7) Configure custom 404 page for your website or point 404 to you sitemap.
(8) Use Google webmaster URL removal tool to get rid of unwanted page & broken link index.
(9) Use rel=" nofollow" to a link un-trusted page i.e. when you refer to a content through a link.
(10) Reduce tables & make use of external JavaScript & CSS file for scripts & styles handling.
Follow the above technical SEO tips for your site and see the improvement in ranking and traffic. If you have clarification, feel free to contact me.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Help Articles & Tips Blog - Jag's SEO A Day Blog
Help Us Help You Improve Your Blog: ProBlogger Census 2012
Here at ProBlogger HQ we’re gearing up for a big year of blogging. Central in our focus is a desire to make ProBlogger as useful to bloggers as we can. After all if we’re not helping you to improve, we’re wasting everyone’s time.
To help us achieve this goal, we’d love to find out a little more about you and your blogging and have put together a short ‘census’ survey to do just that.
Note: information gathered in this survey cannot be tied to individuals and will be used solely for the purposes of improving this blog and serving you better. We may report on some of the statistical information we gather about blogging platforms etc., but nothing you share will be used for any other purposes, and your anonymity is assured (unless you include personal details in one of your answers).
Thanks for taking the time to participate—I’m looking forward to a great 2012!
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Help Us Help You Improve Your Blog: ProBlogger Census 2012
SEO and PPC Work Together to Improve a Search Engine Presence
Search engine marketing novices may not understand all of the different components of an SEM strategy and may be confused by the terminology. SEO? PPC? Is there really much of a difference and is one strategy better than the other? Yes there is a big difference and no, one strategy is not better than the other. SEO and PPC are independent tactics that serve different purposes but they don’t need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, they shouldn’t be. The best SEM strategy is to implement both, especially in the beginning of a search engine marketing campaign.
PPC is also known as paid search. PPC ads appear in the sponsored section of a search result. The websites that appear in this section are there because the advertiser was the highest bidder for the keyword or keyword phrase that was used. Each time the ad is clicked on, the advertiser pays the search engine. Hence the label, “pay per click”. The key to a successful PPC campaign is to target the right keywords that will result in not only traffic, but conversions. Since the website owner is essentially paying for this traffic, it might as well be worth something to them. The costs associated with PPC can be extremely high, especially in a competitive industry.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of making changes to the website and other content across the web that will attract the search engine spiders and improve organic, or natural, web page ranking. SEO isn’t considered to be paid search because no money is exchanged between the website owner and the search engine, but there are certainly costs associated with SEO. SEO is a lengthy process that is never really “over”. It starts with industry, competitor, and keyword research. Next is on-site optimization which is followed by ongoing link building. Good link building requires time and resources to create quality content and share it on the web on a regular basis. Many website and business owners simply don’t have the time or resources. Therefore, they need to hire an in house SEO staff member or outsource the work to a trusted agency or consultant. Good SEO is paid for, just in a less direct manner than PPC.
Since web users have become more savvy over the years and understand the difference between an ad and an organic result, there are arguments that SEO is better than PPC. The truth is that both strategies have their place. While SEO is extremely important, it takes a long time to get onto that first page of a search result for targeted keywords. Some websites never even make it to that first page. PPC, while expensive, can ensure that your brand is seen on page 1. Even if the ad isn’t clicked on, it’s still improving brand visibility. As time goes on and an organic presence improves, it’s possible to scale back on PPC but it doesn’t need to be eliminated entirely. Having both a paid and organic presence on the same page really establishes relevancy for particular keyword searches.
Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing, and he writes a weekly SEO column for Daily Blog Tips. Visit the company website to find more about its services, or call 781-999-1222 to get more information.
Original Post: SEO and PPC Work Together to Improve a Search Engine Presence
How to Improve Content writing using SEO to Rank in First Page?
A Guide to write quality Content to reach your Readers by having SEO standards and factors in mind.
This blog post is about improving your content writing to rank in first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing by following set of SEO standards and factors. This post can help you reach your content to all your readers who search for similar information. Always write content for Readers first, not for bot's alone. Have the keywords in your content as reader friendly then search engine friendly. Read this post so that you "Don't give a chance for your readers to miss your Content".
