Written on July 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse
8 First Step SEO Tips for Bloggers
“What are the first steps to optimizing my blog for searches?” – question submitted by @monedays using the #pbquestions hashtag on Twitter.
Much has been written on the topic of search engine optimization for bloggers – but let me give you a few basic first steps:
1. Content is King
The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog. I suspect others will argue differently but as I look at my own blogs success in the search engines I’d say that this has been the number one factor.
Quality content that helps people will quite often draw a reader to want to share what they’ve written – of course they do this by passing on the link to your post and often they’ll do it in a way that helps your search rankings (on their own blog for example).
2. Anticipate What People Will be Searching For
Every time you write a post you should be automatically be considering what words people might be putting into search engines to find that type of information. Once you know what kinds of words they’re using you’re in a great position to position yourself for that search.
3. Titles Titles Titles
There are a number of things to keep in mind when it comes to titles. Google pays particular attention to titles – so make sure you get them right:
- first make sure that the way you set your blog up puts the title of your post in the ‘title tags’ on the back end of your blog. This is really important.
- if you’re just looking from an SEO perspective don’t include your blog name in the title tags of single posts. This dilutes your keywords. Of course if you’re looking more at branding including your blog’s name in the title tags might be worth doing.
- next – include the keywords that you identified in point #2 in your post title
- also, keep in mind that the words you use at the start of a title tend to carry more weight than words you use later in your title
4. Keywords in other parts of your post
Use the keywords you identified in point #2 within your post also. If you want Google to rank you for a term or phrase you need to use that term or phrase. Use it in sub headings in your post (use h tags where you can), use it in the content itself, use the words in the alt tags of images etc. Don’t go over the topic but do use the words where you can naturally in the post.
5. Link to Your Own Posts
Don’t over do this one but while links from other sites are a great way to increase your blog’s rankings so are links from your blog. Interlink your posts to share where readers can find more information on your topic (where relevant) but also consider linking to key posts on your blog from other places on the blog (sidebar, front page etc).
6. Links from Outside Your Blog
Links from other sites to yours are key in SEO but they can be hard to get. Start to linking to your blog from other sites that you have or are active on. Some (like on Twitter) won’t count for anything much as they have no-follow tags but they are all potential ways for people to access your site and some will help with SEO.
Don’t become obsessed with getting links – rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time. However if you’ve written a great post that you think will be relevant to another blog don’t be afraid to let that blogger or website owner know about it – they could just link up.
Also – take note of the type of posts that you write that do well at getting other sites to link to you. You can learn a lot about generating linkable content by doing so and might just develop a technique that will work again and again.
7. Plugins
I don’t tend to do much to the back end of my blog to alter things like meta tags – but there are some good plugins around if you’re using WordPress that can help with some of this and that may give you a small edge. Check out 9 SEO plugins that every WordPress Blog Should have for some suggestions on this.
8. Readers Begat Readers
This isn’t an SEO technique as such but it plays a part. The more readers you have the more likely your blog is to be found by other readers. There’s a certain ’snowballing’ thing that happens on a site over time – as you get readers quite often momentum grows as those readers pass on your site to others in their network. They link to you, they bookmark you, they tweet about you, they email friends about you, they blog about you, they suggest your site in recommendation engines….
Not all of this counts with SEO but some does and the accumulation of it over time all certainly helps to grow both organic and search traffic. I guess what I’m saying is to get readers any way you can – don’t just focus upon ‘SEO’ as such. It all counts.
My Hunch with SEO
Before I share my hunch…. let me say that I’m not an SEO and this could be completely wrong…. but it’s a hunch that I’ve had for a while now.
I’ve been doing this blogging thing for almost 7 years now and from what I can see the tweaks that many bloggers do on their blogs to optimize it seem to be having less and less impact on the rankings of blogs. Don’t get me wrong – I stand by the above tips completely and would do them as a common sense bare minimum – but from where I sit Google seem to be in the business of finding the best information that they can for their users. They don’t always get it right but I think they do a pretty good job.
As a blogger your job should be to provide the best information that you can.
It strikes me that Google have an ever increasing way of working out if your information is good. It’s not just about what keywords you have or how many links that you get – but these days they own Feedburner (know how many people subscribe to your blog and what links people are clicking on), they own Google Reader (again giving them all kinds of great data), they own Gmail, Google Analytics, YouTube etc…..
Now they may or may not use all the data in their ranking of sites but they certainly could know a lot about your blog and the posts you write. There’s also been increasing talk over the last 6 months or so about how easy it’d be for search engines to start generating data on what content is being shared in social networks and bookmarking sites.
My hunch is that many traditional SEO methods are less important (NOT irrelevant though) and that other factors are increasingly going to come into play. I’m sure that some will work out ways to manipulate this (SEO 2.0?) but increasingly the way to get ranked high in Google will be that you just need to keep producing great content and making sure that it’s sneezed out to your network.
Help this process along by giving your readers way to share your content (and seed it to social networks) as well as to become subscribers.
Tags: Search Engine Optimization, SEO
255 Responses to “8 First Step SEO Tips for Bloggers” - Add Yours
Ryan Freed
July 2nd, 2009 12:22 am
Great suggestions! I have been trying to do all of those. Building your SEO takes time.
The Bad Blogger
July 2nd, 2009 12:28 am
Oh well… I’m an SEO Idiot, I have try out when I started out blogging but after sometime, I’m not sure about you, it seems it doesn’t work out really well for me.
So I have never care about SEO since the day, but I agree with the number 1 which is “content is king”
BlogSEOExpert - SEO for Blogs
July 2nd, 2009 12:28 am
Absolutely agree – content is king. Everything else builds on it, and therefore, comes later. I can’t imagine how some people can’t agree to that!
A few other things:
- Once you start getting some traffic from search engines, closely look at the keywords people are using to come to your site. You can try and optimize better for those terms whenever appropriate.
If you are using wordpress, you can also use a plugin like “Searchterms tagging 2“.
- Apart from using keywords in heading tags, also highlight them wherever appropriate. This can be done by making them bold or italics.
- Internal linking of posts is quite vital. Have a “related posts” type of plugin, or “people who read this also liked” kind of a plugin.
(You can see a demo of both types of plugins in my posts)
L-Jay
July 2nd, 2009 12:30 am
I agree with your ‘hunch’. From the start of blogging I kind of never saw the point of doing all the little extra stuff that was so time consuming (for me to do as I was a beginner at SEO tactics) and only nudged your blog forward. So, I’ve never really done it. I just concentrated on good key words in my title and used familiar search-able words in my post. Now my blog has many articles on number 1 spot on a lot of searches and most posts are at least on the first page above the fold (it’s hard to beat sites like wiki).
Michael Aulia
July 2nd, 2009 12:32 am
Have heard them over and over but never get bored reading them lol
It’s good though if Google actually looks at other “hidden” things to rank your site (rather than simply looking at backlinks and keywords). Let’s hope Google gets smarter and smarter to value sites with genuinely good contents
Mikes Sumondong
July 2nd, 2009 12:32 am
Firs thing, when you said also, “>>>keep in mind that the words you use at the start of a title tend to carry more weight than words you use later in your title”. I didn’t know about this until now. Thanks!
Second, i think the whole post (including your hunch) can be summarized as “YOU NEED TO MAKE GOOD CONTENT and BE VALUABLE to your READERS’ which is so right. When you add value then your readers become “net promoters” for your site. Indeed a butterfly effect happens which brings amazing traffic to one’s site. Thanks for sharing again!
Ilan
July 2nd, 2009 12:35 am
These tips are great, but what about photobloging?
Do you have to write tutorials? Or photo articles in order to ’succeed’?
It’s seems, that ‘good’ photos are not enough…
Adam
July 2nd, 2009 12:38 am
I have ranked very well with Google over the past year. To be honest with you, I have never really done much other than make my post titles search worthy. I guess that tells a lot about that first tip. However, I do use Thesis which they say has a lot of good SEO stuff built into it. I don’t know what that stuff is, but it seems to work!
Kelli Schmith
July 2nd, 2009 12:39 am
Thrilled to see this in a single article. I’m adding a link to it from my own blog, so even more folks will see it and learn.
Miranda
July 2nd, 2009 12:41 am
Content really is king — if you want a good reputation. No one likes something of inferior quality to pop up on their search results. And titles are important, too. It may be fun to be clever, but it doesn’t tell readers what your post is about, and it doesn’t catch search engine attention.
Midwest Guest
July 2nd, 2009 12:46 am
I’m a pretty great believer in “content is King”. I’ve concentrated on my content, keeping a consistent schedule, writing a lot of evergreen content and working a niche.
The posts at my blog that do best in terms of hits seem to be about the smaller, off-the-beaten-track attractions in my region. The regional food company, a local historic attraction…things that aren’t covered by every travelblogger out there.
Yum Yucky
July 2nd, 2009 12:46 am
SEO matters, but great content matters more! My focus is great content. Some people get too obsessed with the SEO thing – they’re Freaks! But you, Darren, present a fine balance between the two. Thanks!
