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Blog Traffic Trick for Beginners: Blog Title, Description & Keywords Optimisation

01/03/2009

3 comments



If you are relatively new in the blogging scene and still experimenting with ways to increase your blog traffic, here is a tip you might want to consider — it works pretty well for me and many others.

It is called meta tag optimisation, which is a part of the search engine optimisation (SEO) effort aimed at increasing your blog relevance in search results (i.e., searchability). Meta tags include blog title, description, keywords.

For example, if you google “Masha College“, you will see that my link appears on top of the search page. This gives me the advantage because people are more likely to click on my link first compared to others, thereby increasing my web traffic.

masha-college-search.jpg

Part of the reason is because I’m using the correct keywords in my meta tags — on the title per se and also in the content. There are of course many other factors as well, but I’m just gonna dwell on the appropriate use of keywords here.

Placement of correct keywords that best describe your website or content can be done by including the meta tags within the “header” tag of your website. There are three important types of meta tags.

Title Tag

Come out with the shortest title that best describes your blog. It is best to have a title of about 65 characters, or eight words.

As for this blog, the title is “mrdefinite.com - It’s money-making hot.” as of now; it has only exactly 39 characters (or four words). It is not the best, but contains the word “money-making”, which could reflect what type of a blog I’m running.

If I were to only put “mrdefinite.com” as the title, it might keep people wondering, “Is this an entertainment blog, or what?” I shall show you how to place your title tag later.

This principle also applies to individual blog post titles. Again I stress the title of your post should be specific and reflective of the content your blog post.

The title of this blog post is “Blog Traffic Trick for Beginners…”. Throw one glance at it and you know it has to do with increasing blog traffic — targeted at people who are new to blogging. I could have used “newbies” instead of “beginners”, but decided to stick to the latter as it is a more popular keyword based on the Google Keyword Popularity Tool.

Description Tag

The description tag describes your website. It has a similar function as the title tag — to explain the blog you are running, but it has the ability to offer what the title alone cannot explain. It provides people understanding on your blog to a greater extent. Take a look at my blog’s description:


A young man in his 20’s who blogs about money making ideas, technology and sometimes his personal struggles and thoughts.


The ideal description will have only about 20 words and I have exactly 20 words. I put it that way because I feel it can pull the best searchability yet maintain the “personality” of this blog. Google “mrdefinite” and this is how the blog is presented:

mrdefinite-search.jpg

See? The description is included exactly like how I wanted it to be. When people type on keywords like “money-making” and “technology”, this blog will be more relevantly listed on the search page compared to other blogs that do no have such keywords.

Keywords Tag

The keywords tag summarises your blog using a string of related keywords not more than 300 characters (around 25 words). The keywords of this blog are “Money, Advertising, Marketing, Technology, News, Entertainment, Music, Politics, Video, Reviews, Download, Asia”.

Warning: Do not place any word more than three times, or Google will consider your blog spam!

The meta tags

The following shows how you can place the meta tags within your “header” tag. You can replace the words in red with your own.

metatags.jpg

Wordpress “All in One SEO” Plugin

For those of you who are using Wordpress, the “All in One SEO” plugin is all you need to optimise your meta tags. My blog saw a spike in traffic several days after having installed the plugin. I wish I had the statistics to share with you.

Basically the settings of the plugin are easy. The following demonstrates part of the options:

seo-plugin.jpg

With this plugin installed, I can instruct it to automatically re-write my original title without that of interfering individual posts, as well as category, search and archive pages.

I also have the option to give individual posts (a.k.a sub-pages of this blog) a unique description, and keywords. In other words, instead of optimisating meta tags in your main blog like discussed above, this plugin allows optimisation in individual pages:

seo-indv-post.jpg

Above is an option as appeared in the “Write Post” sub-panel. Convenient, isn’t it?

So stop fretting how you don’t get any traffic and start optimising your meta tags liao. If these little steps works for a small, growing blog like mine, it will work the same for you if you start implementing/experimenting!

P/S: Share with me your experience in meta tag optimisation. The comment area does NOT have the “nofollow” attribute on; by sharing your experience or opinion here, you can simultaneously increase your backlinks.


Happy Reading!

“Sincere Blogging” - MrDefinite.com Blog Commercialisation Offset Project

01/02/2009

18 comments


divider.jpg

Watched The Insider several days ago – the best movie I have watched in 2008 despite it being already almost a decade old

the_insider.jpg

The movie shows a media practitioner who was caught between media commercialisation and professional values, (e.g., the duty to provide quality content and maintain credibility, among others).

People who are not in the media might not realise the struggle between unless they are working. But as far as blogging is concerned, such a struggle has shifted from traditional media to the new media, and is becoming more and more relevant to new media users, especially bloggers.

Hardcore and prominent bloggers like Kenny Sia and Lilian Chan might find this struggle more obvious than any other bloggers out there because of their expertise and higher degree of involvement in the field of blogging.

Virtual Economy

The blogging phenomenon did not first start out like what we can see today: monetisation of blogs and RSS feeds, search engine optimisation (SEO), microblogging via Tweeter, etc. People first started out blogs simply just to inform in a non-commercialised manner.

