Written on February 25th, 2010 at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse

Optimize a Single Post On Your Blog for SEO

Featured Posts, Search Engine Optimization 244 comments

This is an unofficial extra task for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook.

Today I spent the morning working on a task that I try to do at least once a month – SEO on individual key posts in my archives.

While it’s important to know and practice the basics principles of SEO in the way you set up your blogs structure and in the writing of your posts – I find it can be very worthwhile periodically going back through key old posts to optimise them even further. I’ve used the following process for a while now and in most cases where I do it I find I’m able to increase my ranking for different posts.

I’m not the world’s best SEO but here’s the process that I use in doing this (I invite you to share yours in comments if you do this type of thing) – I hope you find it useful:

1. Identify Key Posts to Optimize for SEO

Across my active blogs I have 10,000 blog posts so I need to be a little strategic about choosing which blog posts I go back to to give a little SEO attention to.

For me the way that I do this is to dig into my Google Analytics account to work out what posts are already having some success with search traffic – but which could be improved. I generally look for posts that are ranking anywhere from #2 to #10 for their keywords (although sometimes focus upon those which are #1 to strengthen them further).

If a page is already generating some traffic from Google for a keyword but isn’t in the number 1 ranking for the word and increase in ranking should also see an increase in the traffic that the post receives. I’ve seen a variety of studies over the years that show that the #1 ranked result in Google can be getting anywhere from 35-55% of all clicks – the higher you are to the top the better.

Lets look at an example:

I’ve got a page on DPS which ranks #2 (depending where you are) for the term Portrait Photography.

It is a good page to optimise because it’s a relatively good term in the amount of traffic it drives (it’s a term that get a fair bit of searching for in Google) but also because the page is a ‘sneeze page‘ which links to quite a few pages across my photography blog and as a result those who visit that page end up visiting over 7 pages on their visit (the site average is a bit over 2 pages per visit).

The page already generates some healthy traffic (a few thousand visitors a month) so I know if I could get it ranking higher it will generate more.

2. Analyze the Competition

I don’t tend to get this deep into SEO too often but from time to time it can be worthwhile doing a little analysis of what pages that are ranking higher than you for a keyword are doing.

One tool that I use for this (and other keyword analysis) is Market Samurai. It’s a tool I’ve only been using for a little while but it’s very handy. That link is an affiliate link but it does give you a 12 day free trial. I’ve shelled out for the full version as it has been so handy a tool for this type of analysis.

One of the modules in the Market Samurai system (there are quite a few more) is one that does analysis of what competing pages are doing for a keyword. Lets take a look at what it gives us for ‘portrait photography’ as a keyword (click to enlarge).

You can see that the #2 ranking is for my site but it also shows a variety of information for other ranked sites in the top 10. Some of the information given is not overly relevant to me (or at least is out of my control like the first column which looks at the age of the domain) but some of the information is useful in getting a handle on how your page compares to other sites.

Knowing this might help you work out what you need to do to rank higher – or it might also give you an indication of whether you have much chance of ranking for the keyword at all (if the site you’re trying to compete against is way beyond what you can achieve it might be an indication that you want to go and work on another page).

In this example lets compare my page with the #1 ranked page:

DA – domain age – they have a real advantage here.
PR – page rank – their page is a 4 and mine is a 3. Something to work on.
IC – index count (the number of pages indexed on the domain) – they are obviously a lot bigger site. This doesn’t mean I can’t rank for the term but gives an indication that I’m up against a pretty established site.
BLP – the amount of backlinks pointing at the page. They obviously have more (we’ll do some more analysis of this below).
BLEG – links from .edu/.gov sites pointing at the page – they have a couple here while I don’t
DMZ – is the site in the DMOS directory (I don’t page a lot of attention to this but some say it can be a factor)
YAH – is the site in the Yahoo directory (again, not something that I pay much attention to but some say it can be the difference between getting a higher ranking and not)
Title – is the keyword/s in the title tags of the post (we both do this)
URL – is the keyword/s in the URL of the post (I have the advantage here)
Desc – is the keyword in the meta description tag (not something that I’ve found to impact SEO much but perhaps something to consider with the way your post appears in Google)
Head – is the keyword/s in a header tag on the page
CA – The Cache Age (the number of days since Google Cached the page)

In this case – the analysis shows me that I’m up against a pretty heavy hitter. It’s an established site with lots of links pointing both at the domain and the page itself. I’m tempted to settle for just ranking #2 for this page but for the sake of the exercise I’ll push on.

Note: Market Samurai also gives you the opportunity to dig deeper into competing sites and can give you a breakdown of the actual links pointing at a page. I won’t do the analysis here (it might be deeper than where people are at) but what I found was that in the case of my competition on this one is that the competing site had a lot of forwarded links pointing at it. I’m not sure what was going on with it but it seems that the majority of the links pointing at my competition are from forwarded domains and not actual live pages. This gives me a little hope so I’ll push on with optimising the page.

3. On Page Optimization

The above competitive analysis might give you a few hints as where to begin in optimizing your page. For example if you’ve not got your keywords in ‘title tags’ or ‘header tags’ – you’ll want to fix that. If your keyword is not in the URL, that’s another thing to consider. Those three tweaks alone could have a fairly significant change (I’ve seen changing title tags to include keywords as increasing rankings significantly).

Once you’ve done that you might want to also look at some smaller tweaks that could play a part. Using keywords in bold, using keywords in alt tags on images etc. These are probably not going to have a major impact but could help a little.

Ultimately if you want to rank for a particular keyword – you need to be using that keyword on your page in key spots (titles, headings, URL). Don’t stuff your page full of the keyword (and whatever you do keep your content useful and readable to readers) but a few tweaks might help.

4. Off Page Optimization

You might find that with some on page optmization that your post is already increasing its rankings – particularly if the keyword you’re looking at is not highly competitive. However at times it can be worth looking at ways of generating some extra links to your page as the number and type of links are important in determining how a page ranks in search engines.

I don’t tend to do much of this type of SEO as I find my site tends to get a nice number of links pretty naturally from other sites but I know those who are more into SEO will work hard on some of the following:

analysing where the competition is getting their links and looking for opportunities to get links there too – for example if a link is coming to your competitor from a forum discussion or blog comment you might also have an opportunity to leave a quality comment there with your own link.
links from other blogs you own (particularly one on a relevant topic) link to your page from it
internal links – this is something I do do – basically its about interlinking your posts. While internal links don’t count as much as an external link they can help a little.
pitching links to other blogs – if you have a relationship with other blogs in your niche try pitching a link of the page that you’re optimizing to those bloggers.
sharing links in social media – most social media sites like Twitter and Facebook put no-follow tags on links so they don’t count directly for SEO but I find that an occasional push of an older post on social media sites can lead to indirect links from other bloggers. I also suspect that search engines are paying more attention to what links are being shared in social media sites so getting your links into them (without spamming) could be useful if you have a network of people who will pass them onto their own networks.

Note: the generation of links can be a fairly ‘black hat’ game at times. It can also be pretty addictive and become an obsession. I personally would prefer to spend my time producing quality content than spending my days asking for links. Do be a little careful with link building – not only can it be a time suck but if you engage in tactics that Google sees as against their Terms of Service (buying links for example) you could also be jeopardizing your sites ranking in their index.

What next?

244 Responses to “Optimize a Single Post On Your Blog for SEO” - Add Yours

Tom | Build That List

February 25th, 2010 12:39 am

Great to see you are using Market Samurai! I have been using it for about a year now and it is extremely handy. That is a great tip about using Analytics. I use it to find the keywords getting good traffic and see if I can improve on them.
Firas Steitiyeh

February 25th, 2010 12:39 am

WOW Market Samurai seems to be coool! this is the first time to hear about!!

Thanks Darren!
Sudeep

February 25th, 2010 12:41 am

Hey Dareen,
SEO has always bothered me and it is really confusing subject to understand to be frank. This article of yours have helped me a little. Lets hope that I could use it and see.
Todd - Home Construction Improvement

February 25th, 2010 12:58 am

Darren,

I’ve been doing this for quite some time with good success. Recently I started going back and improving posts again this time using the Scribe Plugin (http://www.scribeseo.com/) that you recently wrote about. That plugin has been a huge help in forcing me to think about SEO as I write and when trying to update older posts.

I’ll definitely check out the Market Samurai as well.
Mathew Day

February 25th, 2010 1:00 am

Great advice Darren, I usually am content just getting on the first page of the serp’s, but I now realize how much potential traffic I have been missing out by not being in the #1 spot.
George Passwater

February 25th, 2010 1:07 am

Great post Darren.

SEO is a very important part of writing for the web. I really like that you touched on off page as well as on page optimization. Many don’t realize that what happens off your page is just as important as what happens on it.

I also like you included some information on Market Samurai. I have looked into this product and looks great. I also use other things like the Google Adwords tool, SEMRush and more when I look at writing SEO copy and blog posts.

