Today’s blogger spotlight comes from the adorable and fun blog Angelica’s Awesome Adventures!
Andrea actually runs two websites (her other site is Coupon Blog SEO) and is an SEO by day. She has a lot to juggle and she does a great job!
SEO, if you don’t already know, is short for Search Engine Optimization.
In other words…Greek to me!
Andrea has it DOWN though and she was happy to answer a few questions for us!
Q1: How did you first become interested in SEO? How long have you been working in SEO?
I first heard of SEO about ten years ago. I was working in the marketing department at Full Sail University, when we hired our first SEO person. I was intrigued — someone who gets to play on Google everyday?
That sounds fun! (But of course, it’s much more complex than that!)
I wound up taking a bit of a sideways step and working in the online education department, doing some online community work and analytics, and kind of fell in love with the analytics aspect. I wanted to learn more, so in 2009, I enrolled in Full Sail’s Internet Marketing master’s program, which included analytics curriculum as well as other aspects of online marketing, including SEO.
In tandem with that, I started doing some SEO work on my own blog, then got hired as Full Sail’s SEO specialist in 2011. In 2012, I moved to Boston and I’ve been working at Catalyst, a search marketing agency, ever since.
Q2: What is the biggest mistake you see bloggers making in terms of SEO?
This is kind of a three-fold answer. First and foremost, I see a lot of bloggers ignoring the basics — don’t forget with each post, whether or not you have a focus keyword, to use the meta description field. That controls the snippet of text that shows up under your link in the Google SERP (search engine results page). Always include a call to action in that — “Come in to learn more!” or something like that to entice the person looking at it to click your link.
Secondly, I see bloggers going after very, very high competition keywords — for example, a coupon blogger going after “coupon” and “coupons”. These generic terms are nearly impossible for a blogger to rank for. Try to get more granular with your keywords — “coupons for (x product/retailer)”. “(x product/retailer coupon codes)”. Even those are still very competitive, but more focused than the very broad term, “coupon”.
Finally, and this kind of goes with the point above, remember that there is only so much you can do to rank for a certain keyword. You can do everything right and still not wind up on page 1 if Google’s algorithm determines that other sites should show up ahead of yours for whatever reason (freshness, searcher intent, among other things). That’s the great “unknown” in SEO.
Q3: What can bloggers do to improve their SEO knowledge and what resources can they turn to to become more educated?
Moz.com and searchengineland.com are both excellent resources for current SEO news. Moz.com also has some beginning SEO tutorials that are great for getting a grasp on the basics of SEO.
Q4: If you could give one tip to all bloggers in reference to SEO, what would that tip be?
If possible, reuse your posts instead of creating new ones. For example — if you regularly post something like “Old Navy coupon code”, each time a new code comes out, reuse that post instead of creating a new one. That way, if people are linking to your post, you’ll keep accruing links to that one URL instead of spreading it across multiple posts, giving more authority to that post and (hopefully) boosting your rank.
Thank you so much for answering our questions Andrea!
Here are some links of Andrea’s you might want to check out!
- Tuesday Timesavers: great tips and tricks to help save time! Andrea is a full time working mom so she is sharing her tips for saving time! Some great ideas in this series.
- 31 Days of Halloween: 31 days of FREE Halloween printables!
- Coupon Blog SEO: Andrea’s SEO blog and a place you can find out about her consulting packages (Yes! You can hire her!)
Also, be sure you follow Andrea on Social Media:
- Angelica’s Awesome Adventures: Facebook, Twitter & Google +
- Coupon Blog SEO: Facebook, Twitter, Google + and Pinterest
Thanks Andrea !
Thanks so much for the write-up, Heather! It was a pleasure to share with you!