Get Blog Content to Show Up in Google – A Case Study
I was crabby all day Friday, mostly because it’s February in Minnesota and at this point you’re counting minutes until the weather turns. Took a peak at analytics and cheered right up, because there was a very noticeable, sustained spike in traffic, the kind that usually stems from a first page ranking for a well searched keyword or set of keywords.
It’s a beautiful thing.
Turns out a recent blog post on Pinterest Brand Pages was the workhorse. As of Friday the 17th, we were ranking 6th in Google, 2nd in Bing, and 3rd in DuckDuckGo search results for that keyword. We have very similar rankings for the phrase “Pinterest Company Pages.” We’re outranking a lot of authoritative sites like inc.com and Mashable as well, which is kinda fun.
From an optimization standpoint, it’s not terribly difficult to execute. You’ll need a little luck, no doubt, and it helps to be timely. Other than that, you want to have someone on staff like Jessica Conrad who can write super awesomely.
Here’s how to get blog content to show up in Google:
1. Write about something real and interesting
Pinterest is obviously on fire right now. We asked ourselves what our clients have already asked, which is, should we do this for our brand? To be honest, we weren’t sure, but we knew we should come up with a good answer (and then write about it).
2. Research a Keyword
We simply used Google Instant and saw that Google was suggesting Pinterest Brand Pages. This is normally all we do for keyword research, as it can be pretty difficult to rank for anything that registers in the AdWords tool with just a blog post. Plus, if it’s a newer topic, Instant is all you really have, aside from your intuition.
3. Optimize the post
Our content optimization is pretty simple. Put the keyword in the front of the title, and make sure it’s an exact match. Use supporting keywords where possible — in our case, the word “company” was intentional. Last, make it look and sound great. As any content SEO knows, the art is optimizing while still writing a catchy headline.
Next, add an exact match of the keyword early in the post. After that, write naturally, and verify that you’ve adequately sprinkled in your target keywords as part of the proofing process. Fortunately, you really don’t need to stuff your phrase to rank.
4. Be fast
Google seems to favor early movers. If you get there ahead of everyone else, you’re going to rank well, at least to start. Hopefully you’ll get a few links from people searching your target keywords, which will help you stay there.
Of course, it’s good to have a decent page rank, and we’re at a 4. You won’t be able to start a blog today and rank well immediately. At the same time, even a loosely established site can get content to rank if it’s timely. Rooster is still ranking 2nd in Google for the term Foursquare Demographics after a year and half, mostly because we were there early and got a few links. At the time our site page rank was 2.
In case you’re wondering, the phrase “get blog content to show up in google” is a keyword phrase suggested by Google. It’s obviously not a hugely important one, but we’re in the top spot for that phrase an hour after posting. We might get one visit a day from that type of search, but you can see how much damage you can do by writing frequently and hitting it big once in a while.
Google Search plus Your World – Tiny Needles in Mass Confusion Haystacks
I’m not a crystal ball kinda guy and don’t take much stock in predictions, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how Google plus Your World is going to be useful.
The wife and I recently bought a house and we’ve been making various purchases. She’s been looking into furniture, and I’ve been researching ping pong tables and fire pits, among other man cavish goods.
I should state that these are clearly “informational” searches, as opposed to transactional (searching with the intent to purchase online) or navigational (searching for a specific site) searches. They are items that are typically researched online but often purchased at a physical location, as the cost is generally too high to make a commitment without first touching and feeling.
Here’s the rub: for social search to influence my informational purchases, friends of mine would have had to +1 a search result, or share a “ping pong” related item through Blogger, Yelp, Google+, or whatever else Google is allowing in its results.
Nobody I know has +1′d a “ping pong table” product on the Internet. And why would they? If they researched online but went to the store to buy it, they’d then have to go back online and find the search result again to +1 it. That’s simply not going to happen 99% of the time.
The “personal results,” meanwhile, give me a post from a guy who shared that he was eating his lunch on a ping pong table (and I had to scroll down his Google+ page to find it), an article about Tiger Woods taking on gold-medalist Liu Xiang in ping pong, and an article about the aerodynamics of a ping pong ball. There are many more, none of them relevant to the purpose of my search.