Thanks again!
Bart

February 25th, 2010 1:08 am

SEO is quite new to me, but I’m slowly starting to learn about it. I sometimes have the feeling that SEO is a must if you’re blogging even if you just care about writing blog posts. On the other hand, it is fascinating how SEO on itself has become a lucrative market. Hands-on posts like this are really helpful for those of us, who are new to SEO, but want to learn more about the subject and apply it. Thanks, Darren.
Serge Van Cauwenbergh

February 25th, 2010 1:11 am

Darren, you should have written this article a while ago :-) The past few weeks I have optimized ALL my blog articles. At the time I started with the blog, I didn’t know that much about SEO. Now I do a little more and I decided to optimize all my articles from 2007-2008-2009. In the built-in SEO tool in Thesis I added better titles, clear descriptions and some keywords. I also changed or removed wrong links in the articles itself. Although I have only 600 articles, it took me a few weeks to finish this operation. I now notice that I have already less errors in Google Webmaster Tools. In the coming days and weeks I will further examine the statistics in Google Analytics.
Zelle

February 25th, 2010 1:14 am

Thanks Darren! Wonder if this works like Clicktale. I’ve just signed up for the free trial.

As for optimizing my posts, I’m quite satisfied with Scribe SEO.
Roman Soluk

February 25th, 2010 1:15 am

Great tips,

Thanks, Darren! Especially I like the second point, concerning the analysis.
Dali Burgado

February 25th, 2010 1:18 am

Hi Darren,

Market Samurai is awesome! I also go back occasionally to previous posts to tweak SEO. I find that the SenSEO Firefox Plugin is the sweetest tool to analyze your On Page SEO.

It’s is very useful for those who are confused about SEO in general. (Sudeep – this will help you understand it better). :-)

SenSEO provides you with a checklist for all of the things you can do to improve On Page SEO on any page or blog post.

I also didn’t realize Market Samurai had its affiliate program up! Running there now. Thank you, Darren.

Dali
gwen

February 25th, 2010 1:21 am

Been using Market Samurai for several months now and it’s really working great for me.

Gwen
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Cheryl from thatgirlisfunny

February 25th, 2010 1:24 am

Hi Darren,
On-Page Optimization – I’m putting this step in place today. I haven’t been paying attention to whether my keywords are in the ‘title tags’ or ‘header tags’ – that’s a straightforward daily habit I can implement starting now.

Thank you!
Cheryl
Andrew @ Blogging Guide

February 25th, 2010 1:31 am

I’ve been using Market Samurai for quite a while now and it rocks. Best tool around for keyword analysis.

And for SEO I been testing/playing with the ScribeSEO plugin recently – makes things simple.

Andrew
Guillermo

February 25th, 2010 1:46 am

I love it when the good, old Darren is back! This is such a good post that made me realize you haven’t published such a good thing in a while…

I do some research in my Analytics and improve some posts once in a while but this is a new approach I will take into account for the next time.

Thanks!

(And welcome back)
Nina

February 25th, 2010 2:09 am

Great read, thanks for posting :)
Vishal Sanjay

February 25th, 2010 2:38 am

Nice post Darren!! I think most of us forget to optimize our posts as we are busy optimizing our blog itself. Optimizing posts pay an important role is SEO and anyhow its your posts which send traffic to your home page once you start getting search engine traffic.

http://www.dumblittleblogger.com/
Bass Guitar Lessons

February 25th, 2010 3:05 am

It’s also a good idea to do this for all new blog posts. A few minutes spent optimizing new content is well worth the effort.
Web Marketing Tips

February 25th, 2010 3:07 am

That one is really impressive Darren.

But do you manage any kind of record as well for your posts which you pick. I mean 10000 posts means a lot and picking one post from that means really time taking task.
Matthew

February 25th, 2010 3:14 am

Great post, Darren. Market research is everything. I also am a big fan of Market Samurai. Makes my life so much easier and allows a comprehensive way to assess the other competition.
Elizabeth Ashe

February 25th, 2010 3:24 am

I love that you have posted this to your site. Bloggers need to realize that rankings and profit come through practicing excellent seo skills. I use market samurai just for that manner to analysis the competition along with yahoo’s back linking feature.

You have also reminded the importance of going back through old posts to figure out which ones you need to add a little more love to for rank value.

Excellent post!!
Thomas

February 25th, 2010 3:54 am

Thanks for this excellent post Darren. I’ve never actually thought of going back and optimizing old posts. That is a brilliant idea in my mind!

Thomas
Ami

February 25th, 2010 4:04 am

Hi Darren,

Thanks for the article, Since I’m on a tight budget, do you know of a free tool that can also do this job, maybe something that will do for beginners?

Thank you

Ami
Jodi Ralston

February 25th, 2010 4:31 am

Excellent post. It’s interesting breakdown of why some pages rank higher than others. I just wished I could figure out how to do SEO on Blogger/Blogspot individual posts.

Jodi
arya

February 25th, 2010 4:35 am

no wonder if my traffic is bad. i will try this. thanks for share. this is my blog, please visit.
Chad

February 25th, 2010 5:14 am

Thanks for this post Darren! There’s some good ideas here, and I must say that while I think about SEO, I don’t often do a thorough job of implementing any particular effort, especially after the fact. But going back through popular posts and giving them a re-do is a good idea.

I like that you’ve noted this as “an unofficial extra task for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook.” I’ll give you an unsolicited plug here and tell people that I have read both the 31DBBB Workbook and your problogger book, and they are well worth the minimal investment.
Heather

February 25th, 2010 6:01 am

Market Samurai! I came across that as part of the 30 day challenge (which I have to confess, I’ve only done some of). Still it’s a useful tool and when I start earning money from my site I’ll probably want to buy it.

Some great tips there too, definitely worth thinking about. Thanks Darren!
Nathan

February 25th, 2010 6:23 am

Very simple and basic skills for bloggers, yet some people really forget about these things.
Alejandro Reyes

February 25th, 2010 6:34 am

Market Samurai ROCKS!

Thanks for the post Darren!
Gerry Faehrmann - YourLawnAndGarden

February 25th, 2010 7:09 am

Thanks for the heads up on regular SEO fine tuning. Market Samurai is a smart tool. The guys that developed it are real clever cookies.
Sean

February 25th, 2010 7:10 am

What about from the perspective of a new blogger? These seem to be great tips for when I have a lot of posts. But I would love the SEO advice from someone just starting out. Thanks for the tips.
Website Promotion

February 25th, 2010 8:03 am

One can basically get accustomed to write with the search engines in mind and become an SEO copywriter from the beginning, but this isn’t anything easy as many happen to get spammers by stuffing the content with lots of keyword repetition.

Over the course of time and with a little bit of training, one learns how frequently uses the keywords and where. This can help you automatically write in a way that from the time of publishing and getting indexed, you will appear on the first page of search engines for the words of phrases you’ve originally aimed.
David King

February 25th, 2010 8:23 am

Great post Darren! one of my friends uses market samuri and loves it… I should check it out and see what all the hype is about! On page and off page are important… the great thing about blogging is that you are always increasing your traffic because your new posts create more content and you get more backlinks from that content. The big picture and long-term picture is always a beautiful portrait when blogging!
Thanks for the awesome advice! as always!

David king
Darren Rowse

February 25th, 2010 9:14 am

Mathew Day – I think a lot of people think that page #1 on Google is enough, however the stats show you exponentially increase your traffic the higher up you are. Of course there are other factors that can help you get more traffic (for instance the title of your page can have an impact) but the position is important and worth working on.
Darren Rowse

February 25th, 2010 9:15 am

George – Marketing Samurai is just one of many tools out there – there are some good free ones too but MS for me so far has been pretty useful and worth paying for considering the amount that I’m using it.
Darren Rowse

February 25th, 2010 9:16 am

Bart – the SEO market is quite lucrative – I guess with more and more people going online the competition for the top spots grows and services to help you get it become more and more sought after.

I think that you’re ’slowly learning about it’ is a good approach – learn a bit, apply and test it, learn some more, apply and test it….
Darren Rowse

February 25th, 2010 9:17 am

Serge – sounds like a mammoth job – I hope it pays off for you!
Darren Rowse

February 25th, 2010 9:19 am

Web Marketing Tips – I don’t have a specific system for keeping record but I do track some pages to see how they’re ranking (another tool in Market Samurai).
Darren Rowse

February 25th, 2010 9:20 am

Ami – you can use Market Samurai for 12 days for free – so perhaps start with that and see how you go. If you put aside a few days to do it you hopefully can get a lot done. I’m not sure what free tools would give you this kind of comprehensive features though.
Darren Rowse

February 25th, 2010 9:24 am

Sean – for someone starting out, you have an advantage in some ways as you can do this same stuff as you’re writing your posts. To be able to write posts and then look at a tool like Market Samurai to work out what kind of keywords you’re targetting and what other sites are doing to rank well for them can be worth doing. That way you won’t need to come back and optimize them later.

I guess the other thing to keep in mind is to know that as a new site you’re going to take a while to build authority and rank in Google. Work hard and producing quality content – the type of stuff that will attract links. Get out there and try to find ways of getting incoming links to your site.

Lastly – check out First SEO Steps for Bloggers
Mark Mathson

February 25th, 2010 10:12 am

Great post Darren. Thanks for providing such detailed information. As well, I have never heard of Marketing Samurai before this post, so will have to take a greater look at it in the future.

One thing that I learned from reading over at the Yoast blog a few years ago, was if you have a particular post that is ranking high, to consider making it into a page. Also, he recommended turning off comments, and ensuring the titles, descriptions and tags are tweaked to get the most value.

I tried this with a very popular post and it was a great move. I was impressed so much by this simple suggestion.
Deep ripples

February 25th, 2010 10:13 am

Good basic tips. We’ve started using Market Samurai recently. Very useful SEO app.
John

February 25th, 2010 10:16 am

I was never a fan of backtracking through posts for SEO but it definitely helps out. Thanks for the great tips! I’ll be sure to give Market Samurai a try.
Sean Breslin

February 25th, 2010 10:32 am

Darren that was a hell of a post… I do try to optimise a piece of content regularly, and go back or forwards for relevant ping backs. Your phrase a sneeze page is one I like alot.

Market samurai is a great tool and I confess to not using it enought. My latest post, the one above has my begining optimisation in it, Time and relevance adds to it.

I will be back to read this a few times.
Kenn

February 25th, 2010 10:41 am

Awesome post! I have to check into Market Samurai, this seems like a very effective tool!

Thanks again for the tips!

Kenn
Michelle {Brown Eyed Baker}

February 25th, 2010 10:47 am

Great post Darren! I use Google Analytics but can’t seem to find where you can get a specific post’s ranking for particular key words. Could you point me in the right direction? Thanks!
Baadier | Footymix

February 25th, 2010 10:58 am

That Market Samurai tool looks amazing and its the first time i’ve heard about so its definitely something to look into. The site i’m working on at the moment is very new so in a way i’m learning as i go along. What i’m really focusing on is targeting the type of articles im posting to the site and using the views as a indication of the type of articles people are interested in.

For example if a video post gets more hits and activity than a list post then i consider it a good bet that sort of post is attractive to visitors.

My site is relatively new so the results i’m getting from analytics has yet to settle to a sort of constant but either way, 20% more activity on a specific type of post is a good indication for the long haul
Boomer54 Mark

February 25th, 2010 10:59 am

Darren,

One way I generate a few links to a specific blog post is to use a FREE service called Ping.fm.

I can add links to a specific blog post here once and have it appear on any one of my social media sites.

Mark
CJ Spurr

February 25th, 2010 11:09 am

Darren — good post. Don’t have a huge archive to go back and optimize, but since it’s still on the smaller side I guess if I work through them little by little I should be able to keep up on them.

Seems like MarketSamuri is getting some good publicity lately. I also use it. It saves me so much time in researching keywords. Love it.
Eky Dakka

February 25th, 2010 11:11 am

I have use Market Samurai and it is really good for keywords research…Thanks for the post..
Robert

February 25th, 2010 11:21 am

I think it’s so true: Offsite optimisation CAN be really addictive. I got the impression that only links from high quality sites are effective. It’s not worth spending hours on getting links from doubtful sources. Generating high quality content (like I can find in this blog. THANKS) is far more important.
Karen McAllister

February 25th, 2010 11:27 am

Lots of helpful suggestions here, Darren. I like the idea of going back to old posts and optimizing — taking a few extra minutes to amp up work that’s already been created. I’m sure I have lots of old posts that paid little attention to keywords and SEO sense.
Jennifer

February 25th, 2010 11:28 am

I love Market Samurai and I recommend it to everyone who has a blog. You can use it to research your market, generate a list of great keywords, write relevant posts, and you’ll easily rank for those keywords.
It’s a simple way to ensure your content gets into the hands of those who need it most.
Thanks for the great tips here, Darren! It was good to hear you speak at the Coming Home Conference in Melbourne last weekend too. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience.
Aidan

February 25th, 2010 11:29 am

Great post, it is definitely a good thing to get old posts back into circulation on Twitter, while Twitter itself is noFollow, you can pick up some links from those who missed the post first or even second time around!
EddyBadrina

February 25th, 2010 11:34 am

Awesome tips, Darren. I actually just did this a couple of days ago to two posts on my blog, and your post has spurred me on to do a couple more. Thanks!

Badrina Marketing Strategies
Alison Moore Smith

February 25th, 2010 11:37 am

Great challenge.

I’m currently working through the entire 31 day challenge in great detail right now on another blog — and blogging about it on my start blogging blog (that’s totally clear, isn’t it? ;D ).

But I look forward to working on this bonus when I’m done.

Great stuff, Darren.
hokya

February 25th, 2010 11:38 am

do you use the SEO WordPress plugin ?
what is the best way for implementing SEO for you?

if i may say, the quick and easy one is Automated Keywords Generator, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/automated-keywords-generator/
Rob Chant

February 25th, 2010 11:52 am

Some good advice here, and Market Samurai looks interesting.

Just a point to note – image alt properties are very high correlated with high rankings now, so you could always use an image in your post with appropriate keywords in the alt property (again, in a non-spammy way).
Paul Duffy

February 25th, 2010 11:54 am

I hope to get into some serious blogging soon and want to do things correctly from the start and will be using your book, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog .

One thing that worries me about blogs are the post archives and whether the search engines still rate those pages as high a website pages. I keep tweaking the pages of my websites and it does make a difference.

I also use Market Samurai as it really is a great tool to own and it just keeps getting better!
Febri

February 25th, 2010 11:55 am

marketsamurai is something new for me.
Mrs. Accountability

February 25th, 2010 12:01 pm

I have known about SEO for years, but wasn’t really sure how it was working on my site. One thing I did that really helped to open my eyes was to install Feedjit on my site. I didn’t really like the idea of it at first because it takes away some anonymity of my visitors, but I really got a lot of understanding what was going on when I saw my real time visitors coming in using those keywords I saw at Google Analytics. Feedjit shows where the person is coming from, and the keywords they used to find pages on my site. Then I can click on the keywords and find out exactly where I’m at in the ranking. Now I finally could see just how many people were dropping in looking for Fels Naptha soap and L. Frances Caramels, LOL! It really impacted me to try to use good titles of my posts, because those posts I just accidentally HAPPENED to title them with keywords and such a way that they are interesting enough that people are coming daily to see them. I started realizing how sometimes my post titles just don’t have ANYTHING to do with the actual topic, so I have been trying to be mindful of that as I title my posts. I’m just beginning to work through the 31 days, but I hope to optimize those pages to make them more sticky. I really love these extra tips, Darren, and even more I love the podcasts. I have listened to the one from Neil Patel at least four times and learn another tip each time I listen. Very inspirational and I feel like my hour drive to and from work is very productive when I’m learning how to blog better! Thanks!
Surgery Houston

February 25th, 2010 12:04 pm

I’ve often wondered what the key is to getting linked to from a government or education website. That seems like something pretty random for the search engines to put any emphasis on it.
Mario

February 25th, 2010 12:07 pm

Honestly I never thought about tweaking old post.

When it comes to SEO I just do a little of it. I think that if you produce quality content the keywords necessary automatically will find their way into it.

I see that my articles often rank on the first page of the search results and when I investigate further I see that it’s on the keywords that are used to make the content as valuable for the reader as possible.

I don’t want to say that I’m writing very valuable content all of the time but I definitively see a difference in ranking depending on the effort I’ve put into a post.
Isha of Market Samurai Resources

February 25th, 2010 12:10 pm

I often see something I’ve forgotten to do with a new post. So I put it right then check old posts for the same thing. And yes, I’ve often forgotten it on old posts too, so go through old posts checking that one thing. Sometimes it’s just little things like typing your own excerpt.

But I haven’t got 10,000 old posts to check – I wish I had though :)

I find the PR Analysis and Text Analysis parts of Market Samurai incredibly useful when assessing other ranking webpages. Most people don’t know that text like “click here”, “how to order”, “his and hers” and “for all the family” aren’t doing much for their SEO.

Good to see you using Market Samurai; I love it.
traduzioni legali

February 25th, 2010 12:49 pm

yes, great approach! anything that can improve in the rankings should be improved! I review old posts and articles to do some more manual backlinks, take a look to the promotion module in market samurai and refresh the keyword research.
Handoko Tantra

February 25th, 2010 2:02 pm

Some cool description about seo article!

