In the flurry of activity leading up to and directly following the announcement of the Complete Blogging Package contest (by the way, we’re up to about 30 entries at last count), I completely forgot one fairly critical step. The rules of the contest stipulate that entrants must link to the home page of this blog with the anchor text of “make money blogging” or something along those lines. However, until a few days ago, I hadn’t included my target phrase anywhere on my site! Now, as I’ve mentioned before, my background is in SEO so you can imagine my surprise when a non-SEO friend of mine pointed out my mistake. I’m not sure whether I just mentally filed it away and forgot to come back to it or what but the fact was, my site was not set up to make the most of the contest.
As you can now see, I’ve tweaked the title of this blog from “the site title + site description” (in this case it was Blogging Experiment – $0 to a full time income in only one year and every step in between) to “Target Phrase with Site Title” (in this case Make Money Blogging with Blogging Experiment). This accomplishes two things. First and foremost, it gets the search phrase I’m targeting to the front of the Title tag. This basically alerts the search engines that my site is indeed about making money blogging. The second benefit of this change is that the title tag is now much shorter, giving more emphasis to the words that are left. Rather than diluting the power of my title tag, I’m condensing it into one short, powerful phrase. Think of it like your memory; if you’re asked to remember a long phrase chances are you’ll get the first few words right every time, but towards the middle it will be tougher to recall. By cutting down the length of my title tag I’m making sure I don’t confuse any search engines.
So, what effects has this change had? Luckily for us, it appears that Google is moving uncharacteristically fast this week as I’ve shot up to #73 in their rankings for the term make money blogging. Prior to making the change to the title, the incoming links from the contest were likely seen as an attempt to Googlebomb the site. With this one small change, I’ve basically let them know that this site does indeed cover that topic. As side note, while doing a bit of searching in preparation for this post I noticed I’m now in the top spot on Google for the term blogging experiment. Sure that’s the title of this blog and it’s hardly a competitive term but hey, #1 rankings are always nice.
If you’d like more information on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I strongly recommend the SEO Book by Aaron Wall. It’s worth every penny whether you’re an experienced SEO or a blogger with a budget just trying to get the most out of your site.
Author: Ben
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For someone like me with a general blog about sports business, sponsorship, social networking, etc…what would you suggest to do with the Title tag? Something like “Take A Peck and learn something new about sports business.” It’s kind of hard to come up with a concise statement when your blog isn’t so focused on just one topic. What do you think?
Jason, if you can’t sort of sum up your blog with one umbrella phrase such as “sports social networking” or something like that you might be covering too broad a topic. It also might be that you just haven’t found the right phrase either. I’m sure you’ve heard stories about people having to pitch their business ideas in a minute or less, or in the elevator up to the meeting or something like that and for the most part, I hold the same philosophy about blogs. The topic should be clear from the very beginning and if it’s scattered and all over the place you might be shooting yourself in the foot.
If that’s the case you might consider splitting your content up into two blogs or just narrowing down to focus on one area. If you’re famous it’s a bit difference as your main phrase is your name. However, take a look at some of the top blogs out there and see if you can’t sum them up in a few words.
Problogger – blogging
Shoemoney – affiliate marketing
JohnChow – make money online
Chrisg – internet marketing/copy
CopyBlogger – copywriting
See what I mean? Think about it and please let me know your thoughts on it. I love conversations like this where ideas are kicked around and sifted through and in the end, the best idea emerges at the top. Thanks for the great question by the way although maybe I should have saved it for next Monday
Hey Ben,
I’ve thought about narrowing my focus for awhile and being too broad is probably hurting my ability to retain readers. But whenever I think about narrowing it down to only sports business or only social networking, I get bored and I come up with dumb reasons like this to keep it broad: I like people to associate my name (and thus my brand) with being well-rounded and smart about more than just one topic.
But I think you could be right that to get to the next level with this blog, I may have to focus my content more on one specific area. This is what I’ve done with some of my other blogs, which are very niche focused. But with this one I just seem to enjoy being a little more diverse…so we’ll see.
Jason,
I think that is the point exactly. If we want to just enjoy blogging for the sake of blogging. Then we can be random and broad in our writings. But as you said, if we want to take it to the next level then a more focused topic is the way to go. While it may not be as much fun at the moment, it really just depends on where it is you want to go with the blog.
Tim
It is such a simple task choosing a single sentence/phrase to sum up your blog…
So simple in fact that not only did I not really do it, but I didn’t see the worth in it really for anyone else. My site is a filmmaking resource site, the difference is that I want people from the community to add experiences and insights to the sight thus enabling young filmmakers to learn ‘little gems’ that they can’t get in a textbook or readily from the Net…
Having to come up with this single sentence helps you mentally focus your blog. People have asked me what my blog is about, and my answers have always been a few sentences. Usually they ‘glaze over’ before the concept is sketched.
Ok – So now what do you guys think:
“Helping you make your films better”
“We learn the hard way for you”
“The film school of hard knocks”
“Filmmaking via community learning”
“Helping filmmakers stay independent”
I think this is the best:
“Better films by sharing insight”
@All – how/where do you put this in?
Also should this be explanatory or intriguing; should people get it immediately or should I try and make them curious – so they visit…?
@Ben – Thanks for the reply to my questions, it puts things nicely. Now how exactly do you get yourself to stop tweaking the UI and focus on writing good content.
I also can’t help monetising (Adsense at the moment) which is funny as I have no real traffic. I am a perfectionist, so everything has to ‘look’ just right.
PS @Ben – your major strength at the moment, is having your knowledge but being so approachable (not busy and removed).
Zane, how about “Better films through sharing insight” or maybe “Better films through shared insight”? Subtle changes for sure but it seems to help convey the idea a bit better.
Tweaking the UI is something I enjoy as well. I usually force myself to write a good post before I start to play around with the different items that I get sucked into. Also, this blog is great for me in that if I install a new plugin, I write about it and share it so that’s like a built in post in itself.
As for your title tag, you might consider something like “Film Making with KungFuCabbage” and then have “Better films through shared insight” as your description similar to the way I have “from $0 to a full time income in only one year and every step in between” (which come to think of it, I’m not all that crazy about anymore… seems a bit long). Anyway, the point I was trying to make in this post is to include the words or phrase you’d like to rank for in your title tag. That way when you get around to building some links or attracting links, you get the most out of those efforts.
Think of it as the elevator speech that you’d give to someone you were riding in an elevator with who asked you what you did. It’s used in venture capital all the time. The difference is that this is a phrase (a tagline) rather than a story. If you can’t succinctly spell out your differentiation, then you can’t lay out your value proposition, which means it’s much less likely that you’ve a) found an appropriate and targeted enough niche, and b) that you’re able to create enough compelling content to get people to read what you put out there.
@ Ben–small nitpick, but when I tab from the comment, I should get to Post Your Comment. I know…lazy, no good non-mouse using self, bad…bad…
@Zane, I am no expert when it comes to blog names/tag lines etc but I have to with Ben, the “better films….” seems an excellent option. Concise, yet gives me a clear picture of what to expect.
If I came to your site and saw that tag line, I’d immediately understand what the blog’s focus is.
@ Jason, yeah, I’ve noticed the tab thing, just haven’t found the time yet. Actually the search function on the site isn’t working right now either. It’s on the list but not real high up just yet.
@ Amanda, you hit the nail on the head, you only have a short time to make an impression online and if your visitors are spending that time figuring out what your blog is about, that’s not a good sign.