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How To Make It Easier For Google To Find Your Hyperlocal Blog

Steve — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:57:25 +0000

Are you making it difficult for Google and other search engines to find your hyperlocal blog? Everybody needs a little help now and then, even the Big G. I thought I would write about the guidelines I use whenever I write an article for my hyperlocal blog, the Monroe Scoop.

I have 2 things I would like for you to do this week.

Let me state right now that I’m not an SEO Expert (search engine optimization). I’m not an expert at anything with the one exception of enjoying an ice cold Blue Moon in a frosty mug at the end of every day. There are a few things that I try to do with every article I post in the hopes that it will help the search engines find my site. If you apply the same principals on your site, I think it will help build your traffic, it certainly will not hurt.

Doing SEO on a hyperlocal blog is not the easiest thing in the world to do. If you try to do everything perfect, you will go crazy in the process. I want you to focus on just a few things that will eventually become second nature to you. It’s easy. Two things I enjoy in my life. Free…me and free get along great. Easy…I’m a simple dude and don’t like things real complicated. I want my stuff on cruise control if possible.

Heres how I roll:

Since I’m simple, I’ll do my best to make this simple.

I’m going to assume your site is built on the WordPress platform. If you are using a free blogging platform, that is ok as a supporting site to send links. However, stop wasting your time and effort and get on your own site and your own hosting. If you carefully read the terms of service on free sites, you will most likely find that you do not officially own the content and they can shut you down on a moments notice. Do Not Risk It!

Make sure you install the All In One SEO Pack WordPress plugin. Every time you post an article, fill in all of the information into this plugin. I won’t go into the details of this plugin on this article. There are plenty of sites that will do it better justice than I. Just Google it. It’s a very easy plugin and pretty much self explanatory.

I rank #1 on more local terms in my community than I could shake a stick at. I try to write naturally for the most part and just let it happen. No way I can SEO for everything. I rank #1 simply because I post articles and Google has determined that I’m the authority. Google will do the same on your hyperlocal blog also. Ask Matt McGee, he’ll tell you that he can easily rank for just about any term he wants on his hyperlocal blogs.

Here are a few of my personal guidelines I try to do at least 90% of the time.

I focus on 4 terms mostly. 2 variations of my city name and State. 2 variations of my County name and State. Those 4 terms are most likely the 4 most searched terms in your community. Either through a broad search or an exact search.

Whenever I use my city or county name in my article title I always use my state also. Ex. Over 500 Union County, NC Students Screened For Pre-Kindergarten. I could simply write Union County and everyone in my community knows what I’m talking about. To Google, how many Union Counties are in the USA?
I always use an H1 Tag at the beginning of my articles. I start every article (mostly) with my geographical location. Check out the screen shot of the beginning of the article. See the big bold Union County, NC? That’s just my little message to Google.
Screen Shot
Now I just write naturally throughout my article or I post a press release. If the press release uses the word Union County in it, I will usually add the “NC” or “North Carolina” to it. Not always but usually. Use your best judgement.
At the end of every article, I take the opportunity to once again mention my County or City and State, and I also add a link back to the homepage of the Monroe Scoop. I think every SEO Guru out there will tell you that deep linking within your site is very good. I show a link and I “bold” it all.
Screen Shot
At this point and time, it’s time to start adding “tags” to your article. This is very simple to do. Simply start perusing down your article and add tags for the pertinent information in your article. Names, organizations, locations etc… If you notice in the screenshot, you will find that I tagged many of the words that were in my article that someone might do a search on in Google or in my own site search bar.
Screen Shot
Always, always, always add “alt tags” with keywords to your photos. I get a lot of traffic to my site from Google images.
Now here’s a little secret that you may or may not know about but I feel it can be very effective for your hyperlocal blog. Check your stats and look at the search terms that people are finding your site from. Look at the pages on your site they landed on. Take some of those terms and go back and edit those articles by adding those tags to that article or do some editing by adding those terms in the article. Tags will create more WordPress pages for Google to index and give you more terms to be discovered by.
Make it a habit to link to other articles within your site. If you are writing an article talking about the Humane Society and you have previously written about them before, link back to the previous article using good keyword terms as your anchor text. This deep linking helps greatly as the Super Duper Guru’s will tell you.

