SEO Basics for Bloggers

Note: Thank you to everyone for entering the guest post contest!  I've emailed the winners, and their posts should  be coming up in the next few weeks.

Today's guest post is from Tiana Smith.

When I'm not being a superhero/writer by night, I work for a pretty prominent SEO firm. Because of this, I've picked up a few tips and tricks about SEO and how it applies to my niche in the web (namely, as a wannabe author). So, here are some easy-peasy things that will help you gain more of an understanding about online search engine marketing and how to make your writer's blog full of SEO awesome sauce. So, here we go :)



First off, a definition. SEO (search engine optimization) is:
"A way to increase the number of visitors to your website by ranking well in the search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo) for keywords related to your site or blog." ~ Me (so, it's somewhat simplified, get over it)

This might mean you want to rank #1 for your own name, it might mean you want to rank for the phrase "most amazing author ev-ah", or something else similarly silly. *As a side note, I rank #1 for the term "porn stars named Tiana". Who knew? (That was totally by accident by the way, and no, I'm not a porn star. Sorry to disappoint).*

Now that we have the definition out of the way, let's get down to the nitty-gritty basics of how you can optimize your own blog for SEO.

1. Get a piece of the Google Analytics action. Installing Google Analytics on your blog helps you know how many people are reading your posts, which posts/pages are the most popular, how long people stay on your site, how they found your blog in the first place and oh-so-much more. If you want to understand your audience, and if you want to learn how to maintain (and grow) your readership base, Google Analytics is the way to go my friend.

2. Set up Webmaster Tools. This can help you become aware of any problems your site has (if Google cannot index a particular page, for example) and helps you fix them. Some people say it can even get your posts indexed faster ... but I'm just going off of gossip there.

3. Stop using the Blogspot RSS feed address (this also applies to using the .blogspot URL address if you know what's good for you). Just stop it already. I use Feedburner, which helps people subscribe to my posts by email, and also helps me keep track of how many people are subscribed by RSS. Now, Feedburner isn't perfect, so I promise I won't be offended (too much) if you choose a different RSS manager. An RSS manager is another way that you can tell which of your posts are successful, helping you tailor your content to get more readers.

4. Post titles - they're more than just a pretty name, so choose your words wisely young padawan. When you can, use keywords that will help people find your post. For example, I could have named this post something obscure, like "My Day Job Takes Over My Blog" but no one would search for that in Google, well, unless they were weird. Instead, I titled it "SEO Basics for Bloggers", which helps readers know exactly what this post is about.

5. Use keywords in your posts too. I rank #1 for my own name because I have talked about my name in previous posts. (I may or may not be narcissistic. Don't judge me). Don't spam your posts with keyword after keyword, since that just looks bad. Also, search engines don't like it when you're overly dense. (Ha ha, get it? Oh, never mind.)

6. Use keywords in your links. If you are writing a blog post and you want to reference a previous post you wrote because it was so ah-mazing, use keyword-rich anchor text rather than just saying, "visit this link: http://www ..." or saying "go here" with the link embedded in it, or just "link".

7. Get people to link to your blog. This is definitely easier said than done. One way you can do this is by becoming famous. If your Hollywood career doesn't pan out, try having great content that people want to link to, re-blog or Tweet about. You can also participate in blogfests. You can participate in blog awards. And, while I don't recommend it, you can annoy people and leave a link to your site every time you leave a comment on their blog... Yes, to a very small extent, that can help your SEO, but make sure you ask yourself if the trade-off (looking like a needy blogger and overly-promotional type) is worth it to you.

8. While that Archives by Date widget thingy is all well and good, you can take it one step further. If you take a look at my own page (I know, it's hard to leave Livia's awesome site, so wait until you're done here), I have an Archives Page that lists my previous posts, and, wonder of wonders, I use anchor text with links to help my SEO. Granted, this takes more work, but I never said SEO was easy. (OK, well earlier in this post I said I'd be giving easy tips, but, hey, sometimes I lie, and really, if you think about it, this is still pretty easy to do, so there. Also, I used a lot of commas in that last sentence. Please forgive me.)

9. When you are picking your labels for your post, choose keywords that are descriptive and that actually mean something, rather than just Monday Posts or something else lame.

10. This post is already getting really long, so I won't talk about Meta tags, or anything else more technical. I just wanted a number ten so that this list looked all pretty.

So, those are all really basic things that can help you boost your own level of SEO-awesomeness. Have fun dabbling in the SEO waters, and if you have any questions or want to know something more technical, give me a shout out.


Visit Tiana's blog or follow her on twitter.

6 comments:

  1. SEO has always been somewhat of a problem for me, so this actually helps quite a bit.
    However, I tend to dislike writing with SEO in mind, as it would automatically lead to me writing in a voice other than my own, if you get my drift.
    But I guess if you get some practice and do it well, it can still be presented in a natural way with SEO keywords in it.

    Anyway, great post. It will probably come in handy in the future.

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  2. Thanks for the opportunity to guest post Livia!

    Jake - Writing with SEO in mind can be tricky, so when I feel like things sound too unnatural, I try to write without SEO first, and then I go back and add in the keywords/links that seem to fit. You're right though, practice helps!

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  3. Fabulous tips *and* you had me laughing in there!

    Are you fielding questions, too? If so:

    At one of the sites that I write for we fill out an SEO portion when we turn in our posts. What's that about? Is it necessary/ helpful on my personal site?

    If so, where do I, you know, get it?

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  4. this information is very useful for seo newbies like me

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  5. The basics is learning how to do link building first and how it works and why we need to do it before doing more SEO focused stuff.

    motivational speaker

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  6. Totally agree, David R.! It's so important to understand the fundamentals and purpose of SEO prior to its execution and implementation. It's merely a waste of time if you do all the work and it is not being done properly. Furthermore, any client(s) will be extremely upset if they do not see the results they may have been promised. Transparency, ethics, and expertise is a good mix, I think!

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