SEO

Free Social Networking Icons – My Top 15 Picks!

April 28, 2011 4 Comments

There are SOOOO many sets of Social Networking Icons out there, so I thought I would make it easy on you, and put together my top picks! Enjoy :)

1. Blog Social Buttons by August Empress

2. Free Social Media Icon Set: Pink Strip by Webstuffshare

3. Elegant Themes Social Media Icon Set

4. ColorStroked_Free Hand Icon Set

5. Wooden Badges Icon Set by Dawghouse Design Studio

6. Bookmarking Icon Set Vectors by Elmastudio

7. Free Cloud Icons

8. 8 Free Cute & Simple Twitter Bird Vector Graphics

9. Old Bottle Crowns Social Media Icon Set by Dawghouse Design Studio

10. Stitch Style Social Media Icons

11. Heart v2 Free Social Icon Set by The Design Superhero

12. Woven Fabric Social Media Icon Set by Dawghouse Design Studio

13. 108 Free Matte White Square Social Networking Icons by Webtreats

14. Vintage Stamp Social Media Icon Set by Dawghouse Design Studios

15. Glossy Waxed Wood Social Networking Icons by Webtreats

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Commercial Use, Design Tips, Free for Commercial Use, Free for Personal Use, Freebies, Links, Linky Love, SEO, Social Media Buttons, Social Networking Tagged With: Facebook, Flickr, Free Social Networking Icons, Mail, RSS, Twitter

Get Yourself Out There!

October 22, 2010 2 Comments

This is a pretty obvious topic for SEO, but I had to touch on it and maybe I can point out a thing or 2 that can help. When I do designs for people, I get asked SO often, “How do I get people to see my blog?”. Well, that is the question, how do we get people to see our blogs, and not just anyone, how do we get relevant, interested readers? Below is a list of some ideas to get you started (no specific order).

Advertise
Advertising is the FASTEST way to get your name out there. Obvious I know, but it really can pay off! Make sure that if you are looking into advertising, that you really do your homework though. There are so many options out there, and blogs out there. How do you pick one that will benefit your blog the most?

First, make sure that the readers of the blog or website that you want to advertise on, are the readers that you are looking for.

Second, check or ask for the blog or website’s statistics. Make sure that they get enough traffic to send you traffic. Important: When you are looking at statistics, look at how many unique visitors that they receive daily, don’t let them only give you the number of impressions that they receive each day. The difference is that “impressions” stand for the number of times that the blog or site is seen (1 person could “see” the website 20 times, by clicking from post to post, or even a simple refresh of the page). “Unique Visitors” stands for the number of individual people visit that site per day.

If you are flat out broke…. like me :) Don’t stress, there are plenty of other ways to get out there, but advertising is hands down the fastest, easiest way to do it.

Make Friends
Reach out to the people that you think would find your blog interesting. If your blog is about sewing, try to reach out to every sewer, crafter and person that you think would benefit from reading your blog. Here is a quick list of places and things you can do to reach out to potential readers:

Blogs – Find authors of other blogs that are similar to yours, read them, comment on them. I am not saying, go out and try to steal other peoples readers, make relationships with other bloggers that may find your blog interesting, but genuinely do it. I don’t know about you, but it really bugs me when people just leave me a comment and throw their link in there, just to attempt to boost their rank in a search engine. So don’t just superficially comment and buddy up to people (that is just annoying and a waste of your time), find people that you really like, and really read their blogs. More times than not, if you develop relationships with others, it is a you pat me on the back, and I will pat you on the back.
Forums – Forums are awesome! Find forums on your topic, they are a fabulous way to meet people that share common interests. If you are an “expert” in your topic, forums are a perfect place for you to answer other peoples questions and send them to your blog.
Social Networking – Facebook, Twitter, Blog Frog, Bloglovin’ and on and on. These can make or break your blog, this is another way to get on a more personal level with your readers (notice a theme – develop relationships)
Craiglist.org – This one, works for some and not for others. If you ofter a local service (photography, etc), then YES, it is a must. Craigslist also has discussion forums, community listings, and more.
Directories – I couldn’t even begin to list all of the directories out there (http://www.blogguidebook.com/ , http://www.themomblogs.com/ , etc… I will have to put together a list some time for you)
Email Signatures – This one is easy to not even think about. Make sure that your link is on ALL your emails, you never know what relative (or anyone) that will be curious and click on it, and if you are lucky, pass it along.
More – I am sure you can find more. Google your topic, dig deep, find out where your readers are and contact them.

Get to Know Your Readers
When you do start getting readers (assuming that you are just starting out), keep them! How? If they comment, comment back. If they follow, follow back. If they email you, email them back. Get my drift. If you take the time to get to know your readers, you will be able to have that long lasting relationship that keeps your readers coming back.

Along with getting to know your readers, make sure that you let your blog evolve with your readers. Don’t be afraid to let your blog change with your readers, isn’t that the goal, to have a blog that people want to read?

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Blogging Friends, Linky Love, Posting, Search Engines, SEO, Social Networking

SEO Quick Tip: The "ALT" Attribute

October 21, 2010 Leave a Comment

This is a super easy thing that you can do to improve the search-ability of your site, and to make it more user friendly.

What is the ALT?
ALT is an alternative text for images. So if an image doesn’t load properly on a website or page (and how often does that happen, a lot…), the alternative text is what will replace the image.

Why is it so important?
ALT is so important, because it tells Google and other search engines what they can’t see in an image, they don’t know what that image is.

How to use the ALT Attribute:

1. If the image displaying text, like my example below, then you need to put the text that is displayed in the image in the alt attribute.

The alt text would read as follows: alt=”Welcome to Makin’ Cute Blogs, a place for Designers, Custom Blog Designers, and Do It Yourselfers.”

