SEO blogs to add to your RSS feed

Right now, you’re probably thinking, “why would this amazingly helpful SEO blog promote other SEO blogs?” But if you think back to our post about link building campaigns, you will remember that being friendly, even with competitors, is helpful for a website’s authority. So, here are some pretty great SEO blogs that answer some more in-depth questions you might have about SEO and optimizing your content marketing.

The Moz Blog

Moz is already a leader in subscribable and downloadable SEO tools, so it is no surprise that their blog is a leader in search as well. When visiting the Moz Blog, you won’t find shameless plugs for their costly tools and devices. Instead your reading will open SEO doors that you didn’t know existed.

Much of the blog is devoted to how-to’s that are fairly straight-forward if you are looking to improve some aspects of your site. Even better, is Moz’s thoughtful posts on content marketing in general. These types of posts are great for those who are looking to expand on their website topics after you’ve been in the content marketing game for some time.  

[Source: Moz]

One of the best things about the Moz Blog is the abundance of visuals. It’s sometimes to difficult to include relevant images or graphics in your post about SEO, which is not necessarily a topic made for visuals. Moz does an excellent job of creating visuals out of their data to help readers take in information more easily, like the chart on the right detailing keyword usage on a website.

The Orbiter

The Orbiter is the web marketing blog of Orbit Media Studios, a web design and development company led by web expert Andy Crestodina. The Orbit team take turns writing posts, usually centered on their specialty topics. This is where to go when you want to know what the experts are thinking.

The blog’s voice is extremely easy to follow and makes the reader feel like an equal, which is important when it comes to the sometimes confusing and frustrating task of optimizing online content. Each post is broken down for easy-reading and, even when a post is long, does not leave the reader exhausted.

The blog’s topics are mostly focused on SEO, website optimization, and content creation, but there are also more general topics, like instructions for making a simple content mission statement. Not only does this blog want to help your business’ online presence, but the people behind it want to help your brand as a whole, which is comforting.   

Search Engine Land

If you are a part of a business that just needs to know what’s happening in the realm of SEO innovations, then Search Engine Land has to be number 1 on your list of sources. Be warned: this is not a blog to be visited by SEO beginners. If you have become comfortable with SEO jargon and carrying out web optimization tasks is a breeze, then you can give this blog a shot.

[Source: Search Engine Land home page screenshot]

By a simple scroll through Search Engine Land’s home page, it’s obvious that this blog cannot get enough of Google. Just look at the screenshot on the left of their current home page with four references to the big G without even having to scroll.

And why should they shy away from the number one search engine that essentially dictates all rules and regulations for SEO? Google’s algorithms, tools, and ranking systems are changing almost as quickly as a marketer can learn them, so why not stay updated?  

Search Engine Land posts about 4-5 times a day. This can seem a little daunting when you don’t have much time to skim through thousands of words for some practical information, but the deep content that this blog provides could be worth it. For marketers wanting to take their brand to the next level.

kissmetrics

[Source: kissmetrics’ infographic]

kissmetrics does not waste time on flashy layouts and witty blog voice. Instead, the writers behind this web marketing and tracking blog get right to business. It’s easy to tell that this blog is managed by experts in SEO analytics because of the varied and detail-oriented content.

Not only does kissmetrics offer helpful, step-by-step posts on measuring your SEO’s success, but there are also webinars, infographics, and marketing guides to skim through when you are looking for something more than words. Some of this content requires a subscription to kissmetrics, which will cost you. If you spend a few months with the kissmetrics blog and find it extremely useful for your business and marketing goals, then maybe throwing some money their way wouldn’t be the worst idea. In the meantime you can marvel at one of kissmetrics’ many thorough infographics. This one is all about making your ecommerce site trustworthy.

 

Hopefully these alternative SEO blog options didn’t make you completely jump ship on Searchable. We know we can’t cover everything, so we hope you can find something useful for your business’ SEO needs from other web marketing fanatics.     

5 Tips to Help Google Find Your Website

It’s easy to get so caught up in Search Engine Optimization that you forget your target audience-the customer. When optimizing your website it is important that your content is easy to navigate for both crawlers and consumers. This article is going to give you the highlights of Google’s very own Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, plus a few examples to help you get a headstart.

 

Tip # 1: Use descriptive titles!

The title of your page is the first line of a search result, make sure it is descriptive and concise. Readers don’t need a bulky 20-word title, but they do need a title that explains what the page contains. Make sure that your page titles are unique and specific. While the title to our article, “Spiders on the Web,” is clever, it does not specify what the article is really about. The title to this article is more helpful for crawlers and people alike.

Search engines look at page titles before they crawl through the content. Titles and headers are not the same and thus need to be coded differently.Titles are different from headings in that there can be multiple headings but there’s only one title. You can signal to a search engine that a heading is a heading by using the appropriate html coding.  There are plenty of tutorials online that will help with formatting headers and titles in html.

Image Source

 

Tip #2 : Use Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are a chance for you to advertise to potential customers and are incredibly important in generating click-thrus. This article by MOZ explains meta descriptions in more depth. Sometimes, search engines use meta descriptions as part of a search result. These meta descriptions should be short, about the length of a tweet, and compelling. Similar to titles, it is best if you do not use the same meta description for multiple pages.

Image Source

Descriptions are not the only meta tag you can use to specify information on your website. If you want to learn more this tutorial on author and keyword meta tags is quite helpful. In-depth explanations of Google’s meta tags can help you better understand all of your options.

 

Tip #3: Navigation

Make it easy for both users and crawlers to find content. If you use Searchable as an example we have a home page. This is the most visited page on our site because it is (usually) the first page people see. If you look up towards the top we have a menu bar, each item in a menu bar connects to a parent page, within those parent pages there are ‘child’ pages. This clear hierarchy helps search engines (and humans) identify the main themes of your website. It also helps consumers find more information relevant to those themes.  

 

Tip #4 : Hyperlinks

In our previous article about how search engines work, we mentioned that hyperlinks are crucial for your page’s visibility on search engine results pages. Search engines don’t just look at where you are linking, but also how you are linking. Anchor text is incredibly important when creating a hyperlink. The anchor text is the words that are underlined in blue. Try to make sure that the anchor text describes what information you are linking to. Google says to avoid using vague anchor text like, “this article” or “click here.” Don’t hyperlink a paragraph for your anchor text either. A few words should be enough for the crawlers to make the connection. It’s also important to remember that your real target audience is your customers, so anchor text should flow with the sentence instead of hindering the reader’s understanding. To learn more about how to take advantage of hyperlinks, read our article on link building campaigns.

 

Tip #5: Content is king

In their Search Engine Optimization guide, Google states, “Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any other factors.” Spelling and grammatical mistakes make it difficult for users to understand your content. That being said, proofreading is key. Clarity and simple sentence structure help readers of varying experience levels enjoy your website. Make your content worthy of  a “share” because the more links you get, the higher up you move on the search engine results page.

 

If you know of any websites that have utilized these tricks paste a link in the comment section below!