Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Getting Your Blog to Rank Highly In Search Engines

There is little point in writing a blog if no one comes to read it. Blogs are automatically search engine friendly because of their fresh content and clean formatting, but there are a few easy techniques you can use to improve your rankings.

A few words about keywords:

1. Choose your Keywords wisely.
You can choose to write on a topic, or for a key word or phrase, that is immensely popular and has a ton of competition, and never stand a chance of getting in the top page or two of rankings. Or you can choose similar but more targeted keyword or phrase with less competition be in the top 10 listings. Google Keyword Tool

2. Key Word or Phrase? That is the next question.
Most people do not use a single word for a search engine query. The often search a phrase or even type an entire question. This is not necessarily the most efficient way to search, but it is the most natural. So do not think you need to limit yourself to single key word. A key phrase of three – five words is entirely appropriate.

3. Choose your URL wisely.
Once you have chosen your keyword, it is time to choose your URL wisely. Whether your blog is hosted by your blogging software, on your own domain or subdomain. You want your primary keyword to be in your domain name (URL).

4. Keyword Placement
Besides having your primary key word in your URL, you also want it to appear the header tags and titles of your posts.

5. Keyword usage in the body of your post
When writing each post you of course want to use your primary keyword(s) in the text, but don’t over do it or you’ll sound like spam. Always write in a natural, reader friendly manner. This is also the place put a few secondary keywords as well.

6. Keywords in Links
Keywords that appear in links are more important than those in plain text. So where appropriate, when linking to another blog or website, use your keywords in the text of links.

7. Keyword Categories
Another natural place to put your keywords in your Category names.

Keywords are not the only thing search engines consider when ranking your blog. Here are few other areas to consider:

Links

Links that point to your blog and posts are very important to building pagerank.

1. Search Engines and Directories
Being listed in search engines and directories provide great single direction links. So make sure you submit your blog, first of all to dmoz.org. This is end all, be all to internet directories and is a place that most search engines pull from to find websites to spider. After than submit directly to the major search engines, that way they know you exist. Finally, submit to the blog search engines and various free directories.

Here is a well respected list of Blog Directories by Robin Good.



2. Articles
Turn some of your blog posts into articles and submit them to the article directories. This will get you more linkbacks.

3. Comment
Leave appropriate comments on forums and other blogs with a link to your site in the comment.

Updates

1. Update your blog.


The more fresh content you have, the happier the spiders are. Some blogging software will even let you write posts in advance and schedule them to be posted on certain days.

2. Ping
After you update your blog, you’ll want to “ping” the search engines to let them know you have new content. That will get your site spidered more often. You can us the Ping-O-Matic tool to ping a lot of search engines all at once. Alternately, if you use Feedburner, for your RSS distribution, they have a tool that will automatically ping the search engines when you update your blog.

Follow these few easy guidelines and see your blog listed in the search engines in no time.

No comments:

Start Working From Home Today!

There are many legitimate ways to work from home. Here you can find telecommuting jobs, virtual assistant jobs, home based jobs, home based businesses, work from home opportunities, organizational tips, information on running a small business, and more.

Legitimate Home Based Businesses

Organizing Your Time when you Work from Home

- One challenge of working from home is keeping your time organized.

Legitimate Telecommute Jobs

Make Money at Home in Direct Sales

- Direct Sales companies are the tried and true method of working from home. With hundreds, if not, thousands to choose from, how do you know which on is right for you?

The Ins and Outs of Medical Transcriptionist Work at Home Jobs

- Medical transcriptionists can work from home translating dictation from physicians and other health care professionals, into written reports, correspondence and other documents that can be used for medical records.

Work at Home Careers in Medical Transcriptionist

- learn about how the job works, medical transcription certification, employers, tips and more

Mystery Shopping as a Work at Home Job

Choosing a Home Business Wisely

- With company representatives competing for your hard-earned dollar at every turn, how do you choose the business venture which best fits your needs, goals, and lifestyle?

Work at Home with Affiliate Marketing

Home Business Opportunities for Computer Experts

Make a Living Working at Home in the Greeting Card Industry

- make greeting cards, sell greetings cards, work at home and earn money

Virtual Assistant

- get a virtual assistant job and telecommute or open your own home based business

Start a Home Based Freelance Career as a Photographer

Writing in your Home Office

Freelance Writers Work from Home and so do Bloggers

Make Money at Home, Get Paid to:

Receive Phone Calls, Post, Shop, Click, Play, Read Email, Search

Home Business

Resources, Education and eBooks

Most Current Post: