Wordpress or Blogger - Which one is best for search engine optimisation

Hi Mike, im considering setting up a free blog. Can you tell me if its better to use a Blogger blog or a Wordpress blog, from an search engine optimisation point of view.

Regards
Steve.

Hi Steve, thanks for your question.

I myself use Blogger and Wordpress. There is an seo plugin available for Wordpress blogs that automatically optimizes your titles for search engines. Generates META tags automatically, and avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs, which Google can penalize sites for.

It is also fully editable, and compatable with many other plugins like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others. So from the point of view of setting up your blog to be search engine friendly, then Wordpress is best, as Blogger does not have a similar plugin, yet.

You can download the plugin here http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/all-in-one-seo-pack.zip

Blogger does not have the flexibility that Wordpress has, but I think Blogger is easier to use for beginners.

I seem to get better search results with Blogger blogs. That may have something to do with the fact that Google runs Blogger, or it may just be coincidence.

Content has a lot to do with search engine results, so at the end of the day that is what counts ultimately, whether you have a Blogger blog or a Wordpress blog.

I hope this answers your question Steve, please let me know if you need more help.

To get your seo question answered, and posted on this blog, please email us at webordead@yahoo.com

SEO Advisory Service - Advice For Forum Owners.

As I said in my previous post, we would be starting a free SEO advisory service. Well here is the first question from Scott Nicol.

Hi, I am a student and website owner. I own The Seven Forums.com which is now running on fully paid for servers since around August last year and IPB, which put me back £75 about 1 month ago.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to really get the site to take off. Do you think you could help me out, and give some suggestions? The site is based around the upcoming Windows release Windows Seven, which has been rumoured to be coming out the 2nd half of 2009.

Thanks,
Scott Nicol



Hi Scott, thanks for your email.

Forum's are very hard to get off the ground.

You need to create interaction with your users. Posting on other related forum's and having your site in your signature is one way to attract people to your forum.

You can also employ paid posters to make your forum look busy which may encourage people to join in. They dont cost much and are always good to kick start a new forum.

You also need to work on SEO by generating back links from related sites to get your forum listed high in Google. This can bring a lot of traffic if done well. If you dont have the time to do your own SEO, you could outsource the work to an SEO Services company.

You can also promote your forum in Google or Yahoo groups.

Forum's are all about community, likeminded people discussing things that they all have a common interest in. You need to find those people and give them a reason to come to your forum.

Its not easy, but if you do manage to build a successful forum it can be worth a lot of money, and give you a lot of satisfaction.

I hope that this information has been of some help to you.

Best of luck with it.

Regards
Mike.

Apologies, but we have been so busy.

I am so ashamed that we have not updated our blog since August. We have been really busy with our own projects, and projects for our clients that we have just not had the time.

Everyone that reads this blog please accept my appologies, we will try and stop by once in a while to give you something to read.

Just to update everyone, we have just started a free SEO advisory service. The idea behind it is for people to email in their SEO related questions, and we will publish the question and our advice on the blog. Time permitting.

So if you would like to be the first one, then drop us an email at webordead@yahoo.com with you SEO question or problem and we will advise you on the best way to proceed, and publish the info on here on the blog, for the benefit of all our readers. That is if we have any left. :)

Thanks again to everyone that stops by, and happy new year.

Google To Scrap PageRank?

You heard it here first. Google are going to get rid of page rank, or are they?

Page rank is a constant problem for the Google algorithm. Having to decide the importance of a site, by the importance of the sites that link to it.

Are these links genuine? or have they been purchased? or are they 3 way links? Are sites buying links for pagerank, or for traffic, who can tell? Google certainly cant.

High page rank sites usually get high traffic, so how do you decide who is buying for pr, and who is buying for traffic. Who does Google penalize, and who does Google ignore.

Google attempted to combat pr manipulation by introducing the rel="nofollow" attribute in 2005, but this hasn't stopped the problem.

The only answer to this problem as far as I can see is to scrap the page rank altogether. Or at least make it a secret. Without the ability to check a sites page rank, webmasters and site owners will not be able to try to influence the Google algorithm, by getting links from high page rank sites, and attempting to manipulate the Google search results in their favour.

If webmasters and site owners were prevented from knowing the importance of a site in Googles eyes, then the Google search results would be less prone to manipulation, and would result in a more accurate set of search results.

Take the headache out of SEO

SEO, link building, website optimisation, article submission, directory submission, blog posting, the list goes on.

How many times have you sat at your PC and thought "OK I'm going to do some SEO for my site"6 hours later, you are still sitting there, your head hurts, your stomach is empty, and you have done nothing.

Search Engine Optimisation is a frustrating time consuming job. You can spend weeks working on SEO for your site, and your rankings are still no where near where you want them to be.

