A Bloggers Introduction to SEO

Some people think that SEO is something that can just be ‘done later’ but SEO goes into the way your blog is setup and into everything that you write so it’s a good idea to get an idea about it right at the very beginning so that you don’t have to go back and correct mistakes later on which can be very difficult if not impossible in some cases.

Why Bother With SEO?

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

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

Making Sure Your Posts Are Optimised

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

But if you’re writing a blog about digital camera’s for example and writing a post about a particular model then it makes sense to optimise that post to the model of the camera as that is something that would be searched on in Google. There are several places where you need to insert your keyword:

1) The title – the title is the single most important factor and you want your keyword as close to the start as possible.

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

3) Tags – WordPress and other blogging platforms allow you to add tags to posts and this is a great way to add keywords to any post.

4) The URL – make sure your post links have the keywords in them and not something cryptic. Software such as WordPress allows you to convert your post title into a permalink.

What If You Have An Established Blog?

Even if you have already started your blog and written several posts without SEO in mind there are still some tweaks you can make. One thing you must NOT do is change your URL though as otherwise your blog will start reporting broken links.

One thing that you can change quite safely is the text within your post though. You can tweak titles, body copy and add tags to make it more keyword friendly. For example one tweak you might want to make it putting your keywords earlier in the title. For example if you wanted to rank for “make money blogging”, which of these two titles is best? :

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

The second one is better as far as SEO goes because the target phrase comes first in the title. Have a read through your article and make sure your keyword is liberally sprinkled throughout the copy text and don’t forget to add a tag if possible.

Once you make changes it can take a while for Google to pick it up and act on it so don’t expect results overnight!

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