Share your knowledge and create a knowledgebase.
Share your knowledge and create a knowledgebase.
SEO for a blog is different than SEO for most other websites, largely because of the social elements baked into blogging technology. SEO for blogs is less about buying links or tricking inadequate search technology. SEO for blogs is more focused on giving people something to talk about and creating something worthy of attention. Lets take an example of Wordpress which is THE MOST popular blog engine available.
1.a. Permalinks: Always set your permalinks sturcture best suited for your website. You can find it under Settings-> Permalinks. e.g. /%postname%/ or /%category%/%postname%/
1.b. Title Optimization: You should always do this for two basic reasons:
There are many Pluggins available these days but i prefer “All In One SEO”. It lets you set all the titles in your preferred way.
1.c. Description Optimization: Every category description should be very well written for best optimization. One common thing every blog owner is performing is to use automatic description generation using some pluggin. This should be avoided for a reason as most plugins choose first line of sentence as description which may not be well related to rest of the article. I would recommend that write your description yourself as hand written description will always be better than an automated one as you have control over Keywords etc.
1.d. Image Optimization: You should of course be writing good titles and alt tags for each and every image, however, if you don’t have the time for that, there is a plugin that can help you. The plugin is called SEO Friendly Images, and it can automatically add the title of the post and or the image name to the image’s alt and title tags.
2.a. Breadcrums: Breadcrumbs are the links, usually above the title post, that look like “Home > Articles > WordPress SEO”. They are good for two things:
These breadcrumbs should link back to the homepage, and the category the post is in. If the post is in multiple categories it should pick one. For that to work, adapt single.php and page.php in your theme, and use one of the available breadcrumb plugins.
2.b. Headings: Lets make sure that your post title is an <h1>, and nothing else. Your blog’s name should only be an <h1> on your frontpage, and on single, post, and category pages, it should be no more than an <h3>.
2.c. Clean Up and aim for speed: Move all internal JS and CSS in template to external javascripts and css files, and keep your templates clean, as they’re not doing your WordPress SEO any good. You can do two things to increase the speed of your WordPress blog.
Choosing a good hosting package is always wise as you may recieve huge traffic with low server bandwidth will result in loosing visitors. I know you don’t want that 
2.d. Sidebar isn’t important on all pages: On single post pages, side links, blogrolls etc. aren’t necessarily related to the topic at hand, and thus aren’t helping you at all. Thus: get rid of them. Google and other search engines these days heavily discount site wide links, so you’re not really doing your friends any more favor by giving them that site wide link, nor are you helping yourself.
3.a. Noindex, follow archive pages:
Install my robots meta plugin, and make sure the settings prevent indexing of all archive pages, like this:
Now the search engine will follow all the links on these archive pages, but it won’t show those pages in the index. Not everybody will agree on this policy, and others will tell you to just show a snippet of each post on the archive page.
3.b. Unnecessary archives must be disabled: If your blog is a one author blog, or you don’t think you need author archives, use the robots-meta plugin to disable the author archives. Also, if you don’t think you need a date based archive: disable it.
3.c. Pagination: Make sure that if a bot goes to a category page, it can reach all underlying pages without any trouble. Otherwise, if you have a lot of posts in a category, a bot might have to go back 10 pages before being able to find the link to one of your awesome earlier posts. You can use Pagerfix, a plugin that helps in this.
3.d. Nofollowing unnecessary links: An easy step to increase your WordPress SEO is to stop linking to your login and registration pages from each and every page on your blog. The same goes for your RSS feeds, your subscribe by e-mail link, etc. Robots Meta has an option to nofollow all your login and registration links. You’ll probably have to go into your RSS links and nofollow those by hand. If you’re using the meta widget, you might want to enable the option in robots meta to replace that with one that has nofollowed links.
Tweak your blog structure for high rankings: Blogs are spidered so easily due to their structure of categories, tags etc.: all articles are well linked, and usually the markup is nice and clean. However, all this comes at a price of COMMENTS as your ranking strength is diluted because of that. Use following techniques to tweak your blog:
4.a. Pages instead of posts: Once your article is popular with lots of hits create a “Page” and put the article content in it to avoid comments. You can update the article anytime for future purposes.
4.b. Old wine in new bottle: If a post on your blog becomes incredibly popular and starts to rank for a nice keyword, you could do the following:
post-name-original4.c. Showing Related Posts: One way of getting search engines to get to your older content a bit easier, thus increasing your WordPress SEO capabilites a LOT, is by using a related posts plugin. These plugins search through your posts database to find posts with the same subject, and add links to these posts. I would recommend Simple Tags plugin, as I’ve found that the easiest and best one so far.
5. Ask your visitors/readers to subscribe: If your readers have just finished reading an article of yours, and really liked it, that would be the ideal time to reach them. That’s why more and more people are adding lines like this to the end of their posts: “Liked this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!”
Another great time to get people to subscribe is when people have just commented on your blog for the first time. Did you subscribed to our RSS yet?
Optimize comments by getting your readers involved by responding to thier questions, suggestions or even critisism. This way you can build a solid web relations with them.
6.a. How to get people comment: The easiest way of getting people to do anything is: ask them to do it by writing in an engaging style, and then ask your blog readers for their opinion, their take on the story etc.
Another important things is your comment links. Is your comment link “No comments »”? Or is it “No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »”? Feel the difference?
6.b. Bonding with Commenters: Thank people when they’ve commented on your blog. Not every time, because that get’s annoying, but doing it the first time is a very good idea. You can install a plugin which will thank your commenter the first time. You can use a special thank you page.
6.c. Keep people in conversation: Make sure commenter stay in the conversation once they join the conversation. Install subscribe to comments plugin, that allows people to subscribe to a comment thread just like they would in a forum, and sends them an e-mail on each new comment. This way, you can keep the conversation going, and maybe your readers will be giving you new angles for new posts.
7.a. Follow your commenters: I would recommend to actually follow your visitors! Go to their websites, and leave a comment on one of their articles, a good, insightful comment, so they respect you even more. Use Twitter like site to follow your commenter a make a good community.
7.c. Work with the Related Blogs: You can go into Google Blogsearch, and see which blogs rank in the top 10 for those keywords. Read those blogs, start posting insightful comments, follow up on their posts by doing a post on your own blog and link back to them: COMMUNICATE.
If you like the post then please subscribe to our RSS. Your comments are always welcome.
Search engines decide website ranking. If your content is genuine then it ranks well by search engines. Search engines monitor each and everything of our websites. How many visitors are getting daily, How many visitors are getting for a particular post, to which selected keywords of our website is getting traffic, number of inbound links etc. Search engine also checks whether our content is real or not. If our content is copied then search engines may not index our pages. Search engine will not leave any website without crawling. But it takes much time to rank website. Few major key points are given below for better ranking by search engines.
Keywords play a major role:
Does keyword play major role in ranking website? YES…
Keywords and keyword density plays a major role in ranking website. Strength of the content totally depends on keywords. So rich keywords should be placed in Title, headings, tags, meta tags and throughout the page. Check your competitor website and check which keywords is he using for the specific post. By comparing his website decide your keywords and keyword density. Google spiders always check keyword frequency and keyword density. So always choose good keyword frequency for better ranking.
Age of domain:
One of the major criteria is the age of domain for better ranking. Never change your domain name in the middle. The age of the domain is usually a clue they tend to be in for the long haul. If your website has got popularity then leave. If your change your domain name then you back at the bottom of the barrel. If your content is well and good enough then you might have chances for getting traffic because of incoming links. If your content is good then you are just a temporary drop and the rise will be happen again soon. Always try to register your domain name for five years. Search engines always check age of domain to rank website. Consider your website contains 100 posts but domain is new ,it dosent indicate that you are going to be ranked well by google or any search engine. Search engines take time to index your posts. After indexing your posts it checks each and every post. So we can say that age of domain is the main criteria for better ranking. Higher the age better will be the ranking.