2. If the image is a normal image, the alt would describe the picture.

The alt text could read as follows: alt=”Close Up Photo of a Pink Flower”

3. If your image is a bullet point, use: alt=”*”

4. If your image is a line break, or post divider, use: alt=”—————–”

Where does the alt go in your code?

Sample Code (this is my featured on grab button code):
<a href=”http://makincuteblogs.blogspot.com/” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i454.photobucket.com/albums/qq269/carolynnreynolds/FeaturedOn.png” border=”0″ alt=”Featured on Makin’ Cute Blogs”></a>

How to add the ALT Attribute to images in your posts on Blogspot:

1. Click Edit HTML.

2. Put alt=”your alternative text” just before /></a> of your image.

Filed Under: ALT, Blog Tips, Easy Tutorials, Search Engines, SEO, Tutorials

Google Webmaster Tools

October 20, 2010 2 Comments

Google Webmaster Tools is a MUST have if you are trying to understand and improve your search ability on the web. It allows you to explore and see what Google sees when it crawls your site. You can sign up for a free account here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

The first thing you need to do is to add your site or blog, you will see this on the homepage after you login.

Once you have set this up, your dashboard will look something like this. Although, you may find it to be pretty bare because you just set up. Now just explore :) It is pretty self explanatory. **Don’t worry if you don’t see much info yet, Webmaster Tools is not like Analytics, where it is updating constantly.

A few things to do and pay attention to in Webmaster Tools:

1. Submit a Sitemap for your blog. Sitemaps are not quite the same in a blog as they are on a website, websites have tons of pages with different content. On a blog, your primary information consists of posts, so you need to submit your RSS/Post feed as a Sitemap.

To do this you need to go to the “Your site on the web” section of the sidebar in your webmaster tools, then you need to click on “Subscriber stats“, then you will see something like this:

Click on “Yes, please!“
If it says “No data available”, either you don’t have any subscribers yet (if that is the case, go subscribe to your own feed), or Google has not gather the data yet (most likely if you just set up…. so just keep checking back, it will show up in a week or so).

2. Pay attention to your “Search queries” section. This gives you some fabulous information! It shows you where you are in the searches and how people are finding you. Here is a break down of what the table means (in Google’s words):

Queries: The total number of Google Web Search queries that returned pages from your site results over the given period. (These numbers can be rounded, and may not be exact.)
Query: A list of the top search queries that returned pages from your site.
Impressions: The number of times pages from your site were viewed in search results, and the percentage increase/decrease in the daily average impressions compared to the previous period. (The number of days per period defaults to 30, but you can change it at any time.)
Clicks: The number of times your site’s listing was clicked in search results for a particular query, and the percentage increase/decrease in the average daily clicks compared to the previous period.
CTR (clickthrough rate): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click to your site, and the percentage increase/decrease in the daily average CTR compared to the previous period.
Avg. position: The average position of your site on the search results page for that query, and the change compared to the previous period. Green indicates that your site is climbing in search results.

3. Links to your site. I am going to do a whole other post on this subject because it is so important, but the number and quality of links that link to your site are vital.

4. The Keywords section is really nice, because it shows you what google sees. If the keywords that are showing up are not the keywords that you want your blog to be associated under, you need to work on including the keywords that you want in your posts.

If you have not read my article on Meta Tags, then you should :) It really helps google to find relevant keywords.

The last thing that you can and should do to improve your keywords is to make sure to add “Labels” to your posts.

If you have any questions about Webmaster Tools, feel free to ask, or there are some really helpful links in the little yellow box on each page :)

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Easy Tutorials, Google Tools, Links, Meta Tags, Search Engines, SEO, Tutorials

How to Install Google Analytics on Blogger

October 19, 2010 2 Comments

This is another super basic item on my agenda for SEO Week, but it is essential. Google Analytics is one of my favorite ways to track and analyze the traffic on my website and blog. If you don’t know what your traffic volume is like, and where visitors are coming from, you are walking in the dark. It’s FREE, it gives you oodles of information, and you do not need a counter or button displayed on your blog. It installs slightly different from other counters, in that you don’t put code into an HTML Gadget on your sidebar. Here is how you do it:

Step #1: Set up a free Google Analytics account: http://www.google.com/analytics/

Step #2: Select ALL of the code, open a new window in your browser and go to your Blog.

Step #3: Go to your “Layout” tab and Click “Edit HTML”.

Step #4: Scroll to the bottom of the template, and Paste the code that you just copied directly above where it says </body> in your template, and click “Save Template”.

Step #5: Go back to Google Analytics and click “Save and Finish”.

Step #6: When you get back to your “Overview” screen, you will notice that you have a small yellow exclamation point under your status. This means that Google does not see your code, in order to get them to see it, you need to click on “Edit”.

Step #7: Click on “Check Status”.

Step #8: Now it should say “Waiting for Data”. That is perfect, it means that Google now sees your blog will be gathering data.

Step #9: Click on “Analytics Settings” or the Logo to return to the “Overview” page.

Step #10: You will now see that the exclamation point is gone and now there is a little clock. That means everything is working the way it should. When you click on “View Report”, you will see all your date, but **Note: it usually takes 24 hours for any data to appear, so don’t stress if it is not there right away.

That’s it! Just explore the application, and you will be so impressed with all the cool data that you are now gathering about the traffic on your blog!

Here’s a list of some other Counters (I have Site Meter as well, just for cross reference):
Site Meter
StatCounter
Histats
goingup

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Easy Tutorials, Google Tools, Search Engines, SEO, Tutorials

SEO Quick Tip: The "ALT" Attribute

Google Webmaster Tools

How to Install Google Analytics on Blogger

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