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Keyword Tools
As many online writers will know the inclusion of keywords into an article is fundamental to getting good search engine placements. Keywords also help readers to find your content by its relevance, so choosing the right keywords for your online content is essential.
Fortunately there are a number of tools available that can make the process of selecting the keywords that are just right for your article a little easier, and the most useful are listed here in no particular order of merit.
1/ Keyword Discovery
Keyword Discovery compiles statistics from all the major search engines allowing article writers to target the most relevant keywords.
2/ Good Keywords
Good Keywords have a number of keyword tools on their website that offer a variety of tasks: everything from a database to competition research, web page analysis and keyword generation. There are free trial options on the Good Keyword site as well as a free to use keyword pad (screenshot below) which can be used to manage keyword lists.
3/ Wordtracker
Wordtracker generates and optimises keywords for search engines and webpages. There is also aplugin for those who use Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox 2 or 3,so Wordtracker Keywords can be used from your browser.
4/ Google Suggest
As you type in keywords Google shows the number of results based on that keyword as well as offering keyword suggestions.
5/ Google Alerts
With this tool Google offers email updates on your chosen subject or keywords.
I hope this list helps you with your selection of keywords for your articles and leads to greater success in your online writing endeavours. Good luck!
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Blogger Meta Tag Optimization
This handy piece of information about meta tag optimization is something I picked up from Blogspottutorial.com, which although not written with the best grammar has some useful tips. The idea is to edit the Blogger template to make it easier for search engine bots to crawl your blog.
By default Blogger places the name of the blog before the post title in the meta tag code for its templates, but it is possible to edit this and reverse the order so search engine bots find it easier to crawl your blog.
If you go to your blog and take a look at the top left corner of your browser you will see this for yourself; the name of the blog appears before the name of an entry. Now take a look at the top right hand corner of your browser whilst viewing this blog; the name of the blog post is displayed before the name of the blog, as seen here:
To change the meta tag for your blog follow these steps:
Go to the dashboard of your blog
Click on Layout and then on Edit Html
Find this line of code towards the top of the page:
< title > < data:blog.pageTitle/ > < /title >
Replace it with this code:
< b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
< title > < data:blog.pageName/ > | < data:blog.title/ > </title >
< b:else/ > < title > < data:blog.pageTitle/ > < /title >
< /b:if >
Save the template and you are done.
It may take a day or two for the change to occur but once it is done you can rest assured your meta tag has been optimized for search engines to crawl your blog content.
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Blogger Verification
Verifying your Blogger Blog using the meta tag option may seem a straightforward procedure considering Google provides what at first glance appears to be clear instructions on their Webmasters Tools page. (If you haven’t visited Webmasters Tools yet, there is a link towards the bottom of your Bloggers dashboard). However, even though I thought I had verified this blog sometime ago, I recently discovered that the verification status had disappeared.
Starting from scratch I followed Google’s instructions many times on how to add the meta tag code but with no luck. Looking around the internet, I eventually came across a solution on Google’s help forum; a solution you would need to know beforehand or would never guess what steps to take. Whilst looking around the internet I also realised many people were having the same problem verifying their Blogger blog, which is why I am adding the solution here.
The solution is simple:
· Follow the instructions on the Webmasters Tool page, copying the meta verification code provided.
· Go to the dashboard of your Blogger blog and click on the layout link, then on the Edit HTML tab.
· Paste the verification code into the section of the html code as Google instructs.
· Now, just before the closing angle bracket of your meta tag code add a forward slash: />
. The resulting addition will be similar to this: < name="verify-v1" content="code stuff ">
· After saving changes to your blog’s html you can go back to the Webmasters Tools page and click on the Verify tab, and success should be yours!
Adding the forward slash before the angle bracket means the meta verification code is changed to the correct closing for a XHTML doctype. Apparently, Google provides the code as a html meta tag because it doesn’t know what type of doctype you are using on your blog. This is fine, but it would help a lot of people if Google clarified this in its instructions. I hope this has made verifying your blog easier, and good luck with your posts!