This post helps you to know how to improve content writing by formatting the content with HTML & SEO standards that can be easily understood by search engine bots about the importance of the content subject along with researched keywords. If you do not format properly, even quality content will not reach your readers. Make Google[1], Yahoo[2] and Bing[3] search engines, easily crawl able. Have your content to follow the SEO standards like Title, SEF page URL, Mata tag, H1, H2, H3, H4 tags, Image ALT, Anchor text, feed, formatted external CSS, JS and body content in Div code. Don't miss the chance and get to know how to use these standards.
Improve Content write-up to reach your readers with SEO Factors
Normally only few content writers thinks about SEO for Content, that is writing content and optimizing for search engine to make it easily spiderable[4]. One must follow SEO factors to reach readers local and global. Now a day’s SEO for Content is very much essential even for quality content to win search engine results and to reach readers who look for your quality information.
(a) SEO copy writing - Two Ways
You need to start a ground work of picking relevant keywords using Google Keyword selector tool[5] or Search-based Keyword Tool[6] for your content and you may start writing your contents with those single, two word key phrases and long tail key phrases. Do not make the content odd by stuffing those keywords. You can think of the keyword and write the content and if the information is clear and beneficial for it's users then you win the game. If content is written with related images and examples, if any, then you will get even better responses.
Another way is that you can first prepare your content drafts and based on the subject you can look for keywords using Google Keyword selector tool[5] or Search-based Keyword Tool[6]. Then related to the content you can add keywords and make the copy more meaningful and as well make sure that you don't add too many keywords[7]. Do follow Keyword Strategies that can help your to determine the best practice.
(b) Four Keyword Strategies
Here is a much enhanced keyword strategies that can make big difference in your new content write-up and as well to improve your existing content. The strategies are keyword density, frequency, prominence, and proximity.
(i) Keyword Density
To make your content win in search results you need to add top search keywords that your readers use in search engine. Your content may have those key phrases but make sure those are used in your content in correct format that meets keyword density.
Keyword Density % = Amount of keywords used / Total amount of words in the content.
Keyword density in percentage terms is calculated based on the amount of keywords you have used and the total amount of words you use in the content. This strategy is used to avoid the chance of keyword stuffing[7]. Keyword density can be between 2% to 8% and not more than that.
(ii) Keyword Prominence
How prominently your keywords are placed in your content depends on how much top priority for the keyword is given in your starting content, Title, H tags and Meta tags.
(iii) Keyword Frequency
The number of times a particular keyword has been repeated. Referring to the example you can see how many times "Photograph Editing Software" Keyword appears on a page content. Some may think that more the times Keyword found in a page, then the page ranks better for that Keyword. It is not so. Stuffing Keywords in a page will result in penalizing since it looks like spam[7]. Here you need to follow Keyword Density.
(iv) Keyword Proximity
Keyword proximity refers to how close two or more keywords are to each other. You will achieve higher rankings if you place your keywords close together.
It depends on how you frame your two or more words to each other. If you are able to have words in your keywords close then you have chances to rank much higher. Here are two types of examples of how keyword "Photograph Editing Software" is focused.
Example 1: Looking for Photograph Editing Software? Go for Adobe photoshop.
Example 2: Best Software for Photograph Editing is Adobe photoshop.
Example 1 will work better when compared to Example 2 since in example one "Photograph Editing Software" is used as one single Keyword were as example 2 uses "Software for Photograph Editing". Words are not close and in order.
In detail, In Example 1, "Photograph Editing Software" 3 words are in same order as searched by users, whereas in Example 2, "Software for Photograph Editing" are not in order as you can see "Software" word is used in front of "for Photograph Editing" rather than after "Photograph Editing" as you can see from the actual keyword "Photograph Editing Software".
All the Four Keyword Strategies can be applicable in below tags and these are very much useful:
* Title.
* Meta Description.
* H1, H2, H3, H4 Tags.
* ALT attribute.
* Page name.
* Anchor Text.
* The body of the text.
