SEO Werkt!

Posted by moosahemani

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

A successful SEO campaign is the perfect combination of all strategies. Whether you're working with on-page optimization, content development, social media, or link building, all of these factors contain equal value. When it comes to picking the most difficult SEO strategy, I will always give my vote to link building as this part is one of the most difficult, boring ,and time consuming strategies you can implement.

A few days back, I shared a picture of the perfect bedroom for a link builder on Facebook:

Almost perfect, despite the coffee pot missing

Yes, link building can be boring, tough, and time consuming. However, one person on the team can dive into link building and get their hands dirty to get the job done in order to produce effective and action-driven results for the business.

Many people use different tactics when it comes to link building. One of the famous and most effective techniques that almost every ethical SEO uses is to manually outreach to other webmasters and ask for a link. Although the rate of response can be low, implementing a few smart email writing tactics can actually increase the response rate.

In this post, I will discuss a few tactics that I have used in recent campaigns where I had to write good amount of manual email to a variety of influencers and bloggers to ask them for a link favor. I tried out a few different ideas and finally created a format that allowed me to write every email as personalized as possible, while saving a lot of my time.

Here I go!

Use catchy subject titles

The first section of an email everyone reads is the title. It is important to have a catchy title or else your email will soon be sent directly to the trash bin. Do not try to manipulate the reader by creating false title, but instead create a title that is interesting and captivating to act as a perfect lead-in for the valuable content of the email.

Some good examples of titles are:

Length of the email

This is an extremely important factor. Do not write a one-line email that clarifies nothing. You want to make sure your email's content delivers the intended actions and requests in a concise, yet inclusive, manner. Similarly, do not stuff the email with tons of unnecessary information. In either case, the recipient is likely to delete your message right away without even reading it (yeah, I can see you having a déjà-vu here).

A perfect email should have, more or less, two paragraphs that describe the solid reason for writing that email.

Use names

Not rocket science, but always a good reminder! Use the intended recipient's name while asking them for a favor, or do not expect them to reply back. The people you are writing to are busy just like you, and their to-do lists are already filled with tasks to accomplish. You better make your request sounds important, and that starts with using their name. How many times have you ignored emails addressed to ‘Hello Webmaster,’ or similar? Plenty.

Take a little step forward, do your research, search for their names, and use them! After all, it is all in the name!

Example:

The first paragraph

If you are writing an email of 100 words or more, it is important that your first paragraph should be appealing, smart, and engaging enough to encourage your reader to happily continue their journey through the end of the message. I've tried different formats and ideas for emails, but what stuck best with my campaign was to dedicate the entire first paragraph to the receiver.

This may sound like a lot of work, but checking the social profiles and doing some background on your recipient can tell you an enormous amount about a person. Ultimately, this will let you to talk to him or her more comfortably.

Example:

The second paragraph

Don’t drag, just say it!

Now that you've hit the second paragraph, you've made it to the ground floor of your email. If you are going to drag your point out a little longer, then you will probably lose the interest of the recipient. Try to be direct in the second paragraph and let the reader know what you want from him or her. Try to explain your objective in few lines and move towards the end of your note.

Example:

The ending note

Now that you have done your job in describing your objective behind the email, it is time to sum it up nicely in a courteous way.

Why I prefer this format

I've been working on improving my emails for quite some time now, and this pitch and format has worked for me almost every time. Here are a few reasons why I think this email format is sure to get you a better rate of response:

• You are pushing the limit of personalization, so you are leaving less space for the recipient to think about ignoring the email.
• This format is not short enough to look lousy, but not lengthy enough to bore or overwhelm the reader.
• Emails that contain a personal touch from the start of the title through the end of the note are set up for a reply.
• The email contains no dragging content, so there is less of a chance that the reader will get frustrated while reading.
• The first paragraph is powerful and dedicated to receiver, which makes them happy and encourages them to read the email through the end.

Obviously the rate of response is not likely to be 100 percent, but I have found that using this format increases the rate of response for different niches.

If you have any other formatting ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them! Please share your views in the comment section.

About the Author:

Moosa Hemani is a SEO strategist and writes about SEO and related stuff on different blogs. He recently started an SEO Blog where he shares his opinions about SEO, search engines, social, and inbound.

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Unless you blog about your boyfriend problems and only want to share it with your BFFs, it is likely that you want your blog to be discovered and read. This is especially so if you have an e-commerce website promoting your product or services, or simply want to earn revenue from advertising and clicks.

It is not easy to get people on your blog considering that there are millions of blogs on the World Wide Web, so how do you get your blog on the first page of Google’s search results? It’s definitely not easy, but here are several measures you could do to land you there:

1. Use keywords in the title

Google searches the blog title for keywords whenever a search is being made using your selected keywords. For instance, if your keywords are “make money”, a title such as “How to make money fast” will get you more hits than “Be poor no more!” Although you might be tempted to write a catchy title, a simple and straightforward one is usually more effective for search engine optimization purposes.

2. Create and use categories

Categories will not only make it easier for your readers to find contents easily but also help to boost Google rankings. Use keywords as your categories so that whenever a search is made, the results point directly to the category of your posts.

