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“What are the first steps to optimizing my blog for searches?” – question submitted by @monedays using the #pbquestions hashtag on Twitter.
Much has been written on the topic of search engine optimization for bloggers – but let me give you a few basic first steps:
1. Content is King
The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog. I suspect others will argue differently but as I look at my own blogs success in the search engines I’d say that this has been the number one factor.
Quality content that helps people will quite often draw a reader to want to share what they’ve written – of course they do this by passing on the link to your post and often they’ll do it in a way that helps your search rankings (on their own blog for example).
2. Anticipate What People Will be Searching For
Every time you write a post you should be automatically be considering what words people might be putting into search engines to find that type of information. Once you know what kinds of words they’re using you’re in a great position to position yourself for that search.
3. Titles Titles Titles
There are a number of things to keep in mind when it comes to titles. Google pays particular attention to titles – so make sure you get them right:
- first make sure that the way you set your blog up puts the title of your post in the ‘title tags’ on the back end of your blog. This is really important.
- if you’re just looking from an SEO perspective don’t include your blog name in the title tags of single posts. This dilutes your keywords. Of course if you’re looking more at branding including your blog’s name in the title tags might be worth doing.
- next – include the keywords that you identified in point #2 in your post title
- also, keep in mind that the words you use at the start of a title tend to carry more weight than words you use later in your title
4. Keywords in other parts of your post
Use the keywords you identified in point #2 within your post also. If you want Google to rank you for a term or phrase you need to use that term or phrase. Use it in sub headings in your post (use h tags where you can), use it in the content itself, use the words in the alt tags of images etc. Don’t go over the topic but do use the words where you can naturally in the post.
5. Link to Your Own Posts
Don’t over do this one but while links from other sites are a great way to increase your blog’s rankings so are links from your blog. Interlink your posts to share where readers can find more information on your topic (where relevant) but also consider linking to key posts on your blog from other places on the blog (sidebar, front page etc).
6. Links from Outside Your Blog
Links from other sites to yours are key in SEO but they can be hard to get. Start to linking to your blog from other sites that you have or are active on. Some (like on Twitter) won’t count for anything much as they have no-follow tags but they are all potential ways for people to access your site and some will help with SEO.
Don’t become obsessed with getting links – rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time. However if you’ve written a great post that you think will be relevant to another blog don’t be afraid to let that blogger or website owner know about it – they could just link up.
Also – take note of the type of posts that you write that do well at getting other sites to link to you. You can learn a lot about generating linkable content by doing so and might just develop a technique that will work again and again.
7. Plugins
I don’t tend to do much to the back end of my blog to alter things like meta tags – but there are some good plugins around if you’re using WordPress that can help with some of this and that may give you a small edge. Check out 9 SEO plugins that every WordPress Blog Should have for some suggestions on this.
8. Readers Beget Readers
This isn’t an SEO technique as such but it plays a part. The more readers you have the more likely your blog is to be found by other readers. There’s a certain ‘snowballing’ thing that happens on a site over time – as you get readers quite often momentum grows as those readers pass on your site to others in their network. They link to you, they bookmark you, they tweet about you, they email friends about you, they blog about you, they suggest your site in recommendation engines….
Not all of this counts with SEO but some does and the accumulation of it over time all certainly helps to grow both organic and search traffic. I guess what I’m saying is to get readers any way you can – don’t just focus upon ‘SEO’ as such. It all counts.
My Hunch with SEO
Before I share my hunch…. let me say that I’m not an SEO and this could be completely wrong…. but it’s a hunch that I’ve had for a while now.
I’ve been doing this blogging thing for almost 7 years now and from what I can see the tweaks that many bloggers do on their blogs to optimize it seem to be having less and less impact on the rankings of blogs. Don’t get me wrong – I stand by the above tips completely and would do them as a common sense bare minimum – but from where I sit Google seem to be in the business of finding the best information that they can for their users. They don’t always get it right but I think they do a pretty good job.
As a blogger your job should be to provide the best information that you can.
It strikes me that Google have an ever increasing way of working out if your information is good. It’s not just about what keywords you have or how many links that you get – but these days they own Feedburner (know how many people subscribe to your blog and what links people are clicking on), they own Google Reader (again giving them all kinds of great data), they own Gmail, Google Analytics, YouTube etc…..
