These days it seems as though almost everyone has a blog, and girls who were once just fashion-obsessed, have now turned into models as a result. With millions of blogs out there, what makes one stand apart from the rest? Is it design? Is it the domain name and age? Is content really “king”? Truth be told, you could have a great looking blog, with excellent content, however if you’re not ranking in search engines, no one will ever know you and your blog exist. Here is a user-friendly outline on how to get your fashion blog ranking in Google and other search engines. Note, these same techniques can be applied to any blog, I just choose to use fashion as my example, because, well… if you haven’t already noticed, I cherish fashion, just as much as I love technology. And when the two combine? It warms my techic (translate: tech-chic) heart.
- Choose a topic that you are well versed in.
- Search through popular key terms in the niche that you decide to write about
- Use Google AdWords’ Key Word Tool and cross reference the information with another service, like SEO Book’s Key Word Tool
- Once you find key terms that are frequently searched for, and you think you can write extensively about, use them (or versions of them) in your URL, Blog title, H1, H2, and content of your blog.
- Try to pick 2-3 key terms to focus on in your blogs.
- Make sure to mention the key words in the content of your blogs, but do not over do it. Remember to write for people, not Google bots.
- Here is an example of effective title creation, if the article is about “DKNY 2012 Resort review” the title should have just that, “DKNY 2012 Resort review ” work just that, into your title it creatively. Consider, “Manhattan Mix – A Review of DKNY Resort 2012″ etc. (For what it’s worth, “Manhattan Mix” is how DKNY’s resident PR girl described the Resort 2012 line. More on her, and how Social plays a role in SEO, later).
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SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for "dkny resort 2010 review"
- Integrating interesting images into your content will inspire people to share your content more often.
- Using key terms in the image’s title, ALT text, and image captions will help you rank for your targeted keywords. For example, for a company like DKNY, they would want to name an image “dkny-scarf-dress” rather an “Image_0056” per say.
Image may be NSFW.
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SERP for images of "dkny scarf dress"
- Submit your blog to search engines. Here are the URLs to perform this task:
- Here are a list of blog directories to submit you blogs to:
- Obtain links to your website from external websites (this is known as “link building”). By having other sites link back to yours, it is viewed as a vote of authority/confidence for your blog, in the eyes of search engines. If possible, try to get them to use your key words in their link to you (rather than just your blog’s name).
- Example: For fashion blog Saucy Glossie, an ideal link would be via hyperlink “NYC Fashion Blog” rather than “Saucy Glossie” (because chances are they already rank for their own name).
Get Social. Always give your readers the opportunity to easily share your content with others.
- Telling them about your blog through your Facebook account is a good start, but effectively integrating social networking site buttons into your blog is much better. Whether it’s a “like”, “Digg”, “Tweet” or “Stumble,” you gain from the inclusion of these powerful social platforms… it is well worth the extra time invested into integrating them.
- Add Facebook plugins with assistance from this website: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
- Add Google +1 plugins: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/
- DKNY PR Girl is one of the best examples of a business Twitter account that is strategic, yet organic:
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DKNY PR Girl responding to a Twitter follower (aka, yours truly)
- Being active on Twitter allows you to communicate with fans, or simply people talking about your blog/brand. This communication can only help: it increases brand awareness, and will likely drive traffic to your site as a result.
- Choose popular keywords. “Reviews,” “photos,” “interviews” and “how to” are coveted keywords and now with the permalink structure they can start ranking for these and drive in even more traffic.
For WordPress Blogs:
- All in One SEO Pack: This plugin will assist you with the title of your blog, the title of each of your articles, and the meta description that shows up in Google.
- Alter your Page Title and Article Title to be more SEO friendly with SEO Title Tag
- Optimize the URL of your WordPress blog while you are writing your blog post or title. Right below the title you create there is an example of what the URL will be. Directly to the right of that there is an edit button. Revise your URL accordingly.
- “Sociable” is a very tasteful social option to include in all blog posts quickly and efficiently. Facebook developers have also made the inclusion of a “like” and share button easy to add on each blog post: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/
- Go into the Permalink settings, and create a custom URL structure. Try to construct a concise URL, with your key terms.
- Add tags, and place them in a category. This will help people find articles on your site.
- In order to speed up the delivery of your blog to users utilize WordPress Super Cache
- Get Google XML Sitemaps plugin, it will generate a sitemap for your blog, and help Google crawl your blog more efficiently
- If you need a contact form, this is one of the most popular plugins: Contact Form 7
- There are multitudes of great plugins to improve the functionality of a blog. To find the ones perfect for your site visit this site http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
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