The most frustrating thing about SEO is you cannot really see the results of your efforts. It may take several weeks, or even months, before you see any change in your search engine rankings. So how do you know that what you are doing today, is going to benefit your site 3 months down the line? Well unless you are an SEO expert you don't.

So what is the answer? Well the answer is to outsource your SEO work to someone that specializes in SEO. Would you consider rebuilding the engine on your car? No, you would probably employ a car mechanic to do it for you. So do the same with your SEO.

How do you know which SEO companies are good at SEO, and which are just good at talking? Testimonials are one way. Don't just read the testimonials on their site, as most, if not all of them, are made up. Ask for telephone numbers of their clients and speak to them directly. Or ask them to show you results that they have achieved for their clients. If they will not give you this information just move on to someone who will.

A good SEO company will tell you exactly what they are going to do for you. They will try to explain SEO in a format that you will understand, not try to baffle you with tech speak.

Take SEO Unique for example, they are an SEO company based in London. They believe that the key to their success is customer service. They give their customers free SEO resources to help them understand what SEO is all about. They are also in the process of setting up a free SEO questions and answers section on their site.

Look for SEO companies like SEO Unique. Companies that are not afraid to explain SEO in lay mans terms. If you have a better understanding of what is involved, then you are in a better position to decide what you need. It is then down to the SEO company that you choose, to deliver the results that you are after.

Choosing an SEO company is very a difficult job, there is no doubt about that, but if you take a few of these pointers on board, then you should be better equipped to negotiate the minefield that is SEO.

Submit Your Site To Web Directories For Traffic And SEO

Some people love them, some people hate them, but, submitting your site to web directories can bring your site traffic, and help your sites SEO.

Submitting your site to directories is a time consuming job. There are thousands of directories where you can submit your site, and it would take forever to submit to them all.
Therefore you should only choose established directories, with good page rank and good traffic. Established high page rank directories, are well respected by Google, so getting your site listed there will get your site more Google respect, and higher listings within Google search results.

When submitting, pick the most appropriate category for your site. Google loves relevant links, so this is important. Use a good comprehensive keyword rich description for your site. This will help search engines determine the relevancy of your listing. If you write a good description, you will also have a better chance of getting your site approved, in the case of free directory submissions.

Paid directory submissions are also very good for SEO. Google gives more weight to paid directory submissions, as they are less likely to contain the spam that some of the free directories tend to get. A paid listing on a good directory such as Dirsensei Web directory is worth 20 or 30 free listings in my opinion.

The primary purpose of Dirsensei is to list the best quality family friendly websites available, and their directory is made available to users of all ages. Though they are a premium paid directory, they also welcome non commercial sites and list them accordingly. They prefer to list informative sites, and they are all nicely categorized. They also have a latest links page where you can view the latest sites that have been added to the directory.

If you have the funds available, then paid directories are the way to go, to benefit your SEO and generate the most traffic for your site. Lots of free directories get very little traffic, and have little or no page rank. When you compare those to Dirsensei with a page rank 5, and around 3000 visitors per day, you can see the benefits of a paid directory listing.

There is also the time factor to consider when submitting to directories, you may have to submit to 30 free directories, in order to get the same benefit to your site, that one paid listing may bring.

So whether you decide to go for paid, or free directory submissions, always be sure to spend time on your title and your description, to ensure the most successful outcome of your submission, for traffic and for SEO.

Google Bowling

I have recently been reading quite a few articles regarding Google bowling.

Now for those of you that do not know what Google blowing is, let me explain.

Its basically a process by where you try to get a competitors site dropped from Google, by getting hundreds or thousands of spammy links pointing to the site.

The idea is to make Google think that the site owners are trying to spam their site to the top of the search engines.

Now I have heard of companies that are apparently specialists in this field, charging a fortune to carry out this type of reverse SEO, to get sites dropped from Google. But I personally believe Google bowling is a myth.

Google does drop sites in and out of its index from time to time, but I don't think that you can affect a sites ranking by getting links to it from spammy sites.

This is the way I see it. A site owner has no control over who links to their site. If you get natural links from spammy sites how can you be penalized for it? If your site links to spammy sites, you can get penalized for that, as you do have control over who your site links to.

Google likes links from quality authority sites related to your sites content. Getting links from these sites will see your site listed higher in Google, getting links from spammy sites will not in my opinion get your site dropped, it will just not get your site listed any higher. Google will basically ignore the non relevant spammy links.

So if anyone approaches you and tells you they can get your competitors site dropped from Google by using this so called Google Bowling technique, then take it with a pinch of salt. Apart from the fact that it is highly unethical, its also highly unsuccessful in my opinion.