วันพุธที่ 25 มีนาคม พ.ศ. 2552

An Introduction to SEO For Blogs

By Caroline Middlebrook

Many people don't think about SEO in the beginning and believe that it is something that can be saved for a leter time. However this isn't true because when done properly, SEO would be incorporated into your blog setup and it is much better to think of it from the outset rather than trying to correct mistakes later.

Why Bother With SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Search engines are an excellent source of completely free traffic that continues to pour in for years to come but it usually takes a long time for a brand new site to begin getting traction in the search engines which is another reason why it makes sense to consider it from day 1.

To do SEO you need content that ranks in the search engines and of course with blogs being so content-rich they make excellent candidates. However if you don't consider your SEO from the outset all those posts may not be at all optimised and your efforts go to waste and hordes of potential traffic could be lost.

Getting On-Page SEO Correct

The first step in optimising your posts is knowing what keyword phrase you want to target. It is possible to target more than one but much more difficult. Now one thing that I would emphasise here is that as a blogger, particularly if you are starting out, if you have no idea about what keywords you want to target then just don't worry about it as its best to concentrate on writing good content than thinking about search engines.

Having said that, some blogs that are in more specialised niches can be quite easy to pick keywords for. For example if you write some kind of photography blog and you are writing a post which reviews a particular camera then a good candidate for a keyword would be the make and model of that camera as that it what people will be looking for in the search engines. There are several places that you need to insert your keyword:

1) The title - as near to the beginning as you can. This is the most important keyword placement.

2) The post content - your keyword should sppear a few times throughout the body of your post but don't go over the top with it.

3) Tags - Most blogging software such as WordPress allow you to add tags to your posts. Make sure your keyword is one of them.

4) The URL - it is preferable for your keywords to be embedded in the actual URL rather than having something like www.myblog.com/?p=123

What If You Have Already Written Lots of Posts?

If you already have a blog and this is the first time you have thought about SEO there are some things that you can do to tweak things. One thing that you should NOT do is change your post URL's because Google will still be indexing the old ones and if you change them you will have broken links.

However what you can do is change your titles and the copy text in your posts. One mistake that people often make is putting their keywords at the end of their title rather than at the beginning for example if you are targeting the phrase "make money blogging" which is best out of these two titles:

- 10 Great Ways to Make Money Blogging Today! - Make Money Blogging - 10 Killer Ideas!

The second title would be preferable because the keyword is the very first part of the title. You will also want to make sure your keyword appears liberally sprinkled throughout the body text.

These kinds of changes can take a while to take effect though as Google may not visit your blog very often, especially if it is new.

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