New to SEO and making a blog - any sites/books recommended?

Durz0 Blint

Hi all

Im looking to make a blog about my passion for archaoelogy and write about hot trends from the academic journals.

I ran a small test version on Wordpress for fun a few months back and despite only having a handful of articles and no advertising (The site wasn't even properly listed on Google) it managed to get people who were interested in it and wanted to see more so I thought I would start looking into how to properly launch the blog with more frequent content and a well developed SEO strategy.

My budget is about €100 for domain and hosting so I am trying to do this very cheap.

Would anyone have any sites/books they would recommend to someone who doesnt know the first thing about SEO (I am currently reading through http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo)

All the best

Durz0

Peterdalkey

This article is interesting and as a user rather than an SEO bod I find the site useful in understanding the issues that arise or just for learning about the topic. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-beginners-guide-5-things-every-business-owner-know-google/84429/

vonievega

I teach WordPress in local Community Schools Ashton, Douglas,bishopstown and St Colmans Midleton and SEO is one of the main ? Here's my site now where am I? etc if you are hosting go with Fatcow or iPage cheapest fatcow at the moment are $40 pa You can get domain name from Go daddy usually the cheapest but Fat cow may do a deal incl domain just ask them. Use online chat best customer service around.
Yoast is the best SEO but the ultimate SEO is your blog. Make your blog the home page of your site. And blog very regularly, interesting, informative and unusual posts with featured images and a gallery.

WordPress, Googlebots aka crawlers love images with attributions and information. It won't happen overnight(but WordPress have blog of the week) that's a huge compliment if you get on their homepage but if you could get your site linked from a few travel,history,academic sites +FB,Twitter etc over time you will get there.

To get ranked high without the effort you pay Google for say Archaeology, Egypt,Hieroglyphs these add words will get you there but it is all $$$$$$.

On the server you choose you can upload your xml site map and use Google webmaster tools, Set up Google + and Google Channel phew it's exhausting getting SEO'd. Go for it!!

Durz0 Blint

Thanks guys

More tips would be greatly appreciated

dgerryd

Not sure if you are doing this as a hobby or as a way of trying to generate revenue but you could get hosting from hostgator.com for $50-$70 if you go with hostgator on the signup just untick al the extras that they try to usell you as you probably don't need them you can also get your domain there. If you need help Ill help you out no money. Also if you want the best chances of ranking stuff you need to do your keyword research or you will find it hard you need to know what people are looking for in order to create your content around that you also need to find your target market/readers and get involved where they hang out online I have a whole training video course on wordpress if you want it let me know it's just sitting somewhere on a hard drive.

Durz0 Blint

dgerryd wrote: »

Not sure if you are doing this as a hobby or as a way of trying to generate revenue but you could get hosting from hostgator.com for $50-$70 if you go with hostgator on the signup just untick al the extras that they try to usell you as you probably don't need them you can also get your domain there. If you need help Ill help you out no money. Also if you want the best chances of ranking stuff you need to do your keyword research or you will find it hard you need to know what people are looking for in order to create your content around that you also need to find your target market/readers and get involved where they hang out online I have a whole training video course on wordpress if you want it let me know it's just sitting somewhere on a hard drive.

Hi dgerryd

Thank you for your help

That training video sounds perfect.

I am mainly doing this as a hobby and as an indirect method of networking and getting myself better known in the field.

I wouldn't say no to it making a little bit of money though

I am still at the early stages and need to do more research as there is so much I do not know - At the moment I am also looking for the cheapest hosting I can get.

All the best

Durz0

Durz0 Blint

Just fininshed reading the beginners guide to SEO by Moz

http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

Was pretty good but a lot of it was beyond me.

It seems the main thing is to write good quality content (no surprises there) and get linked to by prominent sites (no spam)

Any more information would be appreciated - I am currently looking into what niche to aim for

Archaeology news seems like it might be too popular for me to try muscle in on - but this site here (which imo doesnt look great) ranks in the front page. It does post new content daily which I would not have the time to do.

http://www.archaeologica.org/NewsPage.htm

They also list the sites traffic which is interesting (roughly 6k unique visits per day)

They do have a fairly active forum however so that probably bumps up numbers.

http://statcounter.com/p2443627/summary/?account_id=1575934&login_id=3&code=93bfda52ef9a475947f3f7821ea80e16&guest_login=1&project_id=2443627

Peterdalkey

I am no expert in this topic but I have spent a lot of time of late trying to get a decent handle on it. I would sum up my conclusions so far as follows:

It is critical to get your tags/headers properly set with appropriate titles up to facilitate your products/topics be found by the crawler bots for indexing and ranking. Your key indexing items need to be towards the top of the "page to view" or above the " crease" to use US broadsheet newspaper jargon.

Content is King and with Google now concentrating on typical search phrases and word chains with smarter algorithms, so quality and relevance are getting more and more important. Frequency of addition of new content seems to very important. Still not sure whether it is better to have little and often or to have less often but bigger pieces!

Facebook may be great for spreading your profile amongst interest groups but as Google bots are denied access by FB , thus your "likes" play no role in your SERP rankings! I was surprised to learn that! I do understand that FB can be a very effective marketing tool for certain businesses/subjects etc.

Links from authoritative relevant sites certainly help your results, junk/spam/paid links have a negative effect. Just like content is king, with links quality not quantity is key.

dgerryd

Ok that site is a PR 6 10 year old domain with links from yahoo, dmoz, huffingtonpost, Google is turning a blind eye to certain things they call against TOS maybe because this site does seem to be popular but looking up their links over 50% of their anchor text links pointing to the domain are one keyword although these could be from years ago other sites have been deindexed due to this ? Forget about the approach or mindset your in I now get the feeling your not that passionate about archaeology ? Don't go doing a project unless your committed and have a real interest otherwise what you produce will be the same old rehashed stuff that's all over the web as it is, trust me it's a waste of energy I tried and failed. If it's a case of doing for €€€ then learn Internet Marketing. Also don't take what I say as gospel I'm no expert only telling you my opinion from what I tried myself I have not forgotten those tuts I said I'll dig up just their on old drives somewhere.

mark8511

Hi

main thing is to write good quality content and get linked to by local websites and directories. Other Important thing is Social media now a days. Social sharing affects SEO to a large extent. See the infographics below

http://www.seoireland.org/how-social-signals-impact-search-engine-rankings/

There are few good Irish Directories where you can make the link and its worth SEO and also local visitors, Some of which are:

Localbizz.org
Media Street.ie
Bigdirectory
whatswhat.ie

you can get a list here:

http://www.seoireland.org/small-business-seo-guide/

there may be more but these put a good affect on seo rankings in Google.ie