Well, I think I need to do a little more work on some of my sites. My general score is 5 yeses, 4 noes, and 2 question marks. Yea, gotta do some more work.

Well, if you’re not opposed to revealing your answers to each question and which site you’re referring to, I may be able to help you. Fire away if you’d like.

You just want the world to see what a big dork I really am. LOLOLOL

I used my site ChristineSenter.com as my test site. And here is the sad news.

1.) Yes-well at least I like to think so
2.) ?-That can go either way. Sometimes yes, and sometimes no
3.) No
4.) No
5.) No
6.) No
7.) Yes-But then I learned that from you
8.) Yes-But that’s kind of the same as number 7
9.) Yes-I keep 5 posts on the front page, and offer archives in the sidebar
10.) ?-Again, sometimes yes and sometimes no. This one goes in spurts. I get a run of links, then nothing for weeks on end.
11.) Yes-I know how to do that, no sweat

3.) Are you optimizing your pages with three to five keyword phrases?
4.) Do most of your important keywords appear above the top fold?
5.) Are your keywords hyperlinked?
6.) Do your graphics on your post contain focused and relevant keywords?

If you put these four into practice, you’ll notice a difference in not ranking better in the search engines but also you’ll capture the more interest in your readers.

I actually think you’ve got #3 and #4 nailed pretty good. These two attributes are things you do naturally just with your writing skills along. You know how to capture the attention within your writing and consequently, that also captures the attention from search engines.

I do agree, you need to do more hyperlinking your keyword phrases within your posts. Here is a very easy way to do that:

Hi Garry,
I read this post a couple of days ago and I knew I had to come back and read it again. It really hits on a lot of points that I have not paid enough attention to. One thing I’ve been struggling with is keywords. For question number 2 above it says:

2. Does your content contain focused keyword phrases?

I’m going to guess not, since I have not really done keyword research before creating my posts, I know many of the words I use in my posts are probably highly searched keywords, but I’m sure they’re not properly optimized. But when you say “focused keyword phrases”, what would be an example of that?

Should I research keywords first via google or yahoo to get highly relevant keywords first? and then write article/post around these keywords? I have been basically trying to write naturally and in doing so I’m sure I’ve neglected my overall SEO.

Thanks
Charlie

Hi Charlie,

If you were to write a post about a Pizza Hut pizza. You may mention those words once or twice but as you begin to write more about Pizza Hut and their pizza, the business starts to get referred to as “them” or “they” and the pizza starts to get referred to as “it”. Try to use less of the “He, She, They, Them, It” words.

That is one example.

Gotcha, so write naturally but use the keywords and their variations throughout the post.

Thanks dude.

Google also doesn’t consider punctuation in text when you have a keyword phrase.

So a post targeting the phrase “make money blogging” could appear as:

“If you want to make money, blogging can be a great start.”

“Finally, I learned I could make money. Blogging was my answer.”

You also want to use Thematically Related Keywords. That sounds complicated, but it simply means that when Google sees an article about Pizza Hut (to use Garry’s example) it expects to see thematically related words on the page like “restaurant” or “carry out”.

“when Google sees an article about Pizza Hut (to use Garry’s example) it expects to see thematically related words on the page like “restaurant” or “carry out”.”

Excellent comment Aaron. I believe that you are right.

This post is featured in today’s FullTiltBlogging.com’s Daily Blog Summary - a 5 minute summary of the top 50 Make Money Blogging sites. Great post. (I just realized the link is broken. It will be fixed momentarily.)