Posting Frequency:
You have to monitor your content and update it regularly over time. It is suspicious if you add 100 articles at a time. Always add slowly and submit your content to all bookmarking sites and major search engines if possible. I prefer submitting my content to major bookmarking sites such as digg and technorati after each and every post. Don’t make it much slow my adding once in week. It doesn’t improve your website ranking in search engines. Many webmaster’s answer is that frequent new or updated content carries more weight than infrequent changes to the site. If you do hit and miss content updating and additions over time, and then suddenly post a ton of activity, this can also be seen as instability and suspicious. Steady and consistent, no matter how frequently, adds weight to the score. So content is the major criteria for better ranking in search engines.
Best Place to use your keywords
After describing what your website is about, search engines pay close attention on the keywords you use in your Title, Heading, Body ,Meta tags and links. So make sure to provide rich keywords in those areas. Always try to keep rich keywords in the top of the page. Don’t use links in the top of the page. If user checks your post he reads from the top of the page. After seeing the link with keyword he clicks on the link. This is how you lost your visitors before completing whole page. Generally webmasters keep text links at the bottom of the page.
Always use keywords in headings. Google,Yahoo and most search engine algorithms checks First 3 keywords. And these Three keywords should be placed in Title with H1 tags. Except title we should not use H1 tags anywhere in home page. Keeping your keywords in Headings will boost your visitors. For example let us consider this post. Here i used these keywords in title — Best Place to use your keywords –.When you type - Best Place to use your keywords - in Google i hope my site will come in first page. Using these keywords you have to maintain keyword frequency within the post. A site wide average keyword density should be 2%. Density is the measure of frequency in relation to the total word count of the page.If your page is having 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 10 times, density will be 5%.
There are meta tags with in the HTML code as Meta tags plays a major role. When search engine crawls website it first looks Meta tags and description. There is some debate that how important the meta tags are when comes across SEO but my point is Meta tags shouldn’t be ignored.
Taken from elechub.com
Linkbuilding is the most toughest job It take lots of time. There are many ways to build links. Never try to use cheap tricks to build links such as Link exchanges, link begging from bloggers and reciprocal links.
Quality Content: Our job is to write good Quality Content not link building. Quality content generate traffic to your blog. And bloggers keep your link in their blog. When any blogger reads your content he himself add your link. Your content attracts and makes others to give related back link. This is how you are getting related backlink.This is the best procedure to build links from related websites.
Article submission: Write an article related to your website niche and submit to all major article submission directories. Always try to write a good quality and lengthy content and place your website link below your content. Many visitors visit your site to read your content.And many bloggers will copy and paste your content in their websites with your website link. If your content has been copied by 3000 bloggers then you get 3000 related backlinks at a time. This is how you can build a great number of links at a time. If you are having blogger friends with high traffic and high pr,try to donate free articles to them. Write a lengthy article related to your niche. Keep half of the article in your website and remaining half give to your blogger friend and request a backlink to him. Many visitors comes to his website to read the article. And the continuation of the article will be in your website.In this way you can grab his visitors also in a proper way.
participation in related communities: Try to participate in related communities.If your website is about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) try to join all communities related SEO. For example my content is about “Linkbuilding: The toughest Job in Site promotion”. I am the member of some forum and i’ve posted this topic in that high ranked forum then many bloggers will ask questions related to this topic -how to build links- and many questions related to SEO. I hope you will get different ideas with their questions. If they like your content definitely they will keep your link in their website. We have to maintain a good relationship in those communities. After gaining a good reputation in those communities you will get a great number of backlinks.
Article submission in news papers: Many of my friends write good articles related SEO and submit to news papers to gain links. This is the direct way to approach the web masters. Why because if you quote any doubts to great websites such as Problogger etc . They are not going to answer you soon. Article submission in news papers is the direct way of approaching such a great webmasters. If they like your content they will give u a link. And this link is very very valuable.
