My-SEO-Blogging

Friday, 1 March 2013

Basic SEO for Bloggers

Most of us understand how to search online. For more than a decade, we have relied on websites like Google and Yahoo to sift through the billions of web pages and present a list of contenders that, according to the search engines, most accurately relate to our search query.

Search Engines for President

We understand how to search. What we don’t always understand is how to be found. (How to be found by humans, that is. Google will find you. Oh yes, it will.) Search engines, after all, are merely indexes of the many websites that the Google or Bing bots discover – or as we say, crawl. Without these search engines, your readers/customers/etc. would only be able to find your site (1) by typing in the exact URL in the address bar or (2) by clicking on a link to your site from another site. Without search engines, we would be so lost. Thank goodness for those bots that crawl all over HTML to understand the quality of a website as well as for which terms it should rank organically.

SEO at its core

It’s critical to understand the workings of search engines as much as possible because they control how many users will be exposed to your website. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is really all about enhancing a website so that the search bots can find it more easily and, as mentioned, identify which terms it should rank for.

Bloggers: 10 SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to any successful blogging campaign. Therefore it should be implemented in the right manner. SEO itself is quite intricate for numerous reasons, but mainly because Google uses an algorithm, which takes several factors into account when ranking a webpage, and they keep changing it.

There are virtually so many SEO myths that it has become very difficult to know what’s 100% true, but I can advise you on which SEO mistakes you should not make:

1. Buying Links

You might get a short term boost by buying links if your website is already popular, but you’re still taking a risk here. Paid links are sometimes flagged by Google’s search engine experts. You may wonder, how will they ever catch me? Well, Google’s bots and a special team at the company search for questionable linking patterns every single day!

For example, if you pay for a few hundred links to be pointed to your website in the very same day, some links will probably be flagged as a sort of ‘irregular linking activity’. Links from totally unrelated categories will seem suspicious as well.

I would recommend the old fashioned method of comment linking, manually — your blog will still be able to grow, albeit at a steady pace. Over time, the end results will be worthwhile. If you are however settled on purchasing links, do not use the same anchor text for all of them; mix it up a bit.

2. Duplicate Content

Many bloggers I know try to target the same topic with a variation of essentially very similar keywords. For instance, ‘make money on facebook’ and ‘making money with your facebook’ are quite similar, and creating a completely different page for each keyword won’t add much value to your site.

How much can you really play with topics or keywords that are essentially identical? If you can’t, then you’ll probably end up writing the same content for both keywords, which poses a risk of a search engine penalty. Instead, you should try to penetrate one original topic or keyword in detail and make an effort to strengthen each post.

3. Chasing PageRank

Don’t get me wrong, PageRank is important for any website’s success. The higher the PageRank you have, the better you rank in search engines, and the more visitors you’ll get. However, it’s definitely not the only metric that’ll help you improve your blog’s success. Furthermore, Google has mentioned previously that PageRank is just one of two hundred (wow!) indicators used to crawl and rank a website. Instead, you should focus on your analytics, ROI, and relevancy as recommended by Google itself.

4. Leaving Title Tags Automated

The title tag is undeniably one of the most important aspects when it comes to search engine rankings. Beginner bloggers usually write a post with a long title that describes the topic in too many words. First, you want to keep the title rather short, (not more than 60 characters) but more importantly, you should aim your focus at optimizing the title tags.

How are you Going to Make Money with a Blog?

The one thing that always seems to be floating around in a bloggers mind is how to turn their blog into something profitable. Wouldn’t it be great if you were able to take your love of writing your blog and make a great deal of money from it? What if you were able to turn it into something so big that you ended up living very comfortably off of your blog?

I have had this dream a dozen times. I love my blog. Writing is all I want to do. I could spend hours every day on my blog and feel incredibly lucky, if I was making enough money for that to be a viable option.

Regular Maintenance is Critical for your Blog

Regular Maintenance is Critical for your Blog:

Do you take a day every week, month or a few times a year to make sure you are doing all you can to maximize your blog? I believe a successful blog should be treated like a business. Every so often you should schedule time to regroup and refresh your blog.

Let me give you an inside peek into what I do to stay on top of my blog.

1. I sign out of my blog, then I go to my blog site to see how everything looks from a reader’s perspective. I want to make sure that things pop up correctly, that the page loads quickly and I will leave a comment, to make sure the process is easy.

Free Critique of your Blog

Free Critique of your Blog:

I have gotten so many requests to look over my reader’s blogs that I have decided to create a special opportunity.

I will be putting up another page on this blog. If you would like your blog critiqued, please place your link on the critique page with a sentence about what you would like me to look at. It’s fine if you just want me to look over your blog in general because you are just starting out. If you have a specific question, just write it in the comment section with your link.

Some Secrets I’d Like to Share About Blogging:

I would like to try to help those who are either starting out blogging or feel like they have hit the wall. It’s great to write about how great blogging has been for me, like I did in my last post ways/ but I realize that the article could feel frustrating to read if you feel stuck or overwhelmed.

Below are the best tips I can think of to help you move along in the blogging world.

1. Authenticity is everything. Be true to yourself and do what feels best. No matter how much advice you read, a blog will take a while to gather steam. Use this time to learn what you are passionate about.

Tweaking the blog comes with the territory. You might decide to not continue to write poetry for example, but are loving writing about trips you have been on. Listen to your heart and follow what makes you feel happy and it will show through to others. You will also feel more invested and will want to stick with your blog instead of giving up.

Typography 101 For Bloggers

Do you want to get more readers to your blog?

Of course you do.

There’s thousands and thousands of tricks on how to do that. And just as many blog posts out there.

But this one is easy, but it’s also pretty much overlooked. I’m talking about some basic information design and typography 101 for bloggers.

Interested?

Accept Your Limitations And Get With It

Now, let me tell you right off the bat: I’m no art director. Actually, I’m pretty far from being good at web design myself.

I know this because I work with some very talented web designers and boy, they have talents I’ll never have.

But I’m not talking about highly creative skills here. And if I can learn basic information design, so can you.

Let me highlight this with a short story:

When I studied at the university, I took a 10 week course named Information Design. And I sucked at it.

At the very end of the course, we voted for who had produced the most beautiful information designs during the course. I don’t remember the name of the girl who won, but from what i could tell—she was talented.

Of course, some fellow douchebag thought it was a good idea to also have a vote on who had done the most terrible design.