SEO for Google - August 2017

Here's my understanding. For all the talk of "links are dead", I believe that search engine position is determined by:

1. Quality and quantity and relevance of incoming links from websites. I believe that these are still slightly over 50% of the battle.
2. Sites are also lifted by social media such as Twitter and LinkedIn, perhaps Pinterest. I believe the Google bot is still banned from Facebook which would also include Instagram. I'd guess that this is 25% of the battle. 
3. Engagement. I believe Google spends a lot of effort to measure whether people leave Google and engage with the site or whether they go to the site and stick.  Another 25%.

Of course, this is a bold statement to actually quantify how I think the engine works. I'll keep postulating. 

Increasing Value of Major Authority Sites.  I think that big authority sites used to count a few times more than minor authority sites which counted more than routine sites which counted more than small sites with some history (lets say some respectable links and more than a year of history).  A decade ago, the links from each level up might have been worth 3 times more at each level of authority. I'd now say that it's a full order of magnitude more important.  So today, the value of links from each of these level is worth 10x more than links from the level below. Or maybe it's 100x. My point is that real authority is much more valuable than it use to be:

• new blog and sites with no real traffic, less than a year, and just a few links: hardly count at al.
• established sites with some traffic, more than a year of history, and lots of ongoing incoming links
• small authority sites.
• Major authority sites.

So many open questions....

• Do Youtube links count in the web links category or the website category? Or do these distinctions not mean anything at all?
• Do youtube links from videos with 10x more views count 10x more?  Do Youtube links' value count more based on total views or recent views or comments?
• Do Twitter links increase in significance based on number of followers of the tweeter? Or by engagement with the tweet?
• Are the percent of front page "local" info known for each set of searches? Does it change over time?
• Does Google consider all the blogger blogs to be sort of the same IP address so there's a decreasing value for each blog that links to a site?

WordPress Site Traffic Statistics

I just looked at the stats on one of my WordPress blogs and I saw these unbelievable numbers. 

To be honest, I just don't believe them. There is just no way that I had 67K visits yesterday!  Anybody have any idea what might be causing these aberrant numbers? 

Also in the realm of unbelievable, there  seem to be seven thousand comments all  of which appear to be spam, all blocked by Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

The WordPress Site Statistics on one of my blogs, Unbelievable!

I got curious about this blog and decided to check out my Google Analytics which have also been set up for this blog. They're  a much more reasonable number. This is for the same period. What the heck is wrong then with the wordpress statistics? I would guess from the fact that some bots are spamming the site and the high Wordpress visitor traffic that the WordPress stats counts the spam bots as visitors whereas Google Analytics does not. This is only a guess, I have no idea how to research this.

Google Analytics for the WordPress Blog

BTW, I thought that I would peek at the statistics on this blog (ie Blorum.ifo, the blog that you are now reading). . It's of course a Google Blogger blog. Here's the Google blogger stats.

Blogger Blog Statistics

Whats a real blog?

I read an interesting post that took a new spin on a question that I've discussed at some length in our How to Blog Course. What is a blog?

We were interested initially (the course has evolved) as teaching blogging as a type of creative writing. For us, it was related to the diary, journal, or confessional but had an episodic or serial structure and most importantly, the writing included elements of audience participation, promotion, and an involvement in the world around us. Our approach to explaining blogs was to create categories saying that there are personal blogs; there are hybrids of personal blogs with either business, advocacy, or non-profit purposes; and there are sites which use blog software as a CMS (content management system) but which aren't blogs at all.

Edward De Leau has a post in his blog Why the whole world is wrong about weblogs in which he makes the distinction between weblogs as a media format and weblogs as the technology or CMS behind a website. He belabors it at some length but his definitions are tight and his cartoons are nice.



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Why do I need one of those blog thingys?

I was just reading LisaDesign's blog, a web designer in Rapid City. And she gave the most charming answer that I've heard as to how blogs help:

It's like candy for search engines.