But i wanna to ask…is SEO optimization for article above same too for seo contest?
CrisisMaven

February 25th, 2010 2:19 pm

Thanks for pointing out this market samurai tool I didn’t yet know. And as always: you waste no words, good post!
Sammy

February 25th, 2010 4:32 pm

I read somewhere that updating an older post could negatively and temporarily affect the rankings, etc? Is there any truth to that? Thanks.
Technology Slice

February 25th, 2010 4:36 pm

Nice post. People are so interested in throwing up as many pages as they can that they forget to optimize each one.
Connie Wallace

February 25th, 2010 5:08 pm

Market Samurai sound like something to look into, thanks for the advice. As always, I learn new things each time I read our blogs Darren. Seo has so many factors and social bookmarking is a biggie now a days. Seo is also confusing and has to be just right and not be spammy. Have noticed with my blogs that the most recent posts usually show backlinks. Same with Squido Lenses.
Felicia | Logo Design Blog

February 25th, 2010 6:01 pm

I am new to SEO and I have trouble tracking the backlinks of my competitors. I tried yahoo site explorer but it shows so many links from same domain names and its quite difficult to analyze the results. Google’s backlink have the same problem they also show the internal links linking to the page and my competitors have huge sites with hundreds of pages. So what tools you guys use for tracking backlinks effectively.

Secondly, the bloggers in my niche are also my competitors. So how do I find bloggers who are not my competitors and are genuinely interested in link building relationship?
Ian Anderson

February 25th, 2010 6:23 pm

I went back and filled in the ‘All in One SEO’ boxes after installing the same as a plugin on my newish wordpress blogs.

Now I always make sure that I fill them in AFTER I have written each post; so it should never become a problem in the future. Unless the ‘rules’ change drastically…….
Mert

February 25th, 2010 8:06 pm

Great post Darren,

I completely aggree with you. As for me, every single page is a mini website, which means that every single post must be optimized. Without exception!

On the other hand, I would like to add just one thing: I thing the meta description tag is still important for SEO but we should take in hand all the meta tags en bloc.

I mean using the keyword in the description tag isn’t the most important thing by oneself at the optimization process but it increases the page value when using together with the other tags and the headline (including the keyword).

Furthermore, since the description is seen on the search engine results pages, using the keyword helps strengthen the relevance between the title and the description. If it is attractive and relevant, it compel your readers to click to your post.

Mert
Rinaldi Syahran

February 25th, 2010 9:33 pm

Unusual with only one post can optimize SEO. This is new for me and I think this is a thing to note by many people to get the SEO rise.
Reza Winandar

February 25th, 2010 11:08 pm

With some little SEO and and a web analytics, you can do triple your traffic less than three days.
Andrew Gray

February 25th, 2010 11:21 pm

I noticed the other day when I posted from my wordpress hosted blog linking to another wordpress hosted blog that I got a ping back. Is this automatic or does it have to be approved still by the blog owner? What I did notice was that that one ping back acted as a link when it appeared on the other owners site, the result was I got a boost for that post in the search rankings. Is this normal, or just a coincidence of events? IF it is what happens, then surely linking out is a great easy way of SEO?
Michaels Athens

February 25th, 2010 11:53 pm

I have used market samurai myself, and its true, it’s very useful, handy and very easy to use. It really helps in your SEO tasks. For those that haven’t tried it yet, you are missing a lot. Honestly, I am not someone who is paid by market samurai though, I am just saying this as what I have experienced.
Samantha Milner

February 26th, 2010 12:23 am

Hi guys

im all cross now you have revealed my best seo secret!!!!

I have spent quite a while now doing this and the results have been amazing. Plus its ten times easier to give someone 100 small keywords to aim for rather 1 big one and it can build your traffic a lot quicker.

kind regards

sam
X
Jacob Stoops

February 26th, 2010 12:50 am

Excellent post. I think it’s good to go back once in a while and look at how you can improve on your old posts. Using competitive analysis is a great way to see where you can make an impact. Any tools you use other than Market Samarui? Thanks.
Marc

February 26th, 2010 1:07 am

Opened my eyes to a few new things here.

Also I have found out that web 2.0 properties (squidoo, hubpages, ning) help very much when your trying to market a certain keyword, especially the “low hanging fruit” per say.

Thanks
Blogger Template Place

February 26th, 2010 1:20 am

thanks man… it really useful
scheng1

February 26th, 2010 1:46 am

Wow, 10000 blog posts! I wonder when I can reach the first 1000th blog post, never mind the 10,000th blog post.
I agree that getting backlinks is very time consuming, especially via blog commenting method
Melissa

February 26th, 2010 1:59 am

Great post!

And yes, I do go back and optimize old posts by doing a lot of the things you suggested except the off-page optimization. I’m horrible at that! Must pay more attention to it.

I rely heavily on Market Samurai to analyze the competition and show me where/how they’re achieving their rank.
Joe - Simple Web Designs

February 26th, 2010 2:10 am

Market Samurai is the only tool I will ever use for keyword research, back linking, and finding content. When I first tried Market Samurai I had tested out the unfinished beta version, and even then I was so amazed at how easy it made keyword research for me. Then after it was finished all the features that were added I was blown away. Highly recommended.
Rajesh

February 26th, 2010 2:39 am

Great tip Darren, I like the second point.
Tyler

February 26th, 2010 3:10 am

Thanks for post!
I saw you mentioned SeoDigger, so what about SEMrush? I think it really worth including the list!
Beat Schindler

February 26th, 2010 3:42 am

Hi, impressive, inspirational and useful – typical problogger stuff. And, this one reads like an infomercial for MarketSamurai, so I’ll have another look at it.
Thanks, and wishing yo’all a gr8 day!
Beat
Mario

February 26th, 2010 3:53 am

Excuse me for commenting twice, Darren, but motivated by your post I just took the time to check my blogs statistics.

On one hand I was a little overwhelmed and don’t really know to improve the rankings for the keywords. This is because they only show me keywords that let my blog rank pretty high.

On the other hand I found out that in the first one and a half month of 2010 I have already 30% of pageviews, unique and returning visitors that I had in 2009.

As I can’t say that it’s a result of doing good SEO (I didn’t did any of this) it just can be a result of one single question I ask me recently over and over again before I write and post an article:

‘Is there anybody out there who has a little benefit on the information I share?’

If I can answer this question with a Yes, I think I automatically write in a way that delivers that value to the reader. This on its side generates automatically the SEO.

As you already suggested, and this stays the most important thing in my opinion: write for the reader, not for the search engines.

Thank you for letting me dig deeper in this.
Adrian Swinscoe

February 26th, 2010 4:28 am

Hi Darren,
Great post. As a newbie to blogging your post was very helpful. Can I ask, are you using Scribe SEO (http://scribeseo.com/) as well?

Or, would it be better to just pick one and use it?

Adrian
Derek Alvarez

February 26th, 2010 4:40 am

What a great post!

I love this kind of stuff because SEO is “the gift that keeps on giving” — residual, organic, free, traffic.

You’ve intrigued me with your Market Samurai recommendation — I think I’ll test it out.

Thanks Darren,
– Derek
mmadallas

February 26th, 2010 5:19 am

I never thought about optimizing a blog post, nice
Kenney

February 26th, 2010 5:59 am

Thanx Darren for a great post…I have been using Traffic Travis for my optimization but I haven’t gone back thru old post…I will definitely look into this…thanx again…
http://kenneyyoung.com
TradiArt

February 26th, 2010 9:23 am

Amazing article. We usually use Market Samurai in our keyword research and can confirm is the BEST tool. Traffic Travis also is good. Recommend to use both.
Make Money Banker

February 26th, 2010 12:29 pm

An eye opener for everyone who didn’t optimized their best posts. For almost a week now, I analyzed my best posts in Google Analytics that get most clicks and high payout per click and optimized them using keywords that keep visitors landing on those pages. The best payout I got is $4.32 per click. A good learning experience!
Isha of Market Samurai Resources

February 26th, 2010 12:52 pm

Darren, I’ve just seen some SEO that you missed in this post!

Mouse-over text for your images!

:-o
klhappysurfer

February 26th, 2010 1:52 pm

Thanks for the insightful post, Darren. I’ve picked up some finer points and plan on using them in my posts. Thanks again.
Cheap Hotel Singapore

February 26th, 2010 3:16 pm

Market samurai seems accurate yet looks expensive. Maybe i’ll go with the free trial first. thanks for sharing.
chandan

February 26th, 2010 5:25 pm

Hi Darren you have mentioned some nice things here, well this strategy I am doing for my blog. Before I try to optimze my blog homepage for all of my keywords, but I think it will not give us good output as our blog homepage just like dynamic as we going to add new content on our blog homepage, so what I do now, I have take different post from my blog and I am going to optimize all those post for different keywords. I think this is one good strategy.
Aglolink

February 26th, 2010 9:33 pm

Had never occurred and even wanted to try to optimize a single post. Jim-dandy tips.
Paid Directories

February 26th, 2010 11:09 pm

when im trying to rank i just make sure i have alot of Social networking links, along with alot of other links from my blogs and stuff. Works out well.

Once i start making some good money im going to buy market samuri i hear it works wonders.
Hetal@Maru Gujrat

February 27th, 2010 1:14 am

This is something I have never think in detail.

I m new to blogging so I have already completed initial seo for whole blog but I have never think of individual blog post also requires to do some seo work.

