I thoroughly enjoyed creating a niche community at DigiScrapInfo.com for digital scrapbookers to assist them in organizing their supplies & photos. For three years I translated digital marketing techniques for this very passionate group of entrepreneurs that are also busy moms and grandmas.

Jess from BlogHer had requested a class on intermediate SEO and technology. In the spirit of crafting I realized that optimizing a blog is like adding bling to it. What is bling? My definition is anything that makes it sparkle and attracts attention. And who doesn’t want the attention of Search Engines?

A personal frustration that I have had with many of the SEO sessions I’ve attended is that they talk in general terms, and I came away only with concepts rather than actionable items. So I have put in specific steps for using the various tools mentioned.

Here are some additions that were a result of the questions during and after the session:

1. If you are blogging for fun, family & friends then using a platform such as Typepad, Blogger, Wordpress.com, etc is fine. Some of the tools may be helpful if you’re looking for things to write about. (They aren’t the best for building top rank in SEO. If you want that then it’s best to get a URL and host your own blog. Wordpress is a recommended choice.)
2. I had assumed that everyone knew about Feedburner and so didn’t include it. (My apologies as I consider Feedburner as a basic part of blogging.) http://feedburner.google.com
3. Learn more about using Feedburner here

We had so many questions that I didn’t have time to give the most important piece of advice and that is that blogging should be fun. It’s about sharing ideas. Yes, keywords are important, but if you’re consistent in sharing your passion for a topic then you’ll build that coveted organic SEO over time. These tools can help spur new ideas for content and help you focus on a niche that isn’t as competitive.

A huge thanks to BlogHer for inviting me to join the event yesterday! Crafting is a perfect cottage industry for the internet and I’m glad that we could have a day to focus on digital marketing.

First, I am not an expert on SEO but I have been successful. I invested a considerable amount of time reading up on it when I started blogging. And I never do anything part way! So how good is the search engine optimization on my blog? Google ‘community manager’ and see what you get:

What does this mean (ie: why should you care?):

1. Today I rank #1 for searching in Google for ‘community manager’. (I finally rank higher than my friend, Jeremiah Owyang, who rightfully deserves high regard for his Four Tenets article.) Yes, this is a competitive sport.

2. The organizer of Community 2.0 reached out to me to speak because she Googled ‘Community Manager’

3. My present client Googled ’social media community manager Minnesota’ and found me. Yes, I also live in Minnesota (And yes, I do consult on special projects)

Be forewarned that SEO (search engine optimization) is addictive.

But the payback is that a blog can greatly increase a site’s presence in the eyes of search engines. What does this mean? 

1. People who are looking for your topic can find you.

2. You don’t need to buy Google Ad’s for your site or advertise it.

3. It gives you presence as a leader in the niche and increases your brand presence.

Let’s translate that into business goals:

1. Customers seeking your product/resource will find you

2. Little or no $$’s need to be spent on marketing and advertising

3. Establishes your brand as an industry leader providing information and increases your brand visibility

Most importantly, it’s gratifying to give back to the community that supports you (whether as an individual or as a company)

My sister is my webmaster and she’s done a great job with mine. You can find her at SolutionsByHeidi

Here are her 3 suggestions in terms of what she feels are important:

1. Sitemap – submit to Google & Yahoo so that it’s crawled immediately
2. AllinOne SEO – this is a very popular WordPress plugin (esential is probably more like it)
3. Metatags – choose ones that people search for and don’t have too many

Content – This takes time but writing about related topics on a consistent basis builds SEO quickly. For example, I put up my blog in Sept 2007 and focused on Community Management in Dec 2007.

There is no need to worry about keyword density. (If you don’t know what I mean by that – don’t worry about it, be happy!)

Note: If someone hands you a list of corporate keywords & tells you to use them… you need to have a talk with them. Here are my suggestions:

1. Review the keywords. Are they words that your customers use in their daily conversations? (If not, it’s no use to use them).
2. Use a monitoring tool like Techrigy SM2 to analyze conversations around your brand & industry to analyze the author tags to identify the best keywords to use. Here’s an example of a tag cloud for my niche of Community Manager from SM2. (Do the corporate SEO keywords need tweaking? oh my! See what I mean?)
3. Writing around corporate keywords comes off stilted. Just write naturally & the organic SEO will happen. I always appreciated that @ShashiB got that when I worked with him at Network Solutions.

More importantly, make sure that your titles have keywords related to your topic in them. For example I used to put up a weekly post called Community Strategist Links to reinforce my SEO for that phrase. I also have a redirect from http://communitystrategist.com so the URL helps with my SEO. (ie: purchase a URL related to your keywords if possible).

And search engines also see the first paragraph, so getting your terms in there is also useful. (Make your point as soon as possible). If you scroll back up I slid in ‘Community Manager’ in the first paragraph. For awhile I was on a bent of disliking ‘community manager’ so I was using community building & community strategist but I realized that I was doing myself a disservice in terms of SEO.

Utilize internal links within your site. If you wrote about a related topic then link back to it. Search engines like seeing the interrelationship within your site. In number 2 just above I linked to a previous post that shows an Author Tag Cloud that I was referring to.

Search Engines love back links

Link love – Link to other blogs in your niche. As bloggers we all like to have backlinks. That builds our own SEO. And when you link to us, then we’ll come over, read your post, comment and then in the future link to you. This will increase your SEO and it creates a lot of happiness in the community at large. Not sure where to find related bloggers? Use Technorati Search and search by those with High Authority. (It will introduce you to new friends in your topic area too!)

Blog Roll – These are another type of backlinks but they aren’t viewed as highly by search engines as backlinks in the content. Link to the blogs that you read and as time goes on others will link back to you. If you get to know a blogger, you can ask if you could mutually link to each other’s blogs but please develop a relationship before asking (otherwise it’s tacky – I delete so many emails about this… If you don’t know me, don’t spam me!).

Commenting on other people’s blogs – This is really important if you’re going to be a blogger. It’s as much about participation as it is about writing. So go forth and read other people’s blogs in your niche and comment. Leave meaningful comments. If you have written a post that adds value to your comment then add the link. I call these legacy links or breadcrumbs because they create a path back to your blog for readers in the future. It also contributes to your SEO because it’s another type of backlink. People love getting comments and if you expect them then give first and ye shall receive.

Measuring your progress

Google Analytics is the best place to watch your blog presence grow. You can see what keywords are helping people find your blog with. You can also see where your traffic is coming from (both physical source as well as blog url’s). Google has set up a self paced course at Conversion University.

Claim your blog on Technorati – this shows your Rank, Authority & the number of backlinks. You can track your progress. Some bloggers feel that Technorati no longer has as much relevance.

Finally, Google your topic area. Once you start getting on the top one to three pages it will serve as additional motivation.

For more reading: Darren Rowse has tons of resources (that’s where I learned much from!)

What are your suggestions for improving blog SEO?

If you’re like me then you know how it is to depend on someone else for the maintenance & improvements on your website. There are many web designers out there. My suggestion is that you choose one that will take the time to get to know you & your needs.

This past week I had the opportunity to ‘meet’ Kate Niederhoffer,. Her specialty is social psychology & you’ll get insights into community & social behavior from a new direction. Her post on Learning, Organizing, Anticipating: Better reminded me of my web designer.

Kate’s post made me smile because my web designer has come to anticipate what I’d like on my site (and adds it without my asking!). As many of you know, my sister is the caretaker  of my site. But she is intuitive in the way Kate suggests. She also uses my site as a testing ground for items for her other clients.

Usually I will see something & ask her to add it to my site. She enjoys the challenge of finding it & making it work. (We have been working together like this since January of 2007). So she is quite adept at anticipating what I’d like.

I’m excited to show you Heidi’s latest addition to my blog. On the right she has added tabs that show my Most Tweeted posts & ones that were Tweeted Lately

And then Heidi redid my comments section so it separate the comments into ‘written ones’, Tweetbacks for that post, and finally trackbacks. You can see it best on my post: Making a Business Case for Twitter. It also nicely pulls in the avatars from Twitter.

