Marketing Defined

SEO for Blogs - How to Optimize Blog Posts, Pages and Articles:

Updated: September 2008

SEO for Blogs and small business Wordpress websites is made up of many simple techniques that work together to create a greater overall strategy. This combination of key techniques is more effective or greater as a whole, than the sum of the parts.

Result: while you can skip any small technique that is part of the overall strategy, it will most definitely detract from the edge you will gain by employing ALL of the key search engine optimization techniques.

When blogs first appeared, people mistakenly thought they were just another channel for folks to rant and rave… like a diary of their personal lives!

The distinction here is: a Blog is a tool to express informed views of its authors… making blogs a crucial tool to brand a business on the w.w.w.

SEO specialists kept this affordable seo and web marketing medium under wraps for quite some time, but around 2005 savvy marketers caught on to their importance for not only branding business names, but as a must-have sales and promotional tool…

.. Particularly for the instant indexation opportunities to be gained - as the Search Engines continue their love affair with the constantly updated nature of blogs.

On-page SEO for blogs, is a simple process that begins with the optimizing of each individual post for 1 or 2 keywords or keyphrases.

Learning  how to add related theme keyphrases throughout a Blog… just as you would optimize the web pages on static web sites, is the other key ingredient.

[Naturally, key “off-page” optimization, with the primary emphasis on seeking one-way, non-reciprocated, inbound links must continue in earnest to consolidate the seo efforts covered here for each blog post - the tip here is to make sure that inbound links connect not only to the home page,  but to individual posts in your blog.]

Here are some effective, yet easily applied steps for on-page optimizing of each individual post so as to gain high search engine rankings for your niche blog.

• Keyphrases: Start firstly with the careful selection of a current popular keyphrase related to your industry or the target market of your blog .
• How To Research Keyphrases: Current ’searched-for’ keyphrases are easily gleaned by typing in the primary keyword into the Google search box and watching out for suggestions from the new Google Suggest drop down Feature, or by searching for related semantic keywords highlighted in bold on the Google SE result pages [SERPs].  Here are more pro reference tools:

1. Google Adwords External Keyword Tool
2. The popular Wordtracker, and the recent addition of
3. The Ad Lab at Microsoft offering a complete set of keyword, demographic and search tools… again costing nothing to use. For this exercise you would input a given keyword or term into the Keyword Group Detection Tool which returns a set of related key phrases from recent online queries.Weblogs for keywords: I constantly use the keyphrases readers type into Search Engines to reach my blog, as ideas for blogs posts [these keyphrases are available via the statistics found in the daily Weblogs of your domain] .  As you would guess, using the subjects your readers consistently search for to produce quality blog posts is a key ingredient in growing your blog’s traffic base.

• Title Tag: Be sure to include the researched keyphrase at the very beginning of the “Title Meta Tag” [which contains the Title of your post].  Including the keyphrase towards the end of the tag will only dilute the SEO benefit. It must be incorporated in the very first opening words…  It really is irrelevant if you elect to include the actual name of your Blog at the end of the Title Tag,  as the weight is only applied to the first few words of a Title. However, the blog name must not appear before the Title Tag. TIP: Wordpress users have available: the excellent Headspace SEO Plug In, which allows you to write an optimized title and description meta tag for every single blog post. I started using the Headspace seo WP plug in with great success to update the Title and Description Tags of all the old posts in this Blog. As a result.. I have continued to use an optimized description on every single new post
• Keyphrase Tag: In an effort to defeat spammers, the keyphrase tag really does not carry much weight anymore with the big search engines. However for maximum reach at least until your Blog is a recognized authority website, do include it at least for the home page of your blog.  It is far more important to become adept at using theme related keyphrases for each page.
• Description Tag: does get used quite often to display search engine results. In fact Google on many occasions uses the Description Tag of a blog page to “pull” relevant search results [since I started using the Headspace SEO plug-in, Google has re-indexed a lot of my posts using the exact wording I used in the new Description tags. NOTE: The “description” tag must not start with your keyphrases, instead use a single word like “Offering” or “Providing” to precede the description tag..   For the Headspace plug in all you do is insert the actual description in the relevant tab that appears at the bottom of the "write post" field, after the plug in is activated.Here is how to write an optimized Description tag for a blog - the example niche topic is a company that sells international simcards. Note that the company's USP or strongest marketing point of offering "50 cents calls back to the USA when traveling overseas" is cleverly incorporated into the Description tag - enticing clicks on the article from the SERPs:
  

  < meta name="Description" content="Offering global simcards for international travellers that allow affordable 50cent calls to the USA from your own cell phone" >

• Body Text: Include the keyphrase in the opening paragraph of the post and repeat this phrase one time in the body of the post .. a word of caution: Do ensure a clear grammatical flow of words.. firstly so that the words flow naturally for the reader, and then to avoid down-rankings for keyword stuffing… The MSN beta search engine in particular down ranks any attempt at keyword stuffing — refer this post on optimizing blogs for the MSN beta search engine Bold or Italicize the keyphrase one time in the body of the post and no more. Try to include the title of the post, incorporating the keyphrase right at the very end of the main body of text or at the very least be sure to repeat the keyphrase only... in the closing paragraph.
• Ping: If you use Blogger, you will need to announce the publication of each post to major RSS directories via one of the automatic “ping” tools — Log in to Pingomatic , type in your blog’s url [not the site feed] where indicated at the top, and place a tick in all the boxes underneath and press the “ping” button. This action will ping or announce to all relevant directories that your Blog has been updated with a new post. Naturally, the more sophisticated Blog tools like Wordpress and MT automatically announce the publication of a post via an automated “ping” system.
• Internal Linking: The blog post or article must be hyper linked to related articles on your own site.  The anchor text of these interlinked URLs must contain theme related keyphrases of the inbound page [see an example of how to use the correct anchor text in the preceding URL - I have linked to an article about "theme related keyphrases", and made sure that those words are contained in the anchor text, which is the clickable part of the link ].With the release of WP v2.6 such interlinking will force a comment to appear under the post featuring the related article - make sure you approve some of these comments.    The short descriptions of related topics will tempt visitors browsing the comments to click on such links transporting them deeper into the Blog or website.

  Please avoid a dull and downright boring post just full of links to other blogs … If stuck for ideas relevant to your target market, do spare some time to research related articles via a Google search, offering your own views and conclusions on the topic so as to offer original content.  When others quote your work you are perceived as an authority in your field, which is the primary, free method of getting related inbound links. Such inbound links are highly valued by Google in its ranking algorithm.

Start off with these simple techniques, apply other key on-page and off-page seo techniques…

… and your web sites will climb in the SERPs, eventually ranking highly for the keyphrases you target.

I am so very grateful for the highly ranked posts that generate the majority of traffic to this blog.

What do you think?  Have you got other SEO tips that you care to share with us… Your comments are always valued.