© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make By Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Blog SEO  So easy a child could do it  16-year old blogger  Passive income: ~$1000/month from Google AdSense  Effort required: 1 hr/month  Thank you, Google! My daughter, SEO-in-training

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

#5 for “neopets” #3 for “neopets cheats” #6 for “neo pets” etc.

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Biggest SEO Mistakes  Leaving title tags to be auto-generated (from the post name, category name, etc.)  Squandering your “crawl equity” by letting pages get indexed that don’t deserve to be (“ this page” etc.)  Having multiple “homes” for your blog  Not using unique “Optional Excerpt” to minimize duplicate content  Not using rel=nofollow to direct PageRank flow

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Biggest SEO Mistakes  Over-reliance on date-based archives  No stability in keyword focus on category & tag pages  Suboptimal URLs (too long, too many words, too many directories)  Only one RSS feed, and it’s un-optimized  Hosting blog/feed URLs on a domain you don’t own  Using suboptimal anchor text when linking internally

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts What Are We Waiting For?? Let’s Fix Your Blog!

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Rejig Internal Linking Structure  Tag clouds & tag pages & tag conjunction pages (e.g. “UTW Theme Compatibility Thing” WordPress plugin)  Related Posts (e.g. “Yet Another Related Posts” plugin)  Top 10 posts (e.g. “Popularity Contest” plugin)  Next & Previous / pagination (e.g. “WP-PageNavi” plugin)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Tags point to Technorati tag pages Tags point to internal tag pages

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts A tag page

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Optimize Title Tags  Blog name at the end of the title, not at the beginning  Tag name should go in title on a tag page  Customize with additional keywords for display only on your home page  Override title tags w/ custom one ( “SEO Title Tag” WordPress plugin)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts “SEO Title Tag” plugin for WordPress  Allows you to override the title tag with a custom one on any post, static page, tag page, category page, etc.  Now updated to work with WordPress 2.6  Can even define a custom title on ANY url  Reverses the order of the blog name and the title, or drop the blog name altogether, or replace it with a shorter nickname  Can use category’s description as the title on category pages  Has a Mass Edit admin and an Options page to change settings  Download at

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts “Thin Slicing”  Make quick decisions. Don’t overthink.  Only really works if you’re an expert  E.g. hand-optimize title tags across hundreds of pages quickly (prioritized)  Focus on your title tags, H1s and URLs  Don't obsess, doesn’t have to be perfect. Instead, iterate.  If you don’t have an admin interface, use a spreadsheet and do a database import

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Thin slicing title tags

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Great name for the blog!

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Optimize URLs  URL affects searcher clickthrough rates  Short URLs get clicked on 2X long URLs (Source: MarketingSherpa, used with permission)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Optimize URLs  Further, long URLs appear to act as a deterrent to clicking, drawing attention away from its listing and instead directing it to the listing below it, which then gets clicked 2.5x more frequently. –

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Optimize URLs  Subdomain? Subdirectory? New domain? Domain of your blog host? – vs. StayingFitBlog.com –Got a blogspot.com or wordpress.com URL? You benefit from their domain authority, but you’re forever wedded to them!  Rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores  Maintain legacy URLs even after switching platforms  Keep post slugs relatively short (e.g. “Slug Trimmer” or “Clean Trunks” plugin)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Optimize URLs  Test and optimize URLs, but don’t lose link juice to previous URLs. 301 previous URLs to latest. No chains of 301s.  WordPress handles 301s automatically when renaming post slugs  Mass edit admin for URLs (post slugs) in WordPress – via the “SEO Title Tag” plugin ( plugin)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Thin slicing URLs

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Optimize Anchor Text  Make the post’s title a link to the permalink page  Use SEOMoz Backlink Anchor Text Analysis tool or BLA (tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer) to look for opportunities to request revisions to anchor text on inbound links  Internally link back to old, relevant posts within the body of a blog post. Don’t use “here” or “previously” etc. as the anchor text!

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Post title is anchor text. “Permalink” is yucky anchor text!

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts “Sculpt” Your PageRank  My preference is to have rel=nofollow... –On links in trackbacks, comments (by default on most platforms) –Where the link would be reciprocal –On links to date-based archives, assuming you have category and tag hierarchy (noindexing/disallowing is not enough!)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Minimize Duplicate Content  Code your Main Index Template to display “Optional Excerpts” on everything but permalink page  For each post, write unique content (i.e. paraphrase), don’t just use the first couple paragraphs (i.e. Don’t use the tag!)  Meta robots noindex & rel=nofollow are your friends –Date-based archives –“OR” Tag conjunction pages (e.g. netconcepts.com/tag/seo|articles) –Printer-friendly versions

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Improve the Keyword Focus  Heading tags –category name on category page –Yes for post titles, no for dates!  Emphasis tags within posts (bold, strong, etc.)  “Sticky” posts –Always appear at the top of the page –A way to add keyword-rich intro copy to a category page or tag page –e.g. “WP-Sticky” or “Adhesive” plugin

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Sticky post

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Optimize Your RSS Feeds  Full text, not summaries  20 or MORE items (not just 10)  Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post)  Keyword-rich item  Your brand name in the item  Your most important keyword in the site container  Compelling site  Don’t put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss)  An RSS feed that contains enclosures (i.e. podcasts) can get into additional RSS directories & engines

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Thank You!  For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO checklists & worksheets, and audio recording, executive summary & transcript of thought leaders teleconferences on SEO & blogging, drop me your business card or your request to  To contact me:  Download... –PPT: –Article: