Thanks for visiting again, why not get my Blog updates via Twitter?
Thanks! Eoin

I read a Tweet from Murray Newlands today about adding your Blog to Kindle and I took a look.

The process was fairly easy, so I’m going to do a quick video to show you and I’ll post it here.

If you want to try it yourself, go to http://kindlepublishing.amazon.com

Yes, swine flu and natural treatments can teach you SEO Basics …. well, to be precise …  the phrase “swine flu and natural treatments” can.

This post is a continuation of a forum post in the Irish Business Women’s forum, where I saw a  post about a member ranking number 1 for the phrase “swine flu and natural treatments”

In the forum post, I didn’t correctly show the point I was trying to get across, as I was distracted, I was in the middle to finishing up work for the long weekend, so I decided to do it here.

The point I was trying to make is that, being first for any keyword or keyword phrase in Google.ie is not necessarily a sign of good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This is because getting to number 1 in Google is partially based on how many other websites also have pages for that Keyword.

In the case of the keywords, “swine flu natural treatment”, when I wrote that forum post, no other Irish web site was using the words “swine flu natural treatment” … so if your web page was about “swine flu natural treatment” and you have used basic SEO principles …. you have to show up first in Google.ie.
Here is a screen capture from the day of the forum post.

The phrase swine flu and natural treatments on May 1st

If you look at the text in Blue, you can see, the listing for www.naturesnexus.org is the only listing with “swine flu natural treatment” in the Title text.

You can learn a little SEO from this, by understanding that in order to rank high in any search engine, you need to look at how many competitive pages are in that search engine, for the keyword you want to rank for.

If there are 200,000 competing pages, you will have a slow, difficult job … if there are only 100, then your job is easier … so pick your fights carefully, go for low hanging fruit first.

In this case, the Title of the page was targeting “swine flu natural treatment”, so with no other competing pages, if someone typed in “swine flu natural treatment” into Google in Ireland, this web site would show up first.

To prove my point, I posted a message in the the Irish Business Women’s forum, about this topic, using some basic SEO.
This is a fourm that I have no control over, so getting listed in Google was going to be based on the content of my post and the fact that there was only one page competing against me for the phrase “swine flu natural treatment”.

Here is the result today, May 5th.

The phrase swine flu and natural treatments on May 5th

As you can see, my post is number two, so using the same principles that made the first post go to Number 1, got my post to number 2.

Just to be clear, I am in no way saying that the member that wrote the article for www.naturesnexus.org was bad at SEO, in fact I think it was an excellent example of how to write articles, using SEO to get traffic.

The Author saw an opportunity to contribute to a worldwide discussion on Swine Flu, I’m guessing that she did keyword research and also found the phrase “swine flu natural treatment” had very few competing web pages and then she wrote an interesting article about Swine Flu, using SEO, to make sure it got listed.

That’s how to do it, pick the low hanging fruit.

So here is what this can teach you about SEO basics.

If a phrase  has very few competing web pages in Google, your Title is very important.

Of course, it aslo shows that no matter how many competing web pages there are in Google for a keyword you want to get ranked highly ranked for, make sure you get your Title right.

So for every web page, article or blog post you want to write.

• Do keyword research to find out what people are looking for in Google.
• Take a look at the number of competing pages and look for a phrase that has very few competing web pages in Google.
• Write an interesting article or web page.
• Use basic SEO

Before you begin work on your website or Blog, you need to get the code needed to install Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a free, reliable tool that tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.

Basically, it will show you how people found your web site, so that you can fix problems and also focus your marketing resources on advertising that delivers a better Return On Investment. You can also use it to improve your site to convert more visitors.

Adding Google Analytics to your web site is an essential step, as it gives you more of an advantage over your competition, as you will be able to see what’s working and not working, not just guess.

To use Google Analytics, you need to sign up for a free account with Google and then insert a simple piece of code on each web page or into your Blog.
After you install it, you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website.

For a full list of the freely available Google Analytics features, go to: http://www.google.com/analytics/features.html

Instructions To Install & Configure Google Analytics:

A. INSTALL GOOGLE ANALYTICS

To install Google Analytics, sign up for a free account at http://analytics.google.com

You need to have a Google Account to do this, which is also free, just follow the directions on screen.

