Wordpress SEO Expert

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

  • SEO Overhaul
  • SEO Campaign
  • WP Support
  • Blog
    • SEO Emails
  • Praise

LinkedIn; a kitten free zone.

November 27, 2012 by Peter Mahoney

LinkedIn; a kitten free zone. Wordpress SEO ExpertI’m the first to admit, I struggled with LinkedIn at first. Not that it’s hard to use or anything, in fact it’s incredibly simple. But I struggled to find its place in my social-media-life.

I’ve had my profile up there for years, and I’d fleshed it out (past jobs, current responsibilities, photo, all the things that seemed important) but I wasn’t interacting with anyone.

All my colleagues and ex-colleagues were on Facebook. LinkedIn let me post messages and share other people’s updates, but so much less then my other social profiles.

Then I started using it regularly; I just made sure I logged in a couple of times a week. Recommended a couple of people. Wrote to someone I could only find on LinkedIn that I hadn’t spoken to for a while.

Before I knew it I became a regular. And the more I used it, the more people found me. Job offers, professional queries, community discussions, they’ve all become an important part of what I do.

I’ve found even people I do communicate with elsewhere interact differently on LinkedIn. We act in the way we want to present ourselves to our workmates, bosses and clients.

The first is to post directly to it. In this case you’re just giving away your content for free to a massive company. They’ll get the SEO authority for that post, not you. And while you might plan to have a link to your site on the bottom of those posts you give them, links coming out of their website are marked as nofollow, which means they don’t get used by Google (or other major search engines) as a way of passing on authority.

Oh and of course some folks repost, posting the content on the social network and their own site. Which simply leads to duplicate content issues.

The second method is to just post a link to the article as it appears on your site. So you’re sharing a link rather than the text. The trouble again is that those links are nofollow, so you won’t get any SEO juice for it.

But social networks are generally quite protective of their own SEO authority, they’re not in the business of passing that on to anyone who posts on their platforms. SO I prefer that second option, just link back to your own site. Forget about social networks for SEO. But it’s still good to interact with people on them, and hopefully those users might follow a link to your own site – then they’re your audience.

One really positive thing I’ve noticed about LinkedIn though is it’s easy to accidentally give them your SEO authority. SEO authority is a way of referring to the search engine kudos, or points you might have. There are traditionally two ways most people publish content on LinkedIn.

This is the advantage of LinkedIn. Not only can you build your online community, but you can be sure that your interactions on it are going to be framed in a professional manner, and of a higher quality. To this day I’ve not seen a single photo of a kitten on LinkedIn.

Please don’t be the first.

Filed Under: Online community, Opinion, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social networking

The five pillars for your online community success

November 19, 2012 by Peter Mahoney

The five pillars for your online community success Wordpress SEO ExpertI 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.

Filed Under: Online community, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social networking, User experience

Meta tags and building your online community

November 15, 2012 by Peter Mahoney

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.

Filed Under: Hints & Tips, Keywords, Online community, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Tools

One Peter Mahoney to rule them all: my Google ranking is going through the roof!

November 8, 2012 by Peter Mahoney

7 days ago, I didn’t rank on Google. I had a look for myself, and gave up on page 12. Anyone else would have given up long before, or at least found a Peter Mahoney they liked the look of more. 🙂

3 days ago, I was at the top of page 3.

Today, I am fourth overall, and the first result for an actual person. This applies to a search for Peter Mahoney in google.co.uk (I’m aiming myself at the UK market).

The top two results are for Linkedin directories, which both feature me in the number two spot, and a phone directory listing.

Peter Mahoney isn’t exactly an unusual name either. The marketing director of Nuance is a fairly well known and written about Peter Mahoney. A Peter Mahoney (regrettably) committed suicide after returning from fighting in Iraq, and a Peter Mahoney in Somerset appeared in court in connection with a murder enquiry. petermahoney.com has been owned for over a decade by the same person. None of these are me.

But in seven-short days, I have gone from not featuring at all, to beating out even Facebook results. It’s the result of a lot of experimentation, research, and 16 years web experience.

I plan to bottle this. And to make it available to you.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Check your search engine rankings, a helpful little tool

November 8, 2012 by Peter Mahoney

This online tool simply tells you how your site is ranked on Google, Bing and Yahoo! for the keywords you provide.

Why is this worth blogging about? Because it’s free, and the fifth such online tool I found–but the first one that worked.

It doesn’t search terribly far into the search engines, so unless you’re in the top 10 of Google or Bing, or the top 50 of Yahoo!, you won’t get a result. And clearly you need me to help you out. 🙂

via SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS @ Mike’s Marketing Tools.

Filed Under: Google, Keywords, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Tools

For most people, the end is more money.

November 6, 2012 by Peter Mahoney

SEO is a means to an end. For most people, the end is more money. Don't be fooled into thinking bigger stats is the end game!

— Purple Web Marketing (@purpleweb) November 6, 2012

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Tweets

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • Next Page »

Get FREE Wordpress SEO tips!

I send regular newsletters with WordPress SEO expert-level tips. Sign up to get them, along with my FREE e-book “Ongoing SEO Success”.

Did I mention they’re free!

Subscribe for free

Praise

I have over 2,500 5-star feedback reviews (and I’ve never received less than the full five.)

Here’s just one example, from Mike who runs Costello Entertainments:

Migration, Hosting, SEO and Speed Work on our new website all completed quickly and efficiently and Peter was most helpful in fixing an issue with a Popover on the site as well. If you’re thinking about asking Peter to do a job for you or hesitating, JUST DO IT! – He knows programming and the internet inside out, he’ll get the job done for you professionally, with a smile. I wish I could call a plumber or a tradesman to do the jobs I can’t do myself with the same level of confidence.
Praise WordPress SEO Expert
Read a lot more.

Recent Blogs

  • Outreach for backlinks – how to get quality links that Google will love
    I’m thinking of redirecting my Virtual Assistant work to other tasks as the generic LinkedIn work I ...
  • (Small) Pricing changes for 2025
    When COVID first hit, like a lot of people around the world I wanted to help my clients as much as possible ...
  • shattered monitor on the floorMy site has errors – timeouts – and my host isn’t helping me
    Hi Peter, My site has been reporting errors (timeouts) which have become more regular the past week or so. I ...
  • How do we fix 404 errors after a site move or migration?
    Hi Peter, We migrated from Visualsoft to Woocommerce approx. 10 days ago and are experiencing 404 errors. ...

Legal

  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Disclaimer

Prices are quoted exclusive of VAT unless expressly stated.

Also read

  • Payment information

RSS

Peter Mahoney, WordPress SEO expert blog

Recent Posts

  • Outreach for backlinks – how to get quality links that Google will love
  • (Small) Pricing changes for 2025
  • My site has errors – timeouts – and my host isn’t helping me
  • How do we fix 404 errors after a site move or migration?
  • Why does SEMRush show my ranking change so much?

© Copyright 2025 Wordpress SEO Expert · All Rights Reserved · Site by Peter Mahoney