SEO is simply optimizing your blog or article for search engines to easily find it and index it. If you write something, no matter how good it is, if no one finds it, sees it or reads it, it does you no good, other than you may have had a chance to brush up on your typing skills. You must write for your target audience and write something that people can find and get to. If you write something really good, you will want to promote it and others will want to share it.

So how do you SEO your Blog posts?

First start by writing whatever you want to write about. Just write about it and optimize it later. Get all your thoughts, ideas and tips out there first. Once you have the post down, now it’s time to go back and optimize the post.

If you wrote about finding a home in Northern Alabama and you have discussed some of the areas, the listings or the environment, now you need to title it appropriately. Do a search for “homes in Northern Alabama”. If there is less than 500,000 results with that, you’re good. If there is more, you may want to narrow it down a bit. “homes and real estate in Northern Alabama” and so forth. Then check out the Google Keywood Tool to see if anyone is actually searching for that. These are the two keys to finding the right lead and reader. If no one searches for it, don’t bother.

Once you have the title down, make sure you have used that title and keyword or phrase a couple times throughout the content and bold those phrases so they stand out not only to readers but to search engines.

Then you want to get the post out into the world. Take the extra step to promote it on social media. Make sure you have tweeted the link, posted it on your facebook page, posted in linkedin, on Google+ and others. There are hundreds of sites you could use but these are the top ones. If you have beautiful pictures you will want to post that as well on photo sites like Flickr and Pinterest.

Change up the posts

If you are writing about where to live on Whidbey Island in Washington state you may want to cover various places when tweeting or posting. You don’t have to post the same thing everywhere. Get creative and yes, this is going to take extra time. But it’s well worth it. An example would be: “Fishing, clam digging and oyster shucking all on the same beach? Check out ….. on Whidbey Island” and make sure you post the link to the article.

If you don’t get any hits, check back and repost in a couple weeks. You may have better luck posting at different times or the day or different days.

Use your imagination, get creative and take the extra time to write well and post proficiently. It’s the best way to SEO your blog posts.

John Pinto Landscaping has been helping folks in the Main Line of Pennsylvania, Wayne, Bryn Mawr, Gladwyne, Narberth, Villanova, Haverford, and Ardmore areas for years. He has helped hundreds of homeowners set up their landscaping for selling or redesign a new layout. Knowing what colors to use, the space to give for established growth and contrasting tips is what makes John’s business flourish. He knows the Pennsylvania area well but what about places that are not so lush and green?

Bill Wasowicz of Maricopa Arizona knows the challenges homeowners face when landscaping their home. He specializes in Maricopa short sales so he has seen the gamut of poor design, shotty workmanship and plain old lack of care. He must make at least the outside look presentable so that buyers will want to step foot inside. How do you do this without spending a forture and without the luxury of greenery?

Rocks – lots of rocks. Rocks can speak to the viewer by offering a variety of color, shape and texture. Setting stones along a path or interspersing cactus and native plants can add to the charm and desert style of the Arizona area. Take a look at some photos of Arizona homes and see how the outdoor staging affects the way your eye travels up to the front door. Getting buyers in the front door may be half the battle right there.

Other areas of the country that can benefit from rock gardens in a whole new light are Alaska homes. Although the feel is much different from Arizona, the styling can remains the same with the native landscape and local provisions. Large round boulders and massive logs give the Alaska Tundra feel paired with vivid green grass perfectly maintained and trimmed along walk ways. Many Anchorage homes and Fairbanks real estate feature forest backdrops and mountain canvasses. These are great medians to work with while setting up the front view of the home for MLS photos.

Your Landscape can make or break that first impression. Don’t let this great marketing opportunity pass you by. Make sure your landscape invites buyers in to see more. Once their in, you can focus on the interior staging.

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Here are 3 steps for optimizing your blog posts:

1. Write your post first then optimize it later. You want to be found for related searches and similar content as well so once it’s written determine the best keywords or phrases and add them naturally into your content. Remember to use your heading tags in the code to allow that phrase to jump out to Google and your readers. If it doesn’t read right people are not going to follow your thought process no matter how many keywords you have dispersed throughout. Make sure its legible, understandable and something that people would want to talk about, not just read about.

