Home is where you start from: Casual Blogger Conference 2010- my continued report

Friday, June 11, 2010

Casual Blogger Conference 2010- my continued report

At the CBC10 conference, I think I took the most notes at the talk on SEO by Sarah Kimmel of Tech4mommies.com

I actually took a few pages of notes...so I'll just report back on a few points that really jumped out at me:

use google's keyword tool for adwords to see how simple changes in your wording can make huge differences in traffic.
always chose to open a link in a new window, do not send people away from your site.
make sure your keywords are relevent and popular
when hyperlinking, never use the words "this post' or "here" ( um yeah, guilty...)
get and use a google webmaster account

she went through a list of "worst practices" here are a few;

don't have primary navigation that requires flash/java
don't use mostly or all images with no text
don't target too many keywords
don't participate in link farms.

Jaime Chase presented on Product review, here are a few top things I wrote down...I see I was pretty note-heavy with this discussion, too;

Have a media kit
use images and or video of product, or you using the product
a buyer description of who the product is for, how to use it
have a call to action- where to find it, a giveaway...
be descriptive in your review, do not be vague

The Casual Blogger Conference was all about learning how to do better...how to blog better, how to use and take better photographs, how to find your voice. It was also about connecting to other bloggers- the social part of the conference was the life of the conference, really. Thursday night we had a girl's night out event- it was a great way to mix and meet, I met several bloggers finally in person, and also met many new friends. Friday night's social included a concert..frankly, as an introvert, I was a little fried by Friday night. So, I headed back to my room after dinner with the Blog Frog team and..what else, ...blogged, talked to Sky on the phone and recharged.

to be cont...

Labels: cbc10

posted at 1:00 AM
9 comments

9 Comments:

At 7:28 AM, Jennifer said...: I use "here" for hyperlinks all the time... guilty guilty.
At 11:43 AM, Blessed Mommy said...: Sounds like you had a wonderful time. Thanks for sharing your insights of the conference.
At 4:45 AM, Lizzie said...: Thanks Jen. I've no opportunity to get to these things. Bless your heart for sharing your notes.
At 5:52 AM, Claudia said...: That's so interesting - I would have loved to join the conference myself. Sounds like you got a useful "set of tools" for blogging. Thanks for sharing it - I guess there's lots of possible improvement for me...
At 6:35 AM, Jamie {See Jamie blog} said...: Thanks for sharing your notes!
At 6:04 AM, Lori said...: How fun that you got to go to this conference. Thanks for sharing your notes. Great stuff!
At 5:43 PM, Melissa G said...: Sounds like it was a good time! Thanks for the tips. I'm guitly of some of these too!
A couple questions, what do you mean by "link farms"? And how can we set it up so that a link will open in a new window?
Hmm, it sounds like i need to go to one of these conferences to learn all this! =) Thanks for your help!
At 8:53 AM, Hen Jen said...: Jennifer, yeah, I've bee guilty of using "link here" or "here", too-more so in my older posts. You get better search engine results if your link has either the actual content or subject.

Melissa,

I think a link farm is a page set up only for the purpose of links-there really isn't any content, or if there is, it has sentences that have been lifted from other blogs and mashed together so they don't make much sense. A link farm might offer to put a link to you & you have to link to them..but again, there is no content of value. Search engines don't like theses and they will figure you out. As for opening a link in a new window, I think you can fix that in your blog settings page, I don't think I have mine set to that, either...I need to go tinker around.
At 4:50 PM, AshleyOney said...: Great Job with the notes! Glad you had a blast! So did BlogFrog :)

Ashley @ theblogfrog.com

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