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Nofollow and Dofollow Links
Since seeing for myself how social bookmarking can affect the visibility of an article, it has become clear some social bookmarking sites are more effective than others in helping to build traffic. To date StumbleUpon is possibly the most useful place to add a bookmark because of the way users ‘stumble’ upon content. Digg is also recommended because bookmarks added to the site often show in Google’s search engine results. Apart from reasons of this kind another factor that separates some social bookmarking sites from others is whether they provide dofollow or nofollow links.
Why should anyone concern themselves whether or not a link is dofollow or nofollow? The answer lies in the way links work for a website; the more links a site has the more popular it is likely to be with search engines. Until some time ago this was exploited by a number of people by adding links to places like forums and blogs without contributing constructively to the website. In other words they spammed online content in order to achieve better search engine placements, so as a consequence the nofollow link tag was adopted.
These days it is more than likely that a link added to a forum or to someone else’s blog will be nofollow. Nofollow means that when a search engine bot crawls a website it can be instructed not to follow the link to someone else’s site. If the bot doesn’t follow the link then no link juice will be gained from that link. Link juice is simply a term for your site gaining better credence with search engines through the sites it links to, and so achieving better positions.
This isn’t to say nofollow links have no value at all, after all they can of course direct traffic to your site or blog. But nofollow links simply won’t help to boost your online content in the search engine page rankings.
So, when adding your link to a social bookmarking site, or any place on the internet it helps if you know whether it will offer a nofollow or a dofollow link. This can be determined by going to the site and clicking on the page source tab from your browser’s menu. If links within the page code are nofollow then the link tags will include this:
rel="nofollow"
A dofollow link is in reality just a normal link and that’s how it will look in the page’s source code.
If your browser of choice is Firefox there are two other quick and easier ways to see if links on a page are dofollow or nofollow. The first is to right click on the link and then click on properties. If the link is nofollow you will see the rel="nofollow" added to the link tag.
There is also a browser extension for Firefox named NoDofollow which quickly enables you to see what links on a page are dofollow or nofollow. Once installed it will be located under the tools menu in the browser. Click on its tab from the menu and all the nofollow links on the webpage will be highlighted pink and dofollow links will be highlighted blue.
A website I have found helpful in showing which social bookmarking sites offer dofollow or nofollow links is SocialMarker which also helps in automating the process of adding a page to social bookmarking sites. It lists 51 of the most popular social bookmarking sites and by hitting the appropriate tab you can choose to add your content to either all of these sites, the best or those that are dofollow.
There is also a window which automatically displays the usual information most social bookmarking sites require to add a link, (such as title and description etc). Once you visit a bookmarking site, information from each box can be dragged to the relevant area of the page to be added. Instructions are easy to follow so visiting the page will clarify how to use it rather than reading a lengthy description here.
As a final passing note, Article Writers Network, the social network I set up in part to provide an extra somewhere for writers to add bookmarks to their work offers dofollow links, so can be a handy place to add a little extra link juice to an article. To get a clear idea how the site works take a look at the About page.
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Social Bookmarking Works
After setting up Article Writers Network previously mentioned on this blog, I realised I needed to find ways to attract people and to make it as useful as possible. As a social networking site for online writers one clear choice was to add some articles with useful information and links to resources.
One such article I have added is called Ten Top Paying Article Websites, which describes some of the most reputable online locations where writers can post their articles and make some cash in one way or another.
Another advantage of adding articles to Article Writers Network is that I can add each article to social bookmarking sites to build up links and in turn ensure pages are listed on search engines. Although I have used this process before I have to admit I was surprised at how effective it can be. Yesterday I checked the Google analytics for the website and found that it had received 5000 visitors, and checking again today this number has now more than doubled. Interestingly, some of this traffic has come from websites I don’t (but maybe should) use such as Facebook and Twitter.
This is very encouraging and has shown me that whilst you may read information online about how effective social bookmarking can be, the best way to really learn is to try it yourself, particularly with an article with the right subject matter.
If I keep following this process with luck eventually membership will increase and a lively, active community of writers willing to help each other will develop.
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