2. Be creative on your meta descriptions. While meta keywords (those on the back end of the site that you enter separately from the post) are not that important any longer, your description is very vital to optimizing a blog post or page. You want about 150 characters in your description before Google and other search engines start cutting you off so make sure you give your reader everything they need to know for clicking to read more in that short synopsis of your post or page. While some blog posts don’t allow you to type in a description separately, Google and others will take the first 150 characters from the beginning of the post, so make sure its a good one.

Example: TITLE: Kirkland Real Estate Market Report
DESCRIPTION: Check out the latest in Kirkland real estate market reports for 2012 first quarter for sales and medium prices.

3. Link related posts and pages within your article. You want your reader to stay on your blog or website as long as possible and by leaving breadcrumbs from one related post to another takes your reader on a journey to learn as much as they can about you, the content and the information. You don’t want so many links however that your blog plays like the start of a movie (so many trailers we forgot what we were here to see in the first place). Give your audience just enough to keep them going and make sure there is always a way to contact you for your business, service or help.  Don’t just give us a list of links at the end of the blog but link it within the content itself. Think of Wikipedia; they link related terms, keywords, landmarks and definitions all the time so at any time you are reading and want to know more you can click through to learn additional information on that topic. Write your blog posts this way.

Example: When you’re talking about buying Wenatchee real estate and you mention the word, “Wenatchee sellers”, you will want to link that to the sellers page. If you talk about something that you have a page on, make sure you link to that page.

Of course the title of your blog post is going to be HUGE!! That’s where it’s at. Once you have that title mastered, work on optimizing the entire blog post to live long after its scrolled off the proverbial page.
Source: http://activerain.com/blogsview/2673648/3-simple-tips-for-optimizing-your-blog-posts

Keywords don’t matter anymore in the meta data field.

Google is watching your titles and descriptions. You know your keywords. If you want to be found for them, put them in your title, in your description and in your content. That’s where it matters. Google is no longer looking for the keywords meta tags on your site to see what the post is about. They categorize your alt tags, titles and descriptions and if your content does not reflect those titles and descriptions it will quickly drop you from the SERPS.

So where do you add keywords?

Keywords should be in your title and description. If you don’t manually enter a description, Google will put one in from the first few words of your post or article but if you really want to be found, make sure you manually enter keywords and phrases in that description.

Keywords and phrases should also be in the content. If you’re writing an article about golf properties in Sedona you better mention that about 1-3% of the post. Meaning every 100 words should have that key phrase in the post and it should be in the title and description.  If you want people to find things to do in San Angelo Texas you should mention that several times in the post, title and description. But remember, don’t spam any of these locations. Your title should not be “Things to do in San Angelo, Best things to do in San Angelo Texas, San Angelo things to do”. This is spamming and people nor search engines like it.

Same with the descriptions. Your descriptions should not read like a list of keywords. If you want to talk about Kirkland real estate your title should read something like this: “Search through all the listings in the Kirkland real estate market and find buyers agents, mortgage information and more with Hallmark Realty”. You have not repeated anything but have gotten the idea across and also included several keywords.

So don’t bother entering your keywords in your meta data. Focus on your title, descrition and real content and you should start showing up in the SERPS

Get Found, Get Business, Get Personal SEO ~

We want to offer you a full list of options to choose from when designing, organizing, optimizing or writing for your site or blog. Whether you need just a little SEO Training, full website design, existing SEO marketing or any social media set ups Personal SEO would like to help be your business solutions provider. Feel free to email us for references and examples on content writing. Sales@PersonalSEO.com 425-344-0677

If you’re like me, you get lots of spam on your WordPress, blogger or other types of blogs. Many times even those re-captcha plug-ins don’t help but there are some that allow for firewall protection and such but what if you really want to leave a geniune comment? Is that done anymore? Sure, but many times the comment must be approved before it can be live. In that case if you want to be heard you have to be geniune.

Don’t run around the web pasting a general comment into every blog you can find. No one wants those and it helps nothing. You may not have time to read everything and everyone but you can learn quite a bit from blogs if you take the time to find a blog you’re interested in. Use Google to search for something you want to know about or even the industry you are currently in. When you find a blog that allows custom comments (meaning not dragged over from Facebook) then this is where you can really use your SEO noodle.