But first I think I have to get traffic to my blog and some reach content. Once my blog start rankings I need to do seo for individual post also..

Thnx for this post.
Jan Gordon

February 27th, 2010 4:57 am

I love this post, will retweet it, very valuable info, thanks so much for putting great information out there!

Jan Gordon
janlgordon twitter
Ann Feng Shui

February 27th, 2010 7:02 am

Thanks for these great tips and links to your other SEO articles. Just starting to do these things will improve my rankings, I’m sure, and then I’ll be ready for the next step, Market Samurai. Really appreciate the advice.
Kevin Khachatryan

February 27th, 2010 10:50 am

I find that my optimized blog posts perform at least 1.5 times as better as regular posts.
Gaming News Blog

February 27th, 2010 11:08 am

I haven’t used market samurai before but will try the free trial.
technicalstatus

February 27th, 2010 4:19 pm

thank u for ur great post
Ravindra

February 27th, 2010 5:37 pm

I am interested in Blogging,Actually iam waiting for this Kind of info On SEO

Thank u,Keep it up
Malinda

February 27th, 2010 6:07 pm

Hello darren,

You seem to do a lot of work for your blogs and I can see it pays off. Good going. I too use some tools like seositecheckup.com/back_links.php to keep a check on my website. I’ll also try tools and techniques mentioned by you. :)
Facebook Emoticons

February 27th, 2010 7:14 pm

Yes Market Samurai is cool. You can also find all sorts of competition and search amount data. It is really useful.

Thanks,
Raja Habib,
http://facebookemoticons123.blogspot.com/
KS Chen

February 28th, 2010 11:35 am

You have given a details on how to analyze our webpage performance compare with the competitors. I will try this method and optimize my single post too. Thanks for sharing!
Zach Prez

March 1st, 2010 2:14 am

Awesome post that gets right to the point. Like your honesty about the on page factors of updating title and URLs taking you the most distance – definitely true. May I also recommend Google Webmaster Tools for “1. Identify Key Posts to Optimize for SEO” which can be a quick identifier for your existing ranks to easily identify key phrases that are ranked but not getting clicked.
fas

March 1st, 2010 5:08 am

I dont get it, why would anyone want to only hit on google and not on yahoo and bing?
CJ Simmons

March 1st, 2010 9:34 am

Market Samurai is awesome – thanks for the tips.
Mario

March 1st, 2010 12:23 pm

I want to give one warning when you consider changing the url:

If your blogpost is already listed with permalink in Google this will result in a 404-error if someone clicks on the older search result. This means that your old listing becomes worthless and you have to wait until Google checks your site again.

@fas
This is because 96% of all searches are done via Google. Let’s face it, Google owns the Internet, but this is another topic.
Heidi Strom Moon

March 2nd, 2010 3:44 am

This is a great exercise. We recently started a case study in optimizing one of our old blog posts, but with a slightly different goal in mind than ranking. (http://blog.cdginteractive.com/my_weblog/2010/01/case-study-using-keyword-analytics-to-optimize-blog-post-content.html)

In our case, we’re focusing on engagement metrics, like bounce rate and time on site.

Whatever your optimization goals, it’s always a great idea to mine existing content for new results.
Java Travel

March 3rd, 2010 12:17 am

Wow.. Darren writing SEO. it is nice and helpful for me. (but in my opinion, even you dont have to do SEO, you have tons of organic links rite :) because the quality of the content itself )
Different case for newbie starting to blog, i think they need SEO optimizing, and so do i, have optimizing single page with SEO. One thing interesting from Samurai for me is the cache age. i should learn more about it.
The issues for SEO, at least for me is how far the Google Caffeine gives an effect to SEO /SERP. would like to read it if someone publish about those subject. Thanks
vishnu

March 3rd, 2010 12:31 am

nice advice i am much away from SEO
Geld Verdienen

March 3rd, 2010 1:12 am

Thanks for this post. Because I’m a beginner in SEO I think I can learn much from it :-)
Forearm Tattoos

March 3rd, 2010 5:27 am

Everyone should get hold of a copy of Market Samurai.
Fred Abramson

March 4th, 2010 6:01 am

Based on your recommendations, I have bought both marketing samari and scribe. I am working to optimize my old posts using scribe. Since it has only been a few days, I will be interested to see if this results in any new business.
Ana I YourNetBiz

March 4th, 2010 6:42 am

Some very good points, Darren. Up to this point it never occurred to me to analyze some of my older post for SEO purposes.

Sounds like I’ve been missing out on a great opportunity.

Thanks, Darren!

Ana/YourNetBiz Attraction Marketing blog
bloggerchamps

March 5th, 2010 6:29 am

I am also doing SEO in my post and getting the results with sucess check out my opinion about this http://bloggerchamps.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-to-optimize-single-blog-post-for.html
enrolled agent exam

March 9th, 2010 4:01 pm

The organic links are the best. Always nice when you write great content that catches on.
zikie

March 10th, 2010 8:32 pm

agree with above, organic backlink can get success at serp
Briana D

March 11th, 2010 4:16 am

The Market Samurai looks like a good program, I have been looking for a program to help me with my seo.
Killer Ab Workout

March 11th, 2010 7:13 am

If you were to click the link in my name it would take you to the post im trying to get ranked high in google. Once all the backlinks show up im going to be top dog for the search engines no doubt. I cant wait im going to make some good cashflow coming in at that point.
Ed Baxter

March 11th, 2010 10:45 pm

A great post and if you have a massive blog then it’s certanly worth going back and putting the effort in however putting the effort in before you publish can help cut down the amount of work you need to do 6 months to a year down the line.
Joshua Black-The Underdog Millionaire

March 12th, 2010 2:55 am

I really like this approach to going back and analyzing posts that are performing well and just need a little tweaking instead of trying to adjust everything.

SEO can bring you into a whole world of time-suckage without a lot of results if you are not careful.

I really like this approach Darren, since it systemitizes the process and gives you a to-do item each day, just like any other standard business activity. Definitely better than taking a shotgun approach at SEO for sure.

-Joshua Black
The Underdog Millionaire
James Stewart

March 12th, 2010 7:38 am

Hi

Optimizing blog posts is a really great idea. It not only increases your likelihood of higher page rankings but it is generally good practice (although as already mentioned it might not always be possible to do every post!!)

I have to agree, Market Samurai is a fantastic tool by the way – a must have for me!!

James
Curtis Copeland

March 12th, 2010 12:24 pm

Thanks for the insight into this. Recently, I went back and reviewed some posts from about a year ago. Very poorly executed in terns of SEO. Missed the keyword strategy completely. As a wedding photographer, I need to be sure all my content is accurately SEO’ed to help with the competition. Thanks!

Curtis
The Blogger Connector

March 12th, 2010 4:36 pm

Hello, just found your blog by googling! Nice post on optimization, I got a lot of ready to day. thanks for sharing all that good stuff.

Best,
abercrombie milano

March 12th, 2010 7:23 pm

agree with above, organic backlink can get success at serp.your blogpost is already listed with permalink in Google this will result in a 404-error if someone clicks on the older search result. This means that your old listing becomes worthless and you have to wait until Google checks your site again.
Ann

March 13th, 2010 2:56 am

1) I use the Wordpress SEO plugin.

2) I build internal links within and among important and related posts. And I build quality external links pointing at my site.

3) I do not use “black hat” tactics.

4) I approach link building in slow, methodical way and focus on link quality.

5) I try to write quality content so that other webmasters will choose to link to my content.
Get on Google

March 13th, 2010 6:53 am

Well, to tell the true I never go back to optimize my page,

but since you talk out it in this post, I’ve now got a lot of ideas on top of my head…Good Inspiration

Really glad that I’ve found this post though, really great help
Robert

March 14th, 2010 8:13 am

Hello. I put on my blog Adsense ads in different places. But I have a problem because they appear in the sidebar does not appear on the home page. Advertising becomes visible when someone opens a post or a sub. Can anyone tell me what’s going on?

“I apologize for the previous post: /”
Allureweb Blogger

March 14th, 2010 9:06 pm

Thanks for sharing this post Darren. I have been using market samurai for some time now and i can say it is a useful and very powerful tool for SEO. Especially what your post is trying to point out here about the optimiaztion of particular pages. I personally try to look for my top 5 for the month and concentrate on getting those posts better optimized and re-analyzing them over a month period to see if the SEO efforts are working or not. Some instances it can be worthwhile and sometimes it can have very little effect, but again this all depends on how much effort, research you put in. Great post Darren! will be reading more………….
Gjivan

March 15th, 2010 12:45 am

Hey man…Thankx for this post. I am also struggling to get traffic to my blog, as you are geek in this matter, i have one query for you. My blog is ranked at page 3 in yahoo and google when searched for keyword “personality development” from my local google site. When researching the keyword, it has very high competition as well my blog’s PR is 1. As its ranked in page 3 its not getting traffic more than 20 visits per day, why is this? Can you plz check my blog and suggest me how to optimize it so that i can get adequate amount of organic traffic
Luca

March 15th, 2010 2:23 am

Just started blogging.
Great tips, thanks for the terrific ideas.
アバクロ銀座

March 15th, 2010 6:07 pm

This is a great exercise. We recently started a case study in optimizing one of our old blog posts, but with a slightly different goal in mind than ranking. (http://blog.cdginteractive.com/my_weblog/2010/01/case-study-using-keyword-analytics-to-optimize-blog-post-content.html)

In our case, we’re focusing on engagement metrics, like bounce rate and time on site.

