I threw out your news release today, mere moments after it landed on my desk. That’s too bad, because some tree had to give up its life or precious bandwidth was wasted as both hard and electronic copies of your “news” made its way around the globe.

Newsworthy? Not hardly.

Luckily, no lasting harm was realized—I shook off what you wrote and soon moved on to some real news, managing to use certain well written information as a jumping-off point for a new article.

Yet, the taste of your “bad form” release has to be addressed, so please allow me to share the eight things I found in your piece that is at the center of our collective angst:

1. Terrible Title – 80 characters maximum is a nice rule of thumb for a good title, but you nearly doubled that limit. I couldn’t tell if you were making an announcement or crying out for help.

2. Weak Intro – You lost me after the first paragraph, let alone the first sentence. Neither had anything to do with the title which meant I had to work to figure out what your news angle was.  That angle was nowhere to be found so you failed.

3. Punishing Paragraphs – Your second and third paragraphs were much too long and could easily have been split up into several smaller paragraphs. Better yet, several sentences could have been struck out in entirety.

4. Excessive Quotes – You quoted the president of the company, vice-president of sales and the regional director, with each person saying basically the same thing. I almost expected your bookkeeper to chime in with her comments too.

5. Jarring Jargon – I realize that you are excited about your new product, but that enthusiasm needs to be tempered by reality and sensibility. I hardly know what to make of “concept of functionalities” or “holistic, groupwide simulation.” Get real and lose the Orwellian prose.

6. Pull Quotes – Your one opportunity to tell us something useful died in your pull quote. I’m glad your family rescues abandoned animals, but that tidbit has nothing to do with the news at hand. Someone goofed.

7. Stuffed Keywords – I hardly think that “redundant cycle” is a keyword phrase worth chasing after in the SERPs. Apparently, you do as I found the term scattered in five places throughout your piece. Yes, I am still annoyed!

8. Banished Boilerplate – So, you think that the press release boilerplate should be played around with, do you? Trust me, no one is interested in learning about every single unrelated product your company offers. Stick with the top performers and please keep it consistent from release to release.

Some 950 words later, I managed to sift through your release and determined that no “newsworthy” component could be found. That in itself is sufficient reason why you could have saved yourself and everyone else a whole lot of trouble.

See Also — Are Press Releases Still As Important As Ever?

There is a tendency among some web content contributors to stuff their articles with key words and key word phrases in a bid to be found easier online. The thinking goes that if you write your article in such a way, you’ll find yourself on the first page of Google’s SERPs (search engine result pages), perhaps within the top three (above the fold) results.

This is what I think of keyword stuffed material!

A high placement in the SERPs can certainly offer many advantages for you including more customers who find your site as well as more click throughs for your ads. Up until a few years ago it wasn’t that difficult to achieve higher SERPs but the web has expanded greatly since then and a lot of people have decided to make a “killing” by doing the same.

But the search engines, particularly Google, have adjusted their algorithms accordingly and are much less likely to let a gamed article get through. Your work may still get indexed, but it may not appear any higher than page 19 for “get white teeth” or whatever phrase or words you are using.

There are some dangers whenever you resort to keyword stuffing including:

Your reputation becomes tarnished. Unless you’re happy with being labeled a spammer, you’ll have a hard time separating yourself from that title. In writing, you quickly become identified with the company you keep…or push!

Your audience dies of boredom. Keyword stuffing is always apparent and does little to edify the reader. You may gain the SERPs, but lose your readership.

So, how can you still attract the crowds without resorting to tried and discarded methods? By working more intelligently and deciding that your readers do not deserve to be insulted.

What you can work on are certain writing fundamentals including:

Develop magnetic headlines. I don’t mean headlines that simply exaggerate, but those written to compel people to learn more. Give people something to think about, raise their curiosity and put it in their minds to explore further. Besides, your keywords can be incorporated in your title.

Use similar words. If your content is an overt sales pitch, I can’t help you tone it down. But, if your article is instructive, consider using the words you want to include by naturally spreading them throughout your article. Importantly, use Google’s AdWords tool to help you find what you want. In the “get white teeth” phrase that tool shows several alternative phrases to consider: whiten teeth and get teeth white are important search terms.

You can take your work one step further by citing experts in your field and including their personal blurbs in your article. No, I don’t mean cutting and pasting what you find online, rather to contact these people for an interview. If time is of the essence, then just pitch one question their way and offer to include their answer in your article, citing them and linking to their site.

You’ll gain authority, visibility and a tremendous amount of respect if you build your content carefully. No, you may not get “instant results” but there is a good chance that what you write will get some legs and be cited elsewhere or become an authority piece. Yes, that means abandoning some of the old tactics you may have used but in the long run you’ll have something to be proud of.

See Also — Commenting? You Can Do Better Than That!