Now they may or may not use all the data in their ranking of sites but they certainly could know a lot about your blog and the posts you write. There’s also been increasing talk over the last 6 months or so about how easy it’d be for search engines to start generating data on what content is being shared in social networks and bookmarking sites.
My hunch is that many traditional SEO methods are less important (NOT irrelevant though) and that other factors are increasingly going to come into play. I’m sure that some will work out ways to manipulate this (SEO 2.0?) but increasingly the way to get ranked high in Google will be that you just need to keep producing great content and making sure that it’s sneezed out to your network.
Help this process along by giving your readers way to share your content (and seed it to social networks) as well as to become subscribers.
This article was first published July 2, 2009 and updated September 1, 2022.
This post is quite normal that I could some see tips on many site.
Great post. This will help a lot of bloggers who are looking to improve their organic traffic.
I agree with the 1st point. Content is king, rest comes after wards.
Thanks for the 9 SEO Plugins link Darren, looks like I’ve found another cool stuff that would help my blog soar..
These are some excellent SEO tips.
I will definitely go back over to my blogs and implement some of these.
Good presentation and nice article. Yes I do agree links from other sites to yours are key in SEO. I am new to the SEO field. I always confuse my self that how Google’s algorithms work in deciding PR for your site which got traffic from a site having PR greater than your site. If your site is back linked with other sites one having PR higher than your site and other having PR lower than your site, then what will be the resultant PR of your site? Easy explanation is highly appreciated. Thanks.
Some basic yet overlooked tips there. More then anything content is what matters. You don’t want to rank high in search engines and have a high bounce rate.
My suggestion is that the most important thing about blogging is keyword research and creating a huge number of backlinks to your blogg ! In that way you increase the your google ranking!
Greeting from Serbia
Keywords matter a lot in titles but even if keywords bring traffic to your blog, the traffic won’t stay if the content isn’t providing any value.
This is a great list of things to do. And it’s a must do list. A good suggestion for number 2 is to keep an eye on Google trends and Twitter trends to see if there’s anything trending that relates to your product or service and write about that. But don’t force it.
I have another short list of 6 must dos that I wrote about here…
http://blog.freshcurrent.com/2009/06/24/six-simple-marketing-things-you-better-be-doing/
These are very simple things anyone can and should do to help promote themselves and their sites…
I like the philosophy that ‘great content’ is the best form of SEO because it thrills readers, generates word of mouth referrals, and organically gets ‘back links’ from readers who want to link to your valuable content. Blogging for humans, in the end, might just end up raising rankings in search engines too. Nice post, thanks Darren.
Nice! I got new lessons today. And as we all agree, content always be the king!
Yeah. Got to do some links to relevant blogs for my articles after this =)
These tips can be useful to those who are beginners at blogging and even those who have been blogging for awhile!
It gets confusing reading all the seo tips that you find on the web but I think you are right about content. Good content is always the way to go.
Lot’s of great SEO tips. I read your blog religiously, and I think that your first point in this post, Content is King, can be explained out a bit more. I’ve been thinking about why people like you can generate content that makes me want to come back for more, and makes me realise stuff that seems so simple. There’s something about your content that doesn’t turn me off straight away. I reckon you write in a way that avoids “banner blindness”. Just did a post on it: http://visionadvancement.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/avoid-banner-blindness/
I always focus on content before anything else. The more posts you also have the better.
Excellent post Darren, don’t you find it scary that Google is increasing their power/reach to the extent where they pretty much own the web. Personally I am not sure if the incorporation of the Web 2.0 into thier algo is a sure thing, but I have read on other blogs thoughts on this new theory. Anyway excellent post I have a really hard time remembering my content is the most important part of my online endeavors rather than focusing on my site/blogs promotion. Anyway thanks for the tips.
Kris,
I am working as a SEO and these tips are very useful for me and also for those who are earning through their own blogs. There is no doubt that if we follow these tips, we can get more results within less time and handwork.
Excellent article!
I like to think i am quite knowledgeable about seo and although i have optimised a great deal of websites i have never ventured in to the realms of Blogs.
It is possibly a route i may follow.
But i agree with everything you are saying.
I totally rock and Agree with these great SEO tips.
