SEO Archives | Bourn Creative

A WordPress Blog Is A Filing Cabinet For Your Website

March 28, 2016 Jennifer Bourn

I’m guilty of it. Almost every blogger I know is guilty of it —, well, at least the bloggers who have been blogging for years. It’s a problem we caused that has haunted us for the life of our blog and now is either a huge task we know we need to tackle, or a huge task we’re just going to ignore and push to the side.

Category and Tag Abuse

WordPress category and tag abuse is a real struggle. It’s how this blog at one point, ballooned to more than 30 categories and 800 tags that I then had to clean up.

Now you may be thinking, “So what? What’s the big deal”

The big deal is that not only does category and tag abuse split and fracture your content, it creates a poor experience for your website visitors, making it harder to find similar or related content about the topic they are interested in on your website.

Categories and Tags Used As Keywords

The problem of category and tag abuse stems from the belief that categories and tags are similar to keywords, and that when assigned a category or tag to a blog post, it is the same as assigning a keyword to the post. This action is further perpetuated by the belief that assigning a post to a specific category or tag like a keyword somehow will help their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

Mobilegeddon Is Here! But Should You Even Care?

April 22, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

In November Google started warning website owners about the importance of sites being mobile-friendly. We saw this example in mobile search results with the label “mobile-friendly” added to search engines results page listings.

Then in February they made it official, stating that as of April 21, 2015 (TODAY), a new algorithm change will go into effect, meaning that whether a site is mobile-friendly or not will affect on your mobile search rankings.

Back in March I wrote a post on our blog — Google Drew A Line In The Sand: Your Site Better Be Responsive (Mobile-Friendly) — that details the announcements, shows you examples and screenshots, and provides more details about responsive design and mobile-friendly site design.

Mobilegeddon is fear-mongering at its worst.

Marketers and less experienced web designers and developers have been putting the fear of Google into website owners over the last 4-6 weeks, with scary warnings and threats… and some serious misinformation. What makes my stomach turn though, is those who are cheering for the change solely because it’s a way to scare/persuade past clients to hire them again to redesign their site and rework the code.

Let’s look at the reality of this algorithm change and what it means for you.

Google Drew A Line In The Sand: Your Site Better Be Responsive (Mobile-Friendly)

March 18, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

The gauntlet has been thrown. On February 26, 2015, Google affirmed their position on the importance of mobile-friendliness and it’s affect on your mobile search rankings.

Google originally warned us of this change back in November in the post Helping users find mobile-friendly pages, on their Webmaster Central Blog.

In the post, they point out how terrible the experience is when visiting a non-mobile site on a mobile device and you have to pinch and zoom and scroll sideways to see the all of the content, or you can’t click any of the tiny links or menu items with your gigantic fingers.

We began to see hints of this coming back in November 2014, when mobile search results began displaying a “mobile-friendly” label in their search results — and we saw it displayed on our own listed in mobile search results.

How to Optimize Blog Posts For Maximum Results And Visibility

August 28, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Every time I speak to a group or organization at about blogging for business, I share the same simple, but often eye-opening statements:

Every time a new blog post is published, a new searchable URL is added to your website
Publishing a new blog post just once each week for a year, will add 52 new searchable URLs to your website
That action creates 52 new ways people can find you online — that’s 52 new chances you have to appear in the search engines results when someone is looking for what you do

If audience members were skeptical about blogging before, they usually then agree that it’s worth their time to take a second look about how blogging for business could help grow their business.

The Problem With Blogging For Business

I speak to a lot of people who think blogging for business is a waste of time, ether because they tried it and it didn’t work, or someone else told them that they tried it and it didn’t work.

Why Keywords Still Matter In SEO

August 8, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

You may have heard that while the keyword meta tag used to be super effective and highly regarded, nowadays pretty much all search engines don’t even give the keyword meta tag another thought! A lot of websites, even some top authority sites don’t even bother to use the meta keywords tag anymore for this exact reason.

But why did it come to this? Why has the keyword meta tag lost its luster?

Because of keyword abuse (also known as keyword spam). Website owners were stuffing keywords into this meta tag like crazy, sometimes even repeating the same ones over and over, thinking that it would make the page more relevant for that specific keyword.

Many sites even stuffed keywords into the web page keyword meta tag that didn’t have anything to do with the actual page content. It got out of control and soon the keyword meta tag was no longer a viable way to assess what a web page or blog post was really about.

Writing an Effective Meta Description

July 11, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Believe it or not, now you almost have all the basics of natural, organic search engine optimization at your fingertips! I’ve covered how to optimize content, optimize images, and optimize links. We’ve explained what HTML page titles and meta descriptions are, and how to use page titles for SEO — and today, I’m covering how to use meta descriptions for SEO.