Whatever your optimization goals, it’s always a great idea to mine existing content for new results.
BIZZNURSE

March 16th, 2010 2:33 am

Hi,
I am from Malaysia. It have been 8 month since I started blogging. Well, I’m still a student and do not not affort to buy a dot.com, just depend on blogspot account. I know about your site from number of sources, saying this is one of the best tip giving blog to visit. However, as I am not familiar with some of the term ( sorry, still new), Its hard for me to practice it. Do you have any suggestion where I can find simpler instructions or tips? Thanks,,
build web traffic

March 16th, 2010 4:45 am

Great points Darren. Keyword tools are so helpful. It is important to figure out differences in wording of your titles and phrases by doing a little background work and research. Thanks for sharing.
Vincent Bruggen

March 16th, 2010 8:32 am

Again good actionpoints for all bloggers…

I use for this actions the broken link checker plugin for wordpress, to keep noticed when some links are broken on my blogposts and te keep them up-to-date.
Rita

March 16th, 2010 8:42 am

Great tips, Darren. Helpful as always.

Rita blogging at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide.
The Black Cat

March 16th, 2010 2:08 pm

Good info. I’m still learning about SEO and I’m new at the whole thing, so it’s good to know now before I go further down the road.
Shrink Films

March 16th, 2010 3:49 pm

I heard of Market Samurai before, but never looked at it closer. I will agree with you that reading too much into all these “tools” and trying to SEO is mostly a waste of time. I have many posts ranking well for some competitive keywords which I did not do any SEO work at all. Just goes to show you can’t really control things.
yoes

March 16th, 2010 3:57 pm

Hi, I have a lot of tricks to apply SEO, but apparently still not looking results. What tricks and tips that I just do not run or is there an error procedure. Please input the member, so, Yoes,
yoes

March 16th, 2010 4:18 pm

Hi,

I would like to apply SEO tricks, but had never succeeded koq.
if there are peer to peer who has a trick and tip better, I ask his advice.
I really hope that feedback from Members’
so,

Yoes,
Fresh

March 17th, 2010 12:01 am

Its an excellent article which gives quite useful information for anyone owning (or planning) a website.

What I think many fail to understand is that SEO isn’t a one-time thing but requires constant updating. So you cannot stop at installing a simple SEO plugin but need to maintain it regularly.

This, in itself, is also the most difficult part of SEO. Do you have the time? Do you know how to maintain your keywords etc.? Do you know what tools might help you? Failing to answer these questions normally ‘forces’ people to getting a professional SEO package – IF they have the budget for it.
アバクロ銀座

March 17th, 2010 1:55 pm

Its an excellent article which gives quite useful information for anyone owning (or planning) a website.

What I think many fail to understand is that SEO isn’t a one-time thing but requires constant updating. So you cannot stop at installing a simple SEO plugin but need to maintain it regularly.
アバクロ銀座

March 17th, 2010 2:05 pm

What I think many fail to understand is that SEO isn’t a one-time thing but requires constant updating. So you cannot stop at installing a simple SEO plugin but need to maintain it regularly.
Chris Peterson

March 17th, 2010 11:22 pm

It’s an excellent post which you provides for quality information for technically optimizing blogs which will be helped to get better response.
ldii

March 18th, 2010 3:18 am

Market Samurai is an SEO tool I’ve just heard. Really link building is the most exhausted work to lif the page rank. Thank you for this information anyway.
Simon Townley

March 18th, 2010 4:46 am

Darren, can I ask, do you actually use Scribe SEO for this process, or do you find that with your blogging experience, you don’t really need it?
Dina

March 18th, 2010 6:32 am

Wow nice info, i am new to blogging, and never heard about Market Samurai, thank you very much for this useful information
Lowell

March 18th, 2010 11:24 am

Thanks for those pointers! SEO is a never ending rabbit hole, but pays off in the end. The key is to do the right things and do them well!
Very good mlm

March 18th, 2010 6:19 pm

This is a great article!!! I‘ve ever read. High educations give us more chance to get the better job but Experience is very important too. Many people who had high education but no experience often failed so “Learning by Doing” is the best way to succeed.
Seo4Google.org/blog

March 18th, 2010 10:57 pm

If you change the title of your blog post, the URL of the page will automatically change.
And all the existing inlinks pointing to the page will be lost.
And your own internal links to the page will show a page not found error.
More importantly, the traffic to the page will be lost.
And the page rank will be also be lost.
NEVER change the title of your blog post.
Tom Williams

March 19th, 2010 4:32 am

Market Samuriai looks cool but their pricing is very illusive. I see all the free and discount stuff but I can’t seem to lock in on what the actual cost is for the full version. Not even on the buy now screen. Frustrating.

I like the idea of going back through old posts and optimizing them for SEO. It’s still a lot of manual work through and non-technical folks have a tough time with it. We built the Search Engine Optimizer into our InnoBlogs product which scores every blog post for SEO taking the guess work out of it and allowing non-techs to have a successful blog. Pretty cool. Check it out if you get a second.
Computer Help

March 19th, 2010 9:59 pm

I hope to become a good SEO some day like you ;) Frankly I still feel I am quiet decent in it. However still at the end of the day there seems to be a long way to complete. Thanks Darren Your one in a billion. I love your posts. The best thing is they are quiet informative
David Azevedo

March 20th, 2010 10:50 am

I use a joomla seo plugin on my website but i think that manually inserting keywords maybe a better option. Dont forget use headings h1,h2,h3 because search engines look for them.
I will try out Market Samurai. Thanks for the tip.
Jordan

March 20th, 2010 11:44 am

This was an excellent post. I’ve also found that “Tags” can help you a bit with SEO. I’ve found that words in the title are really the key.
shah

March 20th, 2010 1:51 pm

hi darren,

I am a bit confuse here, I started my blog two months ago but I still could not find my blog on google, have you wrote any article about how to get your blog on the search engine. thank you
m3 real

March 20th, 2010 4:23 pm

WordPress is a pretty well optimized system, and does a far better job at allowing every single page to be indexed than every other CMS I have used. But there’s a few things you should do to make it a lot easier still to work with.
Free Newsletter Tips

March 21st, 2010 11:38 am

Thanks Darren for this great post !

I have been using all sort of tools to observe and analyze my competition. Before I launch in a new venture the first I always do is analyzing the competitors and see if there’s any opportunity for success.

I realized that by understanding my competition, my task becomes much easier. All I have to do to reach them is imitate them; and in order to surpass them I move on to do things that they have not done, or do just those things that they have have done more effeciently.

Since my main focus is on microniches, it has always been possible to get top rankings for my sites.
Julia

March 22nd, 2010 11:16 am

Thank you for such a great post!
Thanks for pointing to Market Samurai – looks like a great tool to me.

Julia.
http://www.gigglinggrapes.com
Diane Gregory

March 22nd, 2010 3:30 pm

Hi Darren,

I know this post is off topic…however, I have a question. Do you plan to conduct the 31 days to creating a better blog this May? I have bought your book and did the challenge last year. But there is something so motivating doing it with others and reading the comments. What are your plans?

Also, do you plan to publish a second edition of your book on blogging.

Diane Gregory
Ryan T Malone

March 22nd, 2010 10:39 pm

Very well written! I think that the key to all of this, amongst the process of course, is in finding a way to structure that into your work lifestyle. This is where alot of people come loose with this kind of thing. Its like, earn a couple of bucks, then what do I do next?

It would be great to see you cover that topic someday.
Santosh Puthran

March 22nd, 2010 11:18 pm

Thanks Darren for the informative post.

I have been concentrating more the contents on my blog rather than SEO aspect of it. Tools like Market Samurai may be good, but there are free tools available on the internet.
Dave Higgs

March 23rd, 2010 5:18 pm

Thanks Darren.

It is a bit like inflation, I suppose. The more people that do SEO, the more other people need to do SEO. And so the spiral continues.

As more people go online (being South African there is still a lot of growth to be done here) the area gets more competitive.

Thanks for the tips!

Dave
Element Investing

March 24th, 2010 7:57 am

Great post. Analyzing the competition is great way to see how other sites like yours are successful. And I think off page optimization doesn’t get as much credit as on page, though the results can be just as impressive.
Rahman Mehraby

March 24th, 2010 9:13 am

I always feel so overwhelmed to remember how you write all your weekly posts in one day. This has been very informative as always Darren. Thanks.

