SEO
Once you become a blogger, you see this bloody acronym everywhere.
What’s so important about it? Does it matter to me?
That depends. How important is website traffic to you? If you’re looking to gain exposure for your blog posts, having your blog found in search engines is a big plus. People searching for specific terms that relate to your posts will be able to find you.
Blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because
1.blogs are frequently updated with new pages
2.blog posts are text rich
3.blog posts have links to other pages that are related to the blog post
4. So if you’ve been writing posts consistently, that are of average length and include links to other posts on your site that
5. relate or other blogs that share the same niche, you’re already doing a great job at assisting the search engine spiders.
Spiders? Spiders my friend.
Ok, not real spiders.
It’s actually similar to a web browser. Search engine spiders crawl the www the same way you would surf the internet using safari or firefox.
It can start crawling anywhere and stop anywhere. It follows links to get from one site to another. When it’s done crawling, it takes what’s it learned and drops it into a database – a search engine’s database (Google’s, Yahoo’s, Bing’s, etc) where it’s indexed and saved. When a user enters a specific term into Google’s search box, the results are pulled from that database; ranking is based on relevance to the search term (and several other variables, to be explained in a more advanced post). The higher your post ranks in the search engine, the higher the possibility that your link will be clicked on.
So how do we optimize our blogs for search engines? Let’s start simple.
Basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips For Your Blog Posts
Match your content to your title. Don’t name the post “thirty ways to barbeque foam cups” and then write about recycling for the environment.
Use your post topic’s keywords in the post’s title and headings tags. This is how the spider “decides” whether your content body is relevant to the post title. For example, if you want your post to be found by users searching for “after bedtime activities” then your post title and heading should have one or more of these words in them. Such as
Title/(h1)MainHeading: Bedtime Activities For Toddlers
(h2)Sub Heading: Toddler Bedtime Stories
(h2)Sub Heading: Bedtime Games
(h2)Sub Heading: Bedtime Stories
(h2)Sub Heading: Tips For Putting Your Toddler Down at Bedtime
Quick Rule: Only one Main Heading per post
Use secondary keywords in the body of your post. These are words that relate to the topic. Bold and italicize these words when possible. This also helps your friendly spider. Don’t go crazy, your post will look like crap.
All images should have Alt Text that applies to your post. Spider can’t see images, but if there’s alternate text there, it counts for something.
All images need a description – this is great for search engine indexing and as an excerpt when sharing on many social media platforms.
Include links to other posts on your site and use actual anchor words. If you link to a post about barbeque sauces, be sure that the anchor words that are linked to the post is “barbeque sauces”, not the word “here” as we’ve all done. You want the anchor words to be relevant to the post you’re linking to.
Choose Categories and Tags that relate to your post.
Install an SEO Plugin
Search Engine Optimization plugins help you to plug a meta title, meta description and meta keywords into your post page’s coding. This info is shown in the search engine results page (SERP) when your post is listed as the answer to a searcher’s query. The plugin offers you the ability to write an eye catching, alluring description of the post to be shown in the SERP, assiting in helping searchers choose a link to click.
Get Social For SEO
Install sharing plugins on your post.
Get active on social media platforms.
Build your network. You need a network of peers to help you spread your post across the WWW.
The most important tip to SEO?
Write unique, meaty posts. Show Google and readers alike that you’re an authority on the subject.
Photocredit:
macromagnon via photoxpress (desk and www)
Nicemonkey via photoxpress (spider)x
Alex Eylar via Compfight
25 Comments
Ok this is my Sunday project! Oh and hey dork face
I LOVE this. Thanks so much. I can’t get over this feeling that I have that you’re so “unsung”. Like seriously. You have so much knowledge and people don’t even know it. I can so see you teaching this virtually to small businesses, world wide. Like you’d be sitting wherever you are now now, live, walking people through this, step by step. Man. I would love to see that. Please let me know of anything I can do to help you make that happen. I’d just love to see it.
Oh, did I say I LOVE WordPress, too. Right now, my blog looks much like an amorphous mess. I need to tweak SO MUCH, but I’m getting there. You make me know I can with posts like this. You inspire me to GREATNESS!!!!
well lady this is only the basics. you have a wordpress blog. that means plugins for seo like crazy. my next post, i’m discussing two that are major and you can use.
I’m going back over my posts to see how I can improve them. Thanks for this information.
u r very welcome lady. thanks for the support
Not bad. I really think you need to create a series for SEO and blogging tips so they’re not so long lady! We talked about this at BBC yesterday. People LOVE series posts and it gives them a reason to come back and subscribe!
Dude that last line shows me how tired you were…”get some kind of ROI on my investment..” LOL ROI=return on investment..on my investment. 🙂 Big hugs and kudos on finally using your mic. BUT….you should’ve emailed me because there are lots of apps for Mac that can do the recording and they’re FREE!! BTW, your voice is nice, not dorky at all!!! 🙂
what scares me about saying that there will be a series, is that i won’t find the time to do the follow ups.
but again, this is just basic seo on the post side. there’s so much more and i already have the next post in mind!
thanks Eve, you’re always a great help and i really do appreciate it.
oh and r u kidding me? i was so tired that when i published the video i saw the double investment and i said fuggit.
You should def vlog, people would love to see your pretty face!!
Oh and before I forget….Happy Mother’s Day!!!!!
Well done Vanita.
I have read so many posts on the “pro” blogs about SEO optimization, but being rather technically challenged, I don’t always understand. I have the basic concepts, but I don’t necessarily know how to go about doing it. What I really liked about your post and the corresponding video is that you broke it down and made it simple to understand for people like me. I appreciate your efforts in doing this, and I’m looking forward to more of your down-to-earth lessons.
I have also been considering moving to WP, but I can barely figure out how to blog on blogger, let alone move it over to WP. But I love all the options you have on that platform.
Nice voice my friend.
Matty
Matty, you’ve got a great site, i say move it to WP! There’s so much more that you can do. and the post i wrote was only the basics and applied to posts only. making your blogspot blog seo is more difficult than doing so with a WP blog. with blogspot you need to edit the html to seo the entire blog where as WP hands plugin that are user friendly. i’ll demonstrate in future posts.
as for making it easy, i spent years breaking down technical specs to clients who were artists, so i get the importance and i know how techy those seo posts found online can be. I’m hoping to make mine easier for my fellow bloggers. i wouldn’t be helping if it’s hard to understand, ya’ know.
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yeah you are right about that. I have never heard of seo until I started blogging.
Right now, my blog looks much like an amorphous mess. I need to tweak SO MUCH, but I’m getting there. You make me know I can with posts like this. You inspire me to GREATNESS!!!!
Nice tips. Thanks for sharing!!
This is a wonderful information. TO be honest I haven’t have any idea about search engine and I’m glad to be able to read this wonderful information. Now its time for me to do some checking about my blog and see if it goes with the tips you mentioned here.
thank you for stopping by. if you’re on wordpress you’re good to go with simple plugins and one page techniques.
how many back links require Google Page rank 4?
Its really great article and great information about the SEO of a blog. Its really awesome work Dear.
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This is a wonderful information. TO be honest I haven’t have any idea about search engine and I’m glad to be able to read this wonderful information. Now its time for me to do some checking about my blog and see if it goes with the tips you mentioned here.
how many back links require for getting page rank of my blog http://magnifyingglassonline.com and i like your post.
This is a wonderful information. TO be honest I haven’t have any idea about search engine and I’m glad to be able to read this wonderful information. | 😛
oh great info! i’m a newbie so this is a big help for me. thanks!
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