In this podcast we are going to discuss a quick tip from the previous podcast and then we are going to get down to it with a list of things that Google says you should avoid in regards to your blog or website.
Tip from Podcast 36: The worst advice you’ll ever hear about blogging Part 8
Bad Blogging Advice Part 8: Don’t Write More Than 300 Words.
The truth is that there is not hard and fast rule to post length. Two years ago everyone said “write 300 words and leave it at that.” Now Google is letting us know that they prefer strong in depth content. The truth is, it is not Google that prefers that it is the searchers on Google. People want solid pieces of information. If can provide solid pieces of information in less than 300 words then by golly go for it but I will strongly suggest that you also throw in some 800 world or 1,500 word posts as well. Test it and see which ones work best for you in the long run. The key to all of this is to provide good solid value for your reader. If you do that Google will love you.
[su_note note_color=”#ffb766″ radius=”5″]The truth is that there is not hard and fast rule to post length.[/su_note]
Now let’s get down to it and discuss Things Google says you should advoid!
So in Podcast #29 : Does your Blog Answer the Question? We started the conversation about Google’s tips. Google provides us a lot of good solid pieces of advice that we all must not should but must follow. If you did not catch that podcast you may want to go back and take a listen.
For now here is our first piece for today:
Don’t fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to “cloak” pages, or put up “crawler only” pages. If your site contains pages, links, or text that you don’t intend visitors to see, Google considers those links and pages deceptive and may ignore your site.
This paragraph is directly from Google, read word for word.
Ok first thing: we need to define cloaking
According to Google cloaking is “a website that returns altered webpages to search engines crawling the site.” In other words, a human reading the site would see different content or information than the Googlebot or other search engine robot reading the site. Most of the time, cloaking is implemented in order to improve search engine ranking by misleading the search engine robot into thinking the content on the page is different than it really is. ~ source: About.com
Essentially this is totally cheating the system and a really terrible way. Basically what the search engines see for a url and what the humans see are two different things. This is generally done to help improve your SEO rankings. Google says don’t do this. If you are caught doing this then you will be banned by Google.
Now let’s discuss the “list of keywords” point here.
Don’t fill your page with a lists of keywords. Bam! But Renee’ you are always talking about keywords. You have your bloggers start with Keywords. Yes, that is all true but I did not ever tell anyone to cram them.
Here is the deal! Keywords are important. You may have an amazing piece of advice and I am confident that you do but you must provide it in the way that people are searching for it. Therefore, you need to know the related keywords that people are searching for.
There was a time when people would cram 100 of the same word at the bottom of blog. You would see what looked like a giant black box at the bottom and it seemed odd but what you did not know is that black box was filled with the same worded typed over and over again in black text. Those days are over. Google is smarter now.
Now they want you to find a keyword phrase, find a related keyword phrase and then use those as a guide.
So there is a site called bestseoideas.com and I like their tips. Here they are:
If you want to be best and safe in this On Page Optimization your website must follow the bellow rules:
- Keep the entire words ratio in the page between 2% to 4%.
- Don’t pick single word Choose Word Phrases it will give you more search engine impressions in different word formations
- Use synonyms of the words you have chosen
- Optimize your title, h1, image alt tags with the key phrase
Here is their formula:
(Keyword presence / total words) * 100
This is formula for Density, keyword having single word value. So right now the density is (2 / 100) * 100 = 2%
Ok so this is a lot to take in. I am going to keep this one short and we will cover more points from Google in future podcasts.
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Thank you so much for stopping by my show notes pages.
I would love your comments and feedback. Also, if you have any questions that you would like discussed in future episodes, please either leave them in the comments below or shoot me an email at renee @ iteachblogging.com.
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Don’t forget to clickety on my PDF download of Tips on Blogging for Business. It covers some tips about the Yoast Plugin and a few others that I install on all of my clients’ blogs.