I just started my first blog, and could use some help/advice on a couple things... (www.garagespin.com) - In IE, there's a grey line cutting accross the header between the logo image and the text section, but not in Mozilla. Could anyone tell me why? - The blog is mostly about digital audio home recording, all keywords that are pretty heavily saturated in Google. Do you have any advice regarding blog format/structure that could help my SEO? - I'm all over the place right now in terms of subject matter, and could lean towards business-related topics or concentrate more on personal experiences. Any thoughts? Sorry for all the questions, I'm a complete newbie! Thanks, -M
<DIV id=banner-img><A href="http://www.garagespin.com/"><IMG height=70 alt="GarageSpin: Digital Audio Home Recording and Indie Music Promotion" src="test_files/CDf6.jpg" width=700 border=0></A> </DIV> Code (markup): Take out the space between the closing A and DIV tags at the end there. That takes out the grey bar in IE.
a full URL to your blog would help to give precise advice if needed ... like any other page - static or dynamic a blog needs to follow the very same structure as any other html page to have optimum SEO i.e. - clean code - descritpion meta tag indivudualized for each post - title meta tag ndivudualized for each post - H1 / H2 titles in text body if you use a correct blog software - then you can create G / Y top 10 SERPS with your blog else you may post just for yourself and for fun like most of the bloggers myself when i started blogging several months ago - i modified the blog software to meed my own a.m. requirements - the original version was simply horrible with zero SEO .. now i have 2-3 posts per day and the blog has become one of the top entry pages on my site with many top 10 SERPS in G
Crew, Your suggestion fixed the problem, thanks! I didn't realize a 'return' before the </div> was being read as a 'space.' Thanks for checking out site and identifying the problem...it was driving me up the wall. Hans, The full URL is: http://www.garagespin.com I'm using MovableType, but am pretty new to CSS and conduct a lot of trial-and-error to tweak the site. I'm not sure how to edit the description and title meta tags for each post. (do you know if movabletype does this?) If not, could you tell me how, or point me to a resource that can (I don't want to become a pain..!). Also, as a complete newbie, I'm not familiar with all the terms -- what does SERPS mean? And what does RP stand for, as in, 5RP rank? Thanks for your help, everyone, it's MUCH appreciated!! -M
Pew Internet & American Life Project should be Pew Internet & American Life Project else you start to confuse bots SERPS = search engine rank positions you have for a particular keyword or keyword combination in Google or Yahoo or any other SE ( search engine ) love the bots - serve clean code to make indexing easier a quick view at http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http://www.garagespin.com/ also with other pages - will show you what to change in code I am NOT familiar with movable type ! but a quick view into the source created shows me that you have zero SEO ( search engine optimization ) that is quite normal for most blogs i saw so far. i guess bloggers care less for direct visitors from G or Y most likely you can tweak that i did so with my software if you look at the source of any page then you see a default page layout created by movable type it should have for each page 1. an individual title meta tag for each post 1. an individual description tag for each post 1. a page H1 equal to title meta tag for each post if i look at a sample page http://www.garagespin.com/archives/2005/02/audio_recording.html then i see no title meta tag no description meta tag NO individual H1 but instead <h1><a href="http://www.garagespin.com/" accesskey="1">GarageSpin: Garage Band Buzz</a></h1> <h2>Garage Band Buzz. Digital audio home recording and indie music promotion. </h2> also - most important - you waste valuable SEO space by having *GarageSpin: Garage Band Buzz* on each page in H1 and again *Garage Band Buzz* in H2 if GarageSpin: Garage Band Buzz is important then it should be as in my below details in large font paragraph only on each page as a text-banner and leave H1 / H2 for SEO relevant individual text only - it pays off !! while in the actual post the "Nick Lachey in Audio Recording Studio Reality Show" seems to be the title for that post but it only is H3 if you plan to get direct visitors from web via SE - then you have work waiting for you i had a somewhat similar situation for a different blog SW i changed the templates that create the pages i created different templates for the page shown /index.php and the pages shown when using the "Permalink" i changed the MACROS my blog software used i changed the external CSS to do the following the subject of a mail sent to the blog is used as - title meta tag - description metatag - H1 that individual topic while the banner still shows an equal text on each page on top - it is but a large font paragraph and no H title except when called as /index.php hence i had to create a second set of templates / CSS before my blog used ONE set for all pages now it uses a template for /index.php and in individualized template that is used as a.m. for each individual post as seen by search engines or users coming from search engines i totally independent description metatag would have been better and ideal but i am a total NON-programmer in php / MySQL and had to find an instant solution that automates all asap for me the present situation creates a sufficient number of regular top 10 SERPS in G and a steady increasing traffic directly from G - that is proof enough for me that the present SEO works fine enough for me at this moment. later when i have excess time i may do some studying to get individual description meta tags as well a blog that never creates systematically top SERPS is like a secret diary where you hide your personal secrets ... may be for some the idea of a blog - a secret link to best friends only ... myself i use it efficiently to publish content in addition to my static page publishings and forums. your HTML code is almost clean and the existing smaller problems can easily be solved the rest as a.m. needs some creative mind of you - and most likely also can be fixed if movable type has CSS and templates to create pages$ also a last point when visiting directly a post such as a.m. sample page you have NO Google adsense hence you lose money if you change your templates - you may as well include that template part of the /index page into each post-page to have Google adsense shown on each individual page if such is called as single page when visited from a G link .- else you may have NO optimized G adsense as well another point is RSS newsfeed i see that you have no RSS newsfeed created by your blog my blog SW does that by default and the RSS feed is submitted by me to Yahoo news bot and many other RSS news feed directories and RSS bots as well as used by regular visitors the RSS newsfeed - if available for your blog - is a most valuable additional promotion tool for the content you offer in your blog good luck in your work
Hans, Wow, thank you for the detailed advice regarding potential SEO improvement of my site. I clearly have a lot of work to do, and a lot of CSS to figure out. A list of homework includes: 1. an individual title meta tag for each post 2. an individual description tag for each post 3. a page H1 equal to title meta tag for each post 4. Supplement H1/H2 with large font for site title 5. Add Adsense to individual pages 6. Add RSS feed 7. Replace "&" sign One question -- What does "a.m." stand for? Thanks again, Hans, I'll be working on this for some time. (and will probably return with more questions..! ) Best, -M
Hey, I just wanted to pass on some good news -- my home recording studio blog, GarageSpin, was indexed in Google a couple weeks ago, receiving a PR of 5! Almost exactly 3 months passed before that happened. Thanks to everyone's advice along the way! -M