SEO

Most people blog to make money or express themselves, but I’ve noticed that many bloggers lack a defined purpose. Sure they’re blogging to make money, but that is way too vague. Every blog or website you launch should have a specific goal and purpose. So many people trying to make money rush and launch a blog, but in their excitement to make money, they don’t stop to consider the detailed goal. They start pumping out articles 3 to 5 times a week, but after a few months they realize they’re going no where.

You need to have a focus for every blog. Do not purchase a domain or launch a site without having a reason. The reason needs to be more than “for money”. For example, the reason could be “this blog is going to be a small 10 post niche blog that promotes geotargeted Adsense contextual ads for  the keywords X, Y, and Z”. I know it seems dumb to need to say that, but it will change the entire process. For that type of blog, the focus needs to be 100% on search traffic, not social. Second, the site needs to not answer the question, because you want them to visit the ad for the answer. You need to set up the site in a way that improves CTR; this means no 125 ad blocks, this means you should got with the basic white background, blue links, black text colors OR go with the dark background, dark text, and bright links colors. Each type of blog defines setup, content, theme, promotion, and monetization.

You need to have a focus or the task quickly becomes overwhelming. Lets say you find a sweet keyword, do not instantly rush out and buy the domain, launch it, and start pumping out content. Before you ever start your site, you should know: all the major keywords, how difficult each one is, know your competition, determine what you’ll need to do to promote it, and estimate a time frame. Then you need to consider how you’re going to monetize it and deal with all that stuff. Get all your information in order BEFORE you start.

So Why Do I Blog on SEO Zombie?

Some might wonder what the goal of this blog is. I don’t really monetize it, but I spend a fair bit of time on it and I’m getting ready to spend a ton of time on it. So this may leave you wondering why?

Most of the work I do with SEO involves promoting my own money making sites. Well this presented a problem for me. People asked me, what do you do for money? Or when I went in for an interview, someone asked to see my sites. Well I’m not going to show them my sites. I needed a flagship, which is the reason I launched SEO Zombie. I created it to rank for my local SEO market, a task I accomplished in about 2 months. So now I am expanding this site. My new goal is to become an authoritative site for SEO with a focus on making money online. Everyone goes after “Make Money Online” and they all have a huge focus on social blogging, which leads people to fail in making money online because people think they should apply flagship promotion methods to their niche sites. My new focus is going to be making money with organically targeted traffic.

I know everyone says the make money niche is not the best money maker, so why am I doing this? Two reasons.

Help People - I’ve known web design for years, but I learned how to make money by digging through tons of information online. I’ve read a lot of good stuff, but I’ve read even more crap. I want to share my knowledge. Blogging allows me to make money part time while going to school. My income isn’t as high as some of the big name guys, but that’s because I do this part time. I go to college full time, so during the school year I do this between classes and at night. I know there are tons of people who would love to have a site that makes a  passive income with a few hours of work each week at night and on weekends. It allows me to go to college without needing a set job, which is nice. My schedule is flexible, which is important when you have homework and exams. I’d like to “pay forward” things I’ve learned.

Build Personal Authority - Even if this site makes no money, a flagship has huge benefits. Imagine the leverage people like Shoemoney and John Chow have with affiliate networks. Having a brand like that, allows you to have weight to throw around. Look at Griz for example. He makes a killing with his blogspot blog, but there are people who are hesitant to take him seriously because he doesn’t have some nice shinny social blog. Sadly, having a whole army of niche sites doesn’t seem to impress people as much. (but it will make you money)

Now, don’t take this wrong. I’m not telling you all to go out and launch a big MMO blog. If you want to make money, build your small army of niche sites in non-MMO niches. I’m working on a degree in web design and my future goal is to have a portfolio that is more diverse than niche affiliate sites. This is why I’m targeting such a huge term. This site is a two year long goal, which is how much time I have left till I finish up all my college stuff. I don’t stress that this site doesn’t make me money, because that’s what my army of sites are for. That helps me work on this site as a long term goal without getting discouraged.

So my new target keyword is…

SEO

Yep, I’m going for the mother load. =P

My group of bloggers I talk to and read already has people dominating the MMO and Internet Marketing niche, but nobody is going for SEO, so I thought it was a good spot for me.