Midwest Guest
July 2nd, 2009 12:48 am
I agree with Miranda about titles, too. Cute and catchy may work with print (where I wrote for years), but titles that more accurately communicate what a post is about seem to do well for me, too.
Jane
July 2nd, 2009 12:50 am
Great post. I’m new to this and struggling to soak up all of the sound advice I keep finding as well as writing my daily blog. I know Rome wasn’t built in a day so I’ll have to just keep persevering.
Antonio Tajuelo
July 2nd, 2009 12:53 am
I agree with most of the article. While you should have your blog well seo-optimized, after that, the real point is to improve your content quality. So, since SEO is nice, it’s just one of the multiple factors that have something to do with a successful blog.
Dave Doolin
July 2nd, 2009 12:54 am
I sure hope so, because content is what I do best!
Salman
July 2nd, 2009 12:56 am
Hi Darren
Awesome post I got much help from this.But I do not understand about keywords and where to place them.Can u help
Regards
Salman
http://www.tips4blogging.co.cc
Sumesh
July 2nd, 2009 1:04 am
When I glanced over this post, I thought “Oh no, not yet another content is king” advice.
However, when I saw your views regarding traditional SEO wisdom being less effective, you instantly gained respect.
I experienced it myself in the course of last two years of blogging – when spending more time learning all about SEO and writing less, I got a lot less traffic. After promising myself to just keep writing more and more, I’m getting visible increase in traffic from search engines.
Let’s face it, search engines are getting smarter, and it is a lot better spending your time writing than trying to find the biggest SEO tip (more often ends up being wasted time).
KampungBoy
July 2nd, 2009 1:07 am
is it i’m still must to put the other post link
but at the same time
I already use plugin related post
so, how????
Strength and Fitness
July 2nd, 2009 1:32 am
My SEO philosophy is pretty simple: don’t obsess over it, but be sure to work with (not against) search engines.
Jim Gaudet
July 2nd, 2009 1:35 am
Natural links, exactly.. If you have great content, people will save your site and hopefully share it..
There you go… Multiple links to your site on your post and should be relevant to start with.
Titles (think of a newspaper)
when I read the newspaper (yes I still do) I look at the Titles first, if I like it I read it. Same thing for all my RSS Feeds (Online Newspaper) this makes your Title the most important aspect of your posts
Jim Gaudet
July 2nd, 2009 1:37 am
Sorry for the 2 posts…but, I though I should mention. You spoke about plugins so I thought this was relevant.
In wordpress be sure to use Pretty Permalinks and select Custom Structure put this in
/%postname%/BLOGERCISE
July 2nd, 2009 1:41 am
Comments like “I’m not an SEO” are always annoying. What exactly qualifys anyone as being an expert? No one outside of Google knows the algorithms at play and there is no “magic formula” other than “make a good sight that people will like”.
You don’t need to be an academic expert to work this out. The rules for optimising are well publicised all over the net and Google happily tells people in their webmaster’s guide.
I totally agree with the final point. People should worry less about writing for search engines and concentrate on building sites that people actually like. If you get the last part right you win whatever happens next.
Northern Camping Blog
July 2nd, 2009 2:07 am
Thanks for the info. I have recently launched yet another blog (Northern Camping), and it is always interesting to see the different ways in which my blogs have each grown over the last couple years.
I hope that I have similar luck with my newest blog but only time will tell.
Nothing can replace good ole fashioned inbound links though…
blogbal
July 2nd, 2009 2:16 am
Great article, I definitely agree with everything you said. By the way, I have a new blog directory and you might want to submit your blog site. It’s a free blog submissions.
Here’s the link: http://www.blogbal.com/
Effects of Alcohol on Fat Burning
July 2nd, 2009 2:48 am
Great post Darren. I agree that social media will eventually be a large component for google rankings, specifically for bloggers.
Because blogging is about new, quality content. theoretically if you adhere to those standards people will want to share your posts with friends. This all goes back to a better experience for google’s users.
I’ll certainly be spending more time growing my 2.0 relationships.
Cj
July 2nd, 2009 3:00 am
Great post. Any suggestions for blogger plugins? I agree that content is king and developing a relationship with your followers.
PrintedProof.com
July 2nd, 2009 3:25 am
Great post. A good read even for those non-beginners
Brad McBride
July 2nd, 2009 3:33 am
I think the best way to get page rank is to have a great product. I know that is easier said then done but the better your product is, the more buzz your site will get, the more backlinks , and so on. SEO is important but make sure your product is unique in the marketplace. Rome wasn’t built in a day… give it time.
shajib
July 2nd, 2009 3:38 am
I have found very small visitor from search engine. It will be helpful for me.
Deneil Merritt
July 2nd, 2009 3:54 am
“It’s not just about what keywords you have or how many links that you get”
You can’t be serious with this line. The reason your posts rank so high in search engines is because your loyal readers link to your posts with author text. Its funny how you suppose to be helping your readers yet you keep them in a position were they stay wondering if they are doing the right thing. I am also sick of reading “content is king”. I have seen some really bad content rank number 1 because of the amount of backlinks with author text it had.
Next time you think about speaking on SEO, tell your readers the “TRUTH!”
Nicholas Z. Cardot
July 2nd, 2009 5:42 am
I just went through this list and did several of them on my site. I even followed your link over to the 9 Wordpress Plugins that will enhance our SEO and I installed several of them on my site. Thanks for the great advice. But in the end, I think that your hunch is probably right. Great content will bring in the traffic from Google and not just the right keywords and meta data. As always, thanks!
Nicholas Z. Cardot
http://www.sitesketch101.com
teratips
July 2nd, 2009 5:55 am
Thanks great
my blog about blogging and money
http://www.teratips.com
Robert Zuniga
July 2nd, 2009 6:24 am
Some people are always looking for the easy fix.
In the long term, writing good content and having the essential SEO plugs will be more successful primarily because it is the Right Way to do business.
It is all about cooperation, quality relationships and the overall experience: not numbers.
Jhay
July 2nd, 2009 7:53 am
I remember the craze for SEO a few years ago amongst bloggers. We were so obsessed about PageRank and link-love that almost everyday, I get requests for link-exchanges.
Those were good times back then.
Brian @ Live Longer
July 2nd, 2009 9:32 am
For the short time that I’ve been blogging I’ve come to think that many of these “techniques” that you’ve identified are not SEO oriented exclusively but they are good site design techniques above all.
My reasoning is that setting title posts to be used as title tags is a one time coding job that is worth your time to do just for the simplicity of the matter. Beyond that your points 1,3, and 5 all deal with on site navigation just as much if not more than SEO. If you interlink you keep readers engaged longer… especially if you are offering good content.
Point 8 is self-fulfilling. If you have good content and keep people on the site then they are likely to come back and refer others. This is not SEO but smart site design.
I agree that the tricks beyond what you’ve mentioned are probably not worth the time any more however for the time being I am still submitting articles to Carnivals for the incoming links and networking opportunities. After all; I am still operating a two month old blog.
Thanks for the post!
Julius
July 2nd, 2009 10:46 am
This is a very informative article, especially for me whose just starting to understand what SEO is all about.
Thanks so much for sharing!
Heather Allard
July 2nd, 2009 12:14 pm
Awesome–this is such great advice that anyone can implement quickly. I’m off right now to download some SEO plugins and change the title tags on my pages/posts.
Gonna get me some SEO love. :) But not be too obsessed with it either. ;)
Thanks, Darren.
Murphy
July 2nd, 2009 12:30 pm
seo is important, but don’t forget facebook’s own power for links as well, since google can’t see them.
akazuma
July 2nd, 2009 12:38 pm
agree with you. COntent is king. Without content, our blog is nothing. Nothing with visitor or traffic.
Paul Sherland
July 2nd, 2009 12:43 pm
Great post! It confirms what I’ve read from other sources. There are lots of very smart folks at Google working hard to deliver the most relevant content for any given search string. Sure, you should do your keyword research and factor SEO into your writing, but above all, provide the prized content that Google is refining its algorithms to deliver.
Manrevo
July 2nd, 2009 1:22 pm
Excellent advice Darren. One thing that you mentioned that is extremely crucial is how important your post titles are.
I had a post about a certain topic and I did some searching around. I tweaked the title a bit and by the next day, my post made it to the first page on Google when you search for that particular term. Not the first result, but it’s still something specially with a fairly new blog with very low readership.
Bradley Davis
July 2nd, 2009 1:43 pm
Great article!! In regards to point 2 I found the wordtracker tool for bloggers to be a great help to optimise single blog posts around related search terms – http://www.bit.ly/WZl7a
Josh Fialkoff
July 2nd, 2009 1:57 pm
Darren,
This is a good post. One thing I think many people overlook is the value of analytics.
Knowing which words people use to get to your posts can help shape not only your keyword strategy, but your content strategy.