1. Content is KING. Give your people some value and good content and they would love you and your site.
Optimizing your page for the Search Engine will only hurt you in the end. If you optimize for the people eventually you will get more value for your website and more visitors. Everybody will be happy!
Ach! I am a newbie learning this stuff and have been cramming my brain with the SEO stuff, and now you tell me (so it must be right because you are very successful) that it’s not critically important. I think it may be more important for newbies than for established siteowners because beginners don’t have the following and so must use the popularity of keywords to get traction.
This post has helped me quite a lot. I started my own blog a week ago, and had some trouble coming up with good titles that would increase my readers. Thanks for the information!
Good advice.
Always a good read. There were few points that I missed out but your post just clicked me back again.
I don’t pay much attention to SEO. I just LOVE to write.
I love this quote from the article, “Don’t become obsessed with getting links – rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time.”
SEO and content. If play great with this 2 thing, i believe we can earn something.
That’s a great SEO tips for bloggers! I always try to work hard for the point “6. Links from Outside Your Blog”. That’s the hardest way to improve our SEO but that’s the one that challenges us! I believe that “Content Is King” is tie to Links from OutSide Your Blog, if we have great content, for sure people will link it. Both of them are related.
Regards,
Lee
That’s right Darren, Google search engine relies on the most relevant secure information for readers which is why they are #1 now.
Best Regards,
Jermaine
I looking seo tips for my blog and found it here. Thanks for the explanation.
As always, thanks for the insightful coverage of the SEO process and the upcoming trends we’re beginning to see.
Hi Darren – I too have noticed similar patterns to your “Hunch”. For example, I put out a piece of content that I knew would be popular on social networks, and gaining plenty of shares. It was impactful, and ended up getting tweeted by a few Twitterati folk – smashing magazine amongst others.
It didn’t however gain (many) links. Traffic for that post was gained directly from Twitter, but more interestingly, what followed was that three days (and still) after the event my organic search traffic had taken a noticable jump as well – which in my opinion was directly attributable to the link bait being shared, and the increase and influx of traffic which resulted.
The fact that it was instantaneous (and it didn’t gain many links) would suggest to me that my pagerank wasn’t lifted, but instead my “trust rank” on the social web was affected, and subsequently resulted in more organic search.
Optimizing your website is one way to increase your traffic and page rank. One important thing to do is building links so that it would gain link popularity and linkbacks for your site.
Great Post. I strongly recommend plug-ins, especially All-In-One SEO. I have personally used this for my WordPress CMS websites.
hi darren i completely agree that content is the king. But there are some other things also of which you should keep note of now search engines are removing most of the site pages which takes lots of time to load and also which contains more affiliate links and ads inside the blog post.
I was getting good traffic on one of my one month old blog which was on automobiles but after some days when i have inserted adbrite ads between the posts my traffic is suddenly decreased from 1200 uniques to 150 uniques which was very bad now i requested for reconsideration f my site and removed the ads in posts….
Darren, I think you go out of topic sometimes. Some of those points are not SEO stuff, but more to REO = Readers Enthusiasm Optimization.
Search Engine cannot differentiate good contents and great contents, but human readers can. “Content is king” is more to human approach than technical approach like SEO. Steve Pavlina: “Content is king means you write for human, not search engines.”
“Quality content that helps people will quite often draw a reader to want to share what they’ve written” -> viral effect like that is very human, though later can be technical e.g: more links. REO first, SEO later on = more to REO.
“Link to your own posts” using the method you describe won’t do much good to SEO, again more to REO. Unless if you speak of Archive that connect to all your posts. 100% internal linking = 1 pagerank addon = more SE traffic.
I guess the title of this post should be “8 First Step to be a Successful Bloggers” or something. That’s my opinion. Cheers :D
what if we are using Blogger? Can we still optimize like using WP?
SEO is very important to any growing blog. I think the URL structures are a very important component that many sometimes forget about.
Hi Darren,
I have used some of the techniques you talk about and so far, the best for me has been 1. Participating in other sites (in comments – forums) and 2. Submitting articles to other websites. This second one has been extremely useful, not only because people know the topics I talk about, but also because this are high traffic sites that get easily picked-up by Google and other search robots.
