Wordpress SEO Expert

Improve your Google ranking with Peter Mahoney, 20+ years SEO & Wordpress experience

Free wordcount tool, aim for 300 for SEO

by

Free wordcount tool, aim for 300 for SEO Wordpress SEO ExpertSearch Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an important part of building your online community.

A good guideline is each piece of content you create (be it a page, or blog post) on your site should have at least 300 words of original content.

Here’s a helpful tool—copy and paste your text in it, and find out instantly how many words you’ve got.

Those people using WordPress have a word counting system built in already, but the other advantage of this tool is is works out and lists the keywords your text is best suited for. So if the results there aren’t what you’d like, tweak your copy until your see your targeted keywords in the top few spots.

300 words can be harder than it seems. You don’t want to waffle and just pad it out. More often than not verbosity and writing for the web are not good friends.

So I challenge you to never take the easy way out, but rather to work hard to get at least 300 words of targeted (effective keyword use), interesting, well structured content.

Word Counter.

The five pillars for your online community success

by

I work with my clients on what I call the Five Pillars, which all lead to the success of their online community.

People tend to look at most of these elements in a microcosm. “How’s your SEO?”, “Are you making the most of social networking?”.

Seeing these as separate hinders your efforts to build and strengthen your online community, which you need to care about because those are the people who will pay for your products and services.

My five pillars are:

  • Core messages
  • SEO
  • Community
  • Social Networking
  • User experience

There is a great deal of crossover between them, as there should be when you’re looking at the big picture rather than focusing on single points.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to describe each one in brief, and in the interests of pith I’ll also do a tweetinar soon, summing the whole thing up in five tweets. That’s going to be a challenge.

Fortunately, I love a good challenge.

Let it snow!

by

Well, in truth I’m cold enough here as it is. November 16, and I’m still fighting the urge to turn the heating on in my office.

My hands are so chilly that I’m starting to fear for my typing skilsl thgouhg. 🙂

I spent the past hour putting some snowflakes on one of my private client’s WordPress sites, check it out, they look 3D…and very cool.

It’s a nice little trick that shows people you mean more than just business. It’s not exactly new, but it’s the first time they’ve done it so their online community is in for a treat.

I am going to suggest we replace it with a nice warm fire as we get closer to Yuletide though! And maybe a virtual glass of whiskey to warm our bellies too.

Professional language translation services.

Meta tags and building your online community

by

Part of building your online community is without a doubt, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). You want your tribe to be well-positioned, and desirable.

It’s just just new members either, but existing ones want to know they’re a part of something exciting, something that ranks highly. Something prestigious.

The “meta tags” in your site’s code are really important here. There’s a science behind it of course, but it’s something you want an expert like myself to help you with. They’re small pieces of code that search engines read to get a better ides of what your site is about, and what keywords it should look for.

However, here’s one of the tricks of the trade you can use yourself. This tool gives you feedback and advice regarding your meta data, helpfully colour coded for people who don’t want to worry about interpreting too much of it.

My favourite metric it returns is to check how relevant your keywords are to your content. This is an absolute must, and something to look at for all your pages.

It’s a bit technical, but the colour coding helps.

Mind you, so can I.

Meta Tag Analyzer.

Online communities and ritual

by

A wonderful line from the Wikipedia article about Online communities.

An online community is a virtual community that exists online and whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership ritual.

I love the idea of describing our online interactions as ritual. After all, ritual permeates all of what we do. I even brush my teeth in a certain way that has become ritualistic. (Start on the lower left, scrubbing around the bottom before moving to the top).

Ritual can, at it’s most basic, be defined as:

5. a. A detailed method of procedure faithfully or regularly followed

That for me is it’s most basic meaning. I love ritual as an experience, something that can be shared, and transformative.

And that is the highest ideal of any online community, to help individuals change through participation in a shared group experience. The online medium of course is very different to a religious or secular ceremony, but it’s differences afford people the option to engage in a different way, to play out other parts of themselves, which is turn allows for a completely different transformation.

That’s my thought of the day. It’s amazing the train of thoughts a simple Wikipedia search can inspire.

Anyway, I’ve brushed my teeth, now on to work.

via Online community – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Prices are quoted exclusive of VAT unless expressly stated.

RSS

Peter Mahoney, WordPress SEO expert blog