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Optimize a Single Post On Your Blog for SEO

This is an unofficial extra task for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook.

SEO-optimize-blog-post.jpg

Today I spent the morning working on a task that I try to do at least once a month – SEO on individual key posts in my archives.

While it’s important to know and practice the basics principles of SEO in the way you set up your blogs structure and in the writing of your posts – I find it can be very worthwhile periodically going back through key old posts to optimise them even further. I’ve used the following process for a while now and in most cases where I do it I find I’m able to increase my ranking for different posts.

I’m not the world’s best SEO but here’s the process that I use in doing this (I invite you to share yours in comments if you do this type of thing) – I hope you find it useful:

1. Identify Key Posts to Optimize for SEO

Across my active blogs I have 10,000 blog posts so I need to be a little strategic about choosing which blog posts I go back to to give a little SEO attention to.

For me the way that I do this is to dig into my Google Analytics account to work out what posts are already having some success with search traffic – but which could be improved. I generally look for posts that are ranking anywhere from #2 to #10 for their keywords (although sometimes focus upon those which are #1 to strengthen them further).

If a page is already generating some traffic from Google for a keyword but isn’t in the number 1 ranking for the word and increase in ranking should also see an increase in the traffic that the post receives. I’ve seen a variety of studies over the years that show that the #1 ranked result in Google can be getting anywhere from 35-55% of all clicks – the higher you are to the top the better.

Lets look at an example:

I’ve got a page on DPS which ranks #2 (depending where you are) for the term Portrait Photography.

It is a good page to optimise because it’s a relatively good term in the amount of traffic it drives (it’s a term that get a fair bit of searching for in Google) but also because the page is a ‘sneeze page‘ which links to quite a few pages across my photography blog and as a result those who visit that page end up visiting over 7 pages on their visit (the site average is a bit over 2 pages per visit).

The page already generates some healthy traffic (a few thousand visitors a month) so I know if I could get it ranking higher it will generate more.

2. Analyze the Competition

I don’t tend to get this deep into SEO too often but from time to time it can be worthwhile doing a little analysis of what pages that are ranking higher than you for a keyword are doing.

market-samurai-SEO.pngOne tool that I use for this (and other keyword analysis) is Market Samurai. It’s a tool I’ve only been using for a little while but it’s very handy. That link is an affiliate link but it does give you a 12 day free trial. I’ve shelled out for the full version as it has been so handy a tool for this type of analysis.

One of the modules in the Market Samurai system (there are quite a few more) is one that does analysis of what competing pages are doing for a keyword. Lets take a look at what it gives us for ‘portrait photography’ as a keyword (click to enlarge).

portrait-photography-analysis.png

You can see that the #2 ranking is for my site but it also shows a variety of information for other ranked sites in the top 10. Some of the information given is not overly relevant to me (or at least is out of my control like the first column which looks at the age of the domain) but some of the information is useful in getting a handle on how your page compares to other sites.

Knowing this might help you work out what you need to do to rank higher – or it might also give you an indication of whether you have much chance of ranking for the keyword at all (if the site you’re trying to compete against is way beyond what you can achieve it might be an indication that you want to go and work on another page).

In this example lets compare my page with the #1 ranked page:

  • DA – domain age – they have a real advantage here.
  • PR – page rank – their page is a 4 and mine is a 3. Something to work on.
  • IC – index count (the number of pages indexed on the domain) – they are obviously a lot bigger site. This doesn’t mean I can’t rank for the term but gives an indication that I’m up against a pretty established site.
  • BLP – the amount of backlinks pointing at the page. They obviously have more (we’ll do some more analysis of this below).
  • BLEG – links from .edu/.gov sites pointing at the page – they have a couple here while I don’t
  • DMZ – is the site in the DMOS directory (I don’t page a lot of attention to this but some say it can be a factor)
  • YAH – is the site in the Yahoo directory (again, not something that I pay much attention to but some say it can be the difference between getting a higher ranking and not)
  • Title – is the keyword/s in the title tags of the post (we both do this)
  • URL – is the keyword/s in the URL of the post (I have the advantage here)
  • Desc – is the keyword in the meta description tag (not something that I’ve found to impact SEO much but perhaps something to consider with the way your post appears in Google)
  • Head – is the keyword/s in a header tag on the page
  • CA – The Cache Age (the number of days since Google Cached the page)

In this case – the analysis shows me that I’m up against a pretty heavy hitter. It’s an established site with lots of links pointing both at the domain and the page itself. I’m tempted to settle for just ranking #2 for this page but for the sake of the exercise I’ll push on.

Note: Market Samurai also gives you the opportunity to dig deeper into competing sites and can give you a breakdown of the actual links pointing at a page. I won’t do the analysis here (it might be deeper than where people are at) but what I found was that in the case of my competition on this one is that the competing site had a lot of forwarded links pointing at it. I’m not sure what was going on with it but it seems that the majority of the links pointing at my competition are from forwarded domains and not actual live pages. This gives me a little hope so I’ll push on with optimising the page.

3. On Page Optimization

The above competitive analysis might give you a few hints as where to begin in optimizing your page. For example if you’ve not got your keywords in ‘title tags’ or ‘header tags’ – you’ll want to fix that. If your keyword is not in the URL, that’s another thing to consider. Those three tweaks alone could have a fairly significant change (I’ve seen changing title tags to include keywords as increasing rankings significantly).

Once you’ve done that you might want to also look at some smaller tweaks that could play a part. Using keywords in bold, using keywords in alt tags on images etc. These are probably not going to have a major impact but could help a little.

Ultimately if you want to rank for a particular keyword – you need to be using that keyword on your page in key spots (titles, headings, URL). Don’t stuff your page full of the keyword (and whatever you do keep your content useful and readable to readers) but a few tweaks might help.

4. Off Page Optimization

You might find that with some on page optmization that your post is already increasing its rankings – particularly if the keyword you’re looking at is not highly competitive. However at times it can be worth looking at ways of generating some extra links to your page as the number and type of links are important in determining how a page ranks in search engines.

I don’t tend to do much of this type of SEO as I find my site tends to get a nice number of links pretty naturally from other sites but I know those who are more into SEO will work hard on some of the following:

  • analysing where the competition is getting their links and looking for opportunities to get links there too – for example if a link is coming to your competitor from a forum discussion or blog comment you might also have an opportunity to leave a quality comment there with your own link.
  • links from other blogs you own (particularly one on a relevant topic) link to your page from it
  • internal links – this is something I do do – basically its about interlinking your posts. While internal links don’t count as much as an external link they can help a little.
  • pitching links to other blogs – if you have a relationship with other blogs in your niche try pitching a link of the page that you’re optimizing to those bloggers.
  • sharing links in social media – most social media sites like Twitter and Facebook put no-follow tags on links so they don’t count directly for SEO but I find that an occasional push of an older post on social media sites can lead to indirect links from other bloggers. I also suspect that search engines are paying more attention to what links are being shared in social media sites so getting your links into them (without spamming) could be useful if you have a network of people who will pass them onto their own networks.

Note: the generation of links can be a fairly ‘black hat’ game at times. It can also be pretty addictive and become an obsession. I personally would prefer to spend my time producing quality content than spending my days asking for links. Do be a little careful with link building – not only can it be a time suck but if you engage in tactics that Google sees as against their Terms of Service (buying links for example) you could also be jeopardizing your sites ranking in their index.

Further Reading on SEO

Do you ever go back and optimize individual posts on your blog for SEO? If so – I’d love to hear your approach to it. This is the way I do it but I’m certain that there will be many other approaches that others take.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Great to see you are using Market Samurai! I have been using it for about a year now and it is extremely handy. That is a great tip about using Analytics. I use it to find the keywords getting good traffic and see if I can improve on them.

  2. WOW Market Samurai seems to be coool! this is the first time to hear about!!

    Thanks Darren!

  3. Hey Dareen,
    SEO has always bothered me and it is really confusing subject to understand to be frank. This article of yours have helped me a little. Lets hope that I could use it and see.

  4. Darren,

    I’ve been doing this for quite some time with good success. Recently I started going back and improving posts again this time using the Scribe Plugin (http://www.scribeseo.com/) that you recently wrote about. That plugin has been a huge help in forcing me to think about SEO as I write and when trying to update older posts.

    I’ll definitely check out the Market Samurai as well.

  5. Great advice Darren, I usually am content just getting on the first page of the serp’s, but I now realize how much potential traffic I have been missing out by not being in the #1 spot.

    • Mathew Day – I think a lot of people think that page #1 on Google is enough, however the stats show you exponentially increase your traffic the higher up you are. Of course there are other factors that can help you get more traffic (for instance the title of your page can have an impact) but the position is important and worth working on.

  6. Great post Darren.

    SEO is a very important part of writing for the web. I really like that you touched on off page as well as on page optimization. Many don’t realize that what happens off your page is just as important as what happens on it.

    I also like you included some information on Market Samurai. I have looked into this product and looks great. I also use other things like the Google Adwords tool, SEMRush and more when I look at writing SEO copy and blog posts.

    Thanks again!

    • George – Marketing Samurai is just one of many tools out there – there are some good free ones too but MS for me so far has been pretty useful and worth paying for considering the amount that I’m using it.

  7. SEO is quite new to me, but I’m slowly starting to learn about it. I sometimes have the feeling that SEO is a must if you’re blogging even if you just care about writing blog posts. On the other hand, it is fascinating how SEO on itself has become a lucrative market. Hands-on posts like this are really helpful for those of us, who are new to SEO, but want to learn more about the subject and apply it. Thanks, Darren.

    • Bart – the SEO market is quite lucrative – I guess with more and more people going online the competition for the top spots grows and services to help you get it become more and more sought after.

      I think that you’re ‘slowly learning about it’ is a good approach – learn a bit, apply and test it, learn some more, apply and test it….

  8. Darren, you should have written this article a while ago :-) The past few weeks I have optimized ALL my blog articles. At the time I started with the blog, I didn’t know that much about SEO. Now I do a little more and I decided to optimize all my articles from 2007-2008-2009. In the built-in SEO tool in Thesis I added better titles, clear descriptions and some keywords. I also changed or removed wrong links in the articles itself. Although I have only 600 articles, it took me a few weeks to finish this operation. I now notice that I have already less errors in Google Webmaster Tools. In the coming days and weeks I will further examine the statistics in Google Analytics.

  9. Thanks Darren! Wonder if this works like Clicktale. I’ve just signed up for the free trial.

    As for optimizing my posts, I’m quite satisfied with Scribe SEO.

  10. Great tips,

    Thanks, Darren! Especially I like the second point, concerning the analysis.

  11. Hi Darren,

    Market Samurai is awesome! I also go back occasionally to previous posts to tweak SEO. I find that the SenSEO Firefox Plugin is the sweetest tool to analyze your On Page SEO.

    It’s is very useful for those who are confused about SEO in general. (Sudeep – this will help you understand it better). :-)

    SenSEO provides you with a checklist for all of the things you can do to improve On Page SEO on any page or blog post.

    I also didn’t realize Market Samurai had its affiliate program up! Running there now. Thank you, Darren.

    Dali

  12. Been using Market Samurai for several months now and it’s really working great for me.

    Gwen
    Get $150,000 in Unsecured Biz Credit Lines

  13. Hi Darren,
    On-Page Optimization – I’m putting this step in place today. I haven’t been paying attention to whether my keywords are in the ‘title tags’ or ‘header tags’ – that’s a straightforward daily habit I can implement starting now.

    Thank you!
    Cheryl

  14. I’ve been using Market Samurai for quite a while now and it rocks. Best tool around for keyword analysis.

    And for SEO I been testing/playing with the ScribeSEO plugin recently – makes things simple.

    Andrew

  15. I love it when the good, old Darren is back! This is such a good post that made me realize you haven’t published such a good thing in a while…

    I do some research in my Analytics and improve some posts once in a while but this is a new approach I will take into account for the next time.

    Thanks!

    (And welcome back)

  16. Great read, thanks for posting :)

  17. Nice post Darren!! I think most of us forget to optimize our posts as we are busy optimizing our blog itself. Optimizing posts pay an important role is SEO and anyhow its your posts which send traffic to your home page once you start getting search engine traffic.

    http://www.dumblittleblogger.com/

  18. It’s also a good idea to do this for all new blog posts. A few minutes spent optimizing new content is well worth the effort.