3. Tag your posts

Tags are something like categories or keywords – posts which have the same tags are grouped together but tags are much shorter than category names and make it easier for readers to find related posts. Once again, use keywords as tags to increase the density of your keywords throughout your website. Oh, just don’t overdo!

4. Include subheadings, subtitles and post headings

You’d probably know by know what I am going to say – use keywords in your subheadings, subtitles and post headings. These details should be as descriptive as they can about your website, and what better way to do so than to use your choice of keywords!

5. Include images in your posts

Images serve three purposes – they illustrate your meanings, serve as a break for the eyes from reading lines and lines of text and to make your website easily searchable on Google. You can improve your Google rankings by using keywords as the file name and in the alt text. Make sure the size of your image isn’t too large as well as larger images tend to slow down a website.

6. Include meta description

Meta description is the snippet of the article that will appear underneath the website link on Google’s search result page. Take some time to write an interesting one that would captivate people’s attention enough to prompt them to click and check out your website.

7. Use keywords at the start and finish

Now that you have taken care of all the titles, headings and such, it is time that you start writing. Before you go far, you’d need to know that the first and last 100 words of your blog post are important in generating traffic to your website. Use your keywords and several variations of it in the first and last 100 words of your blog post.

You would have noticed that many search engine optimization techniques revolve around the use of keywords, among others. Getting to the top page of a Google search is indeed all about keywords as it is what that users would use to look for information.

As such, use them wherever and whenever you can but be careful not to overdo it as your website could then be identified as spam and your readers would be annoyed being incessantly “bombarded” by the same phrases over and over again!

7 Tips to Make a Blog Post SEO Friendly is a post from: We Blog Better. © 2011. Share it freely, but please link back to this source.

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Become a Better Blogger

There is a definite art form to writing blog posts that can give you both the short-term gain of being shareable on Social Media sites, and the long-term gain of ranking well with search engines.  Mainly, because you’re trying to reach two different audiences at the same time.  Content that’s shared on Social Media sites typically has a lifespan of a few minutes at best as it is quickly replaced on the person’s timeline/stream with additional items.  But with search engines, content is cataloged and then retrieved later when a relevant search is made.

So let’s think about the differences in those audiences, and how we reach each:

1 – Social Media sites – Blog post title needs to be catchy and attention-grabbing.  An interesting photo that grabs attention also helps for content shared on Facebook and Plus.  But the idea is, how can you grab the person’s attention for even a few seconds so you can convince them to click your link?

2 – Search Engine – Here, we need to write content that’s consistent with the search query.  You can already see a potential conflict with writing for Social Media sites in that we need that catchy, attention-grabbing title and blog post, but both also have to be CONSISTENT with the content of the blog post.  IOW, if we have a cute and sparkly title, but the blog post is crap/inconsistent with blog post title, it not only won’t be Liked, RTed and +1ed, it won’t rank well in search results either.

So we need to write a blog post that has both a catchy title that immediately grabs your attention PLUS one that will include content consistent with the blog post title that will also rank well in search engines.  Whew, glad we didn’t make it tough on ourselves

Let’s tackle the blog post title first.  As I’ve blogged about before, when writing blog post titles the cardinal sin you can make is to simply summarize the post.  I think a lot of bloggers do that because they view the blog post title as an almost ‘throwaway’ item.  But the reality is, if your blog post title stinks, it kills the chance that anyone will click to read the post.

For example, let’s say you wanted to write a post about a recent study you had done on what type of tweets get retweeted on Twitter.  Let’s also say your research determined that there were 5 specific ways to increase the number of RTs you get.

So if we wanted to write a blog post title that simply summarized the blog post, we might go with ‘How to Get More Retweets’.  Because that’s a summary in the post in just a few words.

But Dan Zarrella actually did the study.  Look at the blog post title he chose: [Infographic]: 5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Get More ReTweets.  Isn’t that a great title?  Here’s what I like about the title:

1 – It makes a specific claim that the blog post backs up.  Dan’s research found 5 specific ways to get RTs, so that’s in the title.  Instantly makes it clickable.

2 – It solves a problem.  Want to know how to get more RTs?  Here’s 5 proven ways to do so.  This makes the blog post not only more clickable on social media sites, but also it helps with search engine results.  Now the one caveat to this approach is that by including an infographic, Dan isn’t including many words in the post, so that might hurt its ability to rank in search results versus a blog post someone else writes on how to get more retweets.

3 – It has the shiny word INFOGRAPHIC in the title!  This doesn’t really help with search engines, but does make the blog post do better when shared on social media sites.

Now I had to do a bit of revising to the title for this post.  Originally, I was going to go with ‘How to Write Posts That Google and Twitter Will Love’.  That’s ok, but then I realized that it wasn’t specific enough, and it was leaning a bit toward simply summarizing.  So I changed it to ‘How to Write BETTER BLOG Posts That Google and Twitter Will Love’.

Why the change?  Think about it, what are most people more likely to search for ‘how do I write better blog posts’ or ‘how do I write posts’?  So by adding ‘better’ and ‘blog’ to posts, I make the title more descriptive, and more search-friendly.