You can learn what interests people and focus your posts on those topics.
-Josh
mark
July 2nd, 2009 2:35 pm
Great post, you have given me more idea about how SEO works.
I totally agree that the content of a particular post is the number one factor for it to be successful.
You should further explain things about how key words affect a post for beginners like me.
tnx..
Prasanna
July 2nd, 2009 4:17 pm
Nice tips for all the start up bloggers. I believe one should start thinking about search engine optimization only after building a niche content. Otherwise, we will be just wasting time on SEO with little valuable content, which is almost of no use.
Felix Albutra
July 2nd, 2009 4:43 pm
Great post Darren, You are such a good mentor. Thanks for this post. I will do my best to follow your steps above about SEO… God Bless and good luck to all your blogging efforts…
Sincerely,
Felix Albutra – SighNetDollars
Natasha Sinha
July 2nd, 2009 5:10 pm
Its a solid tips for making a website search engines friendly. By this blog I came to know the important of good and relevant content in the site, and how its play very significant role in the online arena.
Freelancer Online
July 2nd, 2009 5:40 pm
I think the point 3 in pretty important.
Conent and title are kings!
usman
July 2nd, 2009 8:56 pm
these points are very handy for a person who is a beginner blogger
thanks
V.C
July 2nd, 2009 9:48 pm
This post is quite normal that I could some see tips on many site.
Nihar
July 2nd, 2009 10:16 pm
Great post. This will help a lot of bloggers who are looking to improve their organic traffic.
I agree with the 1st point. Content is king, rest comes after wards.
ITrush
July 2nd, 2009 10:24 pm
Thanks for the 9 SEO Plugins link Darren, looks like I’ve found another cool stuff that would help my blog soar..
Michael
July 2nd, 2009 10:31 pm
These are some excellent SEO tips.
I will definitely go back over to my blogs and implement some of these.
free website traffic
July 2nd, 2009 11:36 pm
Good presentation and nice article. Yes I do agree links from other sites to yours are key in SEO. I am new to the SEO field. I always confuse my self that how Google’s algorithms work in deciding PR for your site which got traffic from a site having PR greater than your site. If your site is back linked with other sites one having PR higher than your site and other having PR lower than your site, then what will be the resultant PR of your site? Easy explanation is highly appreciated. Thanks.
fas
July 3rd, 2009 12:20 am
Some basic yet overlooked tips there. More then anything content is what matters. You don’t want to rank high in search engines and have a high bounce rate.
Branko
July 3rd, 2009 1:29 am
My suggestion is that the most important thing about blogging is keyword research and creating a huge number of backlinks to your blogg ! In that way you increase the your google ranking!
Greeting from Serbia
Tehseen | Ijaar
July 3rd, 2009 1:51 am
Keywords matter a lot in titles but even if keywords bring traffic to your blog, the traffic won’t stay if the content isn’t providing any value.
Mark Peesel
July 3rd, 2009 2:15 am
This is a great list of things to do. And it’s a must do list. A good suggestion for number 2 is to keep an eye on Google trends and Twitter trends to see if there’s anything trending that relates to your product or service and write about that. But don’t force it.
I have another short list of 6 must dos that I wrote about here…
http://blog.freshcurrent.com/2009/06/24/six-simple-marketing-things-you-better-be-doing/
These are very simple things anyone can and should do to help promote themselves and their sites…
Dr.Mani
July 3rd, 2009 3:04 am
I like the philosophy that ‘great content’ is the best form of SEO because it thrills readers, generates word of mouth referrals, and organically gets ‘back links’ from readers who want to link to your valuable content. Blogging for humans, in the end, might just end up raising rankings in search engines too. Nice post, thanks Darren.
BloggerDaily
July 3rd, 2009 3:07 am
Nice! I got new lessons today. And as we all agree, content always be the king!
Yeah. Got to do some links to relevant blogs for my articles after this =)
Michelle Chun-Hoon
July 3rd, 2009 3:28 am
These tips can be useful to those who are beginners at blogging and even those who have been blogging for awhile!
David Stillwagon
July 3rd, 2009 3:33 am
It gets confusing reading all the seo tips that you find on the web but I think you are right about content. Good content is always the way to go.
Paul Derham
July 3rd, 2009 10:36 am
Lot’s of great SEO tips. I read your blog religiously, and I think that your first point in this post, Content is King, can be explained out a bit more. I’ve been thinking about why people like you can generate content that makes me want to come back for more, and makes me realise stuff that seems so simple. There’s something about your content that doesn’t turn me off straight away. I reckon you write in a way that avoids “banner blindness”. Just did a post on it: http://visionadvancement.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/avoid-banner-blindness/
mike
July 3rd, 2009 1:50 pm
I always focus on content before anything else. The more posts you also have the better.
make money online
July 3rd, 2009 2:36 pm
Excellent post Darren, don’t you find it scary that Google is increasing their power/reach to the extent where they pretty much own the web. Personally I am not sure if the incorporation of the Web 2.0 into thier algo is a sure thing, but I have read on other blogs thoughts on this new theory. Anyway excellent post I have a really hard time remembering my content is the most important part of my online endeavors rather than focusing on my site/blogs promotion. Anyway thanks for the tips.
Kris,
Earn money spot
July 3rd, 2009 8:32 pm
I am working as a SEO and these tips are very useful for me and also for those who are earning through their own blogs. There is no doubt that if we follow these tips, we can get more results within less time and handwork.
seo lancashire
July 3rd, 2009 10:38 pm
Excellent article!
I like to think i am quite knowledgeable about seo and although i have optimised a great deal of websites i have never ventured in to the realms of Blogs.
It is possibly a route i may follow.
But i agree with everything you are saying.
Wow Horde Guide
July 3rd, 2009 10:41 pm
I totally rock and Agree with these great SEO tips.
1. Content is KING. Give your people some value and good content and they would love you and your site.
Optimizing your page for the Search Engine will only hurt you in the end. If you optimize for the people eventually you will get more value for your website and more visitors. Everybody will be happy!
Lori
July 4th, 2009 3:00 am
Ach! I am a newbie learning this stuff and have been cramming my brain with the SEO stuff, and now you tell me (so it must be right because you are very successful) that it’s not critically important. I think it may be more important for newbies than for established siteowners because beginners don’t have the following and so must use the popularity of keywords to get traction.
Christina Crowe
July 4th, 2009 5:11 am
This post has helped me quite a lot. I started my own blog a week ago, and had some trouble coming up with good titles that would increase my readers. Thanks for the information!
Shams
July 4th, 2009 7:08 am
Good advice.
shravan Mishra
July 4th, 2009 10:55 am
Always a good read. There were few points that I missed out but your post just clicked me back again.
Dabbygag
July 4th, 2009 11:49 am
I don’t pay much attention to SEO. I just LOVE to write.
I love this quote from the article, “Don’t become obsessed with getting links – rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time.”
tunepal
July 4th, 2009 5:18 pm
SEO and content. If play great with this 2 thing, i believe we can earn something.
Lee Ka Hoong
July 4th, 2009 8:17 pm
That’s a great SEO tips for bloggers! I always try to work hard for the point “6. Links from Outside Your Blog”. That’s the hardest way to improve our SEO but that’s the one that challenges us! I believe that “Content Is King” is tie to Links from OutSide Your Blog, if we have great content, for sure people will link it. Both of them are related.
Regards,
Lee
Love poems & Love Quotes
July 5th, 2009 4:20 am
That’s right Darren, Google search engine relies on the most relevant secure information for readers which is why they are #1 now.
Best Regards,
Jermaine
obati ejakulasi dini
July 5th, 2009 2:23 pm
I looking seo tips for my blog and found it here. Thanks for the explanation.
james
July 6th, 2009 4:31 am
As always, thanks for the insightful coverage of the SEO process and the upcoming trends we’re beginning to see.
Paul Anthony
July 6th, 2009 4:51 am
Hi Darren – I too have noticed similar patterns to your “Hunch”. For example, I put out a piece of content that I knew would be popular on social networks, and gaining plenty of shares. It was impactful, and ended up getting tweeted by a few Twitterati folk – smashing magazine amongst others.
It didn’t however gain (many) links. Traffic for that post was gained directly from Twitter, but more interestingly, what followed was that three days (and still) after the event my organic search traffic had taken a noticable jump as well – which in my opinion was directly attributable to the link bait being shared, and the increase and influx of traffic which resulted.
The fact that it was instantaneous (and it didn’t gain many links) would suggest to me that my pagerank wasn’t lifted, but instead my “trust rank” on the social web was affected, and subsequently resulted in more organic search.
Andrew
July 6th, 2009 7:43 pm
Optimizing your website is one way to increase your traffic and page rank. One important thing to do is building links so that it would gain link popularity and linkbacks for your site.