I write in Spanish and my Blog is in Spanish, so I have written articles for some highly ranked “submit your article” type of sites, like gestiopolis.com. There are several similar website in English; you just have to find which are appropriate for the subject you deal with in your Blog. Try to check this sites Page Rank before you submit, you know, just to see it they’re worth the while.
One last thought. I totally agree with content is King. Write for humans not for search engines. In over 12 years of building dozens of websites I’ve seen that search engines work more like humans than computers. And don’t get obsessed with SEO, take some time to optimize your site, but this should me a minor not a mayor job.
Cheers
Andrés G.
@blackbloggy .This is always the same question I have been asking many people . Unlucikly no would be the answer .
Thanks for the post Dareen
@blackybloggy & @sudeep I would actualy say that you can do a lot more with Blogger than what it’s given credit for. It might be a little tougher to acheive but it is possible.
I run my site on Blogger and I have optimized my title tags, meta tags, and description tags within the Blogger backend as well as H tags for onsite and inpost content. Once you get your own domain to replace the “.blogspot.com” on the end of your URL then you’re doing just as good as with WP in my opinion.
The only thing you can’t do is implement any of the many plugins that you can for WP however many of these plugins have nothing to do with SEO that you can’t do yourself… they just do it faster… in my opinion at least.
Looking back to Darren’s list everything else is about your writing and should therefore have no influence by the platform. Just link within your site well, use keywords when appropriate, and produce good content.
thank admin very good
Looking back to Darren’s list everything else is about your writing and should therefore have no influence by the platform. Just link within your site well, use keywords when appropriate, and produce good content.
Yet another great post. I would say that the most important two things in your post are the content and the backlinks. It’s easy to get backlinks by commenting on other people’s forums. In fact, I see people doing it right here all the time.
You guys should check out my blog too, you’d like it
http://www.e-zonlinemoney.blogspot.com/
Thanks Darren, you are great, very helpful for me
Blogging, SEO Tips by http://teratips.com
I have to say that I did pay attention to SEO when my blog was new. I haven’t completely ignored it. But now I focus more on content, social networking and exchanging links with other blogs / websites. Thanks for a great post.
Great tips Darren!
I recently wrote a blog post about how I got Google PageRank within a few weeks of launching my blog. Here’s a quick summary of how I optimize my websites:
1. I Never Waste Time on Link Exchanges
2. I Obtain Quality Inbound Links
3. I Perform On-Page Optimization (Meta Tags, Content)
4. I Use WordPress/Blogging
5. I Update My Content Often and Consistently (MOST IMPORTANT)
Of course, SEO evolves each and every day and what worked yesterday may not work today. The one method I see as never changing however is content. Updating your content frequently (blogs help you do this) and consistently gives search engines exactly what they’re looking for – FRESH CONTENT.
The downside of SEO is that it takes a long time. I do agree that the better content you produce the better off you are. In the sea of spam the blogger with even half decent content is king.
@Alex – The timeline really depends on how competitive the market is. That’s why most Internet marketers promote finding a niche – less competition and easier to get to the top of the search engines for keywords.
Darren, I thank you for this post as it is full of good advice. I am thankful that you put content is king as number 1. It is what I expect to rely upon. I am trying to figure out SEO, Keywords, tags, etc and how they will help me. You have given me some good insight and also steered me to other places to get more education on this part of blogging. I look forward to reading more of your posts.
I’m going to send my search-engine obsessed clients to #2. Maybe it will help convince them that a number one page ranking is no good if no one is searching for it!
Great article.
Yes, I have to agree with the second one. you have to anticipate what readers should be looking for. Tap into multi-media. Try to use the latest trend and issue and incorporate it to your blog content.
1. I Never Waste Time on Link Exchanges
2. I Obtain Quality Inbound Links
3. I Perform On-Page Optimization (Meta Tags, Content)
4. I Use WordPress/Blogging
5. I Update My Content Often and Consistently (MOST IMPORTANT)
thanks for these great tips
1. I Never Waste Time on Link Exchanges
2. I Obtain Quality Inbound Links
3. I Perform On-Page Optimization (Meta Tags, Content)
4. I Use WordPress/Blogging
http://buildachickencooptoday.weebly.com/
5. I Update My Content Often and Consistently (MOST IMPORTANT)