Most of the time you get a screen that looks like this:

When you have the option of filling in the boxes, don’t let an SEO opportunity go by. Sincerely read the article and if you don’t have time for full comprehension, read enough to leave an intelligent response or question even in regards to the topic. In the name box put your keyword or phrase. It works well if your a real estate agent and you can enter “Olympia WA Realtor” as the name. Then make sure you enter the URL you want attached to that keyphrase. In this case parksideaffiliates.net.

Now remember, this is a “no-follow” tag on most WordPress sites and other blogging sites but don’t let that discourage you too much. Google still sees it as a link and whether they follow it or not you can obtain a general back link from this comment. You can also leave a link in the comment IF APPROPRIATE. Don’t spam the comment box or your comment won’t be approved. If you’re commenting on someone’s blog about house-hunting in Alamogordo you can add a link in your comment to house-hunting in Tularosa as well. Most comment boxes will allow HTML code so this is how you would enter a link. BUT, if you’re too competitive and too closely related to the industry you are commenting on, you may not get that link back approved since you would be in fact, advertising on someone else’s blog.

So use your comment name wisely and don’t abuse it. You don’t want to be penalized or banned. Other names of industries could be: “Credit Card Machine Provider” or “Probate Realtor” or “Personal Book Publisher” or “Verde Valley home finder“. Find your keyword or phrase that would fit a name and link it to your URL in every comment you make.

Get Found, Get Business, Get Personal SEO ~

We want to offer you a full list of options to choose from when designing, organizing, optimizing or writing for your site or blog. Whether you need just a little SEO Training, full website design, existing SEO marketing or any social media set ups Personal SEO would like to help be your business solutions provider. Feel free to email us for references and examples on content writing. Sales@PersonalSEO.com 425-344-0677

Anchorage Alaska is truly an all-American city when you think about it. Hard-working Americans really loving where they are.  If you’re afraid you’ll spend the winter in the dark, be assured that even on the shortest day of the year, Anchorage enjoys nearly 5 ½ hours of sunlight. The Japanese currents and surrounding mountains temper the winter cold so that day time highs sometimes dip into the 20’s.

Although Anchorage is a young town, it is a very cosmopolitan community. There are great restaurants, and a variety of things to keep you busy. Anchorage is also family friendly. The Anchorage School District has two elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools as well as two elementary schools on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER).
Alaskans are welcoming folks. Life here is easy-going and friendly. Ready smiles and a willingness to lend a helping hand mark Anchorage living. If you are considering a move, Anchorage has it all!

The first step is applying for financing. This can be the easiest and the hardest first step in that you must speak to a lender and provide all your income and debts so they can determine how much home you really can afford. Once they have organized all your income, how much you currently have going out, they will give you a price range or maximum amount of home you can purchase. And remember, just because they give you a certain amount, doesn’t mean you must max that out. This is the most you can spend so try to find a home a little less than your maximum and you will be rewarded with a lower mortgage payment each month.

Buying a home in Anchorage

You will want the help of an Anchorage real estate agent to get you started. Going at this alone can only cause you undue pressure, frustration and probably more money spent than needed. Using a buyers agent is completely free for the buyer and they get paid only when you find the right house. Let them work through all the details of the contract and explain every step in detail so you are sure you understand documents you are signing and everything that comes along with owning a home.

Once you find a home you love, you will put in an offer. This can be negotiated until both parties are satisfied and then the home moves from “Active” to “Pending”. Once the home is pending, the deal moves onto the inspection. Don’t skip this part because this is probably the biggest investment you have and you want to know everything about it. Once the inspection is satisfied any other contingencies are competed and the transaction moves onto closing. After both the buyer and seller sign the closing documents, deeds are recorded and money is dispursed, the home is closed and you receive the key.

Buying a home in Anchorage Alaska is really fun and a great investment. If you’re moving to the area I invite you to check out the Reed Moore Group. They are experts in Anchorage real estate and would love to help you into your first Anchorage home.

Find out how to put Craiglist and Backpage to good use in terms of SEO

Back links are becoming just as king as content if not more. While having a plethora of information that someone would really want to know about on your site is ideal so is having other sites link to it. If you can’t get everyone you know to “like”, retweet, or link to your stuff you may just have to do it yourself. This is where Craigslist and Backpage come into play.