Dominating Niches
July 6th, 2009 11:53 pm
Great Post. I strongly recommend plug-ins, especially All-In-One SEO. I have personally used this for my Wordpress CMS websites.
kalpesh
July 7th, 2009 2:05 am
hi darren i completely agree that content is the king. But there are some other things also of which you should keep note of now search engines are removing most of the site pages which takes lots of time to load and also which contains more affiliate links and ads inside the blog post.
I was getting good traffic on one of my one month old blog which was on automobiles but after some days when i have inserted adbrite ads between the posts my traffic is suddenly decreased from 1200 uniques to 150 uniques which was very bad now i requested for reconsideration f my site and removed the ads in posts….
Isaac Yassar
July 7th, 2009 4:21 pm
Darren, I think you go out of topic sometimes. Some of those points are not SEO stuff, but more to REO = Readers Enthusiasm Optimization.
Search Engine cannot differentiate good contents and great contents, but human readers can. “Content is king” is more to human approach than technical approach like SEO. Steve Pavlina: “Content is king means you write for human, not search engines.”
“Quality content that helps people will quite often draw a reader to want to share what they’ve written” -> viral effect like that is very human, though later can be technical e.g: more links. REO first, SEO later on = more to REO.
“Link to your own posts” using the method you describe won’t do much good to SEO, again more to REO. Unless if you speak of Archive that connect to all your posts. 100% internal linking = 1 pagerank addon = more SE traffic.
I guess the title of this post should be “8 First Step to be a Successful Bloggers” or something. That’s my opinion. Cheers :D
blackybloggy
July 7th, 2009 5:02 pm
what if we are using Blogger? Can we still optimize like using WP?
Nick Stamoulis
July 7th, 2009 11:14 pm
SEO is very important to any growing blog. I think the URL structures are a very important component that many sometimes forget about.
Andrés Gómez
July 8th, 2009 12:32 am
Hi Darren,
I have used some of the techniques you talk about and so far, the best for me has been 1. Participating in other sites (in comments – forums) and 2. Submitting articles to other websites. This second one has been extremely useful, not only because people know the topics I talk about, but also because this are high traffic sites that get easily picked-up by Google and other search robots.
I write in Spanish and my Blog is in Spanish, so I have written articles for some highly ranked “submit your article” type of sites, like gestiopolis.com. There are several similar website in English; you just have to find which are appropriate for the subject you deal with in your Blog. Try to check this sites Page Rank before you submit, you know, just to see it they’re worth the while.
One last thought. I totally agree with content is King. Write for humans not for search engines. In over 12 years of building dozens of websites I’ve seen that search engines work more like humans than computers. And don’t get obsessed with SEO, take some time to optimize your site, but this should me a minor not a mayor job.
Cheers
Andrés G.
Sudeep
July 8th, 2009 1:46 am
@blackbloggy .This is always the same question I have been asking many people . Unlucikly no would be the answer .
Thanks for the post Dareen
Brian @ Live Longer
July 8th, 2009 3:14 am
@blackybloggy & @sudeep I would actualy say that you can do a lot more with Blogger than what it’s given credit for. It might be a little tougher to acheive but it is possible.
I run my site on Blogger and I have optimized my title tags, meta tags, and description tags within the Blogger backend as well as H tags for onsite and inpost content. Once you get your own domain to replace the “.blogspot.com” on the end of your URL then you’re doing just as good as with WP in my opinion.
The only thing you can’t do is implement any of the many plugins that you can for WP however many of these plugins have nothing to do with SEO that you can’t do yourself… they just do it faster… in my opinion at least.
Looking back to Darren’s list everything else is about your writing and should therefore have no influence by the platform. Just link within your site well, use keywords when appropriate, and produce good content.
sesli chat
July 8th, 2009 4:22 am
thank admin very good
Looking back to Darren’s list everything else is about your writing and should therefore have no influence by the platform. Just link within your site well, use keywords when appropriate, and produce good content.
Kmanblogger
July 8th, 2009 4:23 am
Yet another great post. I would say that the most important two things in your post are the content and the backlinks. It’s easy to get backlinks by commenting on other people’s forums. In fact, I see people doing it right here all the time.
You guys should check out my blog too, you’d like it
http://www.e-zonlinemoney.blogspot.com/
teratips
July 8th, 2009 4:26 am
Thanks Darren, you are great, very helpful for me
Blogging, SEO Tips by http://teratips.com
HAVOC MARKETING
July 8th, 2009 4:39 am
I have to say that I did pay attention to SEO when my blog was new. I haven’t completely ignored it. But now I focus more on content, social networking and exchanging links with other blogs / websites. Thanks for a great post.
Keller Hawthorne
July 8th, 2009 1:00 pm
Great tips Darren!
I recently wrote a blog post about how I got Google PageRank within a few weeks of launching my blog. Here’s a quick summary of how I optimize my websites:
1. I Never Waste Time on Link Exchanges
2. I Obtain Quality Inbound Links
3. I Perform On-Page Optimization (Meta Tags, Content)
4. I Use WordPress/Blogging
5. I Update My Content Often and Consistently (MOST IMPORTANT)
Of course, SEO evolves each and every day and what worked yesterday may not work today. The one method I see as never changing however is content. Updating your content frequently (blogs help you do this) and consistently gives search engines exactly what they’re looking for – FRESH CONTENT.
Alex
July 9th, 2009 1:25 am
The downside of SEO is that it takes a long time. I do agree that the better content you produce the better off you are. In the sea of spam the blogger with even half decent content is king.
Keller Hawthorne
July 9th, 2009 4:33 am
@Alex – The timeline really depends on how competitive the market is. That’s why most Internet marketers promote finding a niche – less competition and easier to get to the top of the search engines for keywords.
Larry
July 9th, 2009 10:53 am
Darren, I thank you for this post as it is full of good advice. I am thankful that you put content is king as number 1. It is what I expect to rely upon. I am trying to figure out SEO, Keywords, tags, etc and how they will help me. You have given me some good insight and also steered me to other places to get more education on this part of blogging. I look forward to reading more of your posts.
Liz
July 9th, 2009 1:32 pm
I’m going to send my search-engine obsessed clients to #2. Maybe it will help convince them that a number one page ranking is no good if no one is searching for it!
Great article.
search engine placement
July 9th, 2009 1:42 pm
Yes, I have to agree with the second one. you have to anticipate what readers should be looking for. Tap into multi-media. Try to use the latest trend and issue and incorporate it to your blog content.
mark
July 9th, 2009 5:06 pm
1. I Never Waste Time on Link Exchanges
2. I Obtain Quality Inbound Links
3. I Perform On-Page Optimization (Meta Tags, Content)
4. I Use WordPress/Blogging
5. I Update My Content Often and Consistently (MOST IMPORTANT)
thanks for these great tips
1. I Never Waste Time on Link Exchanges
2. I Obtain Quality Inbound Links
3. I Perform On-Page Optimization (Meta Tags, Content)
4. I Use WordPress/Blogging
http://buildachickencooptoday.weebly.com/
5. I Update My Content Often and Consistently (MOST IMPORTANT)
Cathy from How To Make Money Fast Online
July 9th, 2009 6:09 pm
Yes, I agree the content is king. That’s why I’m focusing writing quality articles and submitting it to top major article directories to get quality backlinks, good for seo.
Dubai Property Portal
July 9th, 2009 6:56 pm
What if these 8 steps doesn’t work? I mean Google has been changing policies its very difficult to judge how your blog could be..what say?
Mike
July 9th, 2009 9:18 pm
I don’t mean this in a negative way, but it shocks me that this isn’t simply common knowledge by now. I suppose though, for anybody new to blogging, maybe even new to the internet, that this information would be new.
and then of course it shocks me by how lazy most marketers are as well. I’m trying to get my wife to start blogging, with an eventual goal of both occupying her time and earning extra cash. The challenge however is she “just wants to write about stuff she is interested in”. This of course doesn’t have much chance of creating long-term value or a steady list of readers.
So I end up blogging until 4am on issues that I don’t care a thing about but that will draw readers.
@dubai property portal…hmmm, something tells me you already know these tips work and just needed to post something :) But just in case, these things do work, just don’t expect hundreds of visitors to one blog posting, instead be consistent in your blog postings and if you have hundreds of postings, and average pageviews per visitor of between 3 to 5, you will begin to see a consistent and steady stream of traffic. Usually you won’t hit this plateau until you’ve got somewhere between 20 and 50 posts though, depending on what you write about.
farouk
July 9th, 2009 9:46 pm
thanks for the info,
usually most of my pages show up on the top 10 results of google, here are the factors i take into consideration : 1) title 2) path of the page 3) keywords within page 4) header tags 5) bold or italics 6) internal links
external links are still important but i do well without them
Lex G
July 9th, 2009 10:49 pm
Aside from these great tips that Darren gives us here, I’d like to add something important that you can keep in mind as well :
When doing SEO for a blog, think of your blog posts as single pages that are optimized for certain keywords (3 is nice). They are stand alone HTML pages.
Now, if you choose your the single pages (blog posts) topics so that they are related to each other, you will not only have more sticky readership but it will help your SEO as well.
Keyword relation is still highly underestimated.
So : if you have a blog about fruits, your posts are about banana’s, apples, oranges etc… throwing in a few posts about car repairs may lower your rankings for the fruit topics as well…
Apply Darren’s tips around this concept and you will improve your chances for higher search engine rankings…
PraShawn
July 9th, 2009 11:06 pm
Seo is very important I am a fan of seo articles this post contains great tips,Thanks for sharing. I think article submission is one of the methods that helps me.
David Lee
July 10th, 2009 1:45 am
i will be curious when google comes out with this program. i will try it.
Thank You,
David Lee
DavidALee’s.Com
Michelle Salater
July 10th, 2009 2:11 am
Great article. In order to increase website traffic even more, I suggest to my clients that they recycle old blog posts into online articles and post them on online article directories. Results of posting online articles varies, but I find that every little bit helps.
Asswass
July 10th, 2009 2:53 am
Wouldn’t you love a search engine were you don’t need to think about SEO?
Mike
July 10th, 2009 3:45 am
I’d prefer a world where there were only 10 sites and mine were 9 of them.
Taylor
July 10th, 2009 4:03 am
Darren – A question from someone who has been a long-term subscriber, is it hard to come up with new content for ProBlogger?
It seems like I read this same post right when I started blogging back in January of 2008.
By the way Darren, I appreciate your tips. I’m now making up to $400.00 per month because of some of them.
Thank you.
Taylor Thompson
Wayne
July 10th, 2009 5:30 am
Interesting post. Thanks for sharing that with all of us. I actually have three active blogs. I will give you one in case you are interested in taking a look. You can find the other two from there. http://www.americanrestart.com/
There is one other thing I would like to give you information on. It is an unbelievable blog traffic tool. I use it and would not be without it. It’s a two minute review at: http://hotshorturl.com/wt67
Again, thanks for your posts and keep blogging!
Wayne
Midwest Guest
July 10th, 2009 6:20 am
I’m curious about the suggestion to recycle blog posts into online articles. Are we talking about duplicate copy in multiple locations?
I’ve heard that duplicate copy can hurt your stats with Google, so if I write about the same topic in a couple of different places…I always make sure the posts/articles are slanted and written differently in order to avoid generating dupe copy.
What’s the deal with duplicate copy and its possible effect on your stats?
International Business Development
July 10th, 2009 12:41 pm
This sounds very true about minor tweaks becoming less relevant than providing great information. Off-site SEO is important, too – including factors such as domain age. Good luck to you guys!
Excel Matic
July 10th, 2009 2:12 pm
Just want to thank you for such a great post. I must say that it is the content that affects your blog’s popularity most, than any other aspect. It brings organic growth.
Linda McFadden
July 10th, 2009 2:17 pm
I am glad to see that you hold the opinion that writing quality posts is the most important factor in blogging. However, as I have been finding out that alone is not enough- so I appreciate your other tips. Most of them are easy to follow for someone new to blogging and not technologically savvy with the computer. I will definitely be working on implementing or improving upon each of your tips in my blog.
seopositive
July 10th, 2009 2:26 pm
Hi
All the points are discussed very briefly.The content is really king for seo.The right selection of the content plays the important role for seo.The another thing that the keyword density use the key words of the right density.
Ravi Ahuja
July 10th, 2009 4:28 pm
Great post. These are the first few steps every blogger must follow.
Ike Okoye
July 10th, 2009 6:29 pm
Those are real nice tips Darren. Bloggers, I guess, will still need to do a lot of work on optimizing the content they already have.
bloggosh
July 10th, 2009 6:45 pm
Do you have any idea for people that using blogspot platform, all software and plug in that you talk about is just for WP user, how about for blogger.com user ?
Internet Business
July 10th, 2009 9:11 pm
Nice post. My blog is still new one. So, it is very useful for me (especially) and all of bloggers.
Jacob Stoops
July 10th, 2009 11:31 pm
There is a lot that goes into SEO, but you’ve hit the nail on the head in terms of getting your titles right, targeting keywords that people search for, and using the keywords in the post. Having a good internal link structure, and lots of quality inbound links helps too!
metafever
July 11th, 2009 1:09 am
SEO is one of the most overlooked aspects of blogging today.
Many bloggers need to realize that its not enough to just build a blog, but in order to gain an effective traffic base you must optimize.
Great post Darren!
Craig
July 11th, 2009 2:00 am
Great tips!
Also, consider writing multiple posts using the same SEO-targeted keywords. You’ll often get double entries in the search results, and these tend to draw the eyes of searchers and result in more clicks.
Mike
July 11th, 2009 2:19 am
its surprising that the most important tip “Content Is King” is also the most ignored.Just look at most sites on the web and you will see poorly written,untargeted content.
Brice
July 11th, 2009 6:04 am
Interesting post! I have always found it useful to outsource SEO work via elance or some other “hire an expert” service to gain an added advantage. This has always been a good experience for me since I am not always willing to go 100% into SEO. This leaves room in my day for more things. I get a lot more accomplished this way.
While I’m here, I’d thought I’d plug a product from a friend of mine. Check it how to earn your living online using pretty simple stuff:
http://www.iwantmycd.com
Jeff Schuman
July 11th, 2009 7:14 am
Great list. I happen to agree with your hunch. I think Google values quality information over seo techniques. I do think interlinking is real important as well. Anything to keep traffic around longer can not be bad :-)
Conveyancing First
July 11th, 2009 9:41 am
Thanks for the great tips. I’ll try and use some of them on my website. Your article was very educational.
Nicky Bailey
July 11th, 2009 11:37 am
Great tips as always Darren I learn so much every time I visit your website.
Thankyou
Nickyxx
Rajendra
July 11th, 2009 4:33 pm
Hi Darren , I really like this post, as many of us like to achieve the higher level from now by mean of blogging. Its really not so easy to teach people how to make money. I always follow your suggestions and implement that in my blog. Its really helpful to me.
enfield101
July 11th, 2009 5:56 pm
yes absolutely content is the king that word impress me,I want to create my own blug,your tips are impressed me so i want to read more and updated one, Thankx to U.
negosyanteako.com
July 11th, 2009 8:29 pm
Great tips! yup i agree 100% that writing or focusing on the content is the way to get higher ranking in google. content is king!
Ajay Vikson
July 11th, 2009 8:34 pm
Nice Article. Search engine optimization goes a long way in generating traffic. An effective method would be to submit to article directories which give good inlinks to your website.
S.K SHARMA
July 12th, 2009 4:05 am
Search Engine Traffic is the enrich diet for blog or any website.
Search Engine Optimization can drive this diet for a blog or any website.But it depends upon SEO Expert.It need some tricks also like keywords tracking,keywords ideas,title ideas etc.
Thanks for this tutorial.
Tom Mc Carrick
July 12th, 2009 4:55 am
You say “make sure that the way you set your blog up puts the title of your post in the ‘title tags’ on the back end of your blog.”
How can I do this – is it under “Settings”
Tom
Hooshmand Moslemi
July 12th, 2009 9:06 am
Focusing on a well search engine optimized website is difficult and time-consuming. On top of that, the rules are always changing. So, why bother yourself following complicated techniques that work today and expire tomorrow?
That’s why I totally agree with you that we should build a website around a high quality content. Today, even the search engines take user-friendly and rich-content websites more seriously.
Nothing is more powerful than word-of-mouth marketing. If you provide with pure content on your site, the users themselves would spread the word and promote your web pages. It could be sharing your links, subscribing to your feed and even sending your site as an email message to their friends and family.
On the other hand, knowing some basic rules of SEO is not a bad idea. You want your readership to find you first. So, making a website optimized for search engines by doing some basic actions is effective and necessary.
You have covered everything that is needed to be thought for beginners in order to get ranking in the search results.
Thanks again for this amazing article. Hope everybody finds it useful.
To Your Success!
Hooshmand Moslemi
Dwight @financiallyeliteblog.com
July 12th, 2009 10:59 am
Glad I got 5 of the 8 going for me right now. Very good tips Darren, especially the content is king point.
George
July 12th, 2009 11:19 am
Writing style is also an important factor that determines blog traffic. Some people have got a very interesting style of writing which makes their blogs popular.
Will McCulloch
July 12th, 2009 8:16 pm
Many thanks – as a new blogger at http://whatawebsite.org/ the tips above will be very useful.
Best wishes from Hamburg
Will McCulloch
John Handbook
July 12th, 2009 11:40 pm
Very nice post Darren, really helpful.
The Seo is a world, and there is really much to learn in this domain.
Thanks for Sharing
Johnny Andreis
July 13th, 2009 4:13 am
Once again, your information is extremely useful to bloggers who are just starting out! Thank you for all your support.
Anna
July 13th, 2009 6:00 am
I have always subscribed to the strategy of focusing primarily on giving search engines what they are looking for (useful content which people respond to) instead of getting overly involved in mechanics. Though it is important to understand mechanics as well. I agree thoroughly with your “hunch” at the end of the post.
krissy knox
July 13th, 2009 10:01 am
Excellent points. Content is king. Don’t spend all your time focusing on SEO. And definitely — readers do beget readers. Those are also my experiences. I also love your suggestions at the beginning of t he post. Very useful post!
krissy knox :)
follow me on twitter:
http://twitter.com/iamkrissy
Kris
July 13th, 2009 2:35 pm
Hi Darren,
Just to confirm your hunch – it has been discussed among the “SEOs” that social network links (i.e post shares, twitter links, ect) seem to play into both search and local search algorithms.
The fact is search algorithms are designed to qualify relevant and quality content, and the major search engines will continue to build algorithms to do so. This is why content is king, and always will be.
If your building a blog that you only want for one week, then go ahead and gamble with algorithm manipulation.
Cheers,
Kris
P.s. From my tests social network/media backlinks can definitely accelerate the positive search rankings – get people retweeting!
Slacker
July 13th, 2009 9:26 pm
This is a great article. SEO is something that I stink at. I really need to work on this on my blog because my traffic from search engines sucks.
I enabled SEF links on my site. But some of the tips will be difficult, like keywords in the post, since alot of my content is funny pics and stuff – where to put key words?
I know I have to work at it if I want the search engines to notice me.
jugul
July 13th, 2009 11:06 pm
wow, this one is incredible tips!
thank you so much for your tips.
Robert Bravery
July 13th, 2009 11:37 pm
Yep, Fantastic. Have to agree, content is King. Have good content and the readers will come. Too often young bloggers think that one just has to put words up onto the site, and readers will come.
No way, IT is hard work.
I never though of the importance of in house linking between posts. I try to do this every time, but do forget sometime. But yes, once I started to do this, I say page rank increase, inbound links increase, page views increase. It just makes sense.
A good title will not only grab Google’s attention, but the attention of readers. I spend a good portion of my blogging time trying to come up with the most appropriate title.
Thanks for this
çiçekçi
July 14th, 2009 12:37 am
For sharing thank you very much good very beautiful work
Anthony James
July 14th, 2009 1:21 am
Great article, for someone like me who’s just starting out it’s a great read!
Thanks
Anthony
Movie Trailer Fan
July 14th, 2009 2:25 am
My son told me to check out your blog and I must say I’m impressed, very helpful.
Me
July 14th, 2009 5:56 am
Wow..
Good collection of SEO. It came right on point Darren.
Thanks
Aldy
July 14th, 2009 12:05 pm
What a nice posting, thank to you for this great information. I think to get correct soon on my blog after read this article. May I introducing myself, my name Aldy, I am an Indonesian Blogger and it come to be great honor to me if you would like to link exchange with my blog. Thank you very much
John
July 14th, 2009 12:18 pm
Content is King —ehhh
That really depends on the type of site you are creating. Running a celebrity gossip site most site all have the same content of variations of it. What is critical is being current with the content, having solid backlinks within google to gain authority, this in turn should help with minty fresh indexing and that = traffic. All in One SEO or Headspace2 are solid plugins to ensure Google can not only find you, but also rank you.
JP
Talha Siddiqi
July 14th, 2009 12:52 pm
Darren ,
i wanted to congratulate on running such a wonderful and informative blog . I started my own blog within a couple of months time reading your blog and your book!
Great tips and pointers. Keep up the good work !
Khan
July 14th, 2009 6:19 pm
Very informative article. I agree that now a day Bloggers must provide user an interface to share the content on BookMarking Site. Most of the blogger are getting the data from Internet, so why not they allow an opportunity to other bloggers to use that article on their blogs??
Lisa Baker
July 14th, 2009 8:33 pm
Great tips for a new blogger… love your stuff, thanks!
Go Blogger (dot) net
July 14th, 2009 8:37 pm
@John: Totally agree. For certain types of sites content is not always the king. Sometimes SEO is the king.
milwaukee realtor
July 15th, 2009 12:22 am
beginners should also stay away from the blackhat methods that usually wind up costing them rankings in the long run. google is not stupid and is wise to the tricks webmasters use to try and gain an upper hand.
It may take longer but the honest and safe approach is the best by far!
Hildiid Inventory Software
July 15th, 2009 3:20 am
Thanks man, this is good. I have a blog for a while and I couldn’t get it from the ground but I think, I got an inspiration.
absolutely true ‘good content is the King’ and from now on I will be focusing on this point.
thanks again.
Bergur
July 15th, 2009 4:00 am
Trying to get to the first page of Google? Make a reservation first at the local asylum – you will be checking in soon.
LOL
fedhz
July 15th, 2009 5:13 am
I guess it all boils down to number 1. What matter is great content. ^^
JOE
July 15th, 2009 11:01 pm
Thank you, that was helpful, because I’m suffering of indexing problems !
San Diego Health Insurance
July 16th, 2009 4:48 am
There are a couple of other important tips to maximize exposure for your blog.
1. Create relevant tags for your content so that it gets indexed properly
2. Use bookmarking services and ping your content so it gets wider distribution.
Using just these two tactics, I’ve had blog posts show up in Google searches within an hour of posting them.
SEO for blogs does take work but in the end, your good content will get found if done properly
DinoDirect
July 16th, 2009 3:44 pm
Now i have a site which is half-year old, but there is no order on it, my boss told me to optimize it to get 100 orders/day, what can i do now?
Webdesign Rotterdam
July 16th, 2009 8:59 pm
I agree, content is king. In my opinion the End-User is the most important.
Jennie johnsan
July 18th, 2009 1:59 am
Well… i totally agree with you this Blog was very informative and helpful. The way every thing is explained the really sounds cool. Specially point number “8 :Readers Begat Readers” this really a very good point for S.E.O.
SURVEYS FOR MONEY
July 18th, 2009 6:53 pm
Sometimes I get frustrated because I’m not moving up in the search engines as much as I want to. I begin to scramble around for back links. I need to put more of my focus on the quality of my content so my reader can gain me exposure. Great tips for beginning bloggers.
Toronto Wedding Photographer
July 19th, 2009 6:40 am
What I noticed though, after my blog post is indexed, it gets pretty high for some keywords,but 2-3 weeks later it’s gone to page 10+. i am still yet to figure out how to avoid this
Dmitri
Robomaster
July 20th, 2009 2:29 am
Awesome post! I have read many, many similar articles about SEO and others about increasing blog traffic. My problem is that nobody knows about my blog in the first place – I have very good quality content and if I got the right people to visit I’m sure they would love it.
So how do I get the right people to see it if they don’t know it exists?
A post from my blog:
http://freshtechreviews.blogspot.com/2009/07/windows-7-new-era-for-windows.html
learn forex
July 21st, 2009 2:10 pm
I have read many SEO related articles, I found this article is difference from the others.
I found this site in the first page of Google SE, unlike many SEO expert’s sites, they are not even listed in Google..Big joke isn’t it?
shaunjudy
July 23rd, 2009 10:23 pm
This is a great post for noobs! I always enjoy reading your post even these basic ones.
louise
July 24th, 2009 12:41 am
Does anyone know whether Bing will be operating the same principle as google? Ive looked at their search engine and I like it (especially how you can hover over text without actually going to the website) but my site is no-where currently on key words optimised for Google. It could be that they havent sorted all of this yet or it could mean that theyre operating a completely different method. ANyone know?
Great blog BTW
Louise
G
July 25th, 2009 2:50 am
almost 3 month i write blog, now i know the mistake why only few people go to my blog. thanks a lot for sharing the tips.
Jeff Casmer
July 25th, 2009 11:35 am
Hi,
Great article. I try to mix a little bit of everything from quality content, links, article marketing etc to achieve desired results. Its like baking a cake.
Thanks for sharing!
Take care
Jeff Casmer
Work at Home
romanzick
July 25th, 2009 2:34 pm
im looking for big canal now from anyone who read this, which will help me to promote my blog . thankyou darren for great post
Myersdp
July 25th, 2009 3:57 pm
Thanks for the suggestion..
I agree that tile is really important and build your title around your key keywords and also meta tags is really important..
Tom Mc Carrick
July 26th, 2009 6:53 am
I suppose you need to ask yourself, what will attract people to your site (what attracts you to other sites), and what keeps you there?
It’s important to have a blog that’s neatly laid out, and without too many banner ads
Tom
Social Media Networking Training
July 27th, 2009 6:35 am
Back to basics…it has to be drilled into people’s minds! Reminders like this great post Darren have to refresh people’s minds in this info overloaded age…back to the the core ACTIONS that produce a GREAT blog and ultimately great rankings in the search engines.
Keep sharing the truth!
@TimothyCarter
Hudson Gets Paid Online
July 29th, 2009 5:59 am
That probably the most detailed tips I have seen on the web for SEO. I took all of your advice and started using it on my site. Thanks for the help!
Tom Mc Carrick
July 29th, 2009 10:00 am
Can I ask about:
“next – include the keywords that you identified in point #2 in your post title”
Does this mean that my permalink should look like this:
/%postname%|
(rather than just /%postname/ ?
Thanks
Tom
Funny SMS Jokes
July 30th, 2009 1:44 am
I really like this post, as many of us like to achieve the higher level from now by mean of blogging. Its really not so easy to teach people how to make money. I always follow your suggestions and implement that in my blog
Lonnie
July 30th, 2009 4:45 am
Great post! Question, what about bolding certain keywords in the blog will it also help with SEO?
Thanks again,
Lonnie
hope to read more posts!
Stuart Noton
July 30th, 2009 10:40 pm
It’s all about No.9 – no matter how much tweaking, if you don’t have (great) content and you have few visitors, give up.
Rajat Maity
July 31st, 2009 12:35 am
Highly informative article. I have also read that search engines have started to give increased value to off page criteria too. Idea of interlinking the important posts is great. Where do we find plugins for interlinking. A little more about keyword density would have been more helpful.
Thanks,
Rajat
John
July 31st, 2009 10:41 am
I will try your advice for my blogs. Thanks for article!
Dubai Property Portal
July 31st, 2009 2:25 pm
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the response. I surely agree with you and trying to act upon your advice. But the only factors hits in my mind is by doing these 8 steps it might help the most but will it generates a consistent traffic of visitors for long term or short term period?
Avelina Marshall
July 31st, 2009 8:08 pm
Yes I think little wording about keywords should be added too. Otherwise its a informative article to read.
Nevin
August 2nd, 2009 2:39 pm
It is very informative. Thanks a lot for sharing it.
I’ve bookmarked your blog. Keep working.
Unemployed Personal Loans
August 2nd, 2009 9:36 pm
From my experiences especially ofr Australian webmasters targeting longtail keywords works very well in a compeitive market. Do as Darren says when he talks about antisipating what people will be searching for. Look at a broad term and then extend it, then optimise a post to suit the longtail phrase.
Fantastic post Darren. Nothing less than I would have expected from you.
Cebu destination
August 3rd, 2009 1:40 pm
Yes I agree. Choosing the right keywords is also important to get ur posts visible in the major search engines. It will increase blog traffic.
Avelina Marshall
August 3rd, 2009 6:07 pm
keywords density is the main thing to handle.Spammers usually use the keywords in massive quantity which effects their websites.
tkm
August 3rd, 2009 11:56 pm
Hi,
Thanks for the information! I’ve just started up a blog aimed at students and it seems like there’s lots to learn (!!), so it was nice to read a nice summarised article.
My new website: http://www.freelancestudents.co.uk
Thanks,
tkm
elite gamers
August 4th, 2009 2:32 am
#2 is a good example of why bloggers should pick topics that they have first hand experience in. While looking through some webmaster forums, I see people asking the age old questions “what should I start a blog about?” The simple answer is – pick a topic that you have first hand knowledge in, some kind of experience, certifications or some kind of education in.
When you have knowledge about a certain niche, finding topics to write about should be pretty easy. Its the people that opened a blog just to make money that have problems picking a topic for a blog post.
When you know your targeted audience, and when you know the material your writing about, the rest will be easy.
Phoenix SEO
August 4th, 2009 10:52 am
I find your “hunch” interesting and very likely. Something I noticed is that I see different results for the same search when I am logged into gmail / google vs. logged out.
So, they are definitely paying attention and attempting to provide better results based upon your preferences and past behavior.
This really drive the “content is king” concept.
Avelina Marshall
August 4th, 2009 8:04 pm
I would need to add in that we should always remember our content is the king in setting up ranking of our websites. I want to share a resource http://www.bayut.com in which content is short and much dedicating.
Jon
August 8th, 2009 1:56 am
When I name my posts I use Google’s Keyword Tool to help find good keywords to use.
Konteyner
August 8th, 2009 7:54 am
Wow it is wonderful and cool, thanks you all, i know.
Chris
August 8th, 2009 8:10 am
Linking structure is also paramount. I like to use a silo style structure as much as possible when building my content sites.
Jijo Sunny
August 8th, 2009 12:35 pm
I think “Content is King” is the best tips out of these.
http://mextena.com
iPhone 3G Cable
August 9th, 2009 7:07 pm
Chris you say
“Linking structure is also paramount. I like to use a silo style structure as much as possible when building my content sites.”
What do you mean when you say ’silo style structure’?
I have not heard of that term before!
Thanks in advance – Paul
Ead
August 10th, 2009 11:09 pm
I Agree about the content, a content is the key.
make your website interesting and google will rank it high.
Sara
August 10th, 2009 11:27 pm
Great suggestions. I would also add that registering with the search engines using webmaster tools with Google, Yahoo, and MSN also help. You can use their verification codes, find out information on your site links, keyworlds, crawl errors, etc.
I have two blogs in which I have used most your top 8 and a few others including the webmaster tools.
http://lanternmarketing.com
http://caregiversupport.wordpress.com
Thanks!
Sara
purwonugroho
August 11th, 2009 2:03 am
Seo is complicated. i learn for high trafic rank but i cant. what the most importan on Seo? keyword, discription, or articles post?.i have 4 blog, but the rank is to poor.can u tellme how i can fix it?thank.
Edsil
August 11th, 2009 5:29 am
Thank you so much for the info. I have a blog but it’s kind of a personal one. I’m planning to have another blog and I’ll be taking your tips in SEO. more power!!
Reese
August 12th, 2009 2:54 am
This is so helpful and supports what I’ve believed all along…content is key!
Forex Trading
August 13th, 2009 6:04 am
I liked the snowballing effect analogy. What I think you were saying that makes a lot of sense is that if you have a high traffic site, if people are reading your content – because it is informative well written content – then google is going to know and you are going to rank well.
It is as if the algorithm is becoming more human.
Would love to know how to figure out what content people will be searching for in the future though.
Invisalign braces
August 13th, 2009 8:44 am
Thank you for this useful information. I have been writing the best content I can, but can never seem to get beyond 300 hits a day. Still, I’ll keep writing. Thank you.
eslam
August 13th, 2009 3:44 pm
thank you , good point .. I’ve already opend my blog I’ll try to do this insaa allah
thanks again
http://techjou.com
Crazy Frog
August 14th, 2009 3:55 am
“Content is King” most controversal statment those days. For all other 7 I totaly agree and thanks for this great reminding what to do.
Ronald Redito
August 16th, 2009 2:26 am
I completely agree that great content is the key for better ranking in search engine. I have stumbled upon a software that says it can create hundreds to thousands of articles from a single article which can be used as entries for your sites and submission to article directories. Do you believe it’s a great way?
discount running shoes
August 16th, 2009 10:40 am
Thanks for the tips Darren. I follow your blog all the time and I can’t agree with you more about titles. Google pays alot of attention to the titles. All you have to do is seach on google to see what comes back on a particular search.
Andy Michaels
August 17th, 2009 3:36 am
Lots of great information in that post. As a relatively new blogger you worry that you aren’t doing enough SEO and if you are marketing within the massive IM niche then you wonder if it is worth it at all. After all how can you compete with some of the big boys out there?
So as much as I will try to optimize my posts as well as I can I have to agree that more and more factors may be taken into consideration in the future.
Best Regards
Andy Michaels
james
August 17th, 2009 7:39 am
Great article, I found it helpful. Ive been looking around researching this and along with sites like http://theinternetcashcow.blogspot.com/ I think Im on my way!
Ashley
August 17th, 2009 11:13 pm
Great tips Darren,
I wish I had these tips when I started off my blog! I would say Title is the most important as it does not matter how good your post is if the title does not catch the readers eye they will not then continue to read on to find out how good the post is..
Clark
August 18th, 2009 10:18 am
I’m glad someone is extolling common sense when it comes to seo.
Opportunity2
August 19th, 2009 9:00 am
Very good post SEO is a very important key when it comes to online promotion.
pengumpul blog
August 22nd, 2009 3:30 am
thank’s so much for information. I will try for my site also.
Movie Gravity
August 22nd, 2009 6:23 am
That’s are great tips. I have a website running on Joomla but I think these changes can be made easily trough the template I’m using. Thanx.
Gerald Swanson
August 24th, 2009 7:10 pm
These are good tips. My question is my site doesnt actually have a blog, but I still want people to come to my site. I am thinking about starting a blog and possibly a forum, but is there possibly another alternative? If I have a forum where people can comment and discuss thing on my site, with that inturn invite Google to crawl my site and consider it “new content?” I just feel that if I were to blog on my site it would seem too much like a money grab as id likely be talking about other company’s Refer a Friend offers.
Blogger Guidez
August 26th, 2009 3:14 pm
Hello Darren,
Wow! nice information. I should try your tips to make my blog load faster.
By the way my Darren, I updated a new post on my blog. If you don’t mine, I would to invite you have a visit on it.
