Is this blog post ok?

cormie

I've only recently discovered that adding links to pages is a pretty crucial step for beneficial SEO. I probably need to re-do my whole site adding in links where possible but wrote this blog post with it in mind. Am I on the right track with the way I've added the links?

http://www.vantasks.ie/blog/303/be-careful-who-you-choose-to-teach-you-to-drive/

Also, was anyone else using "twitter tools" for wordpress? I logged in and was prompted to update it and then I was told I need a social plugin too, which I installed but I need to create an account or something first?

any feedback appreciated

The Apprentice

Internal and External link - Perfect
H1 h2 tags could have been used but are no longer a massive requirement but can help with an overall picture. Results of this can be arguable and neglible - Could do with doing it in the future

I would always stick in a Video or picture, with relevant decent description to go along with the Blog post itself .. look up Alt tags for the pictures if you are not familer with this.

Tags to indicate to google what the post is all about.. And also meta Descriptions via All in one Seo that you have installed..
Have a look here if any way stuck .. http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/02/essential-guide-to-meta-descriptions/

Keywords your targeting in the blog post ??, i dont know so i cant comment may be worth looking in also.

Hmm cant really think of anything else.. food nom nom .. later

Cheers cormie

cormie

Haha, thanks a lot! As helpful as ever. Didn't really see an option for H1 or H2 in the wordpress editor but I'll have another look into it. I'm still planning a site wide redesign but I just want to make sure I "got" the internal and external linking that was mentioned to me before. I'll have to go through the text on each page and blog post and try make the most of that to hopefully bump up my ranking.

I wasn't really thinking of any keywords while writing the post, so I guess I wasn't targeting any? Should you always try and concentrate on a few keywords while writing and try fit them in unconspicuously ?

TsuDhoNimh

cormie wrote: »

I probably need to re-do my whole site adding in links where possible but wrote this blog post with it in mind.

Change that to "I should probably review my site and add in links to previous blog posts where it would be beneficial for my readers" and you're on the right track.

The trick is to give the reader the best possible information you can. If that means linking out to an external site, to give statistics on road accidents or linking to the official line from the RSA, link to an external site and if it means linking to a previous blog post or service you provide, then give the relevant internal link.

Take a little care not to over optimise the anchor text of your internal links to make them look spammy and to keep the number of links within a given article to a relatively small number (not for the search engines, but for your users - they won't follow any if your post is littered with links ...... and just FYI you haven't come close to overdoing it in the article you linked, that's more of a general comment I'm just putting out there).

cormie wrote: »

Am I on the right track with the way I've added the links?

3 links, 2 going out to external authoritative or beneficial pages, all read naturally and are good for the users. Yup, that's pretty much spot on.

Don't break the flow of your articles to accommodate it, keep things natural, but probably worth letting you know that the positioning of your links has a little impact too. The higher up in the text a link appears (you've probably come across the ol' "above the fold") the higher the weighting will be, so something to just be aware of as you try and structure the flow of link authority around your site.

cormie wrote: »

Also, was anyone else using "twitter tools" for wordpress? I logged in and was prompted to update it and then I was told I need a social plugin too, which I installed but I need to create an account or something first?

Not familiar with that one specifically, but there are various alternatives on the market that you could change to if you have any worries/concerns.

In relation to the social tool you're currently using, I might suggest scaling it back a little. Sometimes, giving people multiple options increases the chance of them choosing none and simply ignoring it.

In the majority of cases in an Irish context (especially given your non tech target market you're after) I'd be very surprised to see you get a meaningful uptake in submissions to Reddit, SU, Digg, Delicious, et al. You'll probably find (but test it to be sure) that you'd actually get better results just scaling it back to Facebook, Twitter, G+ and email shares.

It's an aside, but one worth mentioning...
It might be worth looking at changing your site architecture slightly, in a number of areas.

How do you access the blog from the main site? I'm sure you have a way, but from a few random clicks I couldn't find it.

You've got multiple tags on each blog post and you use the archive (calendar) system. I didn't see any category pages, but to be honest I didn't look too close.
Be careful about the duplication that this might cause.
(e.g. http://www.vantasks.ie/blog/date/2012/09/ vs. http://www.vantasks.ie/blog/296/emergency-man-with-a-van-planning-after-blowout/)
Most people don't really care when it was posted unless the content is of importance to them, so better to keep to either a category system or purely a tag system of filtering content. Lots of guides out there (Yoast has a particularly good one if I recall correctly) to guide you on this if you do want to do some further reading. (a further aside, but Yoast's plugin wordpress for SEO is also excellent. I'd have it above all in one seo without question. There's a tool you can use to migrate data from the old to the new if you did want to change over, something I'd personally do if I were running that site)

blue4ever

I'd be careful for adding links retrospectively, leave well enough alone. I think the links are fairly natural and appropriate to link (as in its a benefit to any potential reader). Dont go out of your way to get links - do them if is seems natural or as it would supplement the article.

Just in passing: Your own 'presence' on the boards - you should have a look at Googles Webmaster forum and have a think

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking/buqIxBMpx8U


C

TsuDhoNimh

blue4ever wrote: »

I'd be careful for adding links retrospectively, leave well enough alone.

Not often we disagree on something Conor, so I'll jump on this one seeing as we do...

blue4ever wrote: »

I think the links are fairly natural and appropriate to link (as in its a benefit to any potential reader).

