SEO with Lee Odden
We had a request from one of our Conversations with Experts audience members for the recap of our Conversation with Lee Odden. Generally you either have to have registered for the call to get the notes, or be a subscriber to our ezine Savvy eBiz Tips. We publish the notes from the previous Conversation every week. However I decided to oblige and reprint them here.
The Blog Squad interviewed Lee Odden, President of TopRank Online Marketing on "Search Engine Optimization with Blogs and Press Releases."
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is one of those topics where I get lost. There is so much to it and it changes all the time. Lee really helped clarify how search engines work, what they're looking for, and how to use blogs and press releases to get links and drive traffic. Here are Lee's top 8 tips:
1. Use keywords in your blog post title
2. Use keywords in your category titles
3. If you can, hard code key words into your template in the title bar
4. Use subscription buttons for My Yahoo, Feedburner, etc.
5. Make sure you ping the blog search engines after each post (http://www.pingoat.com)
6. Link to older posts if they're relevant to what you're writing
7. Use anchor text in your links with significant keywords (instead of "click here" use "more online marketing tips here."
8. Link out to resources you quote or to which you refer
The rule of thumb is "if it adds value to the user experience, then it's good for search engines."
I cannot cover the full content of this Conversation. You'll just have to listen to it. And, visit Lee's blog at http://www.marketingblog.com . Lots of excellent blog SEO content there.
The audio program is 61 minutes. If you missed the Conversation you can get the audio program for only $9.95 .
Action Step: Review your blog posts. Are you using keywords in the first 2-3 words of each title? Are you repeating that keyword or key phrase in the body of the blog post? For a quick overview of keyword research tools and how and why to use them, check out our post on Build a Better Blog.