(c) Maintaining the position.
It is not only about winning the game on holding the position in #1 page. It is all about maintaining the position in #1 page. I see some get into the position and then drop down soon. This is due to the lack of updates on the topic. Don't give any chances. This may also happen sometimes when you don't follow keyword strategies in your content and when you don't follow SEO standards.
Plan of Action to Rank in First Page
1. Improve your content writing for readers and DO SEO[10].
2. Make sure you have fresh and informative content in your content[8].
3. Avoid thoughts of using content only for marketing.
4. Make your content unique so it stands out from the rest.
5. Work on your content regularly.
6. Do add relevant key phrases to your content and avoid stuffing.
7. Do apply HTML standards and SEO factors to your content for effective search engine listings.
8. Always set right balance for users and Search Engines.
Example on SEO Copy Writing
Here is an example based on optimizing the content. Suppose you plan to have a write-up on "Photograph Editing Software" as below. Here are the steps to show how to use Google Keywords tool to pick relevant keywords and optimize content for those keywords.
Step1: Now to start with optimization you can look for "Photography Editing Software" keyword search count and related keywords using Google Keyword tool.
Click Google Keyword selector tool and paste the keyword "Photography Editing Software" in the "Enter one keyword or phrase per line" text area box, next enter captcha security characters and press Get Keywords ideas button as seen in Figure 1.1
Step 2: Now you gets two types of results. One is "Keywords related to term(s) entered" and the other is "Additional keywords to consider". If you feel Additional keywords are useful you can very well use them.
Below keywords shown in Figure 2.1 are from "Keywords related to term(s) entered" section:
Step 3: Now we have 5 keywords to optimize and the write-up is about Adobe photoshop and we all know Adobe is not free so we can eliminate 5th keyword. (Refer Figure 2.1)
Now we have 4 keywords to consider to optimize the content. Here is an example how we add those keywords to the content.
"Looking for Photograph Editing Software? Go for Adobe photoshop. One of the Best photography editing software for Digital and Professional editing."
SEO Standards - Content formatting and practices
The content formatting and presentation is very much important.
(1) Title Tag
This is the main tag for search engines to know all about the page content. Keep your title tag Keyword rich and catchy since many search engine uses Title tag for search listing.
References
- Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web
- Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines
- Bing Guidelines for successful indexing
- Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide! [PDF]
- Google Keyword Tool
- Search-based Keyword Tool
- Don't load pages with keywords.
- Little or no original content.
- Image guidelines for best practices on publishing images.
- Google-friendly sites
- Don't participate in link schemes
- Google Analytics | Official Website
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Articles, Tips, Tricks, Help Blog - Jagadeesh Mohan
10 Technical SEO tips to improve site SERPs and traffic
SEO is not just about keywords in page content and link building; SEO has to be implemented in technical side too. If you are thinking of improving your SERPs and traffic, you need to follow the below mentioned SEO technical tips.
(1) Make sure you 301 redirect http://yoursite.com to http://www.yoursite.com (or either).
(2) Sort your site duplicate content issue by 301 redirection from http://www.yoursite.com/index.php to http://www.yoursite.com (goes with all page extensions like /.asp, /.htm, /.aspx and so).
(3) Have your site page URL search engine friendly. A page URL should not look like www.yoursite.com/innerpage?id=203. Have it with the desired page name, something like www.yoursite.com/203/your-name.
(4) If your site has N number of page and also if you post couple of content every day then it is recommended to have dynamic web sitemap & XML sitemap.
(5) Improve your site speed by resolving errors and optimizing image size.
(6) Have unique title for all dynamic pages. You can hardcode the system to have the page name in titles (Services or products).
(7) Configure custom 404 page for your website or point 404 to you sitemap.
(8) Use Google webmaster URL removal tool to get rid of unwanted page & broken link index.
(9) Use rel=" nofollow" to a link un-trusted page i.e. when you refer to a content through a link.
(10) Reduce tables & make use of external JavaScript & CSS file for scripts & styles handling.
Follow the above technical SEO tips for your site and see the improvement in ranking and traffic. If you have clarification, feel free to contact me.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Articles, Tips, Tricks, Help Blog - Jagadeesh Mohan
3 Steps to Avoid Writer’s Block and Improve Content Value
This is a guest post by Michael D.. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
You’re sitting at your computer and you’re ready to post a new article on your blog. You open up your application of choice. Your hands hover over the keyboard as if they are supposed to direct themselves. You sit for about a minute and you realize that you have no idea what to write about.
Have you been there? I know I have. I’m constantly working on improving this routine. Being able to write interesting content consistently is key to running a successful blog. The good news is, dodging writer’s block goes hand in hand with writing great content.
There is a lot of mediocre content available on the internet and, hopefully, we can make a great impression on readers by writing valuable content on our own blogs.
There are a lot of useful tips available on how to improve your writing and how to enhance your creative skills. Many websites offer advice on how to attract readers. These sites list the details involved in writing a juicy post that will pull in more subscribers to your blog. That’s great, but I want to help simplify all this information by providing 3 simple tips that make it significantly easier for me to write better, and more frequent, posts on my own blog.
This 3R strategy will rake in those readers rapidly. All jokes aside, here’s the real 3R strategy:
1. Research
Do your homework people. I make the effort to do some research before writing a post. This effort will make it dramatically easier to write quality content down the road. Even just 15 minutes spent here will make a positive impact on the value of your post.
When you do a bit of research before you write your post, you already expose yourself to the kind of material people are looking for. You have a better picture of what people want to read and you give yourself multiple ideas to write about.
My blog is about productivity and personal development so there are countless resources I can use to enhance my content. The fact is, no matter what you are blogging about, there are always books, magazines, movies, shows, blogs or even personal experiences that can help pump up the material on your blog.
I like to stick with traditional resources, like books. I believe that publishing companies are quite diligent about reviewing and editing books. Books are usually written by well-known experts and contain solid evidence to support their claims. The same applies for certain magazines and authoritative websites.
Blogs and other informal sources are also a great source of information, but I feel like the posts on many blogs have quite a bit of fluff and they are usually based off printed material anyway. (I don’t mean to use fluff as an insult. I believe that this fluff is what keeps blogs interesting and has readers coming back for more.) However, when I do research, I’m looking for hard facts.
2. Recreation
Now we’re talking fluff. This is where the magic happens.
You want to be sure that each one of your posts have a bit of personality and entertainment value. Of course, depending on the nature of your blog, you may want to remain distant and informative. It’s up to you. People browse the web for information, but they also want to be amused. Otherwise they would have just picked up a textbook.
Add a bit of personality to your posts. Enjoy your own writing process. Have fun with your posts by adding bits of flair that are distinctive to you. Readers will enjoy this reflection of who you are.
Toss in some entertainment value. You can put in as little or as much as you feel comfortable. Just do something. Put up an interesting photo. Link to a relevant but funny video. Write in a joke, a quote or even a little story that explains your point of view. Personal stories are interesting, but throwing in a fictional story here and there will give you the ability to captivate your audience.
3. Reward
Lastly, conclude your post with a guide that solves your reader’s issue. A short list of steps that effectively summarizes your post and gives the reader the essential takeaway points.
If you’re not giving advice and you’re just providing information, be sure to conclude with cliff notes at the end. Give people the option to skim to the bottom. Yes, we’d like to have our readers enjoy our entire post, but it’s better to give them options rather than push them away from your blog. Gradually, people will spend more time on your site reading your content, and that is what counts.
Summary
I could also add another 2 R’s here: read and rewrite. Hopefully you already do both. Everyone is aware of the importance of proofreading, so I figured that it would be best to stick with the 3 steps mentioned above. Plus, I hope that the 3 steps I provided were more innovative than just “rewrite”. I wanted to keep it short and sweet, so it’s easier to remember.
Be sure to give your audience multiple streams of value. They want information, they want entertainment and they want a brief but effective solution. Give them all of this. Your readers will repay you for your hard work with loyal subscriptions.
I try to make the most of this strategy on my own blog. The truth is that I don’t always follow these steps, but whenever I do, it results in a noticeably better post. I hope this strategy benefits everyone out there who is struggling to consistently write quality content on their blog.
