To Newbie or not too Newbie: the slings and bullet points of experts

June Hollister urges me to offer that missing information that newbies need. Tim Scullin posts a blog with the title, “How You Can Effectively Target Keywords for Newbies”

Okay, then. What knowledge is the prerequisite for understanding this article?

What is a keyword? Why is it important?

If you can’t answer that question easily, maybe you are a newbie. And maybe the article is over your head already.

Let’s say I’m at the intermediate level. I found particulars of Tim’s article had assumptions that were not apparent. That meant that I didn’t really “get it.”

Back to keywords.
1. A keyword is one or more words that people use to search for something.
2. A keyword is what gets typed into Google, Yahoo or other search engine to find information.
3. A keyword is an essential term that connects to lots of information in a given subject.

Does that help get us started?

Now, why are they important?

Let’s say you have some valuable information published online. There are one or more keywords that will logically point to that information and help people find it.

In other words, the right keywords, in the right place, will help people find what you have published. Isn’t that important?

Page Headings and Descriptions

Next, Tim says we should have our keywords in our page headings and page descriptions. You do know what page headings and descriptions are, don’t you?

I confess I was a little fuzzy on that. So I went to my blog for a clue. No help there.

The clue was found easily at WordPress.org. I put the keyword, “page headings” into the search box at the top right on the page. Click and receive a nice list of articles with a snippet from each.

Knowing where to find information is 90% of the battle against ignorance.

The page headings refer to the blog title and the post title, primarily. That means if you are blogging about chocolate, the word “chocolate” should be in the title of your blog. And it probably is.

If your post is about dark chocolate, you want the words, “dark chocolate” to be in the title of the blog post.

Tim Gives Us Our Instructions
From there, in his article, Tim plunges further into the expert zone. I haven’t followed the instructions yet on using the Google Keyword Tool. At least, not exactly as he writes it. And I will. So I have no comment yet.

The prerequisite is a Google account. You get one by setting up a Google mail account. That leads to the treasure chest that Google really is for web masters.

I don’t intend any criticism of Tim Scullin with my observations. I like what he is doing. I follow him on Twitter. He’s personable as a social media guy and likable.

The point is, and maybe I’m out of line here, but, how much do newbies have to know to get started?

I am certain that what I have written here will be useful information for someone. The question is, how does that person characterize herself? Does he or she call herself a “newbie?” How about, “blogging beginner?”

Some astute research would help with this kind of question. But, right now my fiddle is calling me and asking me to play a tune.

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Tags: keywords, newbie, web skills

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