YouTube Interactive Transcript: SEO

YouTube recently added the Interactive Transcript feature, which uses speech recognition technology to automatically generate the transcript.

This is a easy clue that, Google would use this data to list videos for the keywords used in the video.

Interactive-transcript-youtube-seo

Though the transcription isn’t accurate, it surly helps in SEO, if done correctly.

Using SEO to Build Authority and Traffic

This is a guest post by Jeff Gross. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.

If you are putting content on your blog to build traffic and authority, SEO needs to be calculated into your effort. It does not matter if you put out 150 word blurbs on social media sites, full websites, or blog posting. SEO is the primary way the usefulness of information posted is interpreted. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that anyone wanting to be found would want to enable search engines to make that interpretation easy.

seo-for-blogs

The Finer Points of Blog Content SEO
Many of the tactics from building SEO friendly websites hold true on a blog. Appropriate use of keywords will provide the markers that spiders need to accurately interpret the work. A blog post that is overly long will actually be more of a hindrance than a help. There ends up being too much other text that ends up getting into the mix that the spiders can interpret as relevant even if it is not. Other points to consider are…

400-500 words is a good target length. Readers are not interested in encyclopedic blog posts. If the subject is bigger than that, simply turn it into a multi-part series.

Appropriate density of any keyword falls between 2% and 3%. Try to avoid saturating the text with buzzwords or industry-speak to broaden your appeal and keep the text readable.

Your title needs to command attention while being descriptive. It should also include keywords relevant to the text. The first sentence is important in that regard. It should also contain any keywords important to the text.

Blogging software packages will often allow you to add relevant tags to a piece of work. This is useful for using additional terms without saturating the work. For example, how would a blogger who doesn’t know anything about SEO locate this post? They may search up a phrase like “how do I get a bigger audience for my blog?” Even though terms like “bigger audience” aren’t used in the text, you can still aim towards that individual through appropriate tags.

The Quest for Greater Authority
The most useful goal you can pursue for your blog is establishing your authority. Prove your blog is giving good information and it will take hold and spread from there. Easier said then done though, right? Any good approach is going to take time. However we can hasten that process by keeping a few things in mind.

If you post junk posts, that’s how your blog will be viewed. Your blog should be used to demonstrate your unique perspective on the relevant interest. A writer that does not have the time to sit down and proof-read their work, spell-check, and make sure it’s readable will not be getting their work read. If you do not have that kind of time, take advantage of a ghost-writing company to generate solid work for you.

Depart from how the rest of the world is portraying a topic. Sometimes, it’s impossible to do. However, when you can, you want to take advantage of your unique experience, perspective, and knowledge to make your work stand out from the crowd. No one is going to take the time to read the piece if it is just a rehash of 50 other posts. Huge blocks of text are an instant turn off to readers. They will close the window.

A blog is one of the greatest marketing tools that is available at the moment. It is a great way to create a personal, memorable experience between your business and a customer that is often lacking on the internet. Be sure to keep SEO in mind while you flesh out your strategy to build traffic and authority to your blog.

Author’s Bio
Jeff is a professional internet marketing and blogging consultant. He writes mostly about blogging, internet marketing, Pay Per Click Strategies and Search Engine Optimization techniques and best practices. Jeff is also a consultant and content contributor for NY condominiums community.

Google Confirms “Keywords meta tag not used in its web ranking” — What next ?

After a long time of discussion online and offline, finally Google came to the rescue and confirmed that Google does not use Keywords meta tag in web ranking.




Source: Webmasters Tool

What does this mean ?
Now you can stop worrying about the keywords that you insert in the meta tag. Stop worrying doesn’t actually mean, to stop using meta tags! To be in the safer side(as we don’t know how other search engines treat meta keywords), it doesn’t hurt at all to use proper meta keywords.
meta-tags-description
And Matt cuts has clearly indicated in the above video that meta description is still valid and Google considers it while showing the snippet of description, if its nicely/meaningfully done.

Avoid the Confusion
Do not confuse this with “using the proper keywords” in the article. Using keywords in the article will get you up in the search ranking(if done properly) — If not UP, your article will be shown for the keywords, that you are using in the article. But as always, play safe. Don’t try to inject irrelevant keywords into your article. This will do more harm then any help, in the future.
Do not believe in people who call you and tell that – they will get your website in the first place of Google search ranking. Many of these guys still think that Google use the keyword tags to assign ranking and that they can trick!



Whats your stand on meta keywords, meta description or meta tags in general ?

Using #tags[HashTags] in Twitter

For those of you who do not know twitter here is a video to explain Twitter in simple, plain English.



Now a days you might have seen bloggers around the world announcing twitter contests, wherein the person who want to participate in the contest has to follow the blogger and tweet one of the message to his followers, like:

#200giveaway Just entered the Technotip.org $200 giveaway contest. You can win by following @technotip and retweet. http://xr.com/giveaway

Ever wondered how they track your tweets?
There are two methods widely used to track them.
Hash tags and Search.

Search is simple and most of you know about it. If not, then use Tweetag to search for any keyword being discussed by twitter members. To easy the job Tweetag itself tracks and displays the 40 most frequent topics being discussed on Twitter.

What is a #Hashtag?
Tweeples using “#“signs in front of “Keywords” or “Groups” and “Locations“ [This works almost similar to the tags in flickr and other services.]
For Example: recently Thin Air Summit held a conference and called their Hashtag #TAS08 for Thin Air Summit 2008.

These so called # groups are called “Hashtags“ .

Hashtags by definition are used to create real time track records of creating groups on twitter. Placing the # sign in front of keywords or targeted groups, makes it easier to track all conversations in the twitter time line via search.
The hashtag (#hashtag) provides a way for a tweet to be directed at a group and disseminated to people in that group.

Now assume that you have created a (hashtag)group #Google. If you search for keyword Google, you will get thousands of results. But if you search for #Google, you will get the messages of your group only. So this is a big advantage in tracking the tweets of your group.

I recommend using either one tag at the very beginning or at the very end in most cases and try not to put tags in the middle of the tweet – for easy and accurate tracking.

And the popular services that help you to track hashtagged tweets are hashtags.org and twittgroups.

To get started:
Follow @hashtags on Twitter. They will follow you back automatically, and your hashtags will be tracked in Hashtags.org

Its a good feature in twitter, but if used extensively it will surly spoil the twitter environment, by making it look spamy. And some spammers can also take advantage of it, by using some automated scripts(which work using twitter API) to post frequent hashtagged tweets.

You can follow us on twitter @technotip.