  19. That one is really impressive Darren.

    But do you manage any kind of record as well for your posts which you pick. I mean 10000 posts means a lot and picking one post from that means really time taking task.

    • Web Marketing Tips – I don’t have a specific system for keeping record but I do track some pages to see how they’re ranking (another tool in Market Samurai).

  20. Great post, Darren. Market research is everything. I also am a big fan of Market Samurai. Makes my life so much easier and allows a comprehensive way to assess the other competition.

  21. I love that you have posted this to your site. Bloggers need to realize that rankings and profit come through practicing excellent seo skills. I use market samurai just for that manner to analysis the competition along with yahoo’s back linking feature.

    You have also reminded the importance of going back through old posts to figure out which ones you need to add a little more love to for rank value.

    Excellent post!!

  22. Thanks for this excellent post Darren. I’ve never actually thought of going back and optimizing old posts. That is a brilliant idea in my mind!

    Thomas

  23. Hi Darren,

    Thanks for the article, Since I’m on a tight budget, do you know of a free tool that can also do this job, maybe something that will do for beginners?

    Thank you

    Ami

    • Ami – you can use Market Samurai for 12 days for free – so perhaps start with that and see how you go. If you put aside a few days to do it you hopefully can get a lot done. I’m not sure what free tools would give you this kind of comprehensive features though.

  24. Excellent post. It’s interesting breakdown of why some pages rank higher than others. I just wished I could figure out how to do SEO on Blogger/Blogspot individual posts.

    Jodi

  25. no wonder if my traffic is bad. i will try this. thanks for share. this is my blog, please visit.

  26. Thanks for this post Darren! There’s some good ideas here, and I must say that while I think about SEO, I don’t often do a thorough job of implementing any particular effort, especially after the fact. But going back through popular posts and giving them a re-do is a good idea.

    I like that you’ve noted this as “an unofficial extra task for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook.” I’ll give you an unsolicited plug here and tell people that I have read both the 31DBBB Workbook and your problogger book, and they are well worth the minimal investment.

  27. Market Samurai! I came across that as part of the 30 day challenge (which I have to confess, I’ve only done some of). Still it’s a useful tool and when I start earning money from my site I’ll probably want to buy it.

    Some great tips there too, definitely worth thinking about. Thanks Darren!

  28. Very simple and basic skills for bloggers, yet some people really forget about these things.

  29. Market Samurai ROCKS!

    Thanks for the post Darren!

  30. Thanks for the heads up on regular SEO fine tuning. Market Samurai is a smart tool. The guys that developed it are real clever cookies.

  31. What about from the perspective of a new blogger? These seem to be great tips for when I have a lot of posts. But I would love the SEO advice from someone just starting out. Thanks for the tips.

    • Sean – for someone starting out, you have an advantage in some ways as you can do this same stuff as you’re writing your posts. To be able to write posts and then look at a tool like Market Samurai to work out what kind of keywords you’re targetting and what other sites are doing to rank well for them can be worth doing. That way you won’t need to come back and optimize them later.

      I guess the other thing to keep in mind is to know that as a new site you’re going to take a while to build authority and rank in Google. Work hard and producing quality content – the type of stuff that will attract links. Get out there and try to find ways of getting incoming links to your site.

      Lastly – check out First SEO Steps for Bloggers

  32. One can basically get accustomed to write with the search engines in mind and become an SEO copywriter from the beginning, but this isn’t anything easy as many happen to get spammers by stuffing the content with lots of keyword repetition.

    Over the course of time and with a little bit of training, one learns how frequently uses the keywords and where. This can help you automatically write in a way that from the time of publishing and getting indexed, you will appear on the first page of search engines for the words of phrases you’ve originally aimed.

  33. Great post Darren! one of my friends uses market samuri and loves it… I should check it out and see what all the hype is about! On page and off page are important… the great thing about blogging is that you are always increasing your traffic because your new posts create more content and you get more backlinks from that content. The big picture and long-term picture is always a beautiful portrait when blogging!
    Thanks for the awesome advice! as always!

