Big Blog Academy

Keyword density and keyword stuffing has a very delicate demarkation line to differentiate between. SEO experts are in constant effort to increase the keyword density within safe limit as mentioned in Google webmaster guidelines, but still there exist some risk to cross the LOC and get penalized by monster Google. But there is always a safe strategy of using synonym keywords in the content to increase keyword density without falling trap in keyword stuffing and safely increasing content relevancy with the search terms.

What is synonym keyword for search?

For a long time Google use to search contents and decides relevancy of the content based on keyword stemming. It means that you can use keyword in phrase or individual but that should consist of a part of the primary keyword. For example if you type the keyword RUN, Google will return you with results of run, runs, running etc. Notice that the keyword has the term RUN.

The main disadvantage of this keyword stemming is that it is Google who sets this kind of algorithm for deciding the relevancy of th content for displaying them on search result. But about 75% of total net users does not know about how search engines work nor about their algorithm. So, you never know what the users would type to search the content related to your blog.
So, this problem must have to be sorted out to make the search more relevant not only in the eyes of Google but to the eyes of the end users.
This is where synonym comes into play.

Google has worked much and at last they succeed to implement synonyms in their search algorithm.

Consider this excerpt from the Google blog post on synonyms

Synonyms are the foundation of our query understanding work. This is one of the hardest problems we are solving at Google. Though sometimes obvious to humans, it is an unsolved problem in automatic language processing. As a user, I don’t want to think too much about what words I should use in my queries. Often I don’t even know what the right words are. This is where our synonyms system comes into action. Our synonyms system can do sophisticated query modifications, e.g., it knows that the word ‘Dr’ in the query [Dr Zhivago] stands for Doctor whereas in [Rodeo Dr] it means Drive. A user looking for [back bumper repair] gets results about rear bumper repair. For [Ramstein ab], we automatically look for Ramstein Air Base; for the query query [b&b ab] we search for Bed and Breakfasts in Alberta, Canada. We have developed this level of query understanding for almost one hundred different languages, which is what I am truly proud of.

How to gather idea about synonym keywords?

SEO minded people finds Google has really setup up synonym for their search algorithm in a very interesting method. Below is the screenshot taken by me on the following search – “~driving help” (I would like you to notice the synonym search displayed by Google for the term driving). First check out the pic and then read the explanation below.

In the above pic. you will notice that Google search result displays different alternative terms for search keyword driving. They are driving, drive,drivers, travel etc. This means Google search algorithm has been set to come more close to the keyword being searched by trying to understand the real intention of the user by displaying the results for the terms close to or related to or synonyms to the searched keyword. Even Google search result tries to help the user by providing the keyword suggestion at the bottom considering that user may be searching for something but s/he is not getting the proper keyword for that.

The advantage of usig synonym keyword or related terms in your content to increase keyword density is that it increases the chances to rank your content for the most related searches because you never know that what people are going to type while searching for the content related to your site and the best part is that you are always playing safe for getting trapped in the risk of crossing the LOC of keyword density into keyword stuffing for the repeated words.

Synonym keywords from SEO point of view.

SEO if broken into its simple existence will reveals its components as “RELEVANCE + IMPORTANCE”.

By the term relevance Google tends to establish relevancy of your site’s content with the search terms and if it finds your content as more relevant than others then it will display your contents on the top of search results. Now if you are trying to increasing the density of a specific keyword by repeating it several times then may be you are at risk of crossing safe limit and the other thing that is more possible is that you hardly get advantage of ranking for the search terms synonym or related to the keyword you have selected because you have not used it in your content.

When it comes to importance, then also using synonym has extra advantage. It helps others to get link to your site for those different terms present in their sites. Thus increasing your keyword’s and the site’s importance as well for the synonym keywords thus helping your blogs  to get at the top of SERP.

Since the rule of thumb about keyword density is that it should be somewhere between 3-7% on the page, it is always better to play on the safe side of increasing the keyword density avoiding keyword stuffing using synonym keywords and taking extra advantage for that.