I always consider writing keyword-centered well-optimized content for my blog in order not to go back and SEO the previous posts. Maybe that’s because it’s my field of work, but I also think why not writing with the search engines in mind from the beginning?
Becky Kimes

March 24th, 2010 12:46 pm

Hi there,
This was great validation for what I do for clients. When people have new blogs, and are just getting started they need to do what they can around on page optimization and active link building. Until they build up a happy following.

Market Samuri is a fantastic tool!!! Couldn’t live without it!

Becky
http://attractionmarketingmagicwithbecky.com
Ann Krebber

March 24th, 2010 8:52 pm

Great sharing Darren,

Even though I can not make money yet in a lot of amount ( like you :-) ) from my blogs, I dare to buy market samurai. It can really help me to find a particular niche which has really low competition but still has enough searches (traffic) in google.com in US. For my level I will not dare to get competition in keyword such as “Portrait Photography” which hold 201K monthly searches and 14.5M competition. That is your level Darren. I will not dare to challenge Darren :-)

I just will compete in term with 30K monthly searches or lower with 100K competition or lower with specific amount of backlinks that I need which is discovered by market samurai. Now, for some long tail KW, I can place in no.9 in google.com with only backlinks from people who give link love to my blog. I do not yet place some ads until I can get no.1 and receive significant traffic from google.com, thanks for your sharing.
Jahangir Alam

March 25th, 2010 12:08 am

WOW, what a topic and the tips are absolutely mind blowing. Thanks for the tips and I will go through this post in more details to optimise my sites with SEO.

Does Problogger link back to sites (backlinking) or do they also have nofollow on them?

Thanks

Jay
Lynda

March 25th, 2010 1:52 am

I love Market Samurai. I’ve been using it for a couple years now and I wouldn’t be without it. I can’t imagine doing SEO stuff and having to look up most of that info manually. It’s such a time saver.
The Rat

March 25th, 2010 2:55 am

I’m just starting to wrap my head around SEO and getting more traffic to my site. I think this will be a handy thread to come back to over time.

In the meantime, I’m going to follow Darren’s advice by trying to build authority and rank in Google and work hard at producing quality content.

Great post.
İnternet Sitesi

March 25th, 2010 4:51 am

Nice post. People are so interested in throwing up as many pages as they can that they forget to optimize each one.
Frank Melson

March 25th, 2010 6:03 am

A couple of things to help get a Higher page rank with Google is to get bookmarks for social sites.and create backlinks from high ranking blog pages. I also agree that Market Samurai is a great tool My team uses it to.
Chris

March 25th, 2010 5:42 pm

I’m just beginning to see how important SEO really is. I’ve begun to see that you can really make a great deal of money with Adsense if you have a lot of optimized content and it ranks high in the search engines. I’ve actually got my earnings up to almost $10 a day now, and believe me, that’s not easy to do. It’s important that you learn how to optimize each and every blog post. Great information here, Darren. Right on the money!
Karan

March 25th, 2010 10:54 pm

Hey Darren

Good tutorial. Which free tool is best to research keywords? I use Traffic Travis, but ain’t the best thing around.

Karan Goel
Really Simple SEO

March 25th, 2010 11:21 pm

Two months ago I turned my website into a blog and have been posting every day, making a point of doing the meta tags etc. In that time the traffic from search has gone up 300% and the Alexa ranking has gone twice as high. Also I’ve found the post can be live in Google in just a few seconds. I think blogs plus SEO is very powerful.
Su Quinn

March 26th, 2010 3:54 am

Very useful tips indeed. Just trying to work out how to improve the SEO of my new blog: http://www.storiesblogspot.com/
Roxy Freeman

March 26th, 2010 3:57 am

Great tips but I really struggle with the whole SEO thing. I find it puts me off my stride entirely. If i’m writing and trying to make it optimised my writing looses its appeal. The method you describes makes things easier as you go over it afterwards and improve the SEO…

http://www.roxyfreeman.com/
insuranceman

March 27th, 2010 2:58 am

I am a big market Samuai fan. In fact, using it is how i found this high PR site. The free version is good but for not much more get the paid version. Blog on.
Robin

March 28th, 2010 11:47 am

I am in the “mommy blogger” arena, so many of my posts, really aren’t SEO material, but when I have optimized certain posts, the results have been great. I think many bloggers don’t bother to optimize posts with lower paying keywords.
Andre Arnett

March 29th, 2010 2:27 am

Really enjoyed the information. Have used Market Samurai a bit but have not gotten that in depth with it. Thanks for going through this exercise to see what can be done to optimize our sites.
SEO Consultant

March 29th, 2010 5:00 pm

Market Samurai is quite simply the best SEO and market research tool out there.

I’ve been using it for just under a year and it has allowed me to find great niche markets for many websites.

I’ve now reached a point where I’m close to becoming a full time internet marketer.

And Market Samurai has played a big role in that.
Peter F.

March 30th, 2010 4:56 am

Awesome article, you guys! I really learned a lot. I’ve been using other softwares for my SEO optimization, but will give your suggestions a try.
mike

March 30th, 2010 9:57 am

Totally agreed with the article and still believe on organic seo and its purify ways.
Russell

March 30th, 2010 11:24 am

By the very number of comments on this post shows how good an article this is – thank you for spending the time to share this information and for giving your insight into SEO.
gogo

March 31st, 2010 11:45 am

Thanks for the information. SEO optimization should be about how good your site is and not about how much spam you can produce.
gogo

March 31st, 2010 11:46 am

Thanks for the information. SEO optimization should be about how good your site is and not about how much spam you can produce.
David

March 31st, 2010 12:40 pm

I’ve only had my blog up and running for 2 weeks now. I’m glad I read your post because I have been toying with the idea of optimizing my blog and reading your post helped me get started. Another great place to go if you need to learn about keyword optimization is http://www.sitesell.com.
Gary Ginn

April 1st, 2010 7:07 pm

Hmm I guess I’ll give this Market Samurai tool a try. Use up the 12 day trial and see how it turns out. I may just do a review on it on my own blog. Thanks for letting us know about this Darren!
Maaya

April 2nd, 2010 4:18 am

i find this blog so useful! thanks. i believe in oraganic SEO and im trying to work on it
Jeff

April 2nd, 2010 5:13 am

Great post, I will definitely try Market Samurai. With all this valuable imformation it provides, it should pay off one day.
Bryan

April 3rd, 2010 8:33 am

Great post Darren,
I always use your ‘off page optimization’ first methode. analyzing competitor and try to get link from there.

But, my site is not boost as high as I expect.
What wrong with my methode?
Thank you
Rick Vaughn

April 4th, 2010 1:36 pm

Darren,

Like myself I would much rather produce content than worry about links. However, you we all know how important links can be. Better to make a point to do them than ignore them.
nico-yan

April 4th, 2010 7:20 pm

Thanks for the tutorial darren.

As a beginner blogger, I’m strugling to get my blog to SERP. Before reading your tips, all i only do was searching backlinks to my blog.
Surely i will adapt your tips, and i hope within weeks or month my blog will improve.
temizlik

April 4th, 2010 10:19 pm

Nice post. People are so interested in throwing up as many pages as they can that they forget to optimize each one.
Chris Martinez

April 5th, 2010 1:00 pm

Hi All,

This was definitely a good post and well thought out points. My biggest SEO opinion is that we should all be using our keywords naturally in post titles and within our posts/articles. This is a huge factor when google is updating our page ranks. Quality content is key but keywords is the backing to get our pages ranked accordingly.
duit adsense

April 5th, 2010 5:06 pm

Nice post Darren,

The point above is the basic knowledge about SEO and mostly people already know only maybe not all people know how exactly to use it, your post explain all clearly.

Now I know I do the right thing :)
Manuel

April 5th, 2010 7:13 pm

Never thought about optimizing an old post. Will try that today
vinay

April 5th, 2010 7:56 pm

HI i got fed up with this seo . I have been trying to build quality backlinks from many days but still my website http://www.moviebuffer.com is ranked “0″. I am getting some 200 to 400 pageviews per day. Can u look into my blog and help me out .Give me some small tips .Anyway your blog is awesome. I am new to blogging so i dont know much about your blog. I found very useful articles here.
David

April 6th, 2010 7:45 am

I haven’t really tried Market Samurai, although I did download the free trial. I wonder if there’s a good seo tool that’s free.

Great post
Ishrath

April 6th, 2010 6:50 pm

I have always been a fan of fancy home page, often overlooking the importance of optimising landing pages or re-working the old posts.

This article was helpful. I dont know about Market Samurai, but I guess I will continue to provide quality content that can really help the users who read my blog.

I must look back over my shoulder now. Thanks for sharing.
Kris

April 6th, 2010 7:22 pm

Excellent post thanks. I’ve been using Market Samurai for quite a few months now but you’ve shared some great new insights that I hadn’t thought of before.
Kang

April 7th, 2010 3:07 am

Darren,

Another well-informed post as usual. I write a food blog and at times I find it difficult to maintain the link exchanges in the food blogging world. Depending on the circles, asking for links can be viewed as a negative thing. I tend to do alot of internal linking in case one of my blog topics coincides with something else I blogged about earlier, though never really know if strengthening internally actually leads to any good results.

