BlogPaws 2014: SEO Lessons Learned

Post by Blog Manager Robbi Hess

As I write this post, BlogPaws 2014 has officially wrapped up but because we are a 24/7/365 pet community the learning continues! I will be blogging about the lessons learned and the information shared  by the various speakers in the sessions I attended.

Matt Beswick, SEO guru, flew in from the UK to share several sessions about SEO — from basic to advanced. According to Matt, “SEO is not magic…it’s not a dark art.”

As bloggers we all try to use key words and find ways to make our content stand out from the crowded field of pet bloggers that are also vying for the same attention we are.

How can we do that? Is there a secret to overnight success?

Unfortunately, no, Matt shared in the session. “SEO takes time and it needs to be part of your overall marketing strategy.” You do need to know what you want to be found for, though. As an example – not given in the session —  but one I am passing along; if you want to be found locally, use a local search term. For example, “Best poodle writer in Rochester, New York.” If you don’t have to be found locally, then you may need to use a search term that helps set you apart from the other “best poodle writers.” Consider, this “Baby Boomer poodle blogger” – now that is more specific and the more specific you can be the easier it might be for you to get found.

What Matt said was that to get yourself noticed you need to know why you or your blog or website are the best. “If you don’t know why your content is the best, how will anyone else know and why should they come to you as the authority?” (back to my Baby Boomer poodle blogger – I am one and I have one therefore I can be the authority on it.)

Try these as a way to amplify your SEO:

• Create evergreen content – content that is relevant year after year.
• Use info graphics (search engines love them)
• Build a relation with your audience. “Your audience and your relationship with them are at the heart of SEO,” he said.

What other tips did Matt have that pet bloggers can implement?

• Update your bio and author/about page. Use keywords for which you want to be known, “Baby Boomer poodle blogger,” for example.
• Check your analytics. “How will you know if your following or page views have grown if you don’t track and measure your growth?”
• Create shareable content. “Make the content you write good enough that other people want to share it on their social media sites without your even asking.”
• Create linkable content. “This content is something that another blogger will want to link to from his or her blog,” he said. “If you’re the authority in a particular field, people will want to link from and to you.”
• Link between your own posts

Bottom line, he told the attendees in the beginning SEO session, “Write your posts for people, not for Google.’

Tools that he suggests:

• Google’s Webmaster – offers detailed reports on your page’s visibility
  
• Yoast — web optimization tool
• Google AdWords Keywords Planner — a site where you can type in words and get rankings on how searchable they are

Editor’s note: The best blogs, I feel, are those on which I feel a “connection” with the author and those where I really feel that blogger is the authority on that particular topic. If you can do that, and you can understand “who you are and what you do” as a blogger you can then begin the task of building your rankings on Google and other search engines and amping up your SEO.

If you want to attend the BlogPaws 2015 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, register now for the conference discount price. Discount ends Monday, May 12 at midnight.