Google friend connect as I told in my earlier blog post is a social promotion tool for blogs and website. This is one of the must have gadget that should be on your blog to promote it. Far more important is that you too should join your own friend connect account.

Why should you join your own friend connect gadget on your blog?

The common mistake that most bloggers use to do is that they think their job is over just by creating and attaching a Google friend connect gadget in proper place of their blog. Though this works but you are probably ignoring yourself as potential promoter of your own blog without joining your own Google friend connect.

The fact is that joining your own friend connect does not have any direct consequences of your blog promotion. On the contrary, it indirectly helps promoting your blog when you join other’s Google friend connect gadget.

Join your own Google friend connect

How blog promotion happens by joining own friend connect?

The Google friend connect has special feature of displaying the blogs or website that you have joined publicly. Your own blog promotion also plays in when you join your own blog. A large number of visitors always like to click your icon on friend connect gadget either to establish online friendship with you or to know what you are following. Now, if you are joining only other’s friend connect ignoring yours, then other visitors of those blogs only comes to know about theose other sites. But joining your own blog’s friend connect gadget will help you promoting your blog. When others visit your profile of friend connect, they will also get the link to your blog that they may take interest to visit and may like to join your friend connect and thus helps promoting your blog along with you.

So, it is better to take all the opportunity of promoting your own blog may it be your own Google friend connect tool.

SEO common mistakes are what lots of bloggers are found to make when it comes to adding image to their blogs.Some people avoid adding images to their blogs posts where it is really needed. But readers love to check the accompanying image graphics on the blog posts and they are much inclined to read and share. The image adds potential to the posts for attracting visitors and linking by them.

The common mistake made by Big Blog Academy blog?

This is the most common mistake, I too have made in most of the posts till now while writing posts for Big Blog Academy. My visitors may be searching through myposts for images that help them getting interest in my posts. But since last few posts I start experimenting with adding images to the posts and really gets surprised at the visitors performance on those pages. So, it works. Atleast adding image on blog post does not hurt. So, add image to each blog posts.

Images optimization for your blog.

WordPress has already most of the features integrated within to help you uploading media on the fly and do image optimization. The heavy and big size images should not be uploaded directly to blogposts as it makes your blog heavy and takes time more than expected to load which is bad for your blog. There are lots of Wp-plugins available for cropping and re-sizing images to fit nicely within the content either above or alongside. A little knowledge about photoshop helps you even more.

SEO optimization for images.

The SEO experts are very much concerned about every kind of optimization related to images. Adding images to your blog is only half the battle conquered. You should add alt tag to each image so that search engines can realize the image because search engines are image blind. The text within the images are not readable by search engines so the alt text for images helps the search engines to read the images and helps the post images to appear in the image search results thus the blog gets more exposure in front of potential image visitors to visit the blog.

Twitter is buzzword and the most favourite tool for the bloggers to promote their blogs and the blog visitors as well to get update with whats new in the blog. But how do you use twitter to promote your blog? Use TweetMeme button on your blog and avoid auto tweet plugins to tweet your blog posts.

Why should you tweet your blog?

This is a very interesting question often expected from new bloggers. As we all know that twitter has become such a favourite service among all other online social interactive media that mobile companies has now made this twitter service integrated with almost all internet compatible phones. Since people always love to send messages to their near and dear ones telling them about their choices, what they are doing etc. so this service gets popular as this application does not charges money for every message, the only thing you are paying for is internet service and that is too for unlimited twitter messages.

Tweet me

Thus people are getting more and more attach with twitter even when they are not in front of their PC. They use to share with their fellow friends what they are browsing online through twitter. So, if your are not tweeting your blog then its obvious that you are not getting in front of large section of people who are not using internet on PC to browse your blog and in fact you are also loosing another section of online PC user who may not get into your blog till some of their mobile twitter user has informed them about your website.

That is why it is not only my opinion but a general opinion that you should tweet each of your blog post.

How should you tweet your blog?

There are lots of wp-plugins available for tweeting your blog post. But I think that using auto tweet plugins for word press does nothing good to your blog. Auto tweet plugins posts new messages on your twitter account starting with “New Blog Post”. This lefts a bad impression to your twitter followers that you are not physically involved with what is going on there and hence they will leave your new tweets as it is without any interaction with the blog post. In this state, your twitter account appears useless. So, tweet your each post manually with proper intelligence. I will discuss about that in my coming blog post.

Retweet blog posts using TweetMeme WP-plugin.

Retweet me

Tweeting important posts of your blog is only half the battle won, it is better to permit others helping you to win this battle. The followers of your tweeter account comes to your blogpost using your tweet but it is very hard to expect them to retweet it manually everytime they find a new useful information on your blog. So, a retweet button on each of your blogpost will provoke them to retweet the post if they find it useful for themselves and others as well.  TweetMeme button WP- plugin helps a lot in this context. It also displays the number of tweets gathered by a blogpost.

installing TweetMeme plugin will not only adds a retweet button to every blogpost but also provide you the privilege to customize the position and some other features regarding it. The best part of TweetMeme wp-plugin is that it is integrated with Analytics which helps you to check the stat of the recent 5 posts.

So, each time you are posting a new article for your blog, give a little more time to tweet it manually on twitter and help others by putting retweet button on your post by installing TweetMeme plugins once.

Google friend connect adds a new dimension to this era of  getting social and branding with a single click on the web. With more and more penetration of Google in every possible field of social interactivity platform and products that we like to use in our daily life, we are getting more powerful tool to get connected with our fans and friends. Google friend connect is among “one such must be used tools”.

Google Friend Connect, a social tool from Google.

Now, if you are a blogger, then it is obvious that you would like to get your blog promoted round the sphere through www. As I have just discussed that Google is trying to penetrate itself up to the extreme where human online needs meets satisfaction, so it has a large range of social web products including Google friend connect, that a large section of online users are using throughout the web. Since Google has the best idea of bringing every online user to get socialize, so they use to provide many voluntary details about someone who joins your Google friend connect widget present on your blog.

How Google Friend Connect, helps you & your blog.

This is nothing but a nice effort to bring like-minded people together on the web, displaying their choices of what they like to read and interest in each other’s blog as well. Simplicity of with several facilities has made Google friend connect widget very popular. Since Google integrates many of all the information of a Google product user, so often someone who connects to your blog is promoting your blog through their own profile by showing their own interest in your blog by joining it. Hence when other people visit their profile can have easy access to your blog without your own promotion.

• Whenever someone likes your blog or website, they can get a quick option on your Google Friend Connect widget present on the site and can join your friend circle, just with a click on Join Now button.
• You can now a new friend in your friend widget whom you can send welcome message or any personal greetings or messages to establish your relationship in long run.
• You can click of icon of your friend and can see their own choices of blogs and websites they have joined. Thus you can get to know about the choice of your new friend and often have possibilities to get like-minded people here.
• Through their profile you can come to other new blogs and websites that match your niche, thus you can have a clear idea about what the world is thinking about the same niche that you too are interested about.
• Similarly would be the case when some of your friend joins the Google friend connect widget or other blogs or websites, then followers of that blog or website possibly click on your friends profile and get joined to your blog through your friend. Thus your blog find its new way to promote itself through out the web.

So, Google friend connect not only helps you tracking your own blog popularity but also helps you to meet the like-minded people and branding your own blog through your friend’s profile.

Alexa Ranking is the most buzzword among new webmasters, domain owners and cheap SEO masters and  for those who really mean to fool their customers / clients / novice students who are interested in learning SEO. I am sorry if this article would hurt your believe or sentiment or SEO masters personal ego, but what is truth will always truth.

Alexa Rank is often used to fool others.