About the Author: Michael writes at Refine the Grind, a blog with tips on motivating yourself and taking action on your goals. Make the most of your time.
Original Post: 3 Steps to Avoid Writer’s Block and Improve Content Value
Improve Google Rankings with Forum Link Building
Search engine optimization largely consists of two major components. You have your on-page optimization. This is where you might focus on having the right kind of meta information on your website or the right kind of keyword density. You want to make sure that your site is search engine friendly so the spiders know exactly how to index the great content that you have.
And then, you have your off-page optimization. Arguably even more important, this is where you look to build links directing visitors back to your site. For that, you might want to take a look at the link building services offered by Forum Link Building. I’m pretty sure you can figure out what they do based on the name of the service.
Links from High Ranking Forums
As you can probably surmise, you can expect to get a good deal of forum link building from this online service.
In short, what this means is that they will go out and develop “dofollow” links back to your site, primarily using the various forums that are freely available on the web. These links are permanent and they guarantee that they will stay alive for at least one year. If any of the links happen to be taken down during that time, Forum Link Building will provide a suitable replacement link of similar value within one year.
The links you get will be on “forums with high Google PageRank,” including some with as high as PR10. Among the forums that they use are Zimbra, Adobe, CSS Drive, and Amazon. In addition to the forum links, all packages include submissions to PR directories, social bookmarking sites, and article marketing sites.
Does the Service Work?
If you check out the testimonial page on the main site, you’ll see quotes from a number of satisfied customers. These are in addition to the videos posted on the homepage.
Using the example of Anita Clark here, it looks like the real estate professional was looking to target “Warner Robins Realtor” and “Warner Robins Real Estate.” Based on my search, I see her site on the first page of Google results for the first search term but not the second one. This could have to do with some geotargeting, but it also has a great deal to do with what else Clark is using to promote her site.
What’s great about the testimonial page is that many of the clients have provided their own contact information, so you can hear straight from the horse’s mouth how they feel about the link building services. How much weight you give to these reports, of course, is up to you.
How Much Does It Cost?
When you look at some competing services, you’ll find that many charge you on a monthly basis. Such is not the case with the link building service offered by Forum Link Building. There is a one time payment and that’s it.
There are currently three different packages available: the 9.90 silver package, the 8 gold package, and the 99 exclusive package. Remember that these are one-time payments. Each comes with varying numbers of submissions and additional bonuses.
It’s also important to note that CEO Konstantin Shevchenko personally guarantees that their link building campaign “will increase your website ranking in Google. If not, we will provide you with a full refund.” Forum Link Building also works to ensure that the generated backlinks appear natural to Google; otherwise, you could get penalized by the search engine giant.
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Improve Domain Authority for a Better Blog Ranking
This guest post is by R Kumar of dkspeaks.com.
One of the major sources of traffic for any blog today is organic traffic. While SEO is one of the major factors influencing organic search engine results, there is another aspect to this whole story which is often ignored. All of the efforts go into building links, and in doing that, we ignore this critical aspect.
If you are wondering what this aspect is, it’s domain trust and authority. In order for you newer content to be ranked well on Google, it is important that you build both domain trust and domain authority. Otherwise, your already established home page will get a few rankings, but your new content will seldom see good rankings.
For people who do not know what domain trust and authority is, let me explain these concepts.
Domain authority
Explained in simple terms, domain authority is about how many quality pages link to your domain, and how they link to you.
Improving domain authority can involve more than one task. You will not have to change the way you optimize your blog or, follow a different approach all together. Instead, all you have to do is change your process a bit.
Link juice
Like every other person working on building links, I used to comment, write articles, and exchange links with a link to my home page on the anchor text. Things didn’t move until I read an article on building diverse links to the same domain.
I changed my focus and started building links with relevant anchor texts to other pages in the blog. In doing so, I was building a lot of links to my domain name—not just to a single page. Results were good. My domain started to feature for a lot of high-search keywords on almost all the search engines.
