The Pareto Principle (“80/20 Rule”) definitely applies to search engine optimization (SEO). If you’re writing about something very specific, these simple steps will help your blog posts show up for related searches on Google and Bing.

Let’s begin at the beginning:

The article title. Make sure you use the main keywords for your article in the title. It’s surprising how many people never do this. They will write a really intelligent piece then give it a title that is neither descriptive or search engine-friendly.

The permalink. Make sure your blog is using the article title as part of the URL. It should look like:

mysite.com/keywords-about-article

Not:

mysite.com/p=?123

We use the SEO Slugs plugin to remove unnecessary words like “the” and “a.” WordPress makes it easy to making other changes to the permalink. Google’s Matt Cutts suggested this idea a couple years ago.

Change the permalink slightly to cover other possible search phrases. The example I use in this video shows the title as “Change a Tire on a Yugo” but I tweaked the permalink to read “changing-tire-yugo” so that the article would be likely to show up for the searches “changing a tire” and “change a tire.”

For more details see Matt Cutts presentation at WordCamp 2009.

The article content. Simple. Make a point to use the keyword phrase a couple times, but don’t overdo it. Write for humans first, search engines second.

Blog categories. Using relevant keywords for your blog categories is also a good idea. Categories have their own “archive” pages with permalinks too.

Post tags. Again, basic stuff, but be sure to tag your blog post with all relevant terms. Tags, like categories, have archive pages that get crawled by the search engine bots.

Extra Credit

WordPress is pretty seo-friendly as is, but using a plugin like All in One SEO will allow for a little more tuning. You can create yet another variation of the title for the “TITLE TAG.” The title tag is what shows at the top of the browser for the page you are seeing. The title tag is also the headline that shows up as a link on search engine results pages. Here is another opportunity to use a plural version of the keyword instead of singular, past tense instead of present, etc.

The “Meta Description” shows up under the headline on search engine results pages. Search engines don’t factor this into how pages are ranked in results. But, this text can help “sell the click.” If no description is present Google will pull select snippets of text from the page. Robots don’t write as well as humans.

Finally, if you got ‘em, and photos and videos. Either can show up separately as results on search pages.

I’ve seen amazing results using nothing but these simple steps. This especially true when content is written on a very specific topic, or for a very specific audience. That’s a subject for another post.

There are several ways to have your blog automatically update the Facebook Page for your small business. In this example video we step through the process using Networked Blogs, a popular Facebook application. To complete the process you will need to be an administrator for your Facebook Page (if you created it you already are, or you can have the person who created it make you one) and an administrator for your WordPress blog.

This process is a little tedious but the video shows you everything you need to do, and I tried anticipate some questions you will likely have. See it in action on the AVL Marketing Facebook Page.

Let us know if you have questions. If you can recommend a better or easier process/tool/application please do so in the comments section.

1. Audio – Even if your video comes out horrible you can turn it into an audio post.

2. Lighting- If there is one thing that video experts agree on its the importance of lighting. If your going to invest, this is where the bulk of you budget should go.

3. Camera- Almost any camera will do, the idea is to get your face out there so potential clients can see you. However, there are several things to consider when purchasing a camera; video format, sound, storage, batteries, and size.

4. Screen capture- By using software available for both PC and Mac you can create videos with out even needing a camera by just adding audio.

5. Editing on YouTube- Some basic editing can be done on YouTube, such as trimming the beginning and end of your video.

6. Editing using locally installed apps-  Programs such as MovieMaker and iMovie allow you do perform more complex editing on your videos.

7. Distribute- YouTube- Doubling as the second largest search engine and a social networking site, YouTube allows you to easily share your videos.

8. Other distribution options-blip.tv, Vimeo, and Viddler

9. Blog/Youtube integration- Genki Youtube and Smart YouTube are great WordPress plug-ins that will allow you to easily insert your video and show the comments.

Full story at Social Media Examiner

No matter what your company does or sells, it needs a website — at most, a place where you can engage your community of customers and clients; and at least, a simple contact page where people can find you without cracking the Yellow Pages.

If neither you nor your staff have web development chops, you’ll likely be searching for a designer that can build you a site from scratch. A well designed website is a great asset, but business-wise, hiring help from the outside can pose a few problems.

Mainly, it can be expensive. And while the initial investment in a good looking, functional site is well worth it, the second issue is that websites (and your business) will change. If your website is custom built, you’ll have to go back through the designer (if he or she is still available) to make updates — and it may cost you each time.

