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7 Things You Need to Do to Optimize Your Blog for the Search Engines

Filed under Blog Strategy, Guest Posts, SEO by Guest Post on January 28, 2012 at 10:49 am {no comments}

Optimizing your blog for the search engines is crucial and very important! There are so many different blogs out there on the net that you’ll quickly sink to the bottom if you don’t optimize. Follow these seven tips below and you’ll be well on your way to high rankings.

#1 – Create the Right Permalink Structure

The permalinks WordPress uses by default are not search engine friendly. You can make this simple change by inserting %postname% instead of the default that is already there. This will successfully create URL’s that include your post name which should include your targeted keywords.

#2 – Install All in One SEO Plugin

This is a must-have plugin which allows you to specify a title, description, and the keywords for the search engines. It can really help you boost up and reach the top of the listings, whereas the standard WP installation can fall short.

#3 – Install Related Posts Plugin

Search engines love it when they get content pages that are interlinked. It also works very well for the search engines. It will automatically include links to other posts that are similar. Very convenient!

#4 – Research your Keywords

When people search, they search by keyword. It is vital that you know what these keywords are if you want to rank at the top of the search engines. Your posts should be centered around these keywords.

#5 – Include Your Keywords in the Title

In the title of your blog you need to include your main keyword. Also, include your main keyword and select others in the titles of your posts and sprinkle throughout your pages.

#6 – Make Your Blog Easy to Navigate

Easy navigation is essential for your guests and the search engines as it makes it easier for the guests. That means including your blog’s categories, recent posts (to make sure they get indexed) and pages. Easy navigation is also part of choosing a good design.

#7 – Expand the Ping List

When you make a new blog post WordPress will “ping” the blog search engines. This alerts them that content on your site has changed and ready for guests to view. This can help you get indexed fast so you can start making money even faster. Do a Google search to find an expanded ping list you can include in your wp-admin so you make sure you get as many of these sites to update you as possible.

Using these seven plugins will make your job of ranking highly in the search engines easier than ever. If you’re new to blogging with WordPress then these terms may seem incredibly strange to you right now. As you study them and go over them a couple times, put them into action and it will start to feel like second nature!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/7-things-you-need-to-do-to-optimize-your-blog-for-the-search-engines-814983.html

Author: Turn Blogs To Cash

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7 Things You Need to Do to Optimize Your Blog for the Search Engines

Why List Posts are 1. Fun 2. Easy and 3. Great SEO

Filed under Blog Strategy, Increasing Traffic, SEO, Writer's Block by Kelly Bristow on January 28, 2012 at 10:00 am {no comments}

You know you should write a post every day but there are days, many days sometimes, when pulling a post out of thin air can be not unlike pulling teeth. When you’re stumped for a post consider a list post. List posts are easy to put together and can be a lot of fun to write. Better yet, they have the ability to go viral because they are so simple.

List posts are fun

The great thing about list posts is that they can be as silly or as serious as you like. Generally, the more silly the list the more fun the post will be (and the more likely it will be shared). List post ideas often come from the writer’s every day problems, and specifically their solutions. Self deprecation is usually woven into most list posts. I wrote a post years ago about how not to leave a comment. I’d had some trouble leaving a comment on one of my blogger pals blog and made a fool of myself in her comment section trying to fix the mistake. The exchange was fun and turned into a helpful way to navigate comment sections. I had a blast writing the post and to this day it has nearly 200 comments and still gets steady traffic.

List posts are easy

Because list posts are so easy to put together they can be a lot of fun to write. You don’t need to go into great detail with any of the points you make, usually a sentence or two and all that’s left to the writing is the introduction and summary. Because you can toss out items in reference you don’t have to write detailed paragraphs about your topic. Of course you can but it’s understood that it isn’t necessary.

List posts are great for SEO

Because list posts are easy and fun to write the posts themselves tend to be witty, intelligent (because you don’t over think the task) and have the potential to go viral. Everyone loves short articles that have great information or packed with laughs. Consider that many people reading your blog are doing so at work. Though it may not seem like it by looking at Facebook, most people at work actually have work to do. So writing a shorter post ensures that most readers can finish it and if it’s entertaining, can pass it on to other who will do the same. This applies to Stumble, Reddit and Digg as well. People using those services are more likely to give your post a thumbs up if it’s short and to the point.

Writing a post for your blog doesn’t have to take a lot of time. This list post took about ten minutes to write and yet it hits on all the points I wanted to make for both my small business readers who really need to put out at least one post a day, and the search engines. It’s not Pulitzer prize winning writing but it isn’t mean to be. If you would like more information about writing list posts you can read this more in depth post on Problogger.

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Why List Posts are 1. Fun 2. Easy and 3. Great SEO

How To Build Authority for your Blog or Website

Filed under Blog Strategy, Infographics, SEO by Jennifer Brown on January 20, 2012 at 11:01 am {one comment}

I love infographics because they show us in a concise, and obviously visual, manner how complicated ideas work. SEO or search engine optimization, is a tricky concept to understand so this infographic by Vertical Measures comes in handy to explain the many different and often complicated tasks involved in creating a successful SEO campaign. As you can see there is more to SEO than just back links and keywords. Increasingly, social media involvement and authority is needed to gain the attention of search engines. Of course, content is still the most important part of your website or blog but this graphic shows the other areas you should also be focusing on.

via

How To Build Authority for your Blog or Website

Blog Tip: If you want more web traffic you are going to have to post more often

Filed under Blog Maintenance, Increasing Traffic, SEO, Small Business Blogging by Jennifer Brown on January 19, 2012 at 1:22 pm {one comment}

It’s true. If you want more traffic to your website or blog, and you don’t want to pay for it, you are going to have to post more often.

The days of posting once or twice a week using a few keