SEO Tips for Paula Queen of the Surf Pirates
Posted by Pixelhead
A while back I was asked by Paula of Queen of the Surf Pirates for some tips on SEO for her site, which she is planning on moving over to its own domain name.
So here are some general SEO tips for Paula.
First, I am partial to the Wordpress platform. Wordpress does a lot of the SEO stuff automatically, such as writing meta info, title tags and such, so your on page optimization is pretty much a question of using the target keywords in the text and titles.
Choosing a good template is a very important part of this since there are so many out there. Think about how you want your blog to appear and what you want to do with it. Do you want a wide blog or a narrow one? Do you want one side bar or two? Do you want to use Google adsense? Take your time with this, because after tweaking the blog to look the way you want, you don’t want to have to change to another.
Look at your audience and what they want to read. What are they searching for? If they are looking for info on nightlife in OBX for example, you would want to make sure that any posts on OBX Nightlife included those important keywords “OBX Nightlife” in the title, in alt and title tags of pictures(use both, but make sure both are exactly the same), and also use the keywords in the content. If possible, use the keywords at the beginning of the post, in the middle, and at the end. Also highlight the keyword at least once like I did above. Also be sure to use all the words of the phrase independently as well. I would also use other variations to include writing out the words Outer Banks.
Off Page SEO
Next after optimizing the pages, I would get some links pointing to your site with the desired Keywords. This is the most time consuming of SEO, but it can be done. Directory submissions, forum participation, blogging are all good ways to get links to your site for your desired key words. Check out my Link Building posts for details.
When optimizing, it is easy to show up for words that are not competitive, such as niche keywords like “OBX surfing mom”. Showing up for other more competitive words will enable new readers to find your site via the search engines. So when doing your SEO, don’t think about the words you are showing up for currently, think about the words that you are not showing up in the SERPs(Search Engine Results Page), and optimize for those. But please be careful not to loose your current readers while writing for the search engines.
So that is my basic SEO post for you and Paula. Got any other SEO questions I might be able to help you with? Let me know, I’ll see what I can come up with for you.
Some other issues that Paula has involve issues surrounding her niche audience. A couple of good posts that relate to the subject of niche audiences done by Dawud Miracle are:
Oh No, My Blog Audience Isn’t My Target Market
Are You Having A Conversation With Your Niche Audience?
Hope this post helps you Paula, if you need more help, please let me know.
If any other readers are planning on vacationing in the Outer Banks, stop by Paula’s site for the latest info about the Outer banks to include surf reports from her dog Sammy.
Update:
Check out Top 10 SEO Plugins for Wordpress
Written by Pixelhead on August 22nd, 2007 with
5 comments.
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#1. August 22nd, 2007, at 8:45 PM.
Thanks for the suggestions