First of all I would like to vote those webmasters and SEO experts who constantly advocate the fact that Alexa ranking has nothing to do with SEO. (Learn more about what are Alexa rank gnd Google page rank). All SEO expets know that Alexa never considers the actual unique data for ranking any website. Anyone can manipulate alexa ranking with little effort. I personally believe that if something can be manipulated easily, it can’t be a parameter set for success.

Alexa rank has nothing to do with SEO.

Alexa rank is only a measure of popularity of your site. But it is completely im-perfect in counting global online visitors. It is only biased to calculate the visitors from the browsers that have any of alexa product/ tools installed. Thus what you are getting a completely wrong perception about any website.

SEO is completely different thing and has nothing to do with Alexa ranking.Because SEO is about inducing quality, relevancy and getting at the top of all search result in any search engine resulting pages and getting the most awaited Google Page rank reward from Google itself.

So, when you are doing SEO, it is only Google page rank and your position in search engine resulting pages for certain keywords that measures your success of SEO and not Alexa rank. The most attractive thing that I like about Google page rank is that it is being measured by the number of quality links from other websites that point to your websites voting for your website as being trust-worthy and relevant.
Whereas Alexa ranking can be self manipulated in several ways that I am going to discuss in the last section of this article. So, its obvious that anything that can be self-manipulated by anyone can never be trust worthy parameter for SEO

Why everyone is running after Alexa ranking?  The Alexa ranking myth.

Not everyone is running after Alexa ranking. I am not saying that Alexa is completely wrong. But it is mere a measure of your site’s popularity only among  Alexa users. This is even not sure whether that Alexa ranking is being achieved by self manipulation of real measure of popularity among Alexa users.

It is quite obvious that a website with millions of visitor’s who are not using Alexa product will rank less in compare to a site with only few hundreds of visitors, most of whom are using Alexa product. So, whats you think about this type of result.

A genuine SEO expert never runs after alexa ranking. Some webmasters and advertisers use to fool their clients by showing their high alexa ranking, mostly manipulated and use to claim their site to be very popular and ranking well to get sponsors for the website. The sponsors fall easy trap in such ranking results as 90% of people hardly knows how easy it is to manipulate this ranking to make easy money.

Disclaimer: I never advocate the below mention manipulation ways of increasing Alexa ranking, so I have not illustrated any point in this post but it worth memtioning here to show you the ways that alexa ranking is easily manipulated. But those who are really interested in it, they don’t have to get frustrated as i am going to illustrate it in some other post.

Easy ways to increase your alexa ranking.

1. Install the alexa toolbar and frequently visit your site yourself.
2. Install alexa rank widget to get counted for every visit including who doesnot have alexa tool install in your browser.
3. Encourage others to install alexa toolbar and visit your website.
4. Install alexa toolbar in different IP of your office and access your site from all the IPs.
5. Asians are fond of Alexa, so posting your URL in Asian forums will help increasing your website alexa raanking.
6. Post your links in webmaster forum as most of them have alexa toolbars installed in your browser.
7. Pay cybercafe owners to install alexa tool and promoting your site visit.

There are lots of other ways most of which only gaurantees the increase of alexa ranking but has nothing to do with SEO nor indicates about the quality of your website. So, trying for increasing Alexa ranking is not a sin but if you are talking about SEO then don’t proof yourself as idiot SEO expert by talking to others about alexa rank in comparison to Google page rank.

Keyword research or selection is the only secret skill that can help you win the online existence. But, this is very unfortunate that this secret is not hidden and everyone is running after the same. Consequently when everyone is running after keywords, the competition for the keyword gets stiffer. But you can win this battle with little more intelligence.  Below I have mentioned the strategy that I follow for keyword selection.

I always avoid any keyword research software for keyword selection but I always use them whenever I have to do research for keyword. Now you may be getting puzzeled. Don’t worry, everything is being clearly mentioned here.

Disclaimer: I never claim to be the best keyword selector and all my keywords get 100% hits, but I often find my keyword works for 1st page of search result.