Using sites like this is smart because they are indexed quickly and often. What to put on them is the kicker. Where to put them is even more puzzling when you realize you are selling a service rather than a product. But whether you sell novelties or consulting services you can use Craigslist and Backpage for maximum SEO benefits.

Each of these sites have a services section. If you are selling real estate services and simply want to get the word about what you do out there then you would submit an ad under the services: real estate section. This is not a listing but your service, either as a buyers agent or a listing agent. If you specialize in one niche over the other make sure to mention it and put it in your title.

Titles are Key

You will be using these sites for more than just a back link though in that you want someone to actually find you as well. Make your title something that someone would actually search for. Perhaps you want to introduce people to Finding Ardmore real estate by school districts. This is specific enough that you will be found and yet will provide a link back to your original site for the actual search feature. Draw your reader in with the title so they will click on the link from the search engine page then make sure you have somewhere for them to go for more information.

Perhaps you want to offer a pricing search structure. You would create an ad with a title for your area like this: Search price ranges of homes in Battle Ground Washington.  This type of long-tail title search can provide you with top billing on the search engine results page.  Remember, people are getting specific in their searches. They want exact results so the more specific you make your title the better you are going to be found by that real lead.

What do you talk about?

Experience and why someone should choose you over anyone else. If you are an expert in a particular field, use that to your advantage. Say you are proficient at helping people buy homes near Eielson AFB in Alaska. Use this in your content several times and talk about how you help military families relocate, integrate into a new city and get set up right.  Perhaps you are a neighborhood or community expert; talk about the area like the back of your hand. Let your buyers know that you KNOW the area well and would be the best choice when it comes to buying a home with. If you know a particular community make your title reflect this with a title similar to: Homes and Properties in Coupeville Washington.

Maybe you will want to syndicate a particular article or blog from your site. You can do this as long as 40% of the content is different or you refer back to the original post with a link. This might be a financing article or event article like “Things to do in Enterprise Alabama“. You might offer the reader half the information then pull them over to your actual site for the rest of the article.

Whatever you talk about make sure you have links to your actual website in the mix. If you talk about buyers; like Clarksville home buyers, make sure it links back to your buyers page. If you specialize in a certain type of transactions make that known in the title and confirm it in the content. Example: Pullman WA Foreclosure or Financing Santa Fe Homes.

Use your titles, put your ad in the services section of Backpage and Craigslist and promote your links for optimal SEO results.

What Are H1 and H2 Tags? Defining and Using Proper Headings

There was quite a bit of talk on my last post, the rules for blogging, about H1 tags. It really deserves a post in itself. You may have heard of these, heck, may have even used them and just have no idea what they actually mean or why you are doing it. Other than making the text larger, which you could do in any html editor, it makes a huge difference on the SEO front.

When you see the term - H1 – or H1 through H6 in a tag, the H refers to “Heading”. Just like the heading of your paper in elementary school, this is the subject and, well, HEADING of your blog (or article or post or page, or whatever it is you are writing.) You are essentially pointing out the importance of a sentence, keyword or phrase. Google and other search engines, look for this tag when scanning your page to determine the subject and direction of the content.

Think of it as the basic outline for your content. It’s a great idea to repeat your blog title in the content and use the H1 tag at the beginning and end of the sentence. This shows the importance of the title (or subject) to the content. The search engine pulls out the sentence or words between the H1 tag as the whole topic of the content. It then classifies the content as such and your page now becomes more important to the search engines.

Other Heading Tags

The use of the other tags are like bullet points in an outline. H2 tags could be the subheading or targets you want to hit down through the content, just like I have used an H2 tag for the subheading “Other Heading Tags”. Then this paragraph discusses those “other” tags. From here if I wanted to emphasize a little less but still be more than just content I would use an H3 tag and so forth. All browsers recognize these tags so it doesn’t matter where you are working.