My new post is entitled, “Useful Tips To Boost Your Adsense Earnings?” http://tinyurl.com/kpmjyk
Thank you and I hope we could be friends.
Good luck to all your blogging efforts..
Shirish
August 27th, 2009 5:11 pm
A very good insight about SEO. You are very true in saying that over a period of time the SEO tools needs to be relooked at to adapt to the changing scenario of information.
For an overview of SEO you can visit
http://workathomegenuine.blogspot.com/2009/08/search-engine-optimization-seo-pay-per.html
Thanks for the valuable info.
Mr. Twenty Twenty
August 28th, 2009 8:41 am
Darren,
Thanks for the repeated focus on RELEVANT AND INTERESTING CONTENT.
Everything else is TWEAKS. Readers to beget readers, and readers want something worth READING.
Have an amazing day, and thank you for keeping it REAL!
Mr. Twenty Twenty
That guy who really did change his name to the number of perfect vision, because LIVING YOUR VISION matters! Whoo yah!
Small Business Entrepreneur
August 29th, 2009 7:20 am
Great Article, Darren. I have my own blog and have been looking for seo tips to drive relevant traffic to it from google.
Anybod know how long it takes for the google gods to assign pagerank to your blog?
Usman
August 29th, 2009 5:40 pm
Great most for starters :)
SEO Expert
August 30th, 2009 2:29 am
The only things any blogger should pay attention to are producing great content, paying some attention to headlines/titles, and participating in related communities. That last one is really important — you have to really participate and add something to the discussion. This gets you backlinks (that may or may not be followed — the importance of “nofollow” is debatable), but more importantly it draws people with similar interests to your blog.
For bloggers, all other SEO activities are essentially a waste of time.
Great post.
Travis
August 30th, 2009 11:48 pm
I’ve always been a fan of the “content is king” argument. Too many people I know spend hours and hours making little tweak adjustments to their blog, only to provide terrible content in return. It seems like they make page 1 on google initially, but their terrible content eventually has them drifting further and further backwards as a result.
In the end, they provide no value to the readers and gain almost nothing! Really digging your work though, as I just found your site today and it’s proved to be immensely helpful.
D
August 31st, 2009 3:56 am
Do you have any tips on getting backlinks to a blog?
Redfokker
August 31st, 2009 1:35 pm
Great information. Being new to blogging, I am learning the hard way sometimes what NOT to do. Glad I spent some time here. I’ll be checking in on a regular basis. I feel you have the right ideas…
Payday Loans
August 31st, 2009 9:06 pm
Thanks for the seo tips, i am always interested in reading these.
Annette
September 1st, 2009 5:05 am
I really enjoy reading your posts.
They are very useful for everyone who wants to be a better blogger.
Thanks
Annette.
Joshua
September 1st, 2009 4:25 pm
Well when they say content is king you must not forget about spelling and grammar. in the first few months of my blog i was having so much trouble with remembering to read over the post. I would think i spell checked it im good. Going back and reading the post they were terrible and that part of the reason i was not turing first time visitors into avid readers subscribing using my Feed ect.
Now if you go to my blog the first post is long and is completly readable and is enjoyable.
http://dailycashsaver.blogspot.com/
Ronblogger
September 3rd, 2009 9:51 am
I really like this one “Don’t become obsessed with getting links – rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time” and i know that links will automatically come once you created a powerful content
Matt
September 3rd, 2009 1:30 pm
Great suggestions!
These would be great for anybody who wants to blog but is having trouble getting started.
michelle
September 4th, 2009 6:05 pm
I’m going to put these SEO tips into practice. My blog is new, but I hope these tips will at least get me some steady readers.
Çiçekçi
September 4th, 2009 11:57 pm
I look at what the original text of ge google and meta tag in the original article lada be specified in the last geimelerin must be outstanding in the title
Thanks for sharing
Marcy
September 5th, 2009 3:20 pm
Thanks for the tips! The list helps and I need more traffic to our blog!
http://witchcraftmagicspells.blogspot.com/
web design
September 5th, 2009 7:51 pm
content is indeed the most important, and the effect of its is also the longest. but it really takes time. and keyword research is also important
Mukund
September 6th, 2009 12:46 am
Yes! Those are some wonderful suggestions! I have tried few of them and they work well with my blog! And I have question Darren. I am selling LinkWorth Text Ads (LinkWords), I would like to know whether these links will pull my PR? I have got a PR1 for a long time and it has never improved from that. Please get me few suggestions.
My Blog URL : Everything About Blogging
tv
September 7th, 2009 4:23 am
it’s useful i really like it i hope that’s gonna be useful in my blog
Maria
September 7th, 2009 8:07 am
Thank you Darren for this blog post! I agree with you very much. I believe great content, whether on a website or a blog is the key to success. Rather than focusing on Search Engine Optimization, bloggers and webmasters should focus on Customer Experience Optimization. What is it worth, if you get traffic from Search Engines, but people will scream and flee as soon as the site loads? The layout, the content and easy navigation are the keys to keep your visitors coming back and staying longer on your site. Simply keeping search engines happy is too short sighted. Try to see the overall picture!
Thanks for all this great content! I always learn something new from your blog!
Maria
playlistpk
September 8th, 2009 1:11 am
Content is always the king but we need to work on the whole campaign to manupilate the keywords streamline and links to be placed
Super Blogger
September 8th, 2009 2:57 pm
Gr8 tips as usual darren .. and I have to agree that the content is the king .. Even I haven’t seen much result with seo stuff … If you have good content and have submitted your blog/website to all the directories .. people will come
Rock on!!
Super Blogger
http://superbloggertricks.blogspot.com/
Earn Money Online
September 9th, 2009 5:19 am
I agree with your hunch, I think, in the case of blogs, content may actually begin to start replacing solely focusing on backlinks.
Master B
September 12th, 2009 1:24 pm
It’s always nice to come back to this blog and read all the useful posts. I started serious blogging few months back. But I decided to focus on one, about 2 months ago. It still struggling with the traffic. The niche is about money making. But I get confuse now and then between stick to the niche or writing other things like SEO related or computer tech. Should I just compile it in one blog or make scattered blog for each topic?
And another things about keyword stuffing. How many keywords should be in our particular posts to be count as effective one rather than stuffing? I heard 4-5 phrase (if you run after phrase).
I totally agree when u say content is king. Take this blog for example, you have wonderful posts all over. I am still learning from scratch. But you have 7 years experiences, so I guess I am not that dump after all :D
Btw, this is actually should be commented in other post, but since the comment already closed, so I should just add here. I think, not only newbie, but anyone out there who want to earn quick cash by blogging, they should just try with blogspot. I know i know, you might disagree for I realize you are doing with WP under your own hosting. But here’s the fact, check out keywords related to money making in google, and spotted who takes the number 1? and look again, how many with blogspot url in it? (Compare it to wp).
——
Money Making Blogspot
Web Development India
September 12th, 2009 4:24 pm
Nice reading, I came across this blog searching in google, i found out your blog. This Tips are very useful Who initially start SEO for their Websites. I recommend this blog. Keep it up
Thanks sharing
Colleges In
September 13th, 2009 1:28 pm
Seems to me that many of the major SEO factors have remained the same. I have been reading some older articles with week to get some SEO insight and has many points that this post does. Thanks.
cara membuat blog
September 14th, 2009 6:26 pm
Thanks for 8 first tips SEO, but if we have nice content but search engine do not know about our post, what will we doing so that search engine know our post
PVC Doors
September 15th, 2009 11:29 am
Thanks for sharing, Content is very important In the factor of SEO for every web site. Only creating the unique content can be attractted by Web search engine
SEO Backlinks
September 15th, 2009 11:37 pm
It is all about giving your readers an enjoyable ride. Writing good content is the obvious way to do this, but make the experience fun is certainly something that you can bear in mind as you prepare your blog. Quizzes, games etc are things you could consider.
freisprecheinrichtung bluetooth
September 17th, 2009 9:20 pm
Very helpful tips for bloggers. I have never really implemented any of these in my blog. Better I should start now! Thanks for the reminder.
jernen
September 19th, 2009 2:16 am
thank you so much! I am a new learner in this field ,and your post is very important for me !
Source Blogger
September 20th, 2009 1:08 am
Hello,
I think it is obvious to the reader when a blogger first discovers “SEO.”
Suddenly posts become mechanical with only search engines in mind.
Those of us that blog with an emphasis on the side of content, we hope your “hunch” is right.
Source Blogger
Çiçekçi
September 21st, 2009 4:54 am
google page listing the number of recently dropped more than 25 pages if my site does not list
What could be reason
jeux d'action
September 24th, 2009 6:56 pm
Very helpful tips for bloggers. I have never really implemented any of these in my blog. Better I should start now! Thanks for the reminder.
Best Regards
Çiçekçi
September 25th, 2009 4:05 pm
agree to all of this article I tried I would gather the fruits now, thanks for sharing
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