These are very easy and simple steps that will help your site with the search engines. If you start applying these ideas, it will soon become second nature.

2009 Hyperlocal Blog

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How To Start A Hyperlocal Blog And Keep Your Full Time Job

Steve — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:34:12 +0000

I have a friend I’ve been exchanging some really detailed and long email messages with in the past couple of days. Some of what we’ve been writing about deals with hyperlocal blogging and it inspired me to write this article.

“How To Start A Hyperlocal Blog And Keep Your Full Time Job”

My disclaimer here is the fact that I consider myself a full time hyperlocal blogger. The fact that you may hold a full time job shouldn’t hold you back from starting a hyperlocal blog in your community and delving a little into citizen journalism. My situation is different than most. I started my community web site in the hopes that I can eventually earn a living from it. I wrote about my situation in an earlier article. Build a great hyperlocal blog and get paid for it.

You have the rest of your life ahead of you so why not get started now? You don’t have to create an award winning site that rivals anyone. All you have to do is get started slowly and lay the foundation for what can happen in the future. What if in 5 years your local newspaper shuts down? You would have a jump start on everyone in your community to move in and provide. It’s a supply and demand issue.

Here are some very easy steps that I would do to start a hyperlocal blog and keep your full time job This is so easy and will be so meaningful to you in the future that you will actually feel the urge to send me an Amazon Gift Card or name your next son Steven.

Take out a domain name now and a hosting package. I would use your town’s name in the url if possible. For example, Bakersfieldscoop.com or Indianheightsgazette.com. You get the idea. I recommend bluehost.com to everyone for domain names and hosting. It’s what I use on all of my sites.
Use WordPress for your blog. There are more free wordpress themes out there for you than government bailouts. You may want to consider some sort of magazine/news style theme. Free blogging platforms are ok but not necesarily for the long term. You never actually own your own content when using someone else’s free software. Don’t even go there for your main site. Don’t argue with me on this one, trust me.
Once you have your blog set up, go to Google Alerts. I want you to set up a Google email alert for a ton of related searches that pertain to your county and city that will be sent to your in-box once a day. Here are some ideas:
Bakersfield Kansas
Bakersfield KS
Bakersfield County
Bakersfield Kansas Government
Bakersfield Kansas Police Dept.
Bakersfield, Kansas Mayor John Kingston
Bakersfield Kansas School System
Bakersfield Kansas Blogs
Bakersfield Kansas Videos

You should understand where I’m going here. Think up as many terms that relate to your community as you desire.
I want you to take selected articles from your Google Alerts and re-post the article to your new hyperlocal blog.
I want you to give credit and links back to the original article at the bottom of your post. Never re-print anything without without giving credit and a link back.
If an article says that you cannot publish and it’s copyright protected, try to contact the author by phone or e-mail and ask permission. Most likely they will allow it and actually link to your article from their site. That would be good Google Juice
Scour all of the video sites such as YouTube, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo, Blip, Google Videos & Yahoo Videos to find any videos that were taken in and around your community. If the video allows embedding, put the video on your site and give credit and a link back. If at all possible, contact the owner of the video and alert them that you have posted their video. 99.9% will love you for it and probably link to your blog. Good Google Juice again.
Re-publish photos of your community that you find on Flickr under the Creative Commons. Once again give credit and links back.
Add one page on your blog that encourages readers to submit their own news story or community event. Make sure you have a contact form on that page. Here is an example of the page I use on my hyperlocal site that encourages readers to submit stories to me. Submit your news to the Monroe Scoop.
Contact all of your local non-profits and asked to be placed on their e-mail press release lists.
Never leave your house without your camera. Take a photo of the crowded parking lot at the mall and post it. If you think that’s silly, you don’t understand hyperlocal. SEO your article with the name of your town and the name of the Mall. Very important! Place alt tags on your photos so they will show up on Google image search.
This is very important and you must do this on every article you post. It’s also very easy. I do not want you to get carried away with SEO. As a matter of fact, I only want you to SEO four things in your articles. If you are going hyperlocal in Bakersfield, Kansas I want you to put a variation of these 4 terms in every article. Not all 4 in every article. Pick one per article and vary them each time. Each time, I want you to put the term at the start of your article in H1 tags. I want you to repeat it again at the bottom of your article in bold letters.
Bakersfield, Kansas
Bakersfield, KS
Bakersfield County, Kansas
Bakersfield County, KS