B. CONFIGURE GOOGLE ANALYTICS

i) Follow the steps provided by Google for creating a profile for your domain name.

ii) Take your time, as any mistakes may not be noticed until after you have done a lot of work, which may need to be re-done.

iii) Once these steps are completed, Google will provide you with some HTML code that copy to the bottom of every web page, immediately before the HTML </body>.

If you have a Wordpress blog, download this PlugIn to make life easier.

Be sure to select “New Tracking Code (ga.js)”, it looks similar to this:

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);

document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));

</ script>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-#######-#”);

pageTracker._trackPageview();

</ script>

C. To add this HTML code please follow these steps:

a) Scroll down to the bottom of each page, to where you see the body tag:  </body>

b) Right before the </body> tag, paste the lines of HTML code provided by Google.

c) Save the changes.

D. ACCESS YOUR WEBSTATS VIA GOOGLE ANALYTICS

To access your stats, log in to your Analytics account at http://analytics.google.com.

To learn more about using Google Analytics, take a look at this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KK7i084W2w

How To Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, it’s called micro-blogging because all posts must be 140 characters or less.
It can also be used as an Instant Messenger, if the person you are contacting in online.

Twitter is so new, that the only way to really understand Twitter is to get an account and use it.

So if you haven’t got a Twitter account, go to http://twitter.com and first watch the video.

Then click on the What? Why? & How? links.
This information will help to explain what Twitter is.
Next … join Twitter.

You will be asked for a User name, e-Mial address and password.

For your user name, I suggest you use your own name, with no spaces, so if your name is John Smith, your user name would be johnsmith.

Be sure to fill out your Twitter Profile. To do this, LogIn to Twitter and look to the top right of your screen, for “Settings”.

For “More Info URL:”, I suggest you put a link to your blog or website.
For “One Line Bio:”, write a short bio about yourself, make it interesting, especially if you want people to follow you.

What next?

Twitter is based on “Followers” and “Following”

“Followers” are people that have decided to Follow your updates.

“Following” are the people your decided to Follow their updates.

In order for someone to see a message you send to them, they must be following you.
So people that are your “Followers” can read your messages, but unless you are also following them, they can send a message to you.

There is a way around this, that I will show you later.

When you want to send a message (called a Tweet in Twitter slang) to someone, you use the @ symbol + their User name.

My username is eoinoleary, so to send a message to me, you would start the message with @eoinoleary

Remember I wrote that in order for someone to see a message you send to them, they must be following you? and that there is a way around this?

Well if you send a message to anyone on Twitter, using the @ symbol + their User name, it will show up in their “Replies” section, that you can find on the Right, under Home.
However, many people don’t check their replies, so there is no guarantee that they will see it.

Using Twitter

To use Twitter, you need to do is to find people to Follow and people to Follow you. The best way to do this is to find people you know on Twitter,.
You will also be able to see how they are using Twitter and maybe send messages to each other.

To do this, login to Twitter and look to the top right of your screen, for Find People.

You have three choices.
1) Find On Twitter: Which is good if already know someone you know is on Twitter.

2) Invite from other networks: If you have an online e-mail account, you might be able to find people you already know by letting Twitter take a look.
At the moment Twitter can automatically check Gmail, Yahoo mail, AOL, Hotmail or MSN.

3) Invite by e-mail: This is easy, just send an e-mail to people you know, asking them to join.

You can also look for celebrities on Twitter, like Barack Obama, http://twitter.com/BarackObama, who used Twitter during the 2008 US Presidential election.

Be aware that you will find that many celebrity Twitter Accounts are fake accounts, so before you follow them, be sure to take a look at their posts and their profile.
A fake account should be obvious.

I’ve been using Twitter since 2007 and I find it interesting to see what people do with it.

Twitter can be used in many ways, but I’ve observed some interesting characteristics.

The people that have been on Twitter for a few months seem to have adapted Twitter for their needs, posting frequently, with a high percentage of useful information.
Most of these people have a large number of followers, at least 500 but probably far more.

Now I know that “useful information” is dependent on the individual, but why would you follow someone that always posts useless information?

Then you have the people new to Twitter, the majority seem to spend their time feverishly running around trying to build their Followers. I was guilty of this in the past myself.

Posting Useful information is the main tip for Twitter, but Following and Interacting is the real secret of Twitter.

If you follow people that you genuinely want to receive tweets (posts) from, and interact with them, you will start to see Twitter in a whole new light.

This is by no means a full Twitter how to, but it should get you started and don’t forget to follow me, eoinoleary on Twitter.