When economy shifted online, thereby creating what is known as “virtual economy”, commercialisation happens. It is just the mirroring of revolution in the real world – in the virtual world.

Commercial Values vs. Professional Values

08-01-17_money8.jpg

Like Steve Pavlina said, commercialisation could be seen as something “evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, and obnoxious”. Yes, I felt bad having to announce the new direction of this blog a few days later. Some readers will get offended; some will love the idea…

No matter what happens, the world is shifting from one paradigm to another and commercialisation is inescapable.


A main reason certain readers might hate this idea is because they see that there is an agenda or a purpose behind the commercialisation of this blog (i.e., me turning it into a money blog).

Readers like this fear that the agenda will affect the quality of the content delivered to them. They now see delivery of the (new) content as biased, insincere, and profit-driven.

Most importantly commercialisation takes away from the readers the type of content they otherwise like to read just so that the blog’s direction is in consistency with the agenda of the blogger or even the sponsors/advertisers associated with the blog.

Losing a portion of readers who only wish to read my personal experiences and not about money is a consequence I have to pay behind the decision to monetise the blog.


My decision is however definite. The new direction has been set and I am currently working towards gaining and satisfying my new target audience.

First Phrase of Money Blog

Like I previously announced, the first phrase of this money blog will keep me focused on traffic-building before moving on to money-making. However, the duration of the first phrase has not been decided because I am still experimenting with it.

I’m willing to sincerely share any success tips if I could make this blog big one day (traffic is improving and I hope I’m in the right direction). With this direction, I expect my target audience – as I mentioned earlier – to be beginners who are working towards gaining blog traffic.

Second Phrase of Money Blog

People say once you double your blog traffic, you double your advertising revenue. I only could invest 50% of my trust this statement because seriously – I want to be able to witness it to verify if it is true.

If I could increase my web traffic and successfully reach the second phrase – which is to experiment with money-making opportunities – I will continue to share my success with my readers sincerely if any of the opportunity is legal and good.

Sincere Blogging

In moving towards commercialisation, what about the professional values? This is where I would like to introduce everyone to the concept of “sincere blogging”.

trust-fall.jpg

The concept is simple and based on the principles of “give and take”, as well as trust-gaining.


As I believe in “give and take” the sincere way, I believe people will be able to see it and appreciate it. Just when commercialisation is obvious along the new direction of this blog, I want to keep up to “sincere blogging” to inform people that this blog comes with sincerity.

I hereby launch the “Sincere Blogging” Campaign and hope everyone could support in order to offset the negative impact of blog commercialisation.


By blogging sincerely, you might want to avoid blogging about thing you are not even sure of. By blogging sincerely, you might wish to only provide accurate tips that are truthful and reflective of your blog’s success.

Since “sincerity” is relative to individual bloggers, I’m not very concerned about the boundary to which “sincere” means – you get the basic idea.

I’m studying media and have great experience in the related field. As for me, I’m now going to practice “sincere blogging” by sharing what I learnt and observe about the media-saturated world.

As I get to study the trends and developments of various types of media, I feel I am capable of proving knowledge in this field by analysing for and explaining to my readers what is in and what not in the blogging world. Most importantly I want my readers to be able to learn something from what I could offer, apply it in the management of their blogs and make their blogs livelier with organic traffic.

By practicing the concept of sincere blogging, giving away such expertise is what I will offer. In turn, it will most likely gain my blog more traffic if readers find it good. It aims at promoting a win-win situation at a maximum.

Mr. Definite is my online alter ego characterised by his openness, adaptability, bluntness, and truthfulness. You will know if you could trust me several months down the road.

If you find this concept good, you might want to give it support.

It doesn’t matter if your blog is a personal one, or of any other genre — by supporting this campaign, blogging with more sincerity is all it takes.


If you wish, you might even want to add the “Sincere Blogging” logo on your site. BUT BUT BUT, always feel free to add the rel=”nofollow” attribute if you feel the need to do so!


A smoking-hot campaign.
(170w x 30h pixels)
<a target="_new" href="http://mrdefinite.com/?p=2044"><img border="0" alt="A smoking-hot campaign." src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/funkycrib/sincereblogging1.jpg" /></a>



A smoking-hot campaign.
(170w x 30h pixels)
<a target="_new" href="http://mrdefinite.com/?p=2044"><img border="0" alt="A smoking-hot campaign." src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/funkycrib/sincereblogging2.jpg" /></a>



A smoking-hot campaign.
(170w x 30h pixels Transparent BG)
<a target="_new" href="http://mrdefinite.com/?p=2044"><img border="0" alt="A smoking-hot campaign." src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/funkycrib/sincereblogging1-1.png" /></a>



A smoking-hot campaign.
(146w x 146h pixels)
<a target="_new" href="http://mrdefinite.com/?p=2044"><img border="0" alt="A smoking-hot campaign." src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/funkycrib/sincereblogging.png" /></a>


I don’t believe in 100% perfection — there has to be certain things that I might have overlooked in this campaign. Feel free to give constructive criticism!

Happy Reading!