These are the few major ways to build links. I already said link building is the toughest job. It takes lots of time to build link. If your website builds 1000 links at a time then it comes under scam list by search engines. So try to build slowly.
Originally posted in elechub.com
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic“) search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of searches, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
By carefully evaluating techniques required to boost website traffic i have come up with the 32 tips for search engine optimization (SEO) of your favourite website. If these tips are followed in correct manner you will see the increase in traffic for sure
1. Make sure your site is not under construction, incomplete, with little or no unique content.
2. When your site is ready, submit it to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com. Consider also submitting to other search engine but most of them are powered by these four leading search engines. Submit also your site to reputable high PR web directories, open directories, yellow pages and social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, furl, etc.
3. Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com (sitemap for search engines usually in XML format)
4. Offer sitemap to your site visitors for easy page navigation. (sitemap for visitors in HTML format)
5. Create unique and rich content sites. Avoid duplicate content. Do not create multiple pages, sub-domains, domains, mirror sites or sites with different domain names but same content.
6. Check your keywords and make sure they are relevant and actually are contained in your site. Avoid keywords stuffing.
7. Use text instead of images in your content, links and important subjects.
8. Make your TITLE and ALT tags descriptive, simple and keyword rich. Avoid irrelevant and repeated keywords.
9. Title tag should be 60-80 characters maximum length.
10. Meta tag description should be 160-180 characters including spaces. (about 25-30 words)
11. Meta Tag keywords must be 15-20 words maximum.
12. Optimize Pages with Headings (H1, H2, H3..) containing your site’s primary keywords.
13. Validate your CSS and HTML. Check for errors and broken links.
14. If your site contains dynamic pages(i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), make sure you use SEO friendly URLs. Search engines’ spiders having difficulty indexing dynamic pages.
15. Maximum links per page must be fewer than 100. Avoid the risk of being flagged as link farm by search engines.
16. Use Lynx as text browser to check your site. (http://lynx.isc.org/)
17. Allow search bots (good ones) to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site.
18. Check your web server/host if it supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. It tells search engines whether your content has changed since last crawled your site. It will save you bandwidth, resources and avoid server overload.
19. Use Robots.txt file to manage and control search engine spiders in indexing your site. You can allow and disallow spiders and choose directories you want to be crawled and indexed. But with bad bots or spam bots you need to modify your HTACCESS file to properly and effectively manage bots or spiders. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn more about Robots.txt file.
20. Do not attempt to present different content to search engines than what you show to your site visitors.
21. Avoid dirty tricks and exploiting loop holes to improve search engines ranking.
22. Avoid links to bad neighborhood such as web spammers, link farms, phishing, hacker, crack, gambling, porn and scam sites. Linking to them will greatly affects your search engine rankings.
23. Do not attempt to join in link schemes, excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging and link exchange web rings.
24. Do not use unauthorized programs or online tools to submit your site, check page rankings and other automated queries. Avoid the risk of being flagged as spam.
25. Do not use hidden text and links. Show to search engines what you show to your vistors. It will greatly affect your site’s reputation.
26. Do not attempt to create pages that contains phishing, scam, viruses, trojans, backdoors, spyware, adware and other malicious programs.
27. Make your site useful and informative.
28. Improve your link building. Link to high PR websites. Quality of relevant links are far more important than quantity. Links will greatly improve your site’s visibility, popularity and rankings. Search engines consider links as votes to your site.
29. Check your page link structure. Every page should be reachable by a single static text link.
30. Be extra careful in purchasing SEO services. Some uses illegal and questionable ways to improve rankings.
31. Do not buy or sell links.
32. Do not create sites that contains purely affiliate links and no valuable content that are useful to the users.
About the Author: Edwin Reyes is a Web Developer and the Webmaster of Findmesoftware.com, a Philippine based website that provides free software downloads, tools, reviews, online tips, blogging resources, tutorials and Free SEO Tools and Software Download.
