Basic SEO elements for
bloggers
I’ve had this post on the back burner
while coping with several unexpected events in my life that required attention.
It
seems that it was a good thing that I did because Tim Grice has published a
post called SEO Content Writing – How To Produce Great Content That Increases
Rank that ties in perfectly with this one.
1. Keywords in
<title>
Your
title should succinctly state what the contents of the post are. Clever and
catchy titles may bring an flush of traffic but they do not continue to deliver
readers who are specifically searching for the content that your post has. Use
a keyword or keyword phrase as close to the start of the title as possible.
Also use them in sub-titles found throughout the blog post. If you need some
guidance then check out Writing effective blog headlines.
Take a look at the title tags on your
pages, are they targeted towards your chosen keywords? Are they relevant to the
pages they are situated on? If not now’s the time to change them. Take into
account the keyword prominence … Tim Grice in 15 Ways To Enhance Your Sites SEO Today
2. Keywords in headings
<H3>, <H4>, etc.
Using keywords in headings is
advisable provided the text does pertain to the the particular keyword
used.
3. Keywords at the
beginning
Search engines put more weight on the
earliest words on a page, so if your keywords are near the start of the page
title you are more likely to rank well. Potential readers scanning search
result pages see the words found at the beginning first, so if your keywords
are positioned at the start of your listing your page is more likely to get
clicked on.
4. Keywords in anchor
texts
Establishing
your credibility around a specific topic with your readers by engaging in
ethical practice and linking is important. Anchoring links with your
targeted keyword text us very important. If you are linking to
authoritative posts within your niche you should anchor those links with
your chosen keywords. Search engines view the keyword in the
anchor text in a link from another site as getting a vote from this site
and also for the weight of the specific keyword. You ought to be linking to
authoritative posts in your niche using correct anchor text, and also using the correct anchor text in your posts to
link to your older related content posts, rather than “click here”.
5. Keywords in <alt>
tags
The
Google crawler cannot read image scripts and therefore using the ALT attribute
(providing a description) will allow you to tell the crawler what the image is
referring to. If you want your images to be indexed by the search spiders then
give your images the full treatment (TITLE tag, ALT tag Description).
6. Keywords in the body
From a SEO perspective keywords or
keyword phrases can be used throughout the post. However, take note that Google
will penalize those who resort to keyword stuffing that diverges from natural
flow of the text. From the readers perspective, keep it natural and use key
words or keyword phrases only if it’s a natural “fit”.
7. Unique content that’s
frequently updated
Original content (relevant content,
that differs from the content on other sites both in wording and topics)
is a real boost for your blog’s rankings, and frequent changes are favored as
they bring search engine attention. Aim to constantly add new
content and only make small updates to existing content. Do not create
404s (page not found)
8. Site Accessibility
If the
site or any pages on it are inaccessible because of broken links, 404 errors,
password-protected areas and other reasons, then the site can’t be indexed.
See: WordPress: How to Maintain and Track Links
9. Sitemap
It is
important to get a Google
webmasters account and generate and submit an up-to-date sitemap. Sitemaps
are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their
sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an
XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each
URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important
it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more
intelligently crawl the site.
10. Self hosting wordpress bloggers
Here
is a really good article discussing SEO
for self hosted wordpress blogs. There’s also an All in one SEO plugin that I use and recommend. I
also recommend reading SEO for WordPress – A quick guide If you search
the internet you will find free SEO themes for wordpress installs and over
here are more free SEO themes. Lastly, there are paid
themes likeThesis that you can purchase.
Related posts found in this blog:
Happy blogging!
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