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Brilliant Blogs: How to get Noticed

By Silicon Beach Training on 1 November 2011 @ 9:42 AM.

Tags: seo, social media, blogger, photoshop, blog advice, seo training, photoshop training.

The best way to generate links and traffic to your site is writing great content. With Google Panda rolling out a much needed update in January this year (and several updates since) it’s even more important to be able to write compelling and unique content. I believe that Google’s main focus will continue to be about sniffing out the rubbish and serving up the greatest:

By penalising duplicate content
By measuring the success of a post through the monitoring of Social Media activity, Facebook shares, social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Stumbleupon, Google +1’s, Google Plus shares, tweets and retweets.
By measuring the influence of those who share your content
By monitoring the times that your content is linked to by other writers – the more influential the better.

We have seen some of this happening using Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools. We update our SEOAn acronym for 'search engine optimisation', the series of processes used to improve your ranking in search engines and drive more web traffic to your website organically.

training course on a regular basis so we need to keep our knowledge up to date for our clients. Those in the Web Design industry have been espousing for years that “Content is King”, now the SEOAn acronym for 'search engine optimisation', the series of processes used to improve your ranking in search engines and drive more web traffic to your website organically.

Learn more about SEO industry needs to base their practises on this premise because it’s never been so relevant to search engine positioning as it is now. Silicon Beach Training has been blogging for some years now and we think we have got pretty good at it. We have also learned about what works, what doesn’t, and had some great successes so we thought we’d share our experience with you.

Posts that rank the best are often those that have been picked up by the biggest players.

Our Brighton SEOAn acronym for 'search engine optimisation', the series of processes used to improve your ranking in search engines and drive more web traffic to your website organically.

Learn more about SEO posts were linked to by .Net magazine and Matt Gemmell (a key influencer in the SEOAn acronym for 'search engine optimisation', the series of processes used to improve your ranking in search engines and drive more web traffic to your website organically.

Learn more about SEO field) propelling us to (a key influencer in the field) propelling us to #1 for the search term “Brighton SEOAn acronym for 'search engine optimisation', the series of processes used to improve your ranking in search engines and drive more web traffic to your website organically.

Learn more about SEO 2011”. Now we met Matt at a conference and had chat. He followed us on Google+ and twitter, found our post and decided to write about it.

Posts that get ranked are linked to by many people

An early success was a post about a twitter heckled keynote speaker. I found a brief article about this at a time when Twitter was quite new. The now commonplace practise of using hash tags at conferences was only just beginning. I wrote about how important it is to know your stuff before talking a conferences because now there is are global reviews in realtime, and there is also a pack mentality in place here. Tweeters were giving him a really hard time and it was spreading like wildfire. The article quickly got picked up and was tweeted around the world, linked to by many subsequent articles on the subject and out traffic soared.

Posts that rank best are the first to be published on a potential hot topic.

When Google+ appeared, many of us were invited to trial the application. Remembering the success of our “Pimp your Facebook Profile” article we quickly uploaded a Photoshop template to “Pimp your Google+ Profile”. This went almost viral.

Posts that rank best answer questions often asked

Type “Where is the Hashtag on my Mac?” into Google and see who comes up! Need I say more? If there is something you need to look up frequently, or something you are finding it hard to find an answer to – write a post about it and make sure that the question you are asking is in the title and urlAn acronym for 'uniform resource locator'.

Learn more about URL of your post.

Posts that rank best are topical

What is everyone else talking about? Whatever it is you can be sure they are also searching for articles about it. Again being one of the first to post is important. Good places to find out what is hot are:

Google News

Try typing in your targeted keywords into Google news to find out the latest news about your niche. Try and put a different spin on what is happening.

Google+

I’ve been using Google Plus for some time now, and it’s is becoming my greatest source of information on what’s hot. I have circled all the key influencers and regularly check my influencers circle. I find out what Google is up to before the masses. A few days ago they rolled out a great new feature called “What’s Hot”. I love this feature; it gives me easy access to and the ability to share updates that are circulating widely in 'circles' outside my own. 'What's Hot' allows you to take a look at what the "community as a whole finds exciting".

Key influencers

Make a note of the key influencers in your niche. Start talking to them if you can. Write about what interests them and mention an link to them. You can use social media channels to connect with them and get their attention. Everybody has an EGO, pander to them and they are more likely to share your posts. Comment on any breaking news or editorials with your own opinions and don’t be afraid to be controversial. Always credit the source of any posts that you comment on or quote.

Posts that rank well include great images

Don’t skimp on your images. If you don’t know how to use Photoshop it’s about time you took some Photoshop Training! Images can make or break a blog post, make your images large, colourful or funny. Make sure you add your keywords in your image title, your filename, your alt-tags and your caption if possible.

About the Author

Silicon Beach Training is a training company based in the heart of the eclectic North Laines area of Brighton, only 5 minutes form the railway station. Providing Business and Management training, Photoshop Training and of course our legendary SEO training and Social Media courses.