When I mention linking and links here, it is not the number of links to a particular page on your blog that I’m talking about. Instead, it’s the number of links to your domain. So, how many links your domain gets as a whole is of extreme importance. At the same time, it’s also important that the links be from other domains and pages that have fewer outbound links from them.
Deep linking
When I built links to the inner pages on my blog, I didn’t realize initially that there was something else that I was doing at the same time.
I was telling the search engines that even the inner pages on my blog had valuable content, and that it should be ranked, too. Gradually I found that my inner pages were getting ranked on search engines. What this also did was ensure that my newest post was ranked much sooner that it was before I started this exercise.
It is not just important to build links. It is important to build deep links. The normal tendency when you build links is to build links to a particular page on your blog; usually it is the home page. We do everything including working on our anchor text, but we forget the fact that in order for us to build trust in the eyes of a search engine, we should have links pointing deep into the blog’s individual pages. Building trust into each of these pages will help build authority around your domain.
Diverse linking
Commenting on do-follow blogs is said to be a good way to obtain links. So people pick a handful of such blogs and keep commenting on them. I, too, did the same. But did this help? Absolutely not! I was creating links from the same domain again and again. Search engines were not impressed, because there was no diversity among those links.
I decided that I should deviate from the norm and do something different. I started building links from all kinds of domains—.org, .info, .edu, .net, .co.in, and so on. The domains were diverse and I did not restrict myself to the handful of do-follow blogs. It took a lot of hard work, but the results were slowly becoming evident. My blog moved up the search engine ranks much faster than I expected.
While the number of links to your domain is important, the kinds of domains that you’re getting these links from is also very important. The more diverse the domains, the better those links are for your domain authority. Hence it is important that you work on striking a balance between the number of links and the diversity of the domains that you are getting the links from.
Domain trust
It is important that the search engines trust that your domain provides value to visitors. It is only then that they will be interested in showing your latest content in their search results. But how is it that you will build this trust?
In order to build this trust, you need to ensure that you do not get involved in any kind of unethical practices. Unethical link building can prove disastrous to your blog.
Linking is one the biggest factors that influence how trustworthy your domain is seen to be.
The frequency of acquiring links, and the quality of the domains that are linking to you are, also equally important. If your new blog acquires a thousand links in just two or three days, it will not be difficult for Google to understand that there is something fishy going on. You can even be banned for spamming. At the same time, if the links you are getting are all from domains that are involved in spamming, the chances are that your domain will also be considered spammy.
You’ll likely receive emails that come from people claiming to be SEO experts for companies, requesting link exchanges. They would be ready to give you links from domains that they say have good PageRank. But It is important that you verify and check the quality of the domain and the PageRank before you accept the request—there are a lot of websites that can help you detect blogs and websites with fake PageRank. The fake page rank detection tool at http://www.build-reciprocal-links.com/fake-rank-checker/ is one I use.
While the kinds of domains that you’re getting links from is important, it is also important to ensure that you do not link to any of these spammy domains. Since you have full control of your site and what shows up on it, linking to a spammy domain can be even worse than getting links from them.
If you can work on building domain trust and thus improve your domain authority, you will be able to get your latest content to appear on search engine results. What experiences have you had with these concepts as you’ve built links for your blog? Share them with us in the comments.
R Kumar is a blogger and Affiliate marketer. You can read more about Internet Entrepreneurship at his blog and subscribe to the RSS feeds to remain updated, or download his Internet marketing package.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
Improve Domain Authority for a Better Blog Ranking
Use Google Reading Level to Improve Your Blog Message
This guest post is by Rhys Wynne of the Winwar Media Blog.
Last month, Google launched its new Google Reading Level feature. What this does is algorithmically work out the reading level of the search results, to help users more easily decide which search results to click on.
How is it worked out?
Like everything with Google, I’m not entirely sure how Reading Level is calculated. I do know that teachers were paid to grade web pages, and an algorithm was worked out using that data.
There’s been a bit of debate in cases where examples of queries (such as the trashy UK talent show “X Factor” having an “Advanced” readership) don’t necessarily mix with the content, but I think that the following factors determine whether a piece of copy is basic:
- short sentences and paragraphs
- common, non techincal words, acronyms, and phrases (using the phrase “http” rather than “Hypertext Transfer Protocol”, for example)
- possibly even page structure—the use of headers, bullet points, and so on.