I think with Twitter being what it is today, link exchanges might become harder to come by, as it is much easier for bloggers to just RT things they enjoy. Just my two pennies.

Kang.
Sean Supplee

April 7th, 2010 4:36 am

Out of all the SEO products I got none of them compare to the detail you showed here. This is just one of the reasons I love coming to your blog and reading your information. I know my time will not be wasted.

SEO seems to be always changing which is why you see product after product on it anymore. Once one system becomes saturated from everyone using it someone invents some alternative way to doing things. But your post here lays out all the key components that really makes SEO happen with your site.
Ben Griffiths

April 7th, 2010 6:32 am

I found the title of your post the most motivating of all. SEO can often feel daunting, so focusing on one post at a time makes the task seem much more manageable.
Belize

April 7th, 2010 11:12 am

Wonder why my comment was deleted? Maybe a glitch? Try Again: I wonder why this app is built on the Air platform? It runs slower compared to a native Windows app. Testing it and have found several misplaced pages with good p.r. which we are now updating,
moonwalks

April 7th, 2010 5:33 pm

Good post.

Thank you, I am a beginner. I ignored the analysis of competitors. I now know how better to use rival.
Trends Magazine

April 7th, 2010 10:53 pm

Thanks for the tips man! I’ve been working on SEO for my blog and slowly seeing the results come out positive. Hoping for the best :)
Techwire Technology blog

April 8th, 2010 4:20 am

Thanks for the Tips.. I was trying to figure out one post in one of my websites and you laid out the perfect plan for doing it.. I hope to see a jump from present number 8 to something 5 or above
Thomas

April 8th, 2010 6:33 am

Keywords in the URL is so simple, yet I always seem to forget about it. Thanks for the useful tips Darren.
ibnujusup

April 8th, 2010 6:14 pm

frankly, i never optimize an older post since my site is fairly new…
but i’ll consider it in 2 – 3 months time….huhu
Guided Meditation

April 9th, 2010 10:19 am

I get confused by the different google rankings in different regions. Webmaster tells me something, .com search another, .com.au different again. makes it hard to know what other users are actually getting your rank at.
Antoony

April 9th, 2010 10:41 am

For me as newbie at here, I can get great knowledge from your posts such as this post.

I begin to do on page optimization like you mention above: using keyword in my post (KW density), post titles, post description, headings and post URL.

I have done it before but now I become more confidence after reading your post here :-)

Thanks a lot.
Ronnie

April 11th, 2010 1:14 am

This is a great article. I just started my own blog rchristi.com and this article really helps me.
Thanks Darren for sharing this so I know the trick to optimise keywords.
Law Blogger

April 11th, 2010 7:38 am

Brilliant!

I have never seen a tool like samurai before, its currently chugging on my crappy connection but good things come to those who wait.
Lee | Search Engine Viking

April 11th, 2010 10:13 am

On my tiny niche blogs, I optimize every page/post as I build them, but on my personal blogs, I often find myself clicking the “Disable the All-In-One SEO Plugin” option as I’m not always writing for the search engines…

However, some of those non-optimized posts end up getting a ton of traffic, so I often go back and optimize them for the top three or four keywords that people use when they find my site.

Rock on!
Angie J

April 11th, 2010 1:01 pm

Awesome, and simply-put… I’m headed to try the samurai now.

Thank you for posting this!
Dinesh

April 11th, 2010 8:23 pm

I think Google Analytics and Search Tool also will give some ideas to optimize single blog for SEO. Some people don’t care SEO because of robots, but all blogs get human traffic by these robots only. So, optimizing new and old posts for SEO is very important.
Thanks Darren
Joe

April 11th, 2010 10:29 pm

I had a post and I optimized it good!
SEO Preston

April 12th, 2010 8:11 am

I’ve seen marketsamurai in the past probably 8 – 10 months ago. I never looked into it to be honest as I have enough with seomoz and raven..

Might need to think again.
Mitch

April 12th, 2010 3:36 pm

I pick out the articles I really put some sweat into that aren’t performing. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense when you put so much into writing something and it doesn’t do well. A revisit to see if I can mention keywords a few more times works wonders.
Al-Amin Kabir

April 13th, 2010 10:29 pm

Great Post Darren. I did it somedays ago……….
Rick T P

April 14th, 2010 6:32 am

I have been optimizing single posts on several of my blogs and it works quite well. Market Samurai is one of the best marketing tools today. Great information.
Indexed Results

April 15th, 2010 7:41 am

Excellent idea to refresh old posts, particularly for targetted keywords. Coupled with getting links in to the post they’ll fly up the search rankings. If only I had 10,000 posts across my active blogs – I’d be a very happy bunny.
Free Paid Surveys

April 15th, 2010 9:49 am

I have used Market Samurai also in the past, however I never thought of using it to fluff up my old articles. This is a great tip to bring back to life some of your old forgotten work. Lets see If I can pull survey-101 to the top of the online survey food chain.

Thanks again.
M. Vaughan

April 15th, 2010 11:04 am

I found this post amazingly helpful. While pitching links to other blogs may not sound easy, most bloggers are always welcoming new content ideas and guest posters.

Getting creative is the key.

Thanks for sharing!~
Bryan

April 15th, 2010 9:38 pm

Hey Darren,

Great post you have there but I would just like to comment on one interesting bit that has caught my attention.

I’ve never heard of the word sneeze page ever since I started my own blog. It really is a neat idea having a sneeze page and I can see what you mean, having summaries of each posts for a period of time which links back to your main page. And the website that you’ve mentioned does appear on the top 5 websites on Google.
David Duizer

April 16th, 2010 5:04 am

I love your blog. I follow it everyday! As a new blogger I have to say that many of my ‘mini accomplishments’ would not be possible without your blog. Thanks again!

David
Chris

April 16th, 2010 7:24 am

This is really great information because it stresses the importance of getting your blog post indexed on Google. There are many great ways to drive traffic but I’ve found that properly optimizing a blog post or a Hub page and getting a high rank on Google is the absolute best way. If you are going to monetize, search engine traffic is probably the only traffic that converts well, so it’s important to get your posts optimized properly the first time around. Thanks Darren.
Numis Network

April 16th, 2010 8:49 am

Thank you for the post Darren. I’ve been trying to do some SEO lately and I always love finding tips from people that have more experience than I do. One thing I haven’t taking advantage of and that most don’t seem to is external links within a blog post to a relevant outside source. Definitely something I will be trying to implement in the future.

Jon
SuperIndianAffiliate

April 16th, 2010 6:12 pm

How do you add title tags for every post and how to add keyword to a header tag for every post
Gina

April 18th, 2010 3:32 pm

Yep. I did that for a couple of my posts and voila! No. 2 position, first page results. You can also check SEO Chat’s keyword difficulty tool to see if your keyword is rankable. Aim for 50% or below.
Article Submission Software

April 19th, 2010 12:03 am

I what to address the note you made in the last paragraph of the post: Good content is without doubt of paramount importance but a wise blogger should also improve his skills of marketing that content. As with the case of problogger.net, the only requirement for it to remain an authority (probably the biggest in the blogging world) is to keep the high standards of content creation.

This get a little bit complicated with little known bloggers who have the talent but not the advertiser’s mentality, thus they remain virtually unknown, no matter the quality of their writing
jeevi sivalogarajah

April 21st, 2010 4:00 pm

Thanks for the post darren. I just loved the way you guided through on the whole seo optimization process for a single post. I wish i had read this article when i first started blogging, it would have helped me back a while ago. I look forward to hearing more from your blogs and applying it to my own blogs
internet based businesses

April 25th, 2010 7:55 am

I have never thought about going back to my archives to re seo them. Great idea though I think I will have a little experiment.
TucsonDivorceGal

April 26th, 2010 12:33 am

A friend of mine who is an internet marketer has the Market Samurai program. I had a lot of fun playing with it and seeing how I could improve my internet marketing results. I’m just starting to blog and think this information is really helpful. Thank You.
How To Become Rich

May 2nd, 2010 9:20 am

Many don’t realize that what happens off your page is just as important as what happens on it.

I also like you included some information on Market Samurai. I have looked into this product and looks great
FinancialSpreadBetting

May 5th, 2010 5:01 pm

That Market Samurai looks really useful. I was only looking for tips on archiving but now will be investigation the software. Thank you
George Webster

May 24th, 2010 5:18 am

I am using my free 12-Day trail with Market Samurai. I will be writing a more in depth review of it on my blog in the coming weeks so stay posted.

So far, I actually fee pretty overwhelmed with all of the things that there are to do when it comes to SEO, driving traffic, keyword optimization, affiliate marketing, etc.

I never realized how difficult internet marketing would be. But alas, I push forward, hoping for a better day :) (sigh)

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Written on February 25th, 2010 at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse

Optimize a Single Post On Your Blog for SEO