I have several blogs under my management, each of which is underpinned by WordPress (WP), the content management system. I have extolled the virtues of WP for several years now, glad that I abandoned Blogger for this particular arrangement.

But, WP isn’t without its share of problems, most notably its vulnerability to being exploited. Many of the updates accomplished over the past few years were rushed into place when a security issue was suddenly uncovered. A quick patch and your WP was updated; your blog safe as long as you took security problems seriously and uploaded the changes.

Google SERPs

Recently, I uncovered a problem with one of my blogs that would not have been discovered had I not stumbled upon it in the first place. It seems that some of the descriptions in Google’s SERPs had been changed from article snippets to describe porn terms.

If you are not sure what I mean, do a site search (site:yoursite.com) to see the two-three line description of what your articles are about. That description should match the article, but in the case of this website some of the filthiest terminology has replaced what should be there. Yes, you have to add a dirty word to find out if your SERPs have been hacked, but include the word porn and you’ll know for sure (site:yoursite.com porn).

Frantic, I began to search the internet for answers but found very little support. Google’s site, as usual, wasn’t much help as they explained that such descriptions are generated from the website. Which got me thinking: could there be a bit of malicious code embedded in that blog? Might that code be messing with the SERPs?

AntiVirus Plug-in

Cutting to the chase, I turned to the AntiVirus For WordPress plug-in developed by Sergej Müller for help, thinking that a rogue comment got through. Turns out that my comment files were fine, but the plug-in turned up a problem with coding in the sidebar. Specifically, “AntiVirus” scans through your WordPress theme to detect problems and it was the sidebar.php file that was shown to be infected.

Isolating the problem, I discovered that a script used to rotate ads was infected. This script was built by a web designer so we removed it (from my client’s blog) and ran the virus check again—all clean. My client will work with his designer to make sure that the replacement code passes muster.

The SERPs still reflect the other junk, but I’m sure within a few days the site the problem will pass when Google Bot crawls the site. Thankfully, most visitors wouldn’t see the problem in the first place and, if they should click on the description, they’d still be able to see the blog’s pages as normal.

Whacking Mischief

Still, who wants to have their site associated with porn? Plus, you have to wonder if such mischief would eventually cause your pages to sandboxed by the search engines. Ouch.

A client shared his concerns with me over a sharp downturn in traffic to one of his sites and was thinking about launching an expensive advertising campaign to bring people back. This particular site consists of standard HTML pages which means it isn’t based on a blog platform, rather on a nicely designed CSS theme, and is updated fairly regularly.

Although I’m not directly involved with this site, I reviewed his pages and then assured him that the drop in traffic was probably seasonally related. After all, we’re in the middle of the summer months and when your site is seasonally themed, then there are times in the year when an even steeper drop will be noticed.

When Your Blog Loses Traffic

My client’s concern brought up an issue that many bloggers contend with too – a sharp drop to their blog’s traffic. Blogging can be immensely frustrating especially if you pour your heart and soul into it and the returns are just not there. After all of that work you notice that your Alexa number continues to rise, your PageRank sinks and your traffic numbers plummet. But on closer inspection and after an honest assessment of your site, you may discover a number of reasons why traffic is down. Let’s take a look at five of the more notable ones here:

Seasonal Traffic – If you have a Christmas season site, you’re probably going through one of the biggest drops since December 26th. Very few people are thinking about Christmas shopping, but I would venture to say that once Labor Day has passed your traffic will begin to tick upward, increasing noticeably in October and surging by early November. For everyone else (in the northern hemisphere), the months of June, July and August are generally slower as even web addicts like to take a break, head to the beach, visit their families, etc. They haven’t logged off completely, but they’re making good use of their warm weather time. Surf’s up!

Blogging Frequency – Have you been blogging less frequently lately? Check back to when you first launched your blog and compare how often you blogged then with how often you blog now. Over time, you may have gradually slipped to where you’re posting less frequently. Perhaps when you got started you wrote 15-20 articles per month but have since slipped to around 12. Fresh articles bring in the traffic, so consider ramping up your production to match or even exceed previous levels. Don’t let your quality slip!

Article Appeal – Maybe your subject matter simply isn’t of interest to your readers. I always tell bloggers to write about their passion as their enthusiasm will shine forth. Enthusiasm is contagious and people are drawn to blogs where the blogger knows his stuff, is excited about the topic and offers a unique and helpful perspective to his readers. If you’ve gotten in the habit of producing boring articles, then your uninspired audience will flee. Time to ratchet up your blog’s appeal!

Check Analytics – I use Google Analytics to review my traffic on a regular basis. Analytics and similar free or low cost tools give me clues on where people are coming from, what search terms brought them to my blog, which articles were most read and a host of other nifty features. You don’t have to be a statistical geek, but it is certainly helpful if you have a general understanding of these types of programs. You’ll also want to make sure that your sitemap is up to date, that Google webmaster tools is indexing all of your pages and you’ll want to check the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to see how high your pages are appearing for certain traffic generating keywords. Make adjustments as needed and your traffic numbers should increase.