That’s it. That’s all I want you to SEO in your articles with the exception of alt tags on your photos

Now here’s the kicker. I want you to do this once a week, that’s all. I want you to spend time with your family and take care of your full time job first and foremost. Full time jobs are hard to come by and you must take care of those who butter your bread.

Once a week gives you 52 articles per year. In 5 years you will have published 260 articles and you will be ranking #1 for so many search terms in your town that you will send me my second Amazon Gift Card. You will have no doubt picked up a little extra money from your site with Google Adsense or Amazon links or even a local merchant may want to buy a little advertising. When you approach retirement, your hyperlocal website will be waiting on you to go full time and dominate community news in your hometown. Your site will probably be at least a Google PR5 or PR6 by then. Everyone will know about your site who lives in your community. You will own a valuable piece on internet real estate.

All of this and you only have to spend an hour and a half per week to lay the foundation for your future in Citizen Journalism. This is my simple recommendation of how each of you can start a hyperlocal blog and keep your full time job.

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How To Dominate Google With Your Hyperlocal Blog

Steve — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:53:51 +0000

I would like to take a little more time with you today to talk some more about your selection of your domain name. If you missed the first article, here is the link again. Selecting your Hyperlocal web domain name.

It’s important to select a name in which you will or can dominate the search engines. There are a lot of smart people out there and finding keywords in which you can dominate the SERPS with can be quite difficult. There is good news though, finding a name for your hyperlocal blog and dominating the search engines may not be as hard as you think.

Since I’m writing about my own hyperlocal blog, The Monroe Scoop, I will use it as an example. Type in the phrase: Monroe Scoop into Google and here is what you will see.

What you see is that I have taken the name of my site and dominated the search engines with it. I have the same result in Yahoo.com. I also have the same result at MSN.com.

Ok, let’s look at another example:

This is another hyperlocal blog from Lewisville, N.C. published by my friend Deb Phillips. Lewisville Photos. Lewisville, NC. As you can see, Deb also dominates the search engines with her hyperlocal web domain name. Like my site, Deb’s site is less than a year old and growing. Both of us depend on organic search engine traffic. I have spent very little money marketing my web site thus far. Up until now I have depended on word of mouth, Twitter, blog commenting and search engines for the traffic I receive.

Let me now make the point I am getting at. I market the name of my hyperlocal web site, monroescoop.com. I market the name everywhere possible. It is in my e-mail signatures. I leave business cards at my table in restaurants. Every time I see a bulletin board, I pin up a card. When I mention someone in one of my articles, I e-mail them and tell them about monroescoop.com. When I produce a video, I make sure the name of my site is embedded into the video. Bottom line…I market the name of my site because Google has placed me #1. In my opinion, it’s really that simple.

When I check my stats, the large majority of searches that find my site are simply typing in monroe scoop.

Because of the sheer amount of articles I have written and the various subjects, I rank #1 for many keyword longtail phrases for my community. Most of this is not on purpose. It just happens because I try to write good content. I have about 4 keyword phrases that I do try to SEO but that’s all. Don’t make the mistake of trying to rank for a bunch of phrases. Write naturally and it will happen to you automatically.

Pick a good hyperlocal web domain name. If it’s a catchy name, that’s great.
Go out and market the name of your blog.
Don’t get all caught up going overboard on SEO on your site.
Write good and various content. You will start ranking high for terms you hadn’t even thought of.

You can do it. Go out and take a #1 spot on Google. If you have done something similar with your blog, please share your success in the comment section below.

All comments are moderated. Spammers go somewhere else, you are wasting your time.