The SEO Girl

I’ve been eating out a lot recently, and have wanted to curb my restaurant expenses a bit and more importantly, eat healthier! I’m definitely not one able to just whip up something that tastes great, and needed a little (lots of) guidance. I found Hungry Girl, Lisa Lillien’s very fun healthy eating website and two cookbooks. I’ve heard a lot of buzz about Hungry Girl, and after taking a look at and buying both cookbooks, the recipes are actually healthy and pretty easy to make. I’m excited

Their site could be a bit more SEO-friendly by primarily cutting down the number of images used – it’s pretty image heavy. However, the popularity of  Hungry Girl is a lesson for other food bloggers out there, and the marketing tips encompass much more than SEO, but as we know, having a site or blog people actually want to come to, read, and tell others about and link to, can go a long way in having a very successful SEO campaign.

Timely Topics: Eating healthier is a hot topic right now, and sure, people are still hitting their local fast food joints, but healthy eating is getting more and more of the spotlight. Whether they actually cook the recipes is one thing, but searchers are looking for nutritious recipes, and posting about them is likely to get you a wider audience over time. Be sure to also post a photo and nutritional information for each recipe.

Share Your Recipes: Food blogging is much different than publishing a cookbook. Expect your recipes to be all over the Internet, and encourage your readers to share them. Have “Share This” or “Add To Any” buttons on each post to propel your readers to post your recipes on social sites or their own blog.

Give and You Shall Receive: Rather than allow your readers only a glimpse of your recipes, forcing them to blindly buy your cookbook, have a collection of full recipes available on your site or blog. There’s so many cookbooks out there, and potential buyers want to first do their homework and make sure your recipes are actually good. Post every few days with a new recipe separate from the ones in your book. This will encourage readers to buy your book for an extensive collection, and keep them coming back to your site, as well.

E-mail Marketing: The Hungry Girl has a “Subscribe” button on her site, where you can subscribe to her mailing list and receive even more great-tasting recipes! This again helps keep your blog fresh in people’s minds.

Contests: Want to increase the number of links to your food blog and increase buzz? Sure you do. E-mail your blog readers and post about a contest, such as who can create the best variation of your recipe on their own blog (linking to your blog in the post, as well), who can prepare a recipe of yours in the most entertaining way in a YouTube video, etc. Be sure to have an award for the contest, and more than likely you’ll get some exposure for having the contest.

Know Your Audience – The Hungry Girl’s audience is likely not 50-year old retirees. They know they’re targeting twenty and thirty somethings who want to eat healthy without toiling away at the stove. Select your target demographic, and make sure your cooking style and overall theme of your blog match that demographic.

Feel free to comment away with more food blogger marketing tips. Hmm, I seem a bit hungry all of a sudden, time to break out my Hungry Girl cookbook!

I’d like to go a bit more niche than “SEO for restaurants” on this one – I’ll cover the larger topic in another post, but this is all about coffee shops. I love coffee and relaxing in coffee shops, drinking americanos and reading a book or doing some work on my laptop. Every successful coffeeshop should have a website, and here’s some ways to not only enhance the site’s SEO, but to keep visitors coming back for more.

Coffee of the Day – Many coffee shops have daily coffee specials, whether it’s a special drink or type of coffee blend. Update the website every day with the special, and you’ll have visitors checking out the site regularly and stepping into your door more often.

Coffee Shop Approved – Chances are you some of your clientele have their own sites and blogs. Put up a sign in the shop and note on your site that you’ll gladly give them some publicity in the shop about their next event, or simply about their site or blog. In exchange, ask that they link to your site, and you may want to supply them with a “Coffee Shop Approved” type of banner. Create a “Local Loves” bulletin board in your shop, and list their website on the board.

Local Chatter – Anyone can read the newspaper, but what piques our interest is what people really think about the stories. Add a blog to the site and post short news bites, and ask people to respond, just as if they’re sitting across from each other sharing a cup of coffee. This will get the news of your site stirring, and can get the online media in your town noticing.

Social media – Social media is perfect for coffee shops. We suggest creating a Facebook Business Page and posting it in your shop. Chances are, your customers are on Facebook, so this gives them just another avenue to find you on!

