Google ranking for blogs – How well does your blog rank?
I’m not an expert on search engine optimisation or marketing guru or analytics specialist. Now I got that out the way you will understand that what I’m about to show you is neither the only way nor the most extensive way.
When I first started blogging I had to rely heavily on my blog buddies – reciprocal visitors whose blogs I visit regularly. As I got busier with my full time job, I couldn’t keep up with the blog reading and commenting. That didn’t stop my blog from getting an increased traffic. There are many ways to get visitors and one of them I found is getting listed near the top in Google search result pages.
There are no hard and fast rules and I’ve worked this out by watching Feedjit’s traffic feed casually for less than six months.
If the blog is relatively new you will only have to check feedjit once a day or so. I check it two or three times day when I remember. See if any visitors have landed on your blog via Google through a search keyword. It’s easy enough to spot that as the source (xx arrived from) will be Google or other search engines. Click the search engine link and see where it takes you. You will see what that visitor searched for and how high your blog gets listed in Google. It could well be at top of the page or near the bottom of the page. Sometimes it’s not even in the first page.
By looking at the keywords and how relevant your blog is you can work out what’s best for your blog and your locality.
For example, before I went off to take photos for WAIFT Fashion show I did a little googling to see how much coverage the event got in the previous year. I realised that there wasn’t much info available so I did a post and titled it carefully (added WAIFT and full text in the post) to ensure that it could be easily searched. After the initial post I watched Feedjit to see if there was anyone searching for that. Voilà! I was getting quite a few visitors from Google. With that information I did a series of interviews on each designer from the show to beef up the content so when searched using WAIFT Graduate Show in Google my blog appears in the top half (3rd or 4th) the first search result page so click here to see if for yourself.
You could also find out what people are searching and landing in your blog by looking at keyword search traffics from analytics software. I use Google Analytics but I don’t check it often enough. For me, using Feedjit is more spontaneous and instantaneous (no pun intended). This is obviously a reactive response to visiting patterns. If I could predict what people would search then I won’t be doing what I’m doing!
Watching how people find your blog is good but what if your blog isn’t getting any visitors from search engines? That’s highly unlikely but if that is the case with your blog follow these rules and see if you get any increased traffic over time.
- Post often: Search engines love regularly updated content. I post daily and Google seems to like my blog for the kind of content I cover.
- Use meaningful post title: Don’t get too poetic or cryptic with post titles. Post titles are important because they are usually styled as ‘headings’ and ‘linked’. Heading and linking are important for search engines. If you’re using Blogger, Blogger makes URL using titles for each post. URL containing matching search keywords gets better ranking.
- Be linky: create links to other more authoritative sources or original website. Linked texts are more visible to search engines.
- Alt text for images: Search for Ika Butoni in Google, at the time of writing my blog Style Discovery gets the third and my flickr album on the forth spots after Ika butoni’s websites. If you’re using Flickr (or other image hosting service) it helps to add meaningful titles for photos as well. In case of Flickr, the image title becomes Alt (text alternative for images for the visually impaired) text for images.
Here are some of the examples of search results showing Style Discovery ranking well. This is no luck. It’s the result of carefully targeted writing of the blog content.
- writing for local people
- writing on a sepecific designer
The keyword was ‘memorylanecostumehire’
even the local ISP’s search engine lists my post on burlesque and because it’s local (Perth) it was more ‘clickable’
Did you notice how the post title didn’t match the URL here? The title has Ika Butoni in the front but the URL has Hong Kong Fashion Week Fall/Winter. That’s beacause I checked the ranking after the post went out and I wanted to get ranked higher with the designer name rather than the Hong Kong fashion week thing alone. When you edit the title of a post the URL doesn’t change. After that little change, my post gets higher than any other pages online after Ika’s own pages. I can’t ask for better result than that.
16 Comments
issa
January 28, 2009very informational!! i’ll keep some of these tips in mind
miss cavendish
January 29, 2009Makes sense! Obscure post titles don’t help . . .
On another front, do you know (of course you do) how to save to file an image that’s on a
“loop” — say an image from Barneys.com that you click on? I’ve been frustrated to find lovely images that I can’t show off on my blog . . .
Songy
January 29, 2009@miss cavendish
if things are on a loop the best thing to do is to just do screen captures. Have Picasa 3 installed? then it’s easy. Open picasa 3 and minimize it. Start doing captures (there’s a key called ‘PrtScrn’ on your keyboard). Then Picasa 3 will automatically save the images in your computer. Once you’re done with all the captures you can crop the images to suit your post. If you need any more help just drop me a line.
La Belette Rouge
January 29, 2009For some reason my Google analytics quit working about a month ago and I cannot get it to see that anyone visits me. I use statcounter and am better able to see who visits me and when.
Agnes
January 29, 2009I’m so happy you’re “back” Songy
How is your new place working out?
fashion herald
January 30, 2009ahhh, very good stuff here, esp. about titles. thanks, songy!
heartofpearl♡
January 30, 2009haha tats cool!!
your like pro at this google business
x
i devour fashion
January 30, 2009very informative, indeed, Songy!
how are you?
p.s. kindly update darling cuz i’m using a new blog site. merci!
yoon see
January 31, 2009Thanks for sharing Songy.
Have a nice weekend!
Couture Carrie
January 31, 2009This is soooo cool and informative, Songy – I’m going to google some stuff right now and see how I rank!
xoxox,
CC
...love Maegan
February 1, 2009ya know, I never really paid attention to those FEEDJIT bars until now. And then I looked over at yours and saw how exactly I found you. Thanks!
{just fyi …I clicked on you via sea of shoes …knowing it was you ..but here’s what I don’t get….when you click a link from her site and from Karla’s CLoset, their name stays in the URL bar even when you transfer to another site …so I typed in SONGY to google to get you and and you came up number 4 I think. …but back to the URLs, are THEY getting the site links and “hits” so to speak when you click on a link via them?
try it..because I’ve been wondering how to do that for a while now ….OOH, also, when you click on Seaofshoes.com the alexa.com ranking is like in the 400,00′s but if you type in seaofshoes.typepad.com her ranking is like 161,000. WTF? lol. sorry for the novel.
Franco
February 1, 2009songy! how are you?! I’ve been off blogging but i’m trying to get back.
I’ve also rely on blog buddies. sad but true.
glad you are doing fine.
{this is glamorous}
February 6, 2009Love that you took the time to lay out all of this info — had a good handle on much of it, only weak spot being blog titles — like to make them fun as opposed to informative — perhaps there’s a happy medium?
Make Do Style
February 13, 2009Read this first on IFB – you are such a technical whizz!!
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