TsuDhoNimh wrote: »

Change that to "I should probably review my site and add in links to previous blog posts where it would be beneficial for my readers" and you're on the right track.

That's the only thing cormie needs to worry about. As long as the links that are added are beneficial for users and natural (not getting spammy or overly anchor text focused), it wouldn't have any adverse effects whether he does it on future posts or retrospectively.

As the majority of his content is (more than likely) evergreen, it makes perfect sense for him to update this content from time to time and turn it into a valuable resource (hopefully into the best resource for a given topic available). Whether that's adding additional content, adding additional external resources in the form of external links or adding further internal resources (in the form of internal links).... as long as it's adding value it's a positive move.

I've very frequently added retrospective links to posts and have yet to ever experience a negative impact from doing so. Whether that's linking to a new post in a related but not directly linked area or to provide an update to still relevant but slightly outdated content (e.g. a post discussing how to remove unwanted poor quality links that was written last year would certainly benefit from a quick "This post was written XXXXXXX. Significant changes have occurred since then. Check our updated guide XXXXXXX or some of Google's recent changes on how to disavow links.... etc etc").

If you're suggesting that the time required to make any of these changes would be better spent elsewhere, well, that's a different story.

I'd tend to agree with you there, it will be quite a bit of work for relatively limited returns. There are areas he'd gain significantly more advantage from tackling ahead of it, but I wouldn't suggest "don't do it" for fear of any negative search engine view on it (again, assuming it's done intelligently and avoiding all of the potential negatives that come with any future linking activities).

cormie

Wow, thanks a lot for all the input everyone! That's a lot to look over but very helpful anyway.

If only you could present a website as an opensource type project (well paid in this case) where you could have all the great knowledgeable minds putting in their part to create an overall brilliantly looking and functioning website :P

The Apprentice

Ya Tsduo i was in Agreement with both of your Points..

1. Retrospective Linking - Personally havent had any effect myself but one watch none the less - Probably wont be a factor with last weeks google announcement of the (Link Dissavowment) similar to bings but haven't had a chance to have a full read of it yet.. should be fun
Found a link .. wooo http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ie/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html

2. Their is a lot to be done with the site, but cormie mentioned to me a while back he is due a Rejig soon with a Brand new site, so it will cover i hope a lot of the points with the site including site architecture, categories and url Structures etc..

Fully agree on the Social side of it also.. i would personally have Facebook, Gplus and Maybe LinkedIn for your type of business Cormie, anything after this is just clutering up the site. Even do gplus is probably a waste but the 3 just fill the page nicely :P

Also on the post, it was covered above as long as the content is relevant to your site you can rejig it to fit your keywords in the near future so it will add to your keyword Rankings either in an (Indirect fashion) or Direct Fashion .. (1. Blue widget (keyword)) (2. Best blue widgets in dublin)
You,ll get their eventually bro

The Apprentice

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-death-of-link-building-and-the-rebirth-of-link-earning-whiteboard-friday


Have a watch of this video cormie, covers most of the madness that is Link-Earning/Building..

cormie

Thanks again for all that info! I definitely agree with the social thing too. The shell of that site was basically built maybe 5 years ago at this stage and I just kind of added things to it, like wordpress and had a few other adjustments made to it too so I think once I redo the whole thing, it should incorporate itself a whole lot better and flow much easier.

The Apprentice

Cool Cool

bfran

Good work Cormie.

MarkScully

I'd suggest you remove the meta-keywords tag completely due to it having no impact whatsoever on ranking now.

Also push the video down the page a little bit.

Slight alteration to title tag - Be careful who you choose to teach you to drive! | VanTasks.ie Blog

instead of - Be careful who you choose to teach you to drive! « VanTasks.ie Blog

QuietMan2010

@cormie - a suggestion unrelated to your OP: I clicked the link and landed directly on your blog page (as will anyone coming to that article from a search engine), but the page gave me no clear indication of what vantasks.ie is or does. If pushed, I would guess it was vehicle maintenance. I had to click to your home page to find out it was a 'man with a van' service. You might consider adding a strapline to your logo or in the header area to make it instantly obvious, eg. 'Man with a Van Service in Dublin'.

cormie

I'll definitely do that in the site redesign, thanks a lot for the suggestion. Will try change the way the blog titles appear too if << is worse than |

TsuDhoNimh

cormie wrote: »

Will try change the way the blog titles appear too if << is worse than |

It really doesn't matter.

The pipe is good in that it has no other meaning in most cases, it's a widely used and understood separator where the likes of a dash can/does have other meanings, and it would reduce your character count by 1 (as compared against <<), but it doesn't carry any benefit.

Go with whatever you think is best for your users.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHSqLYUPq8w

cormie

Thanks for that! Will take all this into consideration

cormie

Hi again folks, I'm looking to have the site redesigned ASAP. There's a problem with the current one. I want to leave the complete SEO optimisation until a later date and just do up a new backbone and site structure for the time being using the same content but of course have the structure prepared for optimal SEO once I decide to fully concentrate on the SEO.

I don't want to lose my current rankings but would like a complete new site from scratch, if that's possible?

Can anyone recommend anyone that you know will do the work properly at a reasonable cost? Just site structure and design at the moment. I actually started another thread looking for someone but haven't got much response here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056832292

Should I be going with Wordpress for this I wonder?