Find It Friday! Does site speed affect my Google ranking?

Welcome to  Find It Friday in which we help you find the answers to your blogging questions. 

The Question

This week’s question may seem a bit techie..but bear with us..it is an important element of how your blog ranks in Google and enhances your reader experience.

I noticed that my blog took a while to load when I opened it up to show a friend on his computer recently.  He said that speed difference will affect my Google ranking. Is he right and if so, how fast should a page load and what can I do to make it load faster?

The Answer

Yes, he is right. Google uses site speed (i.e. how quickly a website responds to web requests) as part of their search ranking algorithms.

Here is what Google has to say:

Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there.

Blog expert, Heidi Cohen recommends that your pages should load in under two seconds and at most three. After checking the speed, determine which elements slow your page down. Google has a list of  free tools that you can use to evaluate the speed of your site at code.google.com/speed.

Final word from Google…

While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. (However) We encourage you to start looking at your site’s speed (the tools above provide a great starting point) — not only to improve your ranking in search engines, but also to improve everyone’s experience on the Internet.

Do you have a question on how to blog effectively?

Leave a comment below and we will be happy to help you find the answer.

Find It Friday! How To Be An Outstanding Guest Blogger

Welcome to  Find It Friday in which we help you find the answers to your how to blog questions. 

The Question

I got an e-mail this week from a reader who is happy to have his question shared on Find It Friday.

I have been asked to write a guest blog on an aspect of my business which the blog owner feels would be of interest to her readers.  How do you suggest I make the most of this opportunity?

The Answer

As anyone who has attended my talks will know, I am a big fan of guest blogging. It benefits both the blog owner and the guest blogger, introducing both to a whole new readership.

Here are my top 5 tips for guest blogging

1. Do your research

Read the archived posts of the blog owner. Make sure the tone and language of your post fits the character of the blog. Which posts get the most comments?  What resonates best with readers?

2. Pull out all the stops to make your post top-notch

This is your chance to shine, so really make this the best piece of writing you can. Check your facts, credit your sources, and link to external references and sites.

3. Provide an author bio

Write the basic facts that readers will want – don’t overdo it, just enough to make it interesting and relevant.

4. Don’t be self-serving

There is nothing guaranteed to put a reader off than something that is obviously written as a sales pitch for your product or service. You will get the opportunity to link to your business in your author bio and trust me, if your content is good enough, people will check you out, just so long as they don’t feel as if they are being aggressively sold to.

5. Follow through

The last step, but this, in my opinion, is the one that separates the mediocre guest blogger from the finest. When I invite guest bloggers to write for me, the outstanding ones are those who show they care enough to follow through by responding to comments, promoting via social networks, connecting with commentators online, and even expanding the discussion, as happened on one of my other blogs this week, by starting a twitter chat around the topic.

Over To You!

Do you invite guest bloggers to contribute to your blog? Or have you contributed as a guest blogger to other blogs? How did it work out for you?

Find It Friday! Your Blogging Questions Answered

Welcome to  Find It Friday in which we help you find the answers to your how to blog questions. 

The Question

This week we caught up with Christina Giliberti of CG Online Marketing to ask her what one piece of advice she would give us for search engine optimization (SEO) for blogging.

Here’s what she had to say:

The Answer

Just one? Oh that’s hard….blogging by nature is fantastic for SEO as search engines love sites with fresh, changeable content.

I would write blogs in association with your chosen keywords, keep the title catchy and containing one of those keywords, then add H2* tags throughout, again adding your keyword.

So, if I was writing a post on SEO – Title: SEO Game Changers

• H2 tag 1: SEO updates from Google
• H2 tag 2: Top SEO Tips, and so on.

My piece of advice is then – optimise your post, BUT also keep it as natural and flowing as possible. If I had a euro for each site or post I’ve seen that over-optimised with clunky text, I would be a millionairess.

If you are using a platform like WordPress, then you can easily add a plugin to enter meta information per post (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/)

If you really want to ‘win’ in SEO AND provide additional value to readers, use keywords within your post to link to similar posts. So if you’re discussing the merits of Adwords and happen to mention keywords, AND you have written a blog post about keywords, link the term ‘keywords’ to this blog.

*The H tags are heading tags that format your text into headings. H1 is the most prominent (largest), H2 the second, and so forth.  Search engines look to these tags for relevant meaning for SEO (H1 being the topic, H2 – the subtopics, and H3s subtopics of H2s).

_____________________________________________________________

Do you have a question on how to blog effectively?

If you have a question on blogging you would like us to answer, then leave a comment below, or contact us via our Facebook page.

Find It Friday! Your Blogging Questions Answered

Welcome to  Find It Friday in which we help you find the answers to your how to blog questions. 

The Question

How do I add video to my wordpress blog?

The Answer

You can embed videos on your post in a few easy steps with WordPress. YouTube and Vimeo videos are supported by WordPress, or you can upload your own.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to adding a YouTube video to your WordPress blog

1. Click the media icon in the visual editor of your post

2. If you’d like to add YouTube videos to your posts and pages, it’s as easy as copying the video’s URL from your web browser’s address bar:

And pasting it on a line by itself in your post/page editor:

Related Post:

How to add an image to your blog post

_____________________________________________________________

Do you have a question on how to blog effectively?

Leave a comment below and we will be happy to help you find the answer.

Find It Friday! Your Blogging Questions Answered

Welcome to  Find It Friday in which we help you find the answers to your how to blog questions. 

The Question

This week Aine Casey asks us the following question:

Would love to know the answer to the question when setting up a website for a company operating in Ireland, is it better to use .COM or .IE

The Answer

If both are available, I would recommending registering both as many people will presume the domain name has a .com ending and may type that in automatically. The .ie will signify that you are an Irish company.

However, do bear in mind that your business may expand and you may wish to target consumers or companies abroad so it is always good to have a .com address if it is available.

As far as I am aware, one will be the principal address so if .ie is the principal one and someone types in .com, it will automatically divert to the .ie address which will demonstrate you are a company operating within Ireland. Check this is done correctly with your web developer so the SEO effects aren’t spread across the two domains.

Some will recommend registering a variety of domain names, for example, registering a .eu domain too.

If the .com of your chosen domain name isn’t available but the .ie is, then by all means register it as a .ie.  If someone is googling your business name from Ireland, google should provide the .ie company first in any case. My only qualm is when someone knows the url but presumes it is a .com and comes to the wrong site (I’ve done this with other businesses in the past).

I hope that helps.

Do you have a question on how to blog effectively?

Leave a comment below and we will be happy to help you find the answer.