What do you think? Does it provide value to interlace the conversation from Twitter into my blog? The fragmentation of conversations presents a challenge. Not too long ago Heidi added the option for people to add their Twitter id when they comment. I’m glad to help my readers to connect with each other. Heidi can be found at SolutionsByHeidi.com

So, how well does your web designer know your needs? Are they keeping up with the trends in order to help your blog/site evolve with your community’s needs?

further reading: (from Pete Cashmore’s article on Mashable)

10 Ways Twitter Will Change Blog Design in 2009 – Rachel Cunliffe on TweetBacks, BlogTweet feeds and TwitterRolls.

10 of the Best WordPress 2.7 Compatible Themes

This purpose of this is to start discussion & get you thinking about intellectual property & your online presence. What I have learned has been through experience & it taught me some valuable lessons. I mentioned them on Chris Brogan’s post about how valuable your personal brand is & the big risk for corporate trust agents. As a result I was asked to go into more detail.

Again I have no legal training, but can we agree that words need definitions & a contract is nothing more than sets of words. But those words need definitions, right? The interpretations of contracts is fine when both sides agree. But if they don’t then it’s a legal question.

So as knowledge workers, we need to consider the definition of Intellectual Property in regard to the content we’re creating & how it could be interconnected with a corporate brand.

Intellectual property (IP) is a legal field that refers to creations of the mind such as musical, literary, and artistic works; inventions; and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce, including copyrights, trademarks, patents, and related rights. Under intellectual property law, the holder of one of these abstract properties has certain exclusive rights to the creative work, commercial symbol, or invention by which it is covered.

Now, here are some things to think about when you’re blogging or creating user generated content. And this is all meant to generate more questions …and maybe we can find some legal expertise to weigh in?

• What does your company view as intellectual property when you’re working for them?
• Was there an amendment that explains that anything created by you while working for them is theirs? Does this include:
• blog posts about their products or brand? (possibly on your blog?)
• tutorials & user-generated content that you create (on your 3rd party site?)
• your ideas & potential new business opportunities for you for a certain period of time after you leave employment?

On the flip side if you’re a company having your contractors & evangelists to create user generated content & blog about your product. I will suggest that the best path is to show appreciation to these people who are loyal & uphold your brand (even if you’re paying them). I don’t understand the point of the corporate legal department quibbling about ownership of intellectual property that is supporting your company & customers? As pointed out in the book Groundswell it’s all about relationships. And when it comes to the relationship between contractors/employees & the brand/company I think that user generated content & personal blogging are going to start challenging traditional norms.

Some quick suggestions:

• agreeing in advance of employment or contracting is much easier – I specifically state that all of the content on my blog is mine
• both the company & employee should know & understand
• the bounds of the blogging policy
• acceptable interactions in social networks
• whether participating is acceptable on work time (reading blogs, microblogging, participating in social networks, etc)
• your blog’s domain name is not owned by you – it’s like a phone number which you pay an annual fee to maintain it. (I tend to think of my blog URL as my property, but it’s not).

I’d love to hear your ideas & comments. And it would be great if you can bring the legal aspect to this. The topic of intellectual property is going to become more relevant as we continue to produce content online. What do you think?

One of the listeners sent me an email asking a couple of questions:

I’ve never understood clearly the workings of trackbacks, etc. ( I do realize the value, just not how to use them), I was hoping you could explain to me just what you meant by that statement – "put backlinks in comments".

Trackbacks are created on my post when someone links to the article from their post. A portion of the quote from their post is shown. They are helpful because they show who has referenced your blog post & continued writing about what you’ve written on. And they contribute towards SEO because they show that your wrote something worth linking to.

Backlinks in comments are something else. When I comment on someone’s blog post, I will sometimes leave a link to an article that I’ve written that offers more information on the topic.

The difference is timing:

If I were to respond to the post & write an article linking to the post then that would create a trackback on that person’s post. When I put a link to my blog post in the comment section it’s because my post was written first. If you do this you want to make sure that your link is relevant & adds value to the post. I will also add links to other resources from around the web (not just mine).

The backlinks then create legacy links. Imagine the links that you’ve sprinkled around the web in your topic area (don’t do it all the time). I call them ‘legacy links’ & they provide paths for future readers to find your blog.

In Feedburner I can see where my traffic is coming from. Two came over from a comment I made on Chris Brogan’s post on Skills of a Community Manager. And one came over from RWW’s post on Hiring a Community Manager.