So if you have an empty spot on your blogroll =P
lol, I’d love an SEO link =)

What to Expect?

So here I’ll be sharing my version of MMO, which is heavily focused on gray tinted SEO. I mainly promote affiliate products, BANS, and a few Adsense blogs. I’ve worked in areas that many other blogs consider taboo (adult), so I’m considering sharing some of that knowledge here. Its taboo, so I don’t know if I want the label of a porn marketer, but it does make killer money.

If you guys have any questions, or need help, feel free to leave comments and ask questions. I’ll do my best to help you out.

I’ve written multiple times about Marc from One Mans Goal. This guy faced an overwhelming amount of criticism over his purchase. Yes, even from me when I fired of a post about his guest posts (a post I regret making). But this guy never gives up. Although Marc may lack the experience of a seasoned blogger, he has  the trait all successful bloggers say is a must. He has persistence. Marc has found a renewed focus on his blog and has surrounded himself with friends who really want to see his make money online blog take off.

I really cannot say it better than Zani did in the post One Man’s Goal Fights Back. Zani really says it all. I just wanted to point you guys there, because we can all learn something from Marc. He may not be teaching you the newest make money secrets or the keys to SERPS domination, but Marc is no push over. He has more staying power than 90% of everyone trying to make it in Make Money Online.

Good luck to Marc. His site has grown into something totally different than any other Make Money Online blog. His comments become a source of quality information as helpful bloggers come together to help Marc solve his problems. Just check out his post where he’s trying to verify with Google webmaster tools.

I recently offered to SEO Wordpress themes for for my visitors. This lead to some comments about how to SEO a Wordpress template and what I would be doing. I thought I’d walk you through how I personally optimize my Wordpress templates for search engines. I’m going to use my theme as an example. It isn’t “perfect”, but it has some solid SEO strengths. When doing Search Engine Optimization, it is important to structure your code with intent. A web designer’s concern is how the template appears, but an SEO’s job requires them to worry about how Google reads the code. A solid template will help you rank higher with Wordpress.

I took a screenshot of my source code. It is below. Warning, its huge. I made it smaller, but I thought this was a solid way to explain exactly what I am doing. I suggest opening the image in another tab (if you do not have Firefox, get it now). I did this so I could highlight sections, you can also just view my source.

(it is big)

Template Structure

I generally structure my templates like this.

• HTML Header
• H1
• Content
• H2’s
• Sidebar
• H3’s
• Footer
• Anchored link to home page

You’ll see the basic layout with my template. Which I’ll walk through in just a moment

Clean Code

I’m a big fan of standards design and working to validate my code. I’m not obsessive over it, but I make effort to reduce the number of errors in my code. I program with divs and CSS, not tables. This isn’t a must for SEO, because Matt Cutts has said they don’t penalize you for bad code. But the important thing is making your site easy to crawl. Tables give search engines a hard time. You have to remember it is a computer trying to figure out your site. Computers have limited intelligence, so make it easier for them. This won’t make you rank higher, but it will help Google crawl and index all of your information (which indirectly can help your rankings).

So when I get a new template, I always take some time to clean up the code. Remove any errors or bad coding practices.

Secondly, many free templates hide stuff all over the place. This site runs on a free template, but the original was HORRIBLE. It had links and ADSENSE hidden everywhere. Yes, the fool hard coded his Adsense into the template, so I had to go file by file and find it. I already go through and scan every line of text to make sure I know exactly what I’m about to put up and link with my network.

Guided Tour Of My Wordpress Template

Template Header

So let’s start with the header, its not too complicated, there are only a few things to point out. I’ve highlighted my whole header in blue.

First, you want your template to have a strong title. I use All in One SEO to manage my titles. I make sure the title is set up so it can use All in One SEO. You can see my title, which is the second one I highlighted in red.

I also added Geotags. Now this is a little nontraditional, but there are meta tags designed to tell your site’s geographical location. I am geotargeting this site, so I wanted to emphasis my geographical location. I do not know how much trust Google places on these since their isn’t much documentation on it. The only change I saw was a reduction in my local business listings, but it doesn’t seem to hurt my rankings at all. I rank #2 for my keyword, so it seems to have helped some.

The last thing you’ll see in my header is that I cleaned up the code from Brian’s Threaded Comments. I made a post about that recently. I like reducing the space between the start of the document and the content. Also this speeds up your loading time by moving the code to external files.