Promote Wisely – I’ve noticed that some bloggers aren’t very active in promoting their articles. I arrived on the blogging scene late, launching the forerunner to this blog in December 2005. For the first full year, my site wasn’t set up to encourage commenting (people had to register which means few left comments) and my articles were stilted, not conversational in nature. By Spring 2007, my traffic numbers began to increase sharply as I understood that making my blog user friendly would be a big help. I also joined StumbleUpon, which soon began to bring more traffic to my site and carefully chose several other social media sites where I began to establish a presence and a following (Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn, to name just a few). Needless to say, when I stoke the social media flame these days, my traffic numbers increase; if I neglect adding fuel to that fire, then my traffic gradually slides.

Thoughts For Your Day

Technorati tracks blogs and regularly issues a “State of the Blogosphere” report which offers excellent insight into the world of blogs. This report gives a fascinating and comprehensive look at blogging and what all of this means to you. The top blogs out there have been around for three years or longer but as you might guess, the vast number of bloggers eventually give up.

If you plan on being around for the long haul, then develop a strategy to increase your visibility in order to bring in more traffic. Quite a few of my blogging friends are committed to blogging until their fingers fall off, creating interesting and engaging posts on a regular basis. These people know where their blogs have been and they know where they’re going, setting themselves up for long term success.

Oh, what about my client who was worried about his traffic? He decided that a marketing campaign wouldn’t be worthwhile and is the process of making some changes to his web pages. The coming weeks should reveal whether these changes bring in more traffic, but if not I may have another gig to take on.

See Also — Is Your Work To Marketing Ratio 2-1?

Last Wednesday — April 1, 2009 to be precise — Google was up to their usual tricks for April Fool’s Day. I didn’t pay much attention to their annual spoof, rather I soon found myself occupied with reviewing their PageRank export to the Google toolbar.

Yes, it appears that Google is hitting its stride with the all-important, but not that important Google PageRank update, by making changes on a quarterly basis. I say important because for some people it is the chief way that they measure their site’s worth, but I also say not important because there are many different factors and tools which tell how well a site is performing.

My PageRank Report Card

For the record, Matt’s Musings went from PR2 to PR3, WordJourney from PR3 to PR2, AutoTrends held steady at PR3 while The Article Writer is back up to PR4. FYI, The Article Writer made its debut at PR6 in June 2005 before gradually falling to PR5 before dropping to PR3.

Several tiny, niche sites (and even placeholder pages) I manage acquired their first ranking, PR1 to be exact, while my client’s two blogs at SayEducate.com and SayCampusLife.com managed to hold onto their previous PR4 position.

Other Ways To Measure Success

Granted, any drop in PageRank can be frustrating especially if you’ve been link building and using other methods to promote your site. However, there are other ways to measure the value of your website including:

Alexa Rank — Once widely panned by the SEO community, Alexa has gained some respect if only for their frequent updates which occur several times each month. The lower your Alexa number the higher your score.  However, it can easily be gamed through sites like Entrecard which encourage others to visit your site to inflate traffic numbers.

Google Analytics — If you run Google Analytics, you can gain an excellent understanding of your site’s traffic trends. While you won’t get a “rank” for how well your site performs, you will be able to gauge traffic numbers including page views, sources, and how well your AdWords campaigns perform.

Compete — Like Google Analytics, you can receive site traffic history and measure how your site compares against your chief competitors with Compete. Even in the basic (free) format, you can obtain some decent information about your site as well as your competition.

Semrush — Forget PageRank as I want to see how my sites perform with specific keywords. Recently, I discovered that the sharply increasing traffic to my The Auto Writer blog was bringing a lot of good attention my way. Turns out that I secured the #1 keyword phrase for a new vehicle about to be introduced, sending 200+ extra visitors to my site each day. Semrush has a freebie tool which can help you identify some of the results for free. Pay a monthly fee and you can get a hold of all of that information.

SERPs — You can check any search engine’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) manually to see how your site is doing. Honestly, I only check Google these days because of their dominance in the world of search. However, I also use Yahoo Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools to analyze all of my data.

Miscellany — Of course, I use Twitter to help build contacts online and have been particularly taken by Twitter Search which is an excellent way to find out who has been talking about your favorite topic recently.  I also like to use a good backlink checker to find out who is linking to me, I let Google notify me when certain keywords or phrases I’m following get mentioned. Additionally, I like to peak at domain tools when I want to obtain information about a client, a competitor or when I’m considering purchasing a domain or website.

