Having a blog hosted somewhere on the internet doesn’t mean all the surfers know where it is. Let the search engines index your blog and let surfers come to your fresh blog. Though you’re in World Wide Web, nobody really knows you’re there. You need to target your audience, those who are potentially waiting for you but don’t know where you are. This in simple words is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is too complex a subject to address in a single article. However, I will endeavour to discuss some important principles. Though only enough will be covered so that you can assimilate it.

  • How to use keywords as a SEO technique?
  • What to consider when you choose blog templates?
  • How to construct your blog search engine friendly?
  • How to ping your blog?

How to use keywords as a SEO technique?
As long as SEO is concerned, the keyword comes at front line. You have to find the target keyword/keywords or niche keywords. What to do with the keyword/keywords? Please read on..

  • Enter keywords in your blog name: If you named your blog for example, “Bob’s blog”, it’s not a good idea in the view of SEO. Instead name your blog something like “keyword blog”. You need to substitute “keyword” with your “target keyword”, for example “working from home blog”, if your blog is about how to start a home based business!
  • Enter keywords of your post in title tag: Although most of bloggers don’t need to concern about “title tag” because most of blog hosting applications such as blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, movable type, Drupal, etc. take care of this for you. But you have to use the keyword in your title and then they will include it in the title tag for you.
  • Enter keywords in Meta description tag, if possible: This may be difficult for most of bloggers because most of blog hosting system don’t support this. If this is your case, don’t bother with this. To make it possible is almost impossible for many newbies or non technical people who are not techie at all. Don’t despair though there is a way round, care your first sentence of the first paragraph!
  • The first sentence is the most important: Many SEO experts believe that nowadays most of the search engines don’t look Meta description tag. Instead they scan for the few words in the first sentence. So handle your first sentence to include the keywords, make it fit to describe your whole post.
  • Repeat your keywords in your post: An English language grammar teacher may not be happy. But as long as SEO is concerned, it’s necessary. As a rule of the thumb the keyword density should be about 2-3% of whole words in your post.At this point you may wonder “heck, how on earth do I find out the keyword density.” Well, you don’t need to count it manually. There is a free tool to check the keyword density. And actually I don’t even check it all the time. I just keep in mind 2-3% and check only for some posts that I think worth checking. Having this in mind, the free tool is here. Type the URL of your post, keyword and click “analyze” button. It’ll return you the keyword density of your post. If the keyword density is too low, consider repeating the keyword more but don’t repeat too much (more than 3%).
  • Use the keyword in your blog domain: This improves the ranking of your blog and hence more traffic comes to you. If your blog is about “SEO for Blogs”, for example, include it in your domain name so that your blog domain looks like “SEO-for-Blogs.yourhost.com”
  • Use your keyword in the link title: Frankly many bloggers have no idea about this! Which one do you think is better, “wedding gift” or “wedding-gift.yourhost.com” as your link title? The former is better. The reason? Because search engines value more. So keep in mind that whenever you get link try to enter your keywords in the link title.
  • Enter keywords in your file name: When you save your blog post, use your keyword. Which one is better, “bobspost22.html” or “wedding-gift-how-to-choose.html”? This time the latter is better because it includes keywords and hence stands a better chance to be listed in higher rank in search engine.
  • Enter keyword in alt tag: If you use images in your post, don’t forget to put your keyword in alt tag. A small but useful tip related to this is that if your Google Adsense doesn’t seem to show corresponding ads, check your alt tag. Maybe it’s because you put irrelevant words in alt tag.

What to consider when you choose blog templates?
There certainly are search engine friendly blog templates. To know whether your blog template is search engine friendly, go to Crawler simulation. Enter your blog URL and then see how it looks like when a search engine spider visits your blog site. If you see a lot of html code or java scripts before you see main content, it means your blog is not well designed in the point of search engine optimization. There is a way to hide unnecessary code from spiders, using CSS or div class “hide”. Try to make your title tag immediately after head tag and to show up your body content as near to head tag as possible.

How to transform your blog search engine friendly?
Make your blog site structure as simple as possible. This may not be a big issue for bloggers because unless a blogger can design her/his blog system, they have to use a default system. What I mean to say by this is that most of blog systems create permalinks for example, “www.blogcom.com/user/archive/year/month/date/apost.html”. See how far the final “apost.html” is from root. It’s 5 steps down the line. This is not so good in terms of search engine optimization. You can reduce these steps by maybe one or two steps because other database recognition issues spring up. So the bottom line is that try to make your blog simple but if it’s not possible, focus on writing good content. Many top bloggers have a bit complicated permalink structure yet manage to have lots of traffic.

But if you can make your blog structure simpler without problem, please do so because it is much better for the reader and search engines as well.

Pinging your blog
This may not be an issue if you’re using Movable Type, WordPress, Typepad, or Drupal 4.6.0. But consider pinging to Ping-o-Matic!, if your system is not configured to do so. Because it pings to most of important blog search engines and directories in one spot. If your blog application doesn’t support to ping automatically to “Ping-o-Matic!”, you can do so manually by visiting Ping-o-Matic! Once you type your blog name, blog URL, check where to ping and click “submit ping” button, and don’t forget to bookmark. It gives you a convenience because you don’t need to type blog name, URL and check where to ping again.

By pinging regularly you make search engine spiders crawl your website/blog more frequently and notify your readers faster.

Well enough for today. So far you have the most important SEO techniques for your blog, viz., how to use your keywords and where to enter, search engine friendly blog template design, structure and finally pinging to ‘Ping-o-Matic!’ But one thing is missing!

Please Make Sure to Get inbound links!

About the author:

Bob Ratiyal is a successful entrepreneur with over 15 years home based business experience in Internet Information Marketing, Blogs, Software & IT. Visit his website www.bestonlinefinds.com for the best money making opportunities on the net.