If you like to be in control of your web presence at all times, and save some money in the process, consider the advantages of using an online blogging platform as your company’s main website. Here are some of the pros…

Read the full article

Here’s a short video I made for my friend Dan. It’s really easy to add a WordPress blog your LinkedIn profile. As you can see from the video it took me less two minutes to do it, and that’s while I was blabbing about it. If you have a business-to-business enterprise, or if you’re a professional or consultant, a blog is an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise and experience while providing information of real value to your target market. But wait there’s more! Continually producing high quality content also has a massive SEO (search engine optimization) benefit. Your site will show up higher in search rankings if you’re using keywords related to your business. It’s a little more complicated than that, but not much.

If you’re going to do the work of creating great content you should get as much leverage from it as possible by incorporating it into your social media marketing efforts and social networking sites. So take two minutes to integrate your blog with your LinkedIn. Once it’s done, new blog posts will be automatically be added. Now that’s modern marketing. You might be surprised how many people will find your content through your LinkedIn profile.

Let us know if you have any questions.

There are a zillion ways to do this. Here are two that are easy to implement and will be good enough for most of us.

Let’s say you just bought a billboard, or an ad in local newspaper or magazine, and you want to know if this type of advertising will drive traffic to your site where people can learn more about your company, services or products. You could use something like “mycompany.com/newspaper” and track the traffic to that URL. But most people won’t bother typing in the extra stuff, unless there is some special content there or other incentive. Plus it’s hard to remember. Domain forwarding to the rescue!

Probably a better option is to use a special, dedicated domain name for that particular ad. Something like “MyCompanyNC.com” or “GetMyCompany.com.” You get the picture. Just add a simple modifier or possibly use an altogether different but descriptive term (e.g. “SpringfieldPlumbers.com” instead of “JohnsonPlumbing.com”).

Now what? Well, you use domain forwarding or redirecting, call it whatever, and point that thing to a special page, or tracking URL, on your real site. I’m going to outline two different ways to do this that are fairly easy for non-techie types to implement. In fact, you can even combine the two if you want, but that might get tricky.

Option 1

Tracking a Domain Redirect with a Landing Page with Google Analytics

1. Register the new domain that will be in your ad.
2. If you don’t already have it, install Google Analytics on your main site.
3. Create a landing page on your real site: “mycompany.com/landingpage.html” (Name it whatever you want, but make sure the Google Analytics tracking code is added to this page.)
4. Go back to registrar you used to register the new domain. Edit the “host record” settings to redirect it to the landing page you just created on the real site.
5. Use the new domain in your print, billboard, etc. ad.
6. Check Google Analytics for results: Content > Landing Pages

Option 2 (This assumes your site is running WordPress. High five if it is.)

Tracking a Domain Redirect with WordPress and the Redirection Plugin

1. Register the new domain that will be in your ad.
2. Install the Redirection plugin for WordPress.
3. Create a fake tracking URL for your real site and add the redirect using the plugin: “mycompany.com/billboard” (Name it whatever you want, but make sure you the exact same URL in the next step.)
4. Go back to registrar you used to register the new domain. Edit the “host record” settings to redirect it to  a fake tracking URL for your real site: “mycompany.com/billboard”
5. Use the new domain in your print, billboard, etc. ad.
6. Check WordPress admin panel for results: Log in > Tools > Redirection

How easy is that? Questions? We’re here to help.

This is a version of the blog post checklist our writers use when they submit an article for one of our clients’ sites. The only items I have omitted are related to things that are part of our internal work flow. I’m giving it all away! Definitely watch the video because some of these items need explaining. We’ll do some more focused videos later where we can dive deep into things writing meta descriptions and title tags that can help “win the click” on the search engine results pages.

We use a checklist because we want to keep the quality consistently high, from writer to writer, blog to blog, post to post. It’s important that your business is regularly producing high quality content using SEO best practices. Doesn’t matter if the business is plumbing, a restaurant, or shoe store. Modern marketing means creating relevant media for your audience. If this type of blogging seems like more work than you want to do for your marketing program talk to us. This is what we do.

Check out the checklist below.

You can copy and paste it into Word for a printer friendly version. As always, if you have any questions please leave them in the comments and we’ll do our best to help.

SEO Blog Post Writing Checklist

Topic

Keyword Research

Title / Headline

Linking

Word Count

Meta Description

Tags & Meta Keywords

As part of our SEO efforts we write content for the blogs of our small business clients. This is how we make sure our bloggers are using the same keywords that people are searching for. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them. Thanks!