Washington, DC – If you’ve ever watched my video, “If you want to get found on Google,” then you will know that a good SEO strategy always starts with discovering your keywords using that language of your targeted audience.

I work with a lot of doctors and dentists, for example, and they tend to use these highly clinical medical terms.  When they blog and write web content, it is always too high-level.  The words that they often use does not match with the search terms that their targeted audience would most likely use in a Google search to find a new doctor or dentist in their area.

I have discovered that Craigslist is a brilliant method and tool for keyword discovery.  It doesn’t work for all professions or services categories, but it certainly works for web design and SEO.

This is how you do it…

Step 1 : Go to Craigslist and click on a densely populated city like NYC.

Step 2: Enter a high level, broad term that describes your profession

Step 3: Select the pull-down that relates best to you

Step 4: Click seach and study the results

I did this recently for the following search criteria: Los Angeles Craigslist > WordPress > All Gigs.  I discovered the language that people are using to find companies like mine:

• WordPress knowledge
• Graphic designer
• WordPress tutor
• Web Designer
• Web Developer for WordPress
• WordPress Site
• WordPress – Portfolio
• Code Geek
• WordPress Designer
• WordPress Guru
• WordPress assistant
• WordPress, CSS, PHP Expert
• WordPress & Javascript Developer
• Experienced WordPress plugin PHP developer
• WordPress experts
• WordPress Genius

The list goes on and on.  See if you can find creative ways to listen to your targeted audience and discover the keywords that they use to describe you, your company and your services.

WASHINGTON DC, WordPress and SEO expert tips and advice. 

Have you ever studied a Google results page?  Typically, there is a list of 10 links and the structure of the results page is something like a series of these listings: 

The question are: 

1. How is the text in the link derived?
2. How do you control that information?
3. How is the snippet information derived?
4. How is that controlled or specified?
5. Does the link text or title tag affect your search performance?
6. Does the snippet or meta description tag help you get found on Google?

Answers: 

1. The text link is derived from your Title tag, which lives in the head section of your source code. 
2. If you are using WordPress, which I highly recommend, that information is controlled by the Subject line.  When you are in your WordPress admin dashboard and you create a new post, there is a subject line, “Enter title here”. This is where you enter the title tag information.

   

3. The snipped information is derived dynamically by Google.  If you have not set or specified the meta content=”description” tag, then Google will simply grab whatever information it can find – usually the first 150 characters of text in the content page. 
4. This information can be controlled within WordPress.  If you are using the All-in-one-SEO plugin on WordPress, then you can specify this content=”description” tag and control the Google search results snippet.

   

5. The Title tag is probably the single most important piece of information on your web page that helps you get found on Google according to your most important keyword search terms.  So, if you know the search terms that your targeted website audience will use to look for a website like yours, then this information needs to be in the subject line or title of your blog post.  You have about 70 characters to work with, so be concise with your headings. 
6. The description tag does not necessarily help you get found on Google.  However, it does affect your conversion or click-through rate.  The information in the description tag (or the snippet information on the Google results page) will often influence whether or not a Google visitor clicks on your link or some other link.  So, while this snippet doesn’t help you get found, it does help convert Google visitors to visitors on your website.

FREE social media software to start your own social networking website

If you are looking to build a social media / social networking website from scratch, be prepared to invest tens of thousands of dollars.  You may even sink $100,000 into that social media platform.  Development time is also likely to be eight months to a year.

Fortunately, there is a cost-effective solution.  In fact, the software is free.

WordPress MU (the Multi-User version of WordPress), a free, open-source, GNU Public Licensed software used primarily for blogs but is also a phenomenal content management system. I say phenomenal because it’s easy … easy to install, easy to modify, easy to deliver content, easy to get indexed on Google and easy to use.

Check out www.chickspeak.com, a prime example of a niche targeted social networking and content delivery website powered by WordPress MU. Another example is LetsEat.at, which is a free online website builder for restaurants, also powered by WordPress MU.

Now, just because it’s free doesn’t mean you can simply launch it out of the box.  Well, you can, but most likely, you are going to need to create a custom design, install it in a hosting environment that has the bandwidth and disc space to handle volume and seed it with content to start attracting visitors.  You’ll also likely want to have some social media integration to help get it jump started.

If you need help with all that, give us a call. inQbation™ is a web site design and development firm that specializes in WordPress templates, WordPress plugins, and WordPress extensions. If you need a website, blog, or social networking site and would like to use WordPress as its engine and development platform, then please contact the experts at inQbation.

Let us know if you find more WordPress MU or BuddyPress sites

We would love to check them out. Just leave a comment below with the URL or send us an e-mail to blake @ the name of our website dot com.