Time for some more SEO tips for the Search Engine Optimization Tips for Blogs Series.
- Register your Domain for a Lengthy Period – a recent patent by Google indicates that it now looks at the length of your domain’s registration in ranking it. It does this because many spam sites have short registrations and a longer one indicates that you’re building a site with substance and are in it for the long haul.
- One topic per post – the more tightly focused the theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes you might find yourself writing long posts that end up covering a number of different topics. They might relate loosely but if search engine ranking is what you’re after it could be better to break up your post into smaller more focused pieces.
- Write optimal length posts – there is some thought going around the Search Engine Optimization community that pages that are too short can get passed over for high rankings. I try to keep posts at least 250 words. Of course there are some posts on my blogs that are shorter, but if I’m writing a post that I want to rank well I try to give it some meatiness in terms of length. On the other hand don’t make it too long either – because in doing so you make it difficult to keep your keyword density up and could end up with a less tightly focused page. Research also shows that longer articles can have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the ‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article.
Advice on how to optimize your site for search engines
Technorati’s David Sifry responds to fears about blog spam, saying that smart algorithms and teamwork with other players can keep it from overwhelming the blog world.
i think the wordcount is very important.
Longer posts are better because they usually receive more traffic. The key to writing good posts is to not think about the length, but instead make sure they are good posts.
What is considered a lengthy registration? Thanks
Frugal for Life
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I think it’s worth mentioning that sometimes you should just throw SEO out of the window for the sake of your blog. For example, my site is intended as an outlet for my creative writing and my posts tend to be 1,000 words long on average, purely because I’m not dealing in news items, oddities I found on the net or lists of links to other sites. The nature and intent of your blog often dictates which SEO points you can attend to and which you’re just going to have to ignore. Let us not worship the great god Page Rank but see it as the useful tool it is.
All of Darren’s suggestions here match my experience. Posts on a blog on a domain I registered over ten years ago rank much higher and more quickly in the SEs then new pages and blog posts on newer domains. I’ve also learned to post one topic per post. I generally try to keep word count between 250 and 500, though I’m not insane about it. For certain blog posts, I also try to really focus on keywords.
Another valuable trick is to ensure your keywords are in the tag and one tag of your blog post page. Darren, putting the date and byline in the and your real post title in the really need to be reversed.
Sorry about the deleted HTML tags in my previous comment. When I mention “tag” in that post I’m referring to <h1> and <h3> tags. (I hope HTML ampersand codes work here! Why is preview disabled?)
You don’t mention anything about the quality of the posting. Length is one aspect to get Search Engine ranking but don’t you want to convert the Click-Thrus into regulars? See my article on this topic
Interesting last point there, I think this is debatable as some bloggers depend on those long pillar articles for increasing traffic through several internet marketing functions.
I myself keep to a range of articles from ones that are 300 words plus to ones which are 1,000 words plus.