How to Incorporate Heading Tags

Depending on the platform you’re using, ActiveRain, WordPress or even a Word Document, you may have the ability to highlight a phrase and click a simple heading 1, 2, 3, etc.. from the edit menu. Other platforms may only allow these tags in code (html) such as ActiveRain. In this case you must first SAVE your draft (click publish in draft mode) and then go back in to edit and then click the green HTML tab at the top of the edit box. If you try and click while you are in the WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) mode you will lose your work. That’s why it tells you they are not compatible. (Maybe one day AR will change this).

Once you are in code mode, find the sentence or phrase you want to add a heading to. At the beginning of the phrase type in this code <h1> and at the end of your phrase type this code </h1> .The / will close the section so don’t forget to add that at the end. This will work with any number heading you want.

Once you have entered in all the heading tags you want, SAVE again in draft. (Remember, don’t go back to the WYSIWYG tab because you will lose your work again) Save it and then if you want to edit it again, go back into the edit mode and switch the tab at this point. AR gives you a small box to work in now so if you want the bigger edit box, go back to SAVE and back to edit. Kind of redundant I know but this is the only way so far.

Some other tips to using headings

• Don’t have all your headings too close together. Remember, you’re laying out your post like an outline so make the headings far enough part with the text in the middle.
• It helps to have your keywords in the headings when you can.
• Make sure your keywords are in the post title, the H1 tag, and in any alt tag (picture descriptions) for maximum SEO effect.
• It doesn’t matter if they are capitalized or not

So, do you have to do this H1 business with every blog post ever written? No. But if you want to be found, want to show up on search engines more, we better play by their rules. Blog on!

Here are some examples of Heading tags on websites:

Fairbanks Real Estate

Davis Bacon Prevailing Wages

Anchorage Homes

Post originates at http://actvra.in/nYl

While SEO changes about every 5 minutes it seems there are some things that will never go out of style. How popular your website is or a particular page is going to make all the difference in the world because any search engine is going to rank it well if it’s popular. That’s the whole idea. If a site it not popular, forget it.

But how to do you make that page or site popular? These are the things that vary from year to year or even month to month in the SEO world. Back links matter. A LOT. A good quality back link pointing to a site can be worth a hundred insignificant links. Those back links that matter the most are from .edu or .gov sites but if you can’t get them, just having others link to you can help. You want to get your site out there as an authority on your subject so others come to you for that information then share it with their sphere of influence. This travels and the more exposure something gets, the higher it will rank.

But getting that first piece of information out there in the first place can be the hard part. The plan is to title your blog or page with what someone may actually search for. Whether it’s “finding a home near McChord AFB” or “Things to do in Walla Walla“, if you write about it, people will come. And they will continue to come and find you the more you write about AND TITLE these important nuggets of information.

Questions are a big eye catcher and search engine target. People are typing questions into search engines all the time and if you are there to answer their question then just by them finding and reading your article, you will become more important online. But is the goal just to be found? Probably not. You want business too. It doesn’t matter one hoot if you get the world to come read your information, if it’s not putting a penny in your pocket what good is it? This is where you need a call to action. So what if they read about “the Goldendale Observatory State Park“? If you’re a real estate professional and they find this local information on your site, they may remember they have a friend that just mentioned selling their home in Goldendale and this looks like a pretty good brokerage that knows the area well. They may pass on your information. Or perhaps the person themselves is looking for more information on the area they are moving to and now you have just presented yourself a knowledgeable person that knows the area. What a great agent to find them a new home!

But answering someone’s question can really open the door for more. If your pages that are titled the answer to their question, they may click further into your website so long as you have means to do so. If your reader comes to the page they found on the search engine and there is nothing further for them to do, they are likely to click away. But if you have links such as “more information” or a menu with different tools, subjects and topics, they may find themselves browsing around your site for some time. This all means more on the SEO front. The longer someone stays on your site, the better. They are reading, learning and in the end hopefully coming to you for more answers. So make that page title “Housing Market in Gallatin County” an open door to browse listings, get approved for financing and contact you to be their agent.

Get specific with your titles. You may never rank #1 for Montana Real Estate but you certainly can get in the top 5 for a detailed title such as “Land and Acreage for sale in Bozeman Montana“. This is specific enough to get some attention and when someone is really searching for that, it’s typically a guaranteed lead.

So choose your titles carefully. The SEO title can be different than the post title often times so carefully plan out what you want to be found for and make that your SEO title. Answer a question, give a response and get that lead!