Again, I realize that this isn’t the only type of search regularly performed. You could argue that there are several sub-sets of informational searches, like looking for movie reviews and finding recipes. A quick “The Descendents” search, for which George Clooney just won a Golden Globe for best actor, yielded nothing in the personal results. “Recipes” revealed several Google+ posts from Google advocate Denis Labelle, including a post that says “Google+ is the future of social search.” Strangely, I couldn’t find the post with the word recipes in it. Again, no +1s by any of my social connections.
Navigational. Well, if I want go to YouTube and don’t think to type in youtube.com, I could search “youtube” and get there that way. Or I could just search “video.” Wait a second, there are some useful results here! Some videos shared by the three people I know who actually use Google+—excellent!
Yep, no Facebook results, no Twitter results (yet). Google is saying it’s Twitter and Facebook’s fault they aren’t in there, but they seem to be missing the crucial point that they would be more relevant with them included, considering all the additional and relevant content it could serve (isn’t the whole idea of a search engine to organize relevant web pages?). As of now, there are simply too many search queries, too many search results, too many people who don’t know anything about the +1 button, and too many people who don’t get Google+.
Google has a massive task of educating the world about how this works, and right now it’s not easy to find any kind of value or reward.
Why Google Wants you to be an SEO Wookie
Every search engine marketer knows that the dark side of SEO — the black hat, Darth Vader style tactics deployed by thousands of Storm Troopers to game the system for short term benefit — has given the practice its shady reputation. Too bad a few thousand bad apples have to spoil it for the rest of us, because those connected to the Force and all things good in SEO are making the search universe better for all, and even have the loyal and sensible support of Google itself.
It’s kinda simple when you think about it. Google wants to serve up relevant search results — giving customers what they want reinforces the value of the product. Keeps them coming back for more. Most importantly, keeps those ad dollars flowing.
A big issue for Google (and Bing!) is the plenitude of sites on the Interwebs that are poorly optimized. In essence, these sites are failing to tell Google what they’re about. If these sites can’t communicate properly, Google can’t serve them up as highly relevant results to its customers (and allow them to make that cheddar).
Why not, then, deploy kind hearted SEO Ewoks and Wookies to help out?
White Hat SEO couldn’t be more kinder and gentler in its most simple form. The mission, as previously mentioned, is to help sites tell search engines who they are and what they do. Elementary things like doing proper keyword research and writing proper meta tags can work wonders for website visibility, among other suggestions provided by Google itself in its SEO Starter Guide.
In the end, White Hat SEO is a win-win for everyone involved. Client gets more visibility, SEO guru gets paid, and Google indexes and serves more relevant pages (see: cheddar). Oh yeah, and with the completion of each honorable optimization project, the forces of good advance every so slightly over the forces of evil.
Image credit: Dryjack at Deviant Art
Plus One Plugin for WordPress
Google’s been making strong moves lately with the Plus One button and Google+. It’s hard to say whether either of these will reach critical mass – ahem, see Google Buzz.
That said, it’s probably not a good idea to wait to incorporate the Plus One button on your WordPress site, mostly because it takes two minutes to install.
Not surprisingly, there are at least three decent +1 plugin options already. The one with the most unanimously positive reviews is called — wait for it — Plus One.
Search for Plus One in your WordPress account plugin page, install and activate, and you’re done. It automatically gets added at the end of your posts. I may have exaggerated — it probably only takes 30 seconds.
Given that Google has decided to incorporate Plus One data into Webmaster Tools, it’s betting that it can build reliance on it. Unlike Buzz, which seemed to exist in a vacuum, Google has connected the Plus One button to search results and Tools, making it an extension of its current offerings instead of yet another new application or platform to adopt.
Let me be clear — I ain’t saying +1 is going to make it big time. The Interwebs is a big place with lots of wires and tubes, and I’ve never once seen a result that someone in my network has plus one’d. In short, it’s never done for me what it aims to do, which is provide recommendations and leverage my network to facilitate decision making.
That said, it’s so easy to install in WordPress that you kinda hafta. And if it does go large, you’ll be in good position.