Writing a simple, effective, compelling meta description is no harder than writing a simple, compelling, effective sentence or call to action. In fact, your meta description, at the most basic level, is a just short summary of what your web page or blog post is about.

Like your HTML page title, your meta description is very important in attracting new visitors to your website from organic search. Often, but not always, the description shown by the search engines for your web page or blog post is the HTML meta description you write.

What Is An HTML Page Title And Meta Description?

July 8, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Now that you know how to optimize your content, optimize images, and optimize links, it’s time to tackle your HTML page titles and HTML meta descriptions — two often forgotten, but powerful tools for optimizing your web pages and blog posts.

To get started, let’s take a look at what a page title and meta description look like in HTML:

Writing an Effective HTML Page Title

July 3, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Yesterday I shared with you the importance of your page titles and meta descriptions and showed you some of the ways they are used. Today we’re going to focus on page titles and get into the nitty-gritty that makes them so powerful.

Creating powerful, client-attracting titles for each of your pages and posts is a low effort, high-impact search engine optimization strategy — as long as you use them the right way — and not a spammy way.

How to Optimize Links For Improved SEO

June 25, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

I know there are a lot of different strategies that go into optimizing websites and I love all the little details and opportunities to optimize the content we work so hard to produce.

So far, I’ve shared how to optimize content and how to optimize your images, and today I am going to share with you how to optimize your links.

Optimizing website links is probably one of the simplest strategies you can implement because, there aren’t a lot of options!

I’ll bet you didn’t realize that when it comes to optimizing links on your website for search engines, you’re actually doing your website visitors a favor too.

You see, people and search engine bots move through the internet in the same way, through links. So, by optimizing links, you are creating links that are more descriptive and helpful to your visitors, and more descriptive and helpful for the search engines.

How to Optimize Images For SEO

June 20, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

In my last post, I shared what you should and should not do when it comes to optimizing website content. Today let’s focus on how to optimize website images and photos — it’s actually pretty simple.

At Bourn Creative, we highly recommend that you leverage every free and simple way to boost your website’s SEO and the chances your website has to show up in the search engine page listings when someone is searching for your target keywords and key phrases. One part of that is learning to optimize images for web.

Look at these two images — while they look exactly the same, only one of the images is optimized for search engine optimization.

How to Optimize Website Content For Search Engines And People

June 18, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

I know SEO can be overwhelming and I know it feels like A LOT of work — because it is. But, when you take time to understand individual elements and strategies, one at a time, it does get easier!

When talking about organic search engine optimization, I always start with optimizing your on page content because it’s the easiest and most natural thing to do. It’s as simple as formatting your content like you would in a word processing program — as long as you follow the best practices.

What You SHOULD Do When Optimizing Your Content for SEO:

First, you need to make sure your headlines and sub headlines are written clearly, and use your focus keywords naturally and in a normal context that makes sense. Be sure not to force it.

Second, use H tags or Heading tags in your content to mark which parts of your content are headlines and sub headlines. The H tags tell search robots that the content is more important than the body copy or paragraph copy — and provide visual cues to readers and scanners.

What Is Organic Search Engine Optimization / SEO

June 13, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

The goal of pretty much every website owner I know is to be ranked number one on Google for their preferred keywords and key phrases — but to someday, possibly claim that number one spot, you’ve got a lot of work to do. You’ve got to maintain the site, update it with new, valuable, and relevant content, market the site, and optimize it.

There are three basic components to a well-optimized website:

Search engine friendly, user friendly, smart design
Compelling content that gets visitors to take action
Optimization to maximize your website’s effectiveness

At Bourn Creative, we’ve got you covered with drool-worthy search engine friendly design, and hopefully our blog has helped and provided resources to create compelling content. Now it’s time to optimize your website and all the content in it.

Why Broken Links Are Bad For Business

December 12, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Many business owners love WordPress because it puts them in total control of their website and allows them to make changes at any time without needing to hire a professional. But what they don’t realize is that some of the changes they are making are actually hurting the reputation and damaging the integrity of their website, and in turn, their brand.

The changes causing the biggest problems all have to do with deleting or renaming web pages and blog posts. When a website owner deletes a page or post, or changes the URL of a page or post that has already been indexed by search engines, linked to in social media, or bookmarked by users, a broken link is left in its place — and broken links make the website owner look bad in more ways that one!

6 Ways You Can Use Internal Website Links for SEO

November 12, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

As I mentioned in the post How to understand inbound, outbound, and internal website links, internal links are links from one page or post to another page or post on your website. Internal links direct users from blog posts to website pages, pages to posts, new posts to old posts, etc. on the same website URL.

