Search Engine Marketing is a must if you are to going to get people to view any website. Nowadays everyone seems to be an SEO specialist, at least they do in Exeter and Devon, I imagine it is the same throughout he UK.

I am more aware of the abilities of WordPress than other blogging platforms so this is what I will use as my reference point. I have to say that I am totally enamoured with WordPress, I think it is great, but first a bit of general knowledge.

WordPress comes in two distinct flavours

1. .com Most people start with a free WordPress blog which you can start straight away and I would recommend you to go and sign up. If you blog a for a while and chose to migrate to self-hosted this can be easily done.
2. .org If you have access to hosting then self-hosted blogs open up a world of possibilities. You will need hosting with a database which is necessary to store all of the posts, images, comments and information about the site. My hosting supplier now throws one in with even the starter hosting package. You don’t really need to understand about databases (MySQL) but it can be quite interesting looking around, seeing how all of the data and information is organised.

WordPress can be thought of as a modular entity.

1. Core
   The site itself, everything that is needed to make it work. This includes a user friendly interface that will allow you to update the site without knowing about web deign.
2. Themes
   There are a huge number of available themes that make the basic WP blog look different (1 column, 2 column, colours styling etc.)
3. Plugins
   These add to the functionality of the blog, they make it do more things, (display images in galleries, add contact forms, etc. )

Search Engine Friendly Blogs

It helps if your blog has a focus and a appeals to a niche. Write with a clear view of your target audience, in particular what your readers are looking to find and what words they would use to search. Incorporate these words in your text. These keywords are fundamentally important.

WordPress plugins add to the functionality of the blog. In particular there are a range of SEO aids such as;

• XML sitemap generator
  This will enable the blog to develop an XML site-map that helps Google and other search engines locate the pages in your site. (you can get a plugin to create a people friendly site-map such as the one on this site).
• HeadSpace
  This lets you create a good page title and meta description. These two items are very important. Gone are the days when ‘Home’ was a good page title, it needs suitable keywords. The Meta description is what will generally appear in the Google snippet, the bit of information that appears when your page has been found on Google. This should be descriptive and keyword rich.
• Share This buttons
  Make it easy for people to share your site. Not strictly SEO stuff but it all helps.
• Twitter feed and Tweetmeme buttons
  As with Share links Twitter is a great way to network.Don’t underestimate the power of other social media such as Twitter and Facebook, cross-link your accounts try to keep a similar focus with to your blog, otherwise you will fail to appeal to your niche. There are a huge number of sites that will do the job for you, have a look at the Google search results for designcredo. There are loads of re-tweets and niche re-tweet sites in this list. Good news!
• WordPress Stats
  Statistics are your source for data that lets you find out how many people use your site and how they find you. You occasionally will find unexpected results.

I will finish with one further plugin PuSHPress (a PubSubHubbub Plugin For WordPress by Joseph Scott)

This plugin adds PubSubHubbub ( PuSH ) support to your WordPress powered site. The main difference between this plugin and others is that it includes the hub features of PuSH, built right in. This means the updates will be sent directly from WordPress to your PuSH subscribers.

I have recently mentioned PuSh with WordPress and my experience is that WordPress is quite PuSHy as it stands. I am currently developing a WordPress blog for a customer (several as it goes) but the one that is nearing completion has found it’s way on to Google already. This is a tad annoying because the location that it was Googled at is not it’s final resting place so in this instance the PuSHy little blog has caused me a bit of work. For now I will leave PuSH as a topic to return to.

The bottom line is that blogs should no longer be seen as SEO problems, my experience is quite the opposite. Within a couple of hours notification of the first draft of this blog had been returned to me via Google Alerts (SEO, Exeter) but in the same alert I was informed that the post had already made an appearance on another site. Don’t forget, this is organic search engine marketing my investment is time not money.

Yes, yes, time is money I know…

At Design Credo we design websites. We are equally as happy to set up a blog for you. This includes researching theme styles, editing them to suit and branding your site. We will install and configure the plugins and most importantly guide you through the interface. Give us a call (07790 322176) or contact us here.

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I think it is fair to assume that if one searches for something in Google this search will be replicated if one switches browser and searches again using the exact same search string. I think it is also fair to assume that if one has a Google account the search results will be the same whether or not one is logged into that account at the time.

I will state one final assumption, that is that most people would be surprised to find that those first two assumptions are incorrect.

The way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions. ~ Don Miguel Ruiz

Collect data and ask questions

As part of my own scientific endeavour I collect data and ask questions. I use Google Analytics, WordPress Stats, I have a stats package built into my website hosting and I regularly examine the raw data. I find interesting trends, sometimes I can’t explain the results, sometimes my data sources fail to correlate. By and large though I get an idea of how transparent my websites are and I get an idea about whether or not my Organic Optimisation Techniques are working. I can see fairly easily if people are using my sites but I also need to check to see if people can find them, so I Google myself, regularly. (I would like to point out that I am not alone here, lots of people do this.)

I have previously mentioned that the implications of Googling one’s own name are different for individuals and global brands. People know Starbucks but probably don’t all know Andrew Butler (yet). Further to this Andrew Butler is quite a common name.

So to the results. If I google my own name I currently come third on a ‘whole of world’ search. Whilst nice, this is a little surprising. There are a lot of Andrew Butlers, there is also another one in the South-West who is a well known photographer. The two above me by the way own the .co.uk and .com Andrew Butler domains. Get ready for the fall. If I go through the same procedure in Firefox, which is my backup browser my rankings plummet. A bit of research and I found others experienced the same thing;

Olaf Says:
January 12th, 2010 at 8:42 am
It’s because Google remembers the web pages you visit very often.
Your customer must be happy with his site, so he visits the site very often.
I think you visit the some time before thats why there is only a small difference between the logged and unlogged session.
Actually this function is very disturbing, you need to disable web history here: http://www.google.com/history

So tracing my steps, searching again on the variety of computers and browsers I use I have to say that;

So it would appear that Google does inflate your own ranking if your are logged on or if you visit the site frequently. This then leaves me with one awkward question.

Why?

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Andrew Butler is a surprisingly common name, there are a lot of us about. In the UK there are a number of Andrew Butlers who are involved in different forms of photography. There is another, called Andrew Butler, who runs is a company of Chartered Surveyors in the Midlands. I know because he has the .co.uk domain, I wanted it. He also has the .com, but not the .net (I have that).

So to the stats.

This blog is ‘early days’ for me, ‘just a bit of fun’. WordPress blogs generate stats and  one record that I have is of the following search terms used to find my blog ‘andrew butler let and managed’. Sure enough, throw these words back into Google  and you will be lead to my blog, a tad annoying if you are trying to rent a house in Nottingham. (Note to self remember that there are other search engines out there).

The bottom line here is that if you understand how the search engines work your websites will work better. I suspect there are many in the property business who would love to rank fourth in Google for a simple four word search. Looking to see how it happens is the start to controlling the process.

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