Optimize for search engine rankings

When people type in your domain name are they wondering what it’s going to show them?  If so, the search engines will probably be just as confused. Your blog’s domain name should say something about what your blog is about. This one tip is often overlooked, but is incredibly important.

When I created cookingbytheseatofmypants.com I knew that the domain name needed to reflect the fact that the blog was primarily about recipes and cooking.  The search engines have happily responded with good placement for many search terms that include the word “cooking”, regardless of what someone wants to cook.

Post titles are equally important.  If you are writing a post that’s primarily focused on the methods you used to restore an antique deck chair, make sure that the title of your post states clearly that it is about restoring antique deck chairs.  You will find the search engine spiders are quite happy with this practice.

Use Keywords In Your Post

When you’re writing your posts, try to keep the words and phrases that best describe what you’re writing in mind.  These keywords should be repeated several times throughout the post, but not so heavily that they affect the readability of the content you are writing.

Balancing keyword density and actual content is something that takes practice, so don’t be afraid to experiment with the process until you feel that you are getting a decent result for your efforts. (You are using a statistics package that allows you to see what search terms your visitors used to find your posts, aren’t you?)

Is Your Blog Linking To Itself?

Search engines love links.  If your blog posts aren’t actively linking to each other (deep linking), you’re missing out on a chance to make the spiders happy.

Any time you have the chance, drop a link to a post you wrote in the past. If the post is still topical and relevant, link to it as an example of what you are explaining in your current post.  If the information in the older post is dated, link to it as an example of practices that have changed.

This practice is called deep linking, and it helps search engine spiders find and re-index older pages in your blog.  The more often those pages are indexed, the more likely they are to show up in high positions in search results, which gains you traffic.

Site Maps Guide Spiders

Adding a site map to your blog will help the search engine spiders crawl through all the pages in your blog more easily, thus ensuring that your newer posts show up more quickly in their results.  Adding a full map of every post on your blog may sound daunting but have no fear, adding a site map to all three of the major blog platforms is relatively painless.

It is beyond the scope of this book to give full instructions on setting up a site map for your particular blogging platform.  The explanations for doing so can be lengthy and are already thoroughly covered by other sources.  Below is a list of just a few of the resources I have found.

• Add a Site Map to a WordPress.com blog
• Add a Site Map to a self-hosted WordPress blog
• Adding a Site Map to your blogspot.com blog
• Add a Site Map Template to a movable Type blog

**Please note that I have not verified the methods listed for blogspot or Movable Type, as I do not use those platforms.  the information was pulled via search results and compared with other results, so I am fairly confident that these methods are correct.  If in doubt, visit the forums for your particular platform.

Popularity: 1% [?]