Internal links are important to the success and integrity of your website or blog because they give your visitors and the search engines more ways to move (click) through your website and access the content they are looking for. But the value of internal links goes beyond ease of website navigation. They can help the search engines and users attribute specific keywords with specific pages, increasing the chances of it being ranked well in the search engines results page (SERP) listings.

Once you understand the importance links have, you need to understand the different ways you can leverage good internal links to enhance your visitors’ browsing experience and potentially boost your site search engine page rank or the number of pages indexed on your site.

Here are 6 simple strategies for successful and effective internal link building:

10 Ideas To Build Quality Inbound Links and Increase Website Traffic

November 8, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Search engines look for two criteria when evaluating your website links and determining your website ranking: quantity and quality. That means both the number and the relevance of your links are crucial for getting your website found faster by search engines, and by potential clients. The number of links to, from, and within your website come from three areas:

Inbound links: links to your website from external sources
Outbound links: links to other sites from your website
Internal links: links between individual pages on your own website

But just having a lot of links isn’t all you need to consider. The quality of your links is also important. While your goal is to build a good mix of inbound, outbound, and internal links, those links have to be relevant to your content, business, industry, and audience — and you can’t forget that the basic, naturally occurring links are extremely powerful too.

Genesis SEO Settings Guide

March 13, 2013 Brian Bourn

At Bourn Creative, we build our custom designed WordPress websites exclusively on the Genesis Framework by StudioPress. The reasons behind our choice to develop our custom themes on the Genesis Framework are numerous, but a few we often highlight are that the Genesis Framework is very flexible/customizable, coded extremely well, and has been built with SEO as a priority (SEO — the art and science of being found online through organic search).

After all, a beautifully designed website means nothing if consumers and search engines can’t find you.

Genesis already has most SEO requirements built into the framework. As a result, a separate WordPress SEO plugin isn’t necessary, which means one less plugin to manage, and keep updated.

Adding Google Authorship To Your WordPress Site

March 1, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Facial recognition is a powerful marketing tool and authors, business owners, and bloggers alike are taking advantage of it. When searching Google, you have more than likely noticed that photos are now appearing next to some of the listed search results on the search engine results pages — and you may have even been influenced by those photos when deciding which link to click.

Getting YOUR Photo to Show Up

Adding your photo to Google’s search results can easily be accomplished in a few different ways with a WordPress site. In fact, the process is nearly identical using three of our favorite WordPress tools:

Dangers Ahead! Common Pitfalls of Website Creation And What to Do About It

June 8, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

A website is a basic requirement of business. And the process of creating your website is one of the most important steps you will take in starting or rejuvenating your business, second only to establishing your brand. And yet, in spite of its importance, the path of website creation is often prey to folly.

In fact, when beginning to craft the website that they hope will make their businesses stand out, many otherwise savvy business owners often fall victim to common misconceptions, dangerous shortcuts, and poor guidance. Well, you may be asking, how can we go about this important process in the right way, then? The key is to identify those potential pitfalls — and to grasp what your small business website should really be about — before you begin.

11 Ways to Optimize Blog Posts And Get More Website Traffic

September 26, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Even the most seasoned bloggers can forget an important step when publishing a new blog post, and forgetting a step usually means a lost opportunity to optimize your post for the search engines, to get found by your ideal clients online, and to attract new readers to your website.

Use this optimization checklist each time you publish a new post to ensure that it is ready to attract visitors, and optimized to improve your search engine rankings.

Select a single keyword or key phrase to focus on for your blog post.

To increase the effectiveness of your post and the probability it will gain traction in the search engines, focus on one main keyword or key phrase that you want your post to rank for.

Read More

5 Ways Search Engine Optimization Can Help Your Small Business

November 18, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

If you have a website, then you’ve heard about search engine optimization (SEO). But you may also be wondering how it can help your business. Search engine optimization is important to your online business success, and when done right, SEO can have a big impact on your website traffic and sales conversions.

Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t understand how search engine optimization can help their business and as a result, they don’t invest in it — with their time or their money. Here are some of the basic benefits investing in search engine optimization can create for your business:

Google Success? Maybe Not! Be Careful When You Brag…

August 18, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

You know those people, the ones that never miss an opportunity to tell you that they rank number one on Google for all of the keywords relating to their business. I have a friend who is one of these Google Braggers and he uses this line to woo new clients who don’t know any better… Ah the illustrious promise of the Google Promise Land.

Here’s the problem with that. Those statements 99.9% of the time are FALSE!

Here’s the even bigger problem: the people claiming to have reached this state of Google Nirvana with their site ranking number one for every keyword, usually have no idea that they are making false claims because they don’t understand search engine optimization (seo) and rankings.