So, as you can see PageRank doesn’t carry quite the weight that it some think that it should, given the many different measurements to quantify your site’s success. True, I would love to have a higher ranking from Google across my network of sites, but it is the other factors that weigh heavily and seem to bring fresh business my way.

It is now official: MatthewKeegan.com has officially been repurposed and is now an SEO blog. Gone is the vague business model — I’m now using this blog as the central point for my search engine optimization (SEO) work. The official name has been changed too: Matthew Keegan | SEO is now on the masthead.

What does this mean? Well, on surface you won’t see many changes as I’m not going to be adding scads of articles to this site in a bid to drive in traffic or to fetch new customers. I’m already managing ten other blogs and working very hard to help them rank high in the SERPs, pull in traffic, and convert customers. I’m a white hat kind of SEO guy, but if there are some gray areas to exploit, I might explore those as well.

Link baiting is, of course, the main way I help bring links in and this is only done through writing excellent content. To that end, I’ve been overhauling a few sites, taking a couple of others up one level, and using photographs and better layouts to help touch up some other pages. I’m not going to reveal all of my secrets, but I can tell you that as I track some of the changes I’ve made, the search engines love them.

So, join with me and link to this blog and if you are a customer needing some SEO assistance, then please consider me for your project. I can best be reached at matt AT thearticlewriter. com — to your success!

Update: Before I forget, anyone who leaves a comment to this thread with a link to a page they want stumbled, I’ll be stumbling that page for them to mark this blog’s transition. This offer expires at 5 p.m. ET, on March 7, 2008.

Q. I’m trying to make my title tags look a lot neater plus squeeze in some key words here and there. I noticed you separate your words with a line — how and why do you do that?

A. That “line” is called a pipe bar. You can find it on your keyboard as the upper key [shift + that key] located just above your ENTER key. The lower key is for the back slash bar.

I use the pipe bar as a separator and because it looks, in my opinion, much nicer than using a greater than symbol (>) or a semi-colon (;) to separate words.

By the way, using the pipe bar doesn’t mess up your SERPs. Search engines simply treat a pipe bar for what it is — a separator.

This past Friday (October 26th) Google’s datacenters began the process of changing the PageRank for sites across the internet. This followed the two-prong paid link penalty phase pre-update which occurred earlier. Specifically, in late summer Google went after the directories and earlier this week Google penalized a number of sites who sell links or engage in some sort of activity that impacts PageRank.

Looking Forward, Not Back

I won’t rehash all that has taken place the past few months simply because it is common knowledge and I am not interested in looking at what has been. Even as I write this article my focus is partially on the most recent update, with the bulk of my attention given to planning for the future.

PageRank Is Dispensed To Various Articles And Blog Entries

As far as this web address is concerned, the home page and this blog managed to hold steady at PR4 while The Auto Writer, my second blog, fell one notch to PR3. Importantly, specific blog posts and articles I wrote picked up PageRank, with some of the heavier trafficked URLs notching a PR3. Oddly, PageRank seems to have been dished out for blog posts made in August and September while various heavily trafficked articles written in May, June and July show no changes (the previous PageRank export took place on April 27th).

SERPS Trumps PageRank

One thing that has held consistent throughout 2007 is PageRank as The Article Writer has held steady at PR4. Traffic, however, has increased four-fold since January resulting in new business opportunities for me. I rank very well for certain keywords and keyword phrases which has opened up several windows of opportunities for me. Clearly, PageRank isn’t all that important to me as the site’s performance with the search engine results pages (SERPs) is what triggers the work that pays my bills.

Planning Ahead With A New Strategy

Although I don’t want to kill the golden goose, some of my new strategy will change the way that I blog. Specifically:

• I eventually will be blogging an average of three days per week here and two days per week on The Auto Writer. I cannot maintain my current pace if I am to provide material that is interesting and compelling.

• The work I am providing for customers is on the increase. I blog regularly on SayEducate, I’m providing content for a jewelry site, and I recently started a monthly automotive column for a Midwest US magazine (more about that in December). I have a few other irons in the fire I am ready to pull out too.

Finally, I plan on activating at least three new sites over the next two months. I own several domains (dropped, forwarded or dormant) that I plan on developing into full sites. Two sites I plan on keeping while the third I will likely flip. The strategy I have employed with CabinManagers (niche site targeting a specific audience) is paying off and I will employ that strategy in the development of the new sites.

PageRank, Just A Google Tool

PageRank is nothing but a Google tool to measure a site, blog or web page. You can’t do anything about PageRank, but you can bring customers to your site through superior SERPs positioning. By developing web pages which cause visitors to take an important action (click on an ad, fill out a form, buy a product) money can be made, whereas with PageRank you have no control over the process. Besides, it appears Google has devalued this product, perhaps because it has been “gamed” to death.

Now, can we put the PageRank cares behind us once and for all?