It's a cuter way of saying (and I quote an old post of mine and some speaker years ago): Blogging is also a great way to build position in the search engines. Its been suggested that B-L-O-G is not so much an abbreviation for Web-Log but the secret to a Better Listing On Google.

Her post explains how each article contributes to your position: like "compounding interest". I like Lisa's writing and analogies...Her website is nice, her blog is beautifully written. And I'm sure when she has time she'll upgrade her blog to SEO-friendly URLs...

For those who don't know what a search engine friendly URL is. Look at Lisa's blog. The most recent article has this URL: http://lisawebdesigns.com/?p=71

Google reads this and can't find much in that URL to help it "digest" her content. If she had SEO friendly URLs, it would read: http://lisawebdesigns.com/why-do-i-need-one-of-those-bloggy-thingys.htm . Of course, this would help Google understand that her article has something to do with things and needs and bloggies. So with user-friendly URLs, you start paying a little more attention to searched keywords and a little less to extreme cuteness. While SEO friendly-URLS are only one part of Google "digesting" your content, every little bit helps. I was working on a site built in druple today (about learning today) in which you get to tell the system the keywords to use in the URLS.

How do I know all this blog stuff? It's because I'm the co-creator and one of the first students of a course on blogging. Let me recommend that if you are starting or thinking of starting to blog, you take this course. It's fun and you learn in 8 pleasant weeks, what could take you a year of figuring out on your own, the hard way.

One last blog point: I am frequently asked what blog software people should I use? Blogger? Wordpress? Typepad? Should it be hosted on a private domain (like Http://www.BBat50.com or http://www.parentaltech.com) or sit on a shared site (like this one on http://learn-to-market-online116.blogspot.com/ or http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/edmouse)?

The long answer is take the blogging class, the short answer is that you should start by just using a shared host somewhere since it's easier and you can move it later. Do pay attention to use the most recent version of whichever software you choose. I love the recent versions of both WordPress and Blogger. The older versions are just a pain compared the simplicity of the new ones.

This post sponsored by the best homeschool curriculum.....Time4Learning.com

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Deciding on Social Media

I have not yet made strategic decisions on which blog roll groups and other social media to work with.

Technorati seems to be the big boy on the block.
Digg it too.

A few that I'm looking at since bloggers that I'm working with like:

MyBlogLog (and this post includes it's validation code) Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification
BlogHer
BlogCatalog

And I use Feedburner although it's a different animal (provides feeds and analytics, no community or rating)

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In filling out the paperwork, I've also written an updated About me:

I have an online kids education business so I needed to learn to spell S-E-0 as well as understand a landing page, analytics, and what is Web 2.0. I find that it's not a chore or a bore. Oline marketing is fun and not that complicated. I'd say it could be mastered by an average level 7th grader. Come learn with me.

Use the Right Tool for the Right Job

My dad always would say: "Use the right tool for the right job". It would drive him nuts when he caught me using a screw driver to dig a small hole in the wood - "Use a chisel". Or sometimes when I'd use the wrench to hit something instead of getting up and getting a hammer. I particularly remember his delight in taking out a pair of 18" clamps to hold some glued parts together until they dried properly. My instinct would have been to hold the parts until my hands grew tired and hope that was long enough for it to stick (it rarely was).

So, I was thinking of Dad in yesterdays product planning meeting. It turns out that in my tiny company, we are trying to use the right tool for each job:

Moodle - We are using this LMS (learning management system) to put up our own science courses with text, flash, multiple choice questions, student records, etc
phpbb - We have a homeschool parents forum built around this simple effective tool.
Blogger - This blog and my karate blog are built around blogger. Easy to get started with and with some add-ons (feedburner & HaloScan for trackbacks), it's more than adequate.
Wordpress - I was convinced by a number of people that wordpress would be great for a web home schooling blog since it was better for SEO & multi-authors. The jury is still out on this.
Joomla - This content management system - CMS - was chosen as the best way to handle the administration on the coolest spelling website ever that we've now built. At the moment, frankly, we think we really goofed on the choice. The implementation has been painful requiring more rework than development and at the end, the user interface is less than elegant. sigh. Should we rebuild?
Drupple - We want a full featured community for our students which is private and has all sorts of moderating capabilities. I keep asking why we can't use joomla or moodle or a php forum or some blog extensions. The answer seems to be that if we did, it would stink. Sigh.
Typepad pro - Next week, we launch our first course teaching blogging as literature. The first blogging course focused on storytelling. We need to be able to have a group of blogs under one private account and some group discussion capabilities. Our "writing sensei" selected Typepad Pro for the blogging and we're using Google Groups for the discussions.

We are also looking at a few live webinar technologies and surprise, none of our current technologies seem to have that integrated within them either....Three names that have popped up are Wimba, Centra, & Elluminate. Why not Microsoft Meeting?

Of course, our main sites are in .net or flash or php with lots of untemplated html, some javascript and java, and includes and iframes.....One part of our system (a part that we don't control) still uses Microsoft Agent (long sigh).

My point: There was a reason that my dad was great around the house....his collection of tools, his organization, and his determination to do things right. And we're trying to put together great systems. So many specific jobs, many technologies. Soldier on...

Blog Subscriptions by Email - It Works!

My blogs have been a source of satisfaction and frustration to me.

They are satisfying in that, as blogger says, push-button publishing is possible.
They are frustrating in that, in the fine print, we learn: some assembly is required.

They are satisfying in that templates and more templates are only a mouse click away.
They are frustrating in that some template don't support some features.

Frustrating: I couldn't figure out how to let people subscribe by email.
Satisfying. I posted the email subscription to blogger question to the forum yesterday, and implemented the subscribe-by-email today (on my 2nd try but that's more satisfaction than frustration). THANK YOU FEEDBURNER / BLOGGER / GOOGLE :->


Satisfying. I can tell my story my way on my blog
Frustrating: I'm not that good at crafting stories.
Satisfying: I am going to take a course in story-telling focused on writing for blogs. I'm going to get a Black Belt in Blogging!

Blogging Software - Todays problems

I have a few problems with the current generation of blogging software. I wonder if my list is very different than most others.

1. Sticky. Most forums allow the moderator to mark a comment or thread "sticky". This means that this posting, even when it's not the most recent, stays at the top. I can't seem to find this feature in the blogger or wordpress, the two blogging systems that I use. I'm about to try Typepad so stay tuned..

2. Subscribe to updates by email. This elusive feature is one that I would really like. The comments section allows users (including the moderator) to get emails about new comments but I'm talking about having a simple subscription method to get emails about all updates to the blog. I gather that RSS would be better system but I don't seem to understand RSS and I'd really like it to be a simple email system. Even the feedburner addition to wordpress and blogger is lacking this.

3. More HTML functionality such as tables in blog posts. While it's cool to be able to post videos and images, I sometimes try to put some info on a blog post that is best done as a table. While I succeeded after laborious efforts, it should be simplified (by the way, I did figure out some of the bugs and workarounds in blogger for tables but I can't seem to find my write-up here. Maybe it's on another blog, maybe it's on a forum. Ask if you want to see it)

4. Integrated trackbacks, stats, and subscriptions. Basically, I like that google bought feedburner and is integrating them. I just want it done already plus, I'd like them to remember us mortal non-techie users and provide us simple emails subscriptions and de-emphasize the glitzy rss feeds that handle everything including podcasts (another technology that I've not yet gotten involved with).

5. Promotion. It would be nice if there was more automated pinging built into the blogs. Or, if there is more than I am aware of, more documentation on them. I tend to update my content and then to manually use:
www.pingomatic.com
www.pingoat.com
www.pingmyblog.com
www.autopinger.com
www.kping.com
But I can't tell if my efforts are useful or wasted. I do know that if I correctly join and participate in the blog communities, I do well.