Using more technical phrases, longer sentence structure, and creative writing techniques such as hyperbole may cause your writing to be ranked as more “Advanced.”
How can you access Google’s Reading Level for your blog?
To view your blog’s reading level, go to Google’s Advanced Search (the hyperlink is located next to the search box on Google’s home page). Type your search query in the first form box—the one annotated with “all these words”—and make sure that the Reading Level drop-down box shows “annotate results with reading levels”. You should see the results for my old blog’s home page below:
Reading Level is calculated on a page-by-page basis, so if I take the page for my WP Email Capture plugin (which caters to a more technical audience), its results show as follows:
Using Reading Level to improve your blog
The ways in which you can use Reading Level to improve your blog will depends on your blog itself. Generally speaking, you want to keep it as simple as possible to make it accessible as possible—be it creative writing, a how-to post, or a sales page. Having a high basic rating is generally a good thing, but obviously you don’t want to patronize your audience by speaking to them like they’re three years old.
Ironically, by maintaining a simple language form, you can actually end up complicating things. For example, if I was to explain my day job to the computer-illiterate in a way they would understand, I would describe it like this:
“My day job is that I’m somebody who spends time writing, sending emails, and working on websites in order to help push them up to the top of the first page of the search engines, hopefully leading to more people seeing the website.”
To you, I’d say this:
“I work as an SEO.”
Immediately you know what my day job is, as many bloggers know what an SEO does (or rather, should do). The previous education of your readers is important too, but how can you find that out? Well, you can find that out by using Google’s Reading Level feature again.
Attracting the right audience for your blog
Instead of searching for the reading level of your readers, instead search for the reading level of competing sites. Search for your competitors’ blogs and also for keywords that your blog’s associated with. Searching for the phrase “beginner blogging tips” shows this reading level as heavily basic. Problogger shows a more advanced reading level:
Therefore if Darren wanted to attract more new bloggers, he would write in a similar style to his Blogging Tips for Beginners page (which does rank in the top ten):
Ultimately, though, your readers are you best source of feedback. If you are constantly having to explain terms in post comments or over email, you should tone down the complexity of your writing, which will lower your Reading Level ranking. If, however, your readers respond with intelligent comments, you may be able to write in a more advanced style. Just ensure that not too many people are left scratching their heads when they visit your blog.
What’s your Reading Level? Are you happy with that, or do you think you need to tweak it?
Rhys Wynne is an eight-year blogger, four-year professional search engine optimizer, and occassional professional wrestler. He is the senior writer and editor on the Winwar Media Blog, where he shares his thoughts on SEO, social media, and WordPress tips. Subscribe to their free blogging newsletter today.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
Improve your Blog or Site Structure and Links
How many blog posts, articles, pages, videos, etc. do you have on your blog or web site? Are they easy to find? Do visitors have to dig through levels of pages or blog archives to find what they need? Can you provide links to those hidden nuggets of wisdom?
They say that the search engines will rarely index any site pages that are below the third level. For instance, on the site ToMakeASite.com, their home page is the first level. On that home page, they have a link bar to their major sections. One of those major sections is Optimize. On the Optimize page, they have another row of links for pages under Optimize. One of those pages is Keywords.
The Index or home page is the first level. Optimize is the second level. Keywords is the third level. The Keywords page has links to all the pages above it, and to all the pages on its same level. But it is the third level, and there aren't any pages below it. This ensures that Google and the other search engines will find all of the pages in the site.
If you must have pages below the third level, put links to them on your home page, or at least on a second level page. This will help the search engines find those pages. It is not that search engines have anything against pages below the third level. It is just that they do not normally search any deeper when they crawl or index your site. If they find the link when they index an upper page, they will visit that page, even if it is on the fourth, fifth, sixth level.
With blogs, you can link to those hidden pages in your archives, and you will get more traffic to them. For the most part, it should be fairly easy to set up a link bar for your popular blog posts.
