OK, we all know that Search Engine Optimization is important to get more hits for your food blog, but some of us are totally clueless about all the jargon and technology and stuff. I'm sitting at the IFBC panel on SEO for food bloggers, which is basically telling us how to be a "popular kid" in the high-school-esque world of page ranks and the like. I'm going to stream-of-consciousness a list of tips from Barnaby Dorfman, Foodista.com CEO, Mani Dhillon, UrbanSpoon.com General Manager, and Joy Victory, WordPress.com Editorial Czar. This post is going to be so full of keywords, it'll blow your mind.
- Measuring traffic is totally important. Google Analytics for food bloggers is necessary, but, uh, I don't use it. Google has over a million computers trained to act like humans, mimicking the way people move through the internet. That's really, really creepy. I like to think of a robot out in a room somewhere acting like my dad on the internet, searching my name on Google and refreshing the LemonBasil home page constantly.
- Hits don't matter, Monthly Unique Visitors - "Uniques" - do. Everything can be reduced to a dollar amount per 1000 views of an ad. The robots don't care how many times my dad presses refresh on a blog post.
- Links to your site = authority = higher page rank on search engine results. Links are like catnip for robots.
- Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia links do not contribute to your page rank. Huh, that doesn't seem very fair.
- Take the time to figure out where your traffic is coming from, but don't drive yourself crazy trying to learn about search engine optimization for food bloggers. But if you don't pay enough attention, you'll anger the robots.
- "Pretend you're a vegetarian blogger who just went to the farmers' market and bought some corn, and you want to write a blog post about corn, but want to " Weird, I have no idea what that's like. Anyway, using Google insights can help you find out what in trending on the internet, i.e. Corn Chowder. It's using the robots for your own benefit. You can also see how often terms are being searched as compared to other search terms.
- Using keywords in headline and first sentence makes the most impact on your page rank. This is how you talk to the robots. Oh, man, the robots.
- SEO Optimization makes me feel a little queasy. I guess using better titles and keywords wouldn't be really difficult. I want to robots to like my writing.
- Updating often makes a difference to the robots. Also, to your parents who really want to hear about what you ate for dinner with that nice young man you've been seeing.
Moral of the Story: YOU MUST PLEASE THE ROBOTS.
On a less snarky note, this place looks pretty magical. Good work, lightbulbs.
Great summery and lovely photos!
ReplyDeleteWow! have I been having fun with Google insights! Thanks for going on recon for us lowly little food loving geeks. And thanks for reporting back, honestly. I love it! I'm off to read the next post.....
ReplyDeleteWell, I like the word "robots" better than "spiders." It always seemed a little too Matrix-y.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments...I really like hearing what people take away from what I say. I find all the comments about understanding how Google works is "creepy" a bit odd...not knowing would be much worse for me.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this info. I’m a newbie and just beginning to get into SEO. This was hellpful I like blog more. This will definitely help me with my seo efforts with the knowledge his blog post has given me.
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ReplyDeleteThat's a nice suggestion for using Google Insights. I've never thought of it that way. Google Insights has always been more of a personal thing for me, the same way I treat Twitter's trending topics.
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We're on the same boat, SpeedStar. I don't use Google Insights all that much because, unlike Twitter, it doesn't bring the trending topics right to my doorstep. I mean, I don't need to do anything special to see Twitter trends on Twitter's front page.
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And besides, Amarant, Twitter has its own search built in so there's no reason to use Google Insights that much.
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Google insights is a word that's been widely used back in 2010 but has lost its traction in 2011.
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With the latest update on Google's algorithm, it has become a little trickier to 'please the robots'. As much as possible, you want to invest on Los Angeles web design and quality content.
ReplyDeleteThese are great tips when it comes to SEO. We really need to please robots to ensure the success of our campaigns. However, today's algorithm made a lot of changes. Many search engine optimisation Melbourne companies use different ad new strategies to cope with the changes that Google algorithm rolled out.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this information. I’m a newbie and just beginning to get into SEO. This was helpful I like blog more.
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