Newsletters - Every local business should be engaging in e-mail marketing. Send out a weekly email about upcoming events, daily specials, and include a printable coupon for just that week. Include a few sentences asking readers to link to your site from their own site to help keep your local business alive and flourishing!

Hope this perks your coffee shop’s site up a bit (I know, I couldn’t resist the pun).

I have worked with a few law firms for SEO, and let me tell you, it can be one difficult niche. I typically set up and post to a blog for my clients and syndicate press releases on their behalf, but in all cases with the law firms, these strategies were prohibited by the client. Same goes for social media – the clients had to be very careful about the information released, and unfortunately, we could not employ all the techniques I would have liked. Here’s some ways to get around the usual “red tape” law firms experience:

• Keep The Keywords Local – Chances are the law firm serves a local area. Rather than targeting “Pennsylvania Malpractice Lawyers” as a keyword, keep it to a specific location, such as “Philadelphia Malpractice Lawyers”. Choose keywords that expressly relate to the areas the law firm serves. If you’re using keyword research tools and finding local keyword variations are not widely searched, research the more general term, such as “Malpractice Lawyers”, and simply add all the name of the town/city to the front of it.

• Local Link Building - I actually found link building to be fairly simply (well, “simple” relative to link building is a bit of an understatement) for law firms. Look for local sites in their area, including:
  • Chamber of Commerce (May require a fee to be listed, but adds credibility to the law firm’s page, and worth it)
  • Community directories
  • Local libraries, non-profit organizations
  • Restaurants, shops, etc

• Be Interactive - You’ll need to approach the “social” element a bit differently. Many law firms do pro-bono work, are involved in community events, have speaking engagements, and volunteer their time to local schools and organizations. Ask the law firm to keep a running list of these events and photos of each. After each event, contact their local newspapers about the event and include the photo and a link to the law firm’s site. Most newspapers now have online counterparts, so you’re nearly guaranteed a link and traffic from the newspaper’s website. Sure, there’s more of a human element, but it’ll take just as much time as updating a Twitter and Facebook page would.

• Meta Tags – Meta tags are of course not as important as they used to be. However, with a law firm, be sure every page of the site has as unique a meta title, or page title, as possible, in a format such as Philadelphia Medical Malpractive Lawyers: Philadelphia Law Firm . A searcher may be looking for a similar phrase and find the law firm’s listing on a page with 9 other search engine results, so make sure your’s targets exactly what they’re looking for, and has the law firm’s name in case the searcher recognizes the name. Same goes for meta descriptions – include 2-3 sentences about the specific service on that page of the site.

• Stay Professional - I typically stress that it’s important to have as creative and engaging SEO copy on your site as possible. With SEO for law firms, simply keep it professional. State the facts of important cases they won, the services they offer, and how those services can benefit the reader. Of course, make sure the copy is SEO friendly with local keywords, but don’t try to “wow” the reader with intersting content. Convey the message of the law firm, and get to the point.

If you’re not in the same location as the law firm and don’t have a firm grasp on the local area, ask the client to provide you with a list of businesses they work with, restaurants they frequent, and social activities they’re a part of. These pre-existing relationships can dramatically help with link building and overall get the word out about the law firm.

I like input. Anyone have tips on SEO for lawyers?

I’m all about change and constantly looking to the future, and I firmly believe in the quote “Change is the only constant”. You’ll start to see a few new recurring features at The SEO Girl blog:

• Ask The SEO Girl – I often get emails from readers with SEO and social media questions. I’m still always available at theseogirl@gmail.com to answer questions, but will now be sharing some questions and answers right on the blog. Email your SEO or social media question to theseogirl@gmail.com with “Ask The SEO Girl” in the subject line!

• The SEO Girl To The Rescue – I’m always wondering around online, and as a happy SEO geek, often spot ways to improve a site’s SEO. I’ll be randomly choosing a web site to review and making a few SEO and social media suggestions for the site. Sure, I may annoy a webmaster or two, but constructive criticism should always be welcome. Want your site reviewed? Email theseogirl@gmail.com with “The SEO Girl To The Rescue” in the subject line.

• SEO For Your Industry – I believe there is no “one box” style to SEO, and although the core SEO strategies are relatively constant, there are different SEO and social media techniques for every industry. I’ll be chatting about SEO/SMO tactics for different industries in this feature.

Have any features you’d like to see? Leave a comment and let me know!