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WordPress Blog Is A Filing Cabinet For Your WebsiteRead A WordPress Blog Is A Filing Cabinet For Your Website
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A WordPress Blog Is A Filing Cabinet For Your Website

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.

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

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.

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SEO TipsRead How to Optimize Blog Posts For Maximum Results And Visibility
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How to Optimize Blog Posts For Maximum Results And Visibility

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.

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Why Keywords Still Matter in SEORead Why Keywords Still Matter In SEO
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Why Keywords Still Matter In SEO

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.

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Writing A Good Meta DescriptionRead Writing an Effective Meta Description
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Writing an Effective Meta Description

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.

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Writing An Effective HTML Page TitleRead Writing an Effective HTML Page Title
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Writing an Effective HTML Page Title

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.

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Get Found More Often OnlineRead How to Optimize Links For Improved SEO
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How to Optimize Links For Improved SEO

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.

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Search Engine Optimization TipsRead How to Optimize Images For SEO
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How to Optimize Images For SEO

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.

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Small Business SEO TipsRead How to Optimize Website Content For Search Engines And People
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How to Optimize Website Content For Search Engines And People

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.

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Organic Search Engine OptimizationRead What Is Organic Search Engine Optimization / SEO
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What Is Organic Search Engine Optimization / SEO

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.

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Ideas To Build Inbound LinksRead 10 Ideas To Build Quality Inbound Links and Increase Website Traffic
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10 Ideas To Build Quality Inbound Links and Increase Website Traffic

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:

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.

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SEO Strategies For Blog PostsRead 11 Ways to Optimize Blog Posts And Get More Website Traffic
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11 Ways to Optimize Blog Posts And Get More Website Traffic

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.

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SEO For Small BusinessRead 5 Ways Search Engine Optimization Can Help Your Small Business
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5 Ways Search Engine Optimization Can Help Your Small Business

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:

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

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.

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Proof Blogging is Good For BusinessRead Actual Proof That Blogging is Great For Business
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Actual Proof That Blogging is Great For Business

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.

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

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.

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Two Parts Of SEORead Search Engine Optimization: The Two Most Important Things Your Website Needs
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Search Engine Optimization: The Two Most Important Things Your Website Needs

Jennifer Bourn

We can talk search engine optimization strategies and organic search engine optimization techniques all day, but one thing will always remain the same. The two most important things to help you get found more often online and stand out from the rest of the sites in your niche are, in this order: Good content and Good design.

Good content that is user focused, information rich and valuable is the most important part of your website. Good content that is updated regularly is even more important. The search engines first and foremost want to see that you are providing information of value on a regular basis.

Consistently adding new content to your website shows the search engines that your site deserves to show up in the results because people need access to your newly updated content.

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WordPress Blog StrategyRead Blogging for Business: 3 Reasons Your Small Business Needs a Blog
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Blogging for Business: 3 Reasons Your Small Business Needs a Blog

Jennifer Bourn

Do you have a gorgeous website that has a fantastic and beautiful design? If you hired a talented web designer, I am sure you do. And, I am sure you are really proud of your website. If you didn’t hire a professional, you should check out my post 10 Reasons Your Business Website Stinks and How You Can Fix It.

Here’s the problem. Your website needs to be a whole lot more than just pretty and attractive. It needs to be a 24 hour a day lead generating machine that makes your life easier and helps your increase your profits.

Don’t get me wrong, high quality design is very important to your branding, image, credibility and professionalism, as well as the flow of information in your website. But, you website needs much more than high quality web design.

Your website needs to be planned strategically to help you achieve your goals and objectives. It needs to accelerate your progress toward achieving your big vision. But how do you do that? There are several ways you can build a more functional website that gets results, such as:

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