But I also need to make sure that the content of the post actually backs up the title, plus it helps if the same terms in the title, are in the post.  Note how many times the phrase ‘blog post’ is in this post?  Several times, and especially near the beginning of this blog post (see there it is again!).  That’s a cue to Google that the content of the blog post is consistent with the title.

So if you are wanting to optimize your blog posts for both search engines and social media, keep these tips in mind:

1 – Pick a catchy blog post title that’s also relevant to the blog post.  You want something that immediately grabs the attention of the reader because on social media sites, you’ll probably only have a few seconds to grab the reader’s attention before they move onto the next tweet.

2 – Focus on relevant keywords and phrases in the blog post title as well as the blog post itself.  Note that the term ‘blog post’ is in the title as well as the post, several times.  That’s a keyword phrase that I am focusing on because I want this blog post to rank well when someone searches for this term.

3 – Putting ‘Twitter’ in your blog post title gets you more retweets.  Dan proved this in his blog post linked above

A mere five years ago, the idea of self-publishing a serious business book would have been laughable. Self-publishing was for losers, right? Self-publishing was a last resort after not being able to get a book contract from one of the Big Six publishers (Penguin, HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette or Macmillan), or a business book publisher like Harvard Business Press.

Well, guess what. The book publishing – and reading – revolution is well under way. The idea that self-publishing is a last resort is dead. That notion is out of date. It misses the boat. Self-publishing may not be right for every prospective business author. It depends on your goals. But it is an extremely viable option to get your book – yes, a professionally edited and designed book – directly into readers’ hands.

I’ve been mulling over how to explain this in a way that is palatable to those who think a “real” book is one published by a “real” (aka legacy) publisher. I was one of those until quite recently, BTW. First, I’ll bludgeon you with an argument: self-publishing an ebook is now so easy and quick that it would be madness not to consider it. Write your book (the hardest part), get it edited, choose a catchy title, get an eye-catching cover designed, format the manuscript for Kindle (and the other e-readers, if you wish). Upload the file via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform, set the price (you can always change it) – and you’re done. If your price is at least $2.99, you will keep 70% of each sale. And in case you missed it, Amazon announced three new Kindles today, along with the Kindle Flash, an iPad competitor, all priced under $200. In other words, you can potentially reach millions of readers with a self-published Kindle ebook.

OK, I realize that may not work for those who are not fired up by the next new thing. Here’s another argument for those who may be stuck in old-think. Let’s use an analogy: the only way to get a top notch education is to attend an Ivy League university. Hogwash. We all know that smart, motivated students can get a magnificent education at dozens, if not hundreds, of second and third tier colleges that are less well known. The one-size-fits-all approach – to education, to publishing, to jobs, to just about everything – doesn’t work any more. Seth Godin’s newest book, We Are All Weird, lays out this argument more eloquently and imaginatively than I can.

I’ve got a lot more to say about this topic but I’ll stop here for now. In the meantime, lob your questions, doubts, rebuttals or other concerns at me in the comments below. I’d love to hear and will do my best to answer each of you.

A mere five years ago, the idea of self-publishing a serious business book would have been laughable. Self-publishing was for losers, right? Self-publishing was a last resort after not being able to get a book contract from one of the Big Six publishers (Penguin, HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette or Macmillan), or a business book publisher like Harvard Business Press.

Well, guess what. The book publishing – and reading – revolution is well under way. The idea that self-publishing is a last resort is dead. It’s out of date. It misses the boat. Self-publishing may not be right for every prospective business author. It depends on your goals. But it is an extremely viable option to get your book – yes, a professionally edited and designed book – directly into readers’ hands.

I’ve been mulling over how to explain this in a way that is palatable to those who think a "real" book is one published by a "real" (aka legacy) publisher. I was one of those until quite recently, BTW. First, I’ll bludgeon you with an argument: self-publishing an ebook is now so easy and quick that it would be madness not to consider it. Write your book (the hardest part), get it edited, choose a catchy title, get an eye-catching cover designed, format the manuscript for Kindle (and the other e-readers, if you wish). Upload the file via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform, set the price (you can always change it) – and you’re done. If your price is at least $2.99, you will keep 70% of each sale. And in case you missed it, Amazon announced three new Kindles today, along with the Kindle Flash, an iPad competitor, all priced under $200. In other words, you can potentially reach millions of readers with a self-published Kindle ebook.

OK, I realize that may not work for those who are not fired up by the next new thing. Here’s another argument for those who may be stuck in old-think. Let’s use an analogy: the only way to get a top notch education is to attend an Ivy League university. Hogwash. We all know that smart, motivated students can get a magnificent education at dozens, if not hundreds, of second and third tier colleges that are less well known. The one-size-fits-all approach – to education, to publishing, to jobs, to just about everything – doesn’t work any more. Seth Godin’s newest book, We Are All Weird, lays out this argument more eloquently and imaginatively than I can.

I’ve got a lot more to say about this topic but I’ll stop here for now. In the meantime, lob your questions, doubts, rebuttals or other concerns at me in the comments below. I’d love to hear and will do my best to answer each of you.