Both of these posts had over 60 comments, but people continue to read the posts. Imagine the effect over a period of time? So I refer to them as legacy links because they help new people find my work on that subject. Usually they are learning & mining blogs. Some people say that this isn’t acceptable, but I’ve never been criticized for it (or told to not do it).

Tips:

• Identify who the influencers are in your niche with lots of traffic. Although everyone likes comments.
• Comment early on (although I don’t think that matters). Sometimes I enjoy leaving a comment after many people have (that’s especially the case on Chris Brogan’s blog).

Does this make sense? What are your tips?

When Darren asked for a guest post we chatted about what the topic should be.

He suggested ‘Taking your Blog to a Community’ which is a broad canvas. I wrote a compilation of ideas for extending awareness of your blog or site to new communities.

Many of you read Darren’s blog regularly. If you’re not familiar with his work I recommend that you browse his blog (especially if you’re just starting to blog). He has amazing ideas.

Thank you Darren for the opportunity to share my community building ideas with your community. And thank you for introducing your community to my blog & work! That was one of my main points: Collaboration is a great connector.

I hope that you find the ideas useful. Building community is fascinating & very gratifying.

In writing this it occurred to me that I have enough readers to invite guest posts. So I invite you to email me with the topic(s) you’d like to write a guest post on. My email address is on the left under my photo.

Blog commenting is probably one of the easier things to accomplish when I’m traveling. I’m using Jeremiah Owyang’s tip of having blog ideas created in advance.

In my first post I listed my methodology for starting or rebuilding a blog. I’ve used it twice. There’s an aspect that’s more important than that & it bears repeating:

“It’s not all about you & your blog!

There is a much bigger world out there & you are but one voice, so you need to join the collective:

1. read other people’s blogs & comment – use a blog reader

• get involved & ask questions
• provide value & insight for them based on their writing & encourage them to grow

2. respond to their post on your blog if if your response is too long for a comment

• make sure that you reference the original post & use their static link (people appreciate the link love)
• this introduces your readers to a blog that you enjoy (a form of sharing your friend’s blog)
• sometimes it’s wise to wait a day or so if it’s an emotional response – maybe pretend that you’re writing to your boss?

3. comment on blogs that reference you & your writing

• use Google alerts & Technorati to see who’s writing about you & your blog
  • follow those links & respond to the conversation
  • it’s a great way to build brand
• allow trackbacks & follow them

4. show appreciation for the sharing of knowledge by your network

• utilize a variety of formats – Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc
• remember that it’s a group effort & we can do more together!

What ideas do you have for commenting on blogs? Have you gotten to know people through their blogs? Share your experiences.

Like that question has never been answered before! So why am I addressing it? Well, someone asked my opinion & after coming up with 5 steps & prioritizing them I thought the process should be shared.

Here is my advice for starting a blog along with some resources to get you started.

1. Branding

• Who are you & what makes you memorable? I have my photo…
• What is your message? You may not have your voice yet, but that’s ok.

2. Choose a theme & someone to build it if you’re technically challenged like me

• Find a theme that reflects your personality
• SEO is huge & widget-ready will make it fun for you
• Google Analytics & Feedburner are important
• choose a blogging platform that is user friendly
• I really like WordPress & my sister builds great blogs

3. Start writing and find your voice

• I don’t believe you need content in advance because I’ve started 3 – cold
• After 2-3 months you’ll be comfortable & will have found your voice
• During this time read & post comments on other’s blogs
• ‘Gently’ link to your relevant blog posts.

4. Go thru your posts & redo the categories at 3 months or so

• Now that you have your voice, you’ll know what you’re writing about!
• Categorize them for your readers please (it’s the librarian coming out in me)

5. Be consistent in your posting & grow your blog

• Check your stat’s & interpret them
• What searches are hitting your blog?
• Follow links back (using Technorati) and thank them for linking to you

Bonus idea – I did say 5 up there.

6. Repurpose questions that people ask or that you see multiple times.

• If one or a few people have them, then chances are the lurkers do too (which is 95% or so people).

What did I miss? It should be a fun process. If it’s work you probably won’t do it (please don’t contribute to the massive number of abandoned blogs). It will take effort, but it will be rewarding! enjoy!

Blogging gets easier with time. After awhile the self conscious feeling fades & it becomes more natural. Give yourself time to grow with it!