    David king

  34. Great post Darren. Thanks for providing such detailed information. As well, I have never heard of Marketing Samurai before this post, so will have to take a greater look at it in the future.

    One thing that I learned from reading over at the Yoast blog a few years ago, was if you have a particular post that is ranking high, to consider making it into a page. Also, he recommended turning off comments, and ensuring the titles, descriptions and tags are tweaked to get the most value.

    I tried this with a very popular post and it was a great move. I was impressed so much by this simple suggestion.

  35. Good basic tips. We’ve started using Market Samurai recently. Very useful SEO app.

  36. I was never a fan of backtracking through posts for SEO but it definitely helps out. Thanks for the great tips! I’ll be sure to give Market Samurai a try.

  37. Darren that was a hell of a post… I do try to optimise a piece of content regularly, and go back or forwards for relevant ping backs. Your phrase a sneeze page is one I like alot.

    Market samurai is a great tool and I confess to not using it enought. My latest post, the one above has my begining optimisation in it, Time and relevance adds to it.

    I will be back to read this a few times.

  38. Awesome post! I have to check into Market Samurai, this seems like a very effective tool!

    Thanks again for the tips!

    Kenn

  39. Great post Darren! I use Google Analytics but can’t seem to find where you can get a specific post’s ranking for particular key words. Could you point me in the right direction? Thanks!

  40. That Market Samurai tool looks amazing and its the first time i’ve heard about so its definitely something to look into. The site i’m working on at the moment is very new so in a way i’m learning as i go along. What i’m really focusing on is targeting the type of articles im posting to the site and using the views as a indication of the type of articles people are interested in.

    For example if a video post gets more hits and activity than a list post then i consider it a good bet that sort of post is attractive to visitors.

    My site is relatively new so the results i’m getting from analytics has yet to settle to a sort of constant but either way, 20% more activity on a specific type of post is a good indication for the long haul

  41. Darren,

    One way I generate a few links to a specific blog post is to use a FREE service called Ping.fm.

    I can add links to a specific blog post here once and have it appear on any one of my social media sites.

    Mark

  42. Darren — good post. Don’t have a huge archive to go back and optimize, but since it’s still on the smaller side I guess if I work through them little by little I should be able to keep up on them.

    Seems like MarketSamuri is getting some good publicity lately. I also use it. It saves me so much time in researching keywords. Love it.

  43. I have use Market Samurai and it is really good for keywords research…Thanks for the post..

  44. I think it’s so true: Offsite optimisation CAN be really addictive. I got the impression that only links from high quality sites are effective. It’s not worth spending hours on getting links from doubtful sources. Generating high quality content (like I can find in this blog. THANKS) is far more important.

  45. Lots of helpful suggestions here, Darren. I like the idea of going back to old posts and optimizing — taking a few extra minutes to amp up work that’s already been created. I’m sure I have lots of old posts that paid little attention to keywords and SEO sense.

  46. I love Market Samurai and I recommend it to everyone who has a blog. You can use it to research your market, generate a list of great keywords, write relevant posts, and you’ll easily rank for those keywords.
    It’s a simple way to ensure your content gets into the hands of those who need it most.
    Thanks for the great tips here, Darren! It was good to hear you speak at the Coming Home Conference in Melbourne last weekend too. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience.

  47. Great post, it is definitely a good thing to get old posts back into circulation on Twitter, while Twitter itself is noFollow, you can pick up some links from those who missed the post first or even second time around!

  48. Awesome tips, Darren. I actually just did this a couple of days ago to two posts on my blog, and your post has spurred me on to do a couple more. Thanks!

    Badrina Marketing Strategies

  49. Great challenge.

    I’m currently working through the entire 31 day challenge in great detail right now on another blog — and blogging about it on my start blogging blog (that’s totally clear, isn’t it? ;D ).

    But I look forward to working on this bonus when I’m done.

    Great stuff, Darren.

  50. do you use the SEO WordPress plugin ?
    what is the best way for implementing SEO for you?

    if i may say, the quick and easy one is Automated Keywords Generator, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/automated-keywords-generator/

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