Take for example a local Sacramento company that makes this claim often. After about the fifth time I’ve seen them make this claim both in person and on Facebook, I decided to check it out. I cleared my browser history, I cleared my cache, I logged out of Google and I searched. Yes, they ranked number one for their business name and the two owners’ names — which should be the case, after all, it is their business name (duh). Then I searched for them under the top seven keywords and key phrases I could think of that would fit their business and they didn’t even crack the top three pages. For several keywords, they didn’t even crack the top ten pages.

Here’s what you need to know: Your search results are relative.

Actual Proof That Blogging is Great For Business

February 1, 2010 Brian Bourn

When we build websites for our clients, we almost always recommend a custom designed WordPress site with an integrated blog. In fact, part of our intake process with new clients includes explaining the value of blogging for business and how it can help them increase website traffic and attract new clients. You can learn more in the article 6 Reasons Why WordPress is Perfect for Small Business.

Relevant, targeted, and fresh content is what search engines like Google want, and high rankings within the search engine results are what every website owner wants.

So how do you feed the search engines regularly updated, focused content and increase your website rankings?

The answer is blogging. The main pages of your site tend be more generalized and provide an overview about you or your company, your products and services, or your programs. A blog however, allows you to focus content on specific topics that your audience wants to know about. And, guess what? The search engines reward you for your efforts.

Search Engine Seduction: Give Them What They Want and You’ll Get Better Rankings

January 15, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

Your number one goal online is to be found more often by the consumers who want and need what you have to offer. To be found, the search robots, spiders, or crawlers need to index your website. The search bots are scanning your HTML for content, links, images, headlines, meta tags, and more. They will then combine the information they find to determine your search engine page rankings.

To have your site crawled by search robots, they need a reason to visit your website and index your web pages. The number one way to get your site indexed by the search engines is to update the content frequently and consistently. You need to be kind to the search engines by giving them what they want — fresh content, clean coding, and user friendly design.

A WordPress Blog Is A Filing Cabinet For Your Website

Category and Tag Abuse

Categories and Tags Used As Keywords

Mobilegeddon Is Here! But Should You Even Care?

Mobilegeddon is fear-mongering at its worst.

Google Drew A Line In The Sand: Your Site Better Be Responsive (Mobile-Friendly)

How to Optimize Blog Posts For Maximum Results And Visibility

The Problem With Blogging For Business

Why Keywords Still Matter In SEO

Writing an Effective Meta Description

What Is An HTML Page Title And Meta Description?

Writing an Effective HTML Page Title

How to Optimize Links For Improved SEO

Optimizing website links is probably one of the simplest strategies you can implement because, there aren’t a lot of options!

How to Optimize Images For SEO

How to Optimize Website Content For Search Engines And People

What You SHOULD Do When Optimizing Your Content for SEO:

What Is Organic Search Engine Optimization / SEO

Why Broken Links Are Bad For Business

6 Ways You Can Use Internal Website Links for SEO

10 Ideas To Build Quality Inbound Links and Increase Website Traffic

Genesis SEO Settings Guide

Adding Google Authorship To Your WordPress Site

Getting YOUR Photo to Show Up

Dangers Ahead! Common Pitfalls of Website Creation And What to Do About It

11 Ways to Optimize Blog Posts And Get More Website Traffic

Select a single keyword or key phrase to focus on for your blog post.

To increase the effectiveness of your post and the probability it will gain traction in the search engines, focus on one main keyword or key phrase that you want your post to rank for.

Read More

5 Ways Search Engine Optimization Can Help Your Small Business

Google Success? Maybe Not! Be Careful When You Brag…

Here’s what you need to know: Your search results are relative.

Actual Proof That Blogging is Great For Business

Search Engine Seduction: Give Them What They Want and You’ll Get Better Rankings

Discover What We Can Do For You

Have a project you think we'll like? Click the button below and tell us about it.

Category and Tag Abuse

Categories and Tags Used As Keywords

Mobilegeddon is fear-mongering at its worst.

The Problem With Blogging For Business

Optimizing website links is probably one of the simplest strategies you can implement because, there aren’t a lot of options!

What You SHOULD Do When Optimizing Your Content for SEO:

Getting YOUR Photo to Show Up

Select a single keyword or key phrase to focus on for your blog post. To increase the effectiveness of your post and the probability it will gain traction in the search engines, focus on one main keyword or key phrase that you want your post to rank for. Read More

Here’s what you need to know: Your search results are relative.

Discover What We Can Do For You

Have a project you think we'll like? Click the button below and tell us about it.

Select a single keyword or key phrase to focus on for your blog post.

To increase the effectiveness of your post and the probability it will gain traction in the search engines, focus on one main keyword or key phrase that you want your post to rank for.

Read More