How To Blog For Newbies Day 14

After reading this post, many of your should be able to call yourself a SEO Apprentice. Now, not only have you learned how to blog, you would also learn how to do search engine optimization on your site.

Although this post would not be able to guarantee  your blog to be listed at the top of Google, it will definitely increase the frequency of your blog being indexed in the search engine. Actually I’m a tad worried that my advice here would be taken too seriously by you, lest you would hold me responsible if your blog don’t make it into the top page.

Please understand that the search engines, especially Google is constantly evolving. Month old tricks of SEO deceit would probably be irrelevant by the time you are reading this. Bear in mind, that the only SEO strategy that would never go out of date is through providing regular thematic contents.

Previously, SEO was probably known to a priviledge group of programmers and computer scientist. However, as the age of internet explosion, more people are exposed to this wonderful technique. My knowledge on SEO was taught to me by my mentor and research made via the internet. As a result, it is only fair that I share my limited knowledge to the readers of HowToBlog.org, so that we would improve together as a group of new bloggers.

As you would recall from my previous post on “What is SEO to a blogger?“, SEO is all about telling the bots of Google, Yahoo and other search engines about your site’s availability. Before you even start your blogsite, SEO should already be ingrained in your mind:

SEO Tip 1: Selecting The Right Keywords

The selection of the right keyword actually begins with the purchasing of your first domain for your blog. If I were to build a website using my own name, for example robinong.net, what is the chance of Google bots discovering me in the world wide web as compared to HowToBlog.org? See the logic.

I’m not saying that you should hurriedly dump your blog now and start searching for a keyword rich domain. You could still utilize the right keywords to optimize your site. For example, if robinong.net is all about blogging, I could still use keywords like “blogging, blog, how to blog” to optimize my site. However a good domain name is a good start.

Choose keywords that you feel that the chance of ranking good in the search engine despite the competitors using the same keywords. Contrary, you should not look for keywords which nobody looks for. Finally, focus your keywords with the theme that you wanted to blog about. For example, if your blog is about cats, you should use keywords related to this domestic feline, like “feline, cat, purr (and others)”

SEO Tip 2: Insert Keywords With Basic HTML Language

I usually add these at the header page. Just go to Theme -> Editor -> Header. Insert these html after the head:

<title>Cat Blog<title>

<meta name=”keywords” content=”cat, feline, cat food“>

<meta name=”description” content=”Your resources about caring for your cat“>

SEO Tip 3: Create Focused And Regular Contents

Right, when you are talking about cats, do not sway from this subject. You could blog about the species of cat, cat’s behaviour, cat’s care and cat’s food. Never boast about your chess conquest in this blog.

By diverting away from your theme, you are making your blog confusing to the spiders and also, pushing your readers away from returning to your site. Your readers would only give you so much chance and it’s up to you to capitalize on them.

SEO Tip 4: Do Not Overstuffs The Keywords

Never overuse keywords. The use of keywords should not take up more than 12 – 24% of the entire body text. Search engine considers this as spamming and it’s never nice to be in the bad books of Google, Yahoo, or the rest.

SEO Tip 5: Get Backlinks

From my own experience, one of the most tedious step in SEO is getting backlinks. Backlinks that come from more reputable sites but with similar theme.

There are numerous ways to generate backlinks. Firstly, send your contents to social bookmarking sites like Digg.com and Reddit.com.

Secondly, submit your contents to popular submit articles directory like ezinearticles, hubpages and others.

Thirdly, ask for consent from your peers and more established bloggers for link exchange. However, this can never be easy. Most of the time, your request will be ignored but, you still have to go on trying. It’s fun though when they do respond to your request.

SEO Tips 6: Never Succumb To Engaging Link Farms

By engaging link farms, you could probably bid ‘Sayonara’ to your website because search engines will likely to ban it for life.

My list of SEO tips is by no means exhaustive. I am still a considered a novice in SEO and if you have any comments about my post, please feel free to give your opinion. In fact, some of these tips may have flaws in them, who knows. Just be honest and I would try my best to correct any mistakes that I might have made in this post.

(How to blog with great blogging tips)