Bloggers Guide to SEO
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First I have to say that I am by no means a SEO expert, but I do know blogging. Improving your blog for search engines has never been easier for bloggers. It just takes a little bit of work. In the last month we’ve received 1,400 visitors from Google alone.
What Exactly is SEO?
When I first started blogging, I didn’t even know what SEO was.
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines.
The better your website is prepared and “optimized” for search engines, the more traffic you should get. Here is how you can improve your blog and start using basic SEO methods to improve your rankings.
Change the URL Permalink Structure
It’s important for your blogs URL to include at least the post title. Basic WordPress default settings give your blog, example, “yourblog.com/p=1”. This not only hurts your SEO, but makes your blog look unprofessional. You can customize your post URLs to have whatever you like.
To change the settings, go to your Options tab in the WordPress dashboard. Then select permalinks. To have your post link just have the post title, go to custom and enter /%postname%/.
I recommend to do this very early with your blog. By changing the URL structure, your blog will need to be re-indexed for the right URLs. If I changed my permalink structure now, people searching my blog would get errors because the URL for each post would be different.
Install the All In One SEO WordPress Plugin
This is an essential (and easy) WordPress plugin for any blog. This plugin allows you to perform basic important SEO techniques with your blog. You can change the title and description to whatever you want. This is what the search engines will see. You can also tag your post with keywords which is also very important for search engines.
If you haven’t downloaded the All in One SEO plugin, you can do so here.
Blog Your Key Term
Pick relevant key terms for your blog and use them. The obvious best way to start ranking for the key terms you select (at least longtail) is to blog about them. Make sure to include the key terms in your title, post and tags.
My post, 10 Quick Blogging Tips, helped me start ranking for “blogging tips” and other key phrases similar to that.
Build Links With Your Key Terms
To get better rankings for your key terms you need to promote it. I’ve had bloggers link to this blog with keywords like blogging tips and blogging tools. I’ve used this technique for link exchanges and leaving comments.
Of course the alternative is to buy links. However this can be costly. You also don’t want to go and get 1,000 links within the same key term in one day. This could ultimately ban you from search engines, or for that particular term. SEO can be a slow process, but rewarding.
Comment on Blogs – Do Follow / Top Comments
Commenting on blogs can not only drive traffic and subscribers to your blog, it can also help with basic SEO.
By commenting on blogs with “do follow” or a top commenter list, you can build easy links with whatever key term you chose. This is how I gained better rankings for key terms like increase website traffic and blogging tips.
An important rule here is to NOT SPAM. All the comments I left were on-topic and provided value to the article and comment section.
Courtney Tuttle has the infamous Do-Follow List where you can find tons of blogs that give you SEO juice. There are over 200 websites/blogs that are now on the “D List”.
How have you incorporated basic SEO into your blog?
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20 Comments on this post
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Rob O. said:
This isn’t strictly a SEO-specific strategy, but it may be helpful nonetheless…
Another, probably lesser, tip is to use “deep linking” where possible. That is, when leaving comments on other blogs, insert a specific link to one of your pillar posts in the “website” box instead of just your main URL. You can also deep link back to older posts on your site within new posts to encourage crawlers and readers alike to dig deeper and explore your older posts.
This can be another way to shine a little light on an older post that you were especially proud of but somehow never seemed to garner as much attention as you had expected.
April 1st, 2008 at 8:45 am -
Doug said:
Thanks for the tips
April 1st, 2008 at 1:10 pm -
Pass the Torch said:
Every time I read your blog, I’m reminded about how little I know.
Thanks for educating;)
April 1st, 2008 at 6:51 pm -
Sean S. said:
Great post on SEO.
Very useful and to the point.
Thank you for the tips on SEO and blogging.April 2nd, 2008 at 4:42 pm -
bendzg said:
there’s a better alternative to all in one SEO pack heheheh.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:01 am -
computerzworld said:
Very useful info….. I will be surely do whatever you have said….. Thanks for sharing such a great content….
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:16 am -
Experiments said:
Useful tip on SEO but I will need to revisit to get acquainted with each of the following described above. My blog is in blogger. Does the wordpress thing apply to blogger as well.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:37 pm -
Felex Tan said:
I agree with comments on top website will improve PR which i leave at least 50 comments daily,which i will target to achieve 100 comments.I do not mean just give a unuseful comment such as “Thats great,i love it….”Really will read the post,and give sincere comments.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:17 am -
computerzworld said:
is there any seo optimizer for google’s blogger?
April 5th, 2008 at 9:13 pm -
risoknop said:
Nice article 🙂 First I got scared because you used exactly the same image as I used at my blog in similar post (about SEO basics) and I thought it’s my article but then I continued reading and foud out it’s not…
Thumbs up…
April 6th, 2008 at 3:07 pm -
Carol said:
After reading this post, I think I may have been doing a better job at SEO than I thought I was. I try to do all of the things you suggest to do. And, of course, I come to BAYB to get the best advice. :::sucking up::: 😉
April 15th, 2008 at 12:21 am -
Riccardo said:
I’ve just started one month ago to do SEO and I think that thanks to your tips it will be even more effective!!
Riccardo from ItalyMay 19th, 2008 at 6:40 am -
Andy said:
Nice Information i needed it.Thanx for putting up such a great post.
June 6th, 2009 at 12:16 pm -
Talking Ava said:
I only know a handful of things about SEO, so this is a pretty great thing to read and very much useful in my trade. Thank you so much for sharing these tips!
March 24th, 2010 at 12:11 am -
car wash tampa said:
I always check my website history and analyze my site on alexa.com . Just try this you will have better details of your website.
January 3rd, 2011 at 3:02 am
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