H1 Tag

I put the H1 at the very top of the page. You can see it highlighted in red right after the blue section of the header. Most people who have done SEO for a while know Google applies extra weight to information in the H1 tag. Well Google also gives weight to words near the top of the document. When Google arrives at my site, the first thing they read in my body is an H1 tagged keyword. This improves the prominence of that keyword.

I like to follow this structure: tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, and then remind them of what you told them.

The H1 tag is the “tell them what you’re going to tell them”. After reading my title, meta, and h1, Google already knows the content of my page. I then set off to reinforce the keyword.

Navigation

I’m breaking my advice here a little. Honestly, my navigation elements should come after my content. (I do with my sidebar) But I figured this little list was small enough to get away with. Its not really enough to push my content far down the page.

I suggest everyone go in and manually code their navigation menu. You should put no follows on these. There is debate and discussion that Google gives most weight for the first time it sees a link on your page and that the first link’s anchor text is counted the most. And some think 2nd and 3rd links are not counted. You do not want to set internal authority for the word “home” on your index page. Nofollow all the navigational elements that are useless.

Optimized Content

Nothing else to really say here, but go read my post on writing for search engines. I get lazy some times and don’t do it right all the time, but you’ll spot on my site when I’m focusing a post on purpose.

Take a look at this post. See the keywords in the intro paragraph? See how I worked my keywords into bolds and header tags? I can honestly write about what ever I want here in the middle. I will sandwich my content with my keywords, then include them in the title and H1. That’s enough to be optimized on site. After that, its just a matter of links.

H2 Tags

I use H2 tags for my post titles. These are given extra weight by Goolge. This way my homepage is give extra weight for these post titles. SEO’s like Griz set up their blog for 1 post per page, which is a great approach for Adsense. He makes sure every page is only optimized for 1 keyword. I personally don’t do this, because I like having a my recent stuff on the home page. It doesn’t really hurt, but I see it as a trade off of usability. You’ll see the H2 tags highlighted in green in the image of my template.

Sidebar

This is an important part of your templates design. PUT YOUR REPETATIVE NAVIAGATION SIDEBAR AFTER YOUR CONTENT.

Again.

PUT YOUR SIDEBAR AFTER YOUR CONTENT!

If you put it first, then the first 1/3 of every single page of your site looks exactly the same to Google. Improve your keyword prominence by pushing your content to the top and the useless stuff to the bottom.

Again.

Put your sidebar after your content.

You’ll see a highlight where my sidebar starts.

H3

Many themes use H2 tags in their sidebar to define the headers for the different sections. This dilutes the authority these tags carry by using theme on repetitive and useless keywords. So for the site bar, you should change these to H3 or just a div.

You’ll notice I do use H2 tags twice in my sidebar, which seems against my advice, but this was intentional. I include the phrase “SEO Zombie” in each one. I wanted to add extra weight to the word SEO, so this is an easy way for me to have SEO in H2 tags on ever page.

You can see my H3 tags highlighted in yellow.

Template Footer

Lastly, you need a strong footer. There are a couple things I did in my footer to help my SEO. First, I anchor one of my keyword back to my home page. This helps me push internal authority to my home page for that keyword. The second thing I do is to use my keywords in my footer. These don’t carry much weight, but it allows me to have my keyword used on every single page. Google can detect your footer, but every little bit can help. The last thing I do is include my city and state in the footer of every page. I am geotargeting targeting this site, so I want Google to see a reference to the city and state on every page.

I also nofollow the useless site wide links, because I don’t want to waste internal juice on them.

Conclusion

This is a long post to explain something that isn’t too difficult, but some people still don’t take the time to optimize their theme. With my theme, the keywords are the first and last thing you see. I put the important stuff first and the useless stuff last. I use headings and bold effectively. And I keep the code clean, so Google doesn’t have any problems. These seem minor, but strong on site SEO can move up an established site up by pages.

So I hope this helps you optimize your Wordpress template for search engines. For those who are comfortable with HTML / CSS, this shouldn’t be hard. If you have no experience with HTML and want some help optimizing your free wordpress theme, then let me know and I’ll SEO it for you.

Also, be sure to check my posts about SEO web design and writing for SEO.