In need of some Google juice? SEO is the single most important thing to getting better rankings and traffic from Search Engines. Every type of website, whether it is a static text-based site, or a fully fledged CMS, needs SEO to rank. So here are some of the top tips to increase SEO rankings for blogs.
1. Title Tags
The title of your web page(s) is one of the more important SEO tips, and for sites that have hundreds of indexed pages - like blogs, every title tag should be different. The easiest way of accomplishing this is the title of the post or page should be the title of the web page. For Wordpress users, replace your current <title> tag with this piece of code which will acomplish just that.
<title><?php if (is_single() || is_page() || is_archive()) { ?><?php wp_title('',true); ?> |
2. Deep Linking
This involves linking to posts in your archives to keep those Search Engine bots crawling deeper into your blog. Obviously linking every single link back to your own blog probably will get you penalized by the Search Engines, but having relevant links to articles that you have written in the past will help those bots scour deeper, but it will also get your readers more involved by finding some of those gems in your archives that they haven’t read before.
3. Sitemaps
A somewhat overlooked aspect of blogs, a sitemap once again will help those bots index your site. Google first started using sitemaps as a way of indexing sites. Install the Google Sitemap Generator for Wordpress and all the mumbo jumbo sitemaps protocol and XML code will magically be generated for you.
Tip: Make sure you install the latest version of the Google Sitemap Generator as the generator has been updated recently to include support for the newer Sitemaps protocol witch Yahoo and MSN have started supporting.
Once you have it installed, don’t forget to submit your sitemap to Google and Yahoo. MSN are still testing the protocol with some of their internal sites. (I will update this post once it becomes available.)
For Google: Google’s Webmaster Tools
For Yahoo: Yahoo’s Site Explorer
4. Headlines
The headline of each of your blog post counts towards your SEO as most post title’s are written in a H1 tag, which are given higher impotance by Search Engines, as an H1 tag almost always depicts the title of a page / post. Choosing your headlines is just as important to your readers or new visitors, as it is what they read first in their RSS reader or when visiting your site. It needs to entice them to read further as much as it counts towards SEO if you strategically use important keywords that you are trying to target.
Do yourself a favour and read Brian Clark’s Copyblogger.com, which is packed with copywriting techniques that are both aimed at SEO and attracting more readers.
2 of his posts highlight some sure-fire headline templates that you can use. Go and check them out.
10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work
7 More Sure-Fire Headline Templates That Work
5. Permalinks
A permalink is the URL of a specific blog post or page. For example the URL of this blog is http://www.problogging.co.za, but the permalink for this post is http://www.problogging.co.za/13/5-of-the-best-kept-secrets-of-seo-for-blogs
So if you wanted to link to this post so that your readers would be directed straight to this article and not have to try and find this post from my homepage, use the permalink. It is a permanent way of finding a post, as every new article I write appears at the top of my homepage, and older posts fall off it, so using the permalink will mean that this post will never get lost!
In terms of SEO, having your permalinks structured correctly also helps your rankings. Having weird numbers and dates is not as important as having strategic keywords in the permalink. For Wordpress users under Options > Permalinks, use either the Date and name based permalink, or use a custom structure that includes the postname. I am using a custom structure which includes the post ID and the post’s name: /%post_id%/%postname%. So if you are using tip no.4 as well as proper permalinks, your SEO for links on the internet are a definite way of getting more traffic!
In Conclusion
There are tons of SEO tips and tricks, but starting small and testing tweaks here and there will teach you some of the techniques that help the top websites rank #1 for their keywords.
SEO is an ongoing process, so never forget about the importance of SEO is to your blog and traffic.
Here’s to your SEO blogging success!
Jason Bagley
5 responses so far ↓
Wizard Man // Feb 13, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Nice article. I’m gonna kick things off by adding one or two comments:
1. Remember that Titles must be different on every page… Especially those you want indexed.
2. The trick is to have keyword flow… i.e. keywords in your title, should be in your page description, should be in your content.
I have a question with regards to deep linking. I see that nowhere on your blogs do you have a “Link to this page” on your blog. IS that something that you don’t recommend. i.e. Does this not make life easier for people to link to you?
Errostetoorie // Dec 19, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Hello
As a fresh www.problogging.co.za user i just want to say hello to everyone else who uses this board B-)
capsoonoeleta // Jan 7, 2009 at 7:00 pm
What is bumburbia?
SowVesSoreise // Oct 29, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Sta kazete o njenim stopalima?
Mislim da ima jako lijepa stopala!
Stopala su na njoj najbitnija stavka!
illupen // Oct 29, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Hello guys!
As i’m new here, i just want to say hello.
By the way - bb code seems to work bad?
cheers,
______________
illupen
how to order soma online
http://board.muse.mu/member.php?u=127208
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