Why I avoid any keyword research tool?

The main reason of avoiding keyword research tool for selecting keywords is nothing but its popularity. To me, it appears that sometimes your strength is so much visible that it becomes your most appearing weakness. Whenever anybody starts searching the for how to do keyword research, then any search engine you consider gets flooded with various software tools available for keyword research. Though each and every software tool performs different way but I never rely on just click and pick method from their result, because it is obvious that what I am using is being used by lakhs or crores of blogger. So, what is special you are trying? its just something better than nothing.

Solution: Defenitely don’t avoid these keyword selection tools but try your own brain or take advice of SEO experts to select the best keyword for you.

So, How do I select key?

Its nothing special way, but a simple tricky way. I generally use to follow the below mentioned steps.

1. Never use any specific keyword tool except Google Adword Tool. But never just open Google tool and pick from it.
2. Analyse each and every synonyms available from keyword selection tool.
3. Take considerable to put each and every available keyword suggestion in Google Adword Tool.
4. Since I cares about AdSense, I use to analyse Advertiser Competition and Search Volume.
5. I try to select the medium advertiser competition competition with medium to high search volume depending upon the topic to write upon. But this is not the end.
6. Now selects few of them that I think will work out for me, now put each of them in the most wanted Google Search Engine.
7. Now I use to check out the medium competitive keywords in search results among them and start working on them.

May be you find this is the most non-sense way of selection but one thing I would like to say you that no software can take place of human brain and human instinct. You should agree that better ideas may emerge in seconds but it takes time to reach towards the best cumulative ideas to choose from.

But do stick to the ideas that work for you.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO we all know is almost a never-ending job and often many people are found to get overwhelmed by SEO. But it is never so hectic experience for those who have understand the basics of SEO step by step. Instead, when SEO being learned step by step increases curiosity and developes interest among the SEO learners to reach the next extreme and watch out the results.

How to avoid overwhelming from SEO?

To be perfectionist is ok, but to overlook situation demand is nothing but foolishness. Few of my SEO students are seems to be so perfectionist in nature that they demand each and every thing to be ok for SEO before publishing any changes made by them on their blogs. Apparently it seems to be a good habit, but I must admit, this is one of the worst reason that invites fatigue within your soul and gradually will kill your SEO spirit.

The reason being quite simple – human soul expects results from their achievement, but when you are struggling hard for long without result, your soul starts loosing hopes. Similarly, SEO is a long process of making changes and getting perfect after subsequent trail and error process. So the best way to keep your enthusiasm up is to keep on changing small factors concerning SEO and publish it to get results.

Don’t wait for publishing SEO changes.

As I have mentioned earlier that many new SEO learners have the tendency to publish changes once they have finished completely. This has two disadvantage.

1. You have to wait long for complete SEO before publishing and getting the results, thus you starts loosing your faith.
2. You are loosing the attraction of Google spiders. As we know that Google loves changes, hence if you starts publishing in small chunks then Google spiders starts getting new changes in your blog and thus you are providing reasons to the spiders for visiting to your blog more often, thus helps increasing your blog visibility to Google which is considered as the most important factor of SEO.

When to publish SEO changes?

If you are doing SEO, you should know that Google loves changes or something new on the web. So, every time you have made any little changes in your blog regarding SEO, do publish it and don’t wait till another new idea of SEO comes in your mind.

1. If you have made any changes in Blog title, publish it before waiting long for another changes to get completed.
2. While working upon keyword density, you have done up to certain level have to wait for some new idea about something else about SEO, just publish it before starts waiting.
3. Publish your blog if you have done any SEO changes in meta description, meta keyword tag or whole meta section and waiting for something else.

Though it is not wise to re-publish your every minute, but it does not have any bad impact known to me if you are doing so. It has a positive impact on your blog if you have .xml site-map present in your blog. This site-map notices the frequency of changes and inform it to Google spiders to crawl your page more frequently, which is positive for SEO.