We all know that building a website is only part of the strategy. If there is no means of marketing a website, a website is will be just another shop in the Sahara desert. With more people getting online everyday, and search engines being the major starting point for most Internet searching, it is important for every blogger to make sure that their blogs are optimized so that they can be found on the major search engines.
Unfortunately, most blogging platforms come out of the box, without much consideration of optimization for search engines. As such, bloggers need to be able to tweak their blog templates the right way to ensure maximum optimization.
What are the ways then? What are the things to tweak? Here are five to start off with!
1. Page Title
There is absolutely no way to argue that the page title is the most important thing to note for a page where SEO is concerned. Many blog engines like WordPress ship out wit the titles for individual posts in the format of [Blog Title] >> [Post Title]. This is not good for SEO, instead, one should eliminate the [Blog Title] in individual posts, or put it in the format [Post Title] - [Blog Title]
2. Meta Tags
It is critical to understand that with a permalink created for every post you make, there is a need to specify and different meta description and meta keyword tag for each post. Most blogging engines do not come default with this. While the meta keyword tag is not used by most search engines, the meta description tag plays a strong role in helping in SEO.
3. Your Blogroll
Most blogs feature a blogroll, and in the SEO point of view, it is important that these blogs you link to need to be of relevance to your blog. This not only helps spiders better identify what topic your blog is about, but also encourages the bloggers in your blogroll to link back.
4. Blog Archives
Blogs normally feature a reverse chronological order of posts, and as new posts are added to the main page, the old posts are rolled off the page. It is important to keep these old posts linked via your main page, in some way or another.
Often this is done using a blog archive. The advantage of using a good blogging platform is that most of the time the archiving is done automatically for you. Bloggers can choose to archive by week or by month. However, some may unknowingly adopt a one-column template and layout that does not feature the archives.
The key about blog archives is that they will eventually provide a hierarchical view of the pages in the blog, taking the blog main page as the home page.
The first level of the hierarchy is your blog home page, the second is your archives page, which links to the individual posts on the third level.
5. Frequent Posting
This is by far the most effective way of optimization for search engines. Search engines have a job to do - to bring the best and the freshest news to the Internet user behind the search box. By updating your blog frequently, as much as even a couple of times a day, you are telling the search engines that "Hey, my blog has fresh content, so come often!". Blogs that are updated frequently will see that the search engine spiders come frequently to actively seek new content, and it is only when your post is indexed that it appears in the search engine results pages.
Unfortunately, most blogging platforms come out of the box, without much consideration of optimization for search engines. As such, bloggers need to be able to tweak their blog templates the right way to ensure maximum optimization.
What are the ways then? What are the things to tweak? Here are five to start off with!
1. Page Title
There is absolutely no way to argue that the page title is the most important thing to note for a page where SEO is concerned. Many blog engines like WordPress ship out wit the titles for individual posts in the format of [Blog Title] >> [Post Title]. This is not good for SEO, instead, one should eliminate the [Blog Title] in individual posts, or put it in the format [Post Title] - [Blog Title]
2. Meta Tags
It is critical to understand that with a permalink created for every post you make, there is a need to specify and different meta description and meta keyword tag for each post. Most blogging engines do not come default with this. While the meta keyword tag is not used by most search engines, the meta description tag plays a strong role in helping in SEO.
3. Your Blogroll
Most blogs feature a blogroll, and in the SEO point of view, it is important that these blogs you link to need to be of relevance to your blog. This not only helps spiders better identify what topic your blog is about, but also encourages the bloggers in your blogroll to link back.
4. Blog Archives
Blogs normally feature a reverse chronological order of posts, and as new posts are added to the main page, the old posts are rolled off the page. It is important to keep these old posts linked via your main page, in some way or another.
Often this is done using a blog archive. The advantage of using a good blogging platform is that most of the time the archiving is done automatically for you. Bloggers can choose to archive by week or by month. However, some may unknowingly adopt a one-column template and layout that does not feature the archives.
The key about blog archives is that they will eventually provide a hierarchical view of the pages in the blog, taking the blog main page as the home page.
The first level of the hierarchy is your blog home page, the second is your archives page, which links to the individual posts on the third level.
5. Frequent Posting
This is by far the most effective way of optimization for search engines. Search engines have a job to do - to bring the best and the freshest news to the Internet user behind the search box. By updating your blog frequently, as much as even a couple of times a day, you are telling the search engines that "Hey, my blog has fresh content, so come often!". Blogs that are updated frequently will see that the search engine spiders come frequently to actively seek new content, and it is only when your post is indexed that it appears in the search engine results pages.
Kian Ann is a professional blogger and blog marketing trainer based in Singapore, passionate about using blogs as a key start to Internet entrepreneurship, and helping businesses get maximum presence by getting started in corporate blogging. For more blog marketing tips and to get your free blog marketing e-course, check out his blog at http://www.blogopreneur.com
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