Travel Bloggers Unite SEO presentation by Michael Briggs (http://www.caliberi.com). Presented on the 26th of March 2011 in Manchester.

1. I’m mike and I’m a geek. Hashtag : #TBU11 Wifi Network : thestudio work Password : 0123456789

2. In the Know SEO Travel Bloggers Unite #TBU11

3. Don’t worry about taking notes Everything will be online next week Sit back and relax

4. If I were a blogger… and I wanted to develop a site to get me free stuff make some money make friends I’d choose SEO and here’s how I’d do it…

5. Did I say that… I used blogs to Generate an income That paid for my wedding in Mauritius Me, my wife, my wee boy Full board holiday (and all spending money) at one of the worlds best hotels (Le Touessrok, Mauritius) Wedding dress, rings, kilts everything Using only SEO

6. My plan Research Get online Develop content Get links Get social Build positions Iterate

7. Find out what people search for? Google Keyword Tool http://www.tinyurl.com/keywordtool WordTracker http://www.wordtracker.com

10. From this I knew What were people searching for Patterns of search behaviour Modifier set Cheap Vs Bargain Sub groups of traffic for my niche Traffic trends through the year

11. Find the long tail

12. Now I wanted to know my competition Who are they Use Google Traditional search Google blog search Google alerts What are they Are they : travel agents? other blogs? Is it affiliates/MFA sites? Is it Google places? Wikipedia

13. Getting myself online Domain name Keywords vs brand Hosting Get someone good If my site goes down Google will trust me less One Click Install Wordpress

14. Fix a small server issues Non-www redirect Remove duplicate content issues Remove lost visitors Did this through .htaccess RewriteEngine On RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} !^www RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

15. Configure WordPress Settings Permalinks Settings -> Permalinks Nice keyword rich URLs URLs that look better in the search engines Improved click through

16. Configure WordPress Settings Make sure I’m pinging Settings -> Writing “update services” Get the strong list I can find online anywhere Search “WordPress ping list” Paste services into the field

17. Configure WordPress Settings Allow access from my iPhone Settings ->Writing Check Remote Publishing

18. Get myself a theme WordPress has some themes already Appearance -> Themes ->Install themes Download and Install themes I find in search results? Beware Some SEO’s may have placed links in these Some themes contain malicious code

19. SEO’ing my theme Themes may have aspects that I may need to fix How are the HTML tags used? <h1>…</h1> Is the theme widget ready? Can I easily change my logo?

20. Plugins to make SEO easy I need plugins that : Make my content better Improve the “long tail” Find Plugins Plugins ->Install

21. Plugins I always use WordPress SEO Plugin (Yoast) Fuzzy SEO Plugin UP Update Smart Pinger Plugin Contact Form 7 Plugin Twitter Stream Plugin Feedburner Plugin Web Ninja GA Plugin Akismet

22. Developed great content Created the Post title Included keywords in post title (Yoast Plugin) Keywords at the start Brand at the end Don’t overload the title Developed meta descriptions! Not going to help my rankings But can improve my click through

23. Wrote post naturally Write without thinking about SEO (much) Then use keywords if required Use “~” to find related keywords Use headings to block out content Headings give more relevance Use the <!– more --> function for long posts Ask visitors to comment Reply to comments where possible

24. Added other indexable content Videos Hosted on Youtube (second biggest search engine) Did some traffic research on YouTube https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool

25. More indexable content Images - Used the alt attribute

26. Even more indexable content Created useful downloads if appropriate PDFs Word Docs Excel Image packs

27. Pushed the Button…

28. No rankings and no visitors

29. Great content gets rankings

30. Biggest SEO Myth Great content gets rankings

31. Why? Great content deserves rankings BUT Great content without links will fail So I needed to start getting links

32. What’s a good link? Website with related content Strong HeartBeat Regular content being published on the site Regular tweeting Facebook activity Links to other related sites already

33. But what types of links did I want? Anchor text I use my keywords I use my brand I use my URL Link Types I want links in content I want a few sitewidelinks (be careful) Point to my homepage I use my website name I want profiles I want domains not links

34. Link metrics Links can be complicated large scale development short tail phrase optimisation Have you heard of PageRank?

35. PageRank Here’s the math…

36. “Magic Green Fairy Dust” @Google

37. There are lots of link variables… MozRank Domain Authority Page Authority TrustRank SocialRank Cache Frequency

38. But I didn’t need to worry I’m in a niche I’m not competing for the massive terms I have friends (real and virtual) I’m going to get links from them I have RSS So I can syndicate my content I have directories/social profiles So I can be seen in great places for free

39. I make friends with people offline Guest post (and get a link) Spoke to a journalist I know Wrote for websites that love new content Created/contributed to pages on wikipedia Useful pages Do not spam. Spam is the curse of the internet

40. Befriended people on Twitter I’m going to get important people on my side Located important people Engaged with them Ask important to people to guest blog on my site Spoke to them honestly about what I liked& didn’t like Be genuine & be yourself

41. I syndicated my RSS Every time I posted The post got a link My title tag is the link (keywords) I get noise about my content in the eyes of the search engines

42. I built real & useful social profiles

43. Tried online news sources I tried Digg/Reddit I wrote great content Appropriate for my audience (on my blog and the news site) Very little reward But If I had wrote great content The community had voted on these I may have got a front page for a category Got thousands of visitors Got some links

44. Now Google goes social & personal

45. If this had been available Twitter would be even more powerful Social friends would always see my content I could have got even more links (hopefully)

46. I now had.. Rankings for my keywords & traffic Friends helping me People asking me to write for them Bloggers ask to write on my site Subscribers Regular and frequent real comments

47. And every time I iterated http://analytics.google.com http://www.hittail.com Things got better as I grew more long tail traffic

48. So how did I monetise this? AdSense Not too much , these can be a sign of low quality Not above the fold if possible Affiliate links Masked links; these can be a sign of low quality Advertising Banners

49. And here I am I made my money I got married Great wedding & honeymoon I got a tan I made new friends (real and virtual)

50. Thank You Questions? Site reviews tomorrow! Stay in touch Email : Michael.briggs@caliberi.com My Twitter : @michaelkebriggs Company Twitter : @caliberi

51. attributation “Hi How are you image” - http://www.flickr.com/photos/an_agent/54106267/ Unhappy post it - http://www.shutterstock.com PageRank Bar - http://www.clippingimages.com/blog/google-page-rank/ PageRank Formula - http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/905-PageRank-What-Is-It-And-How-Do-You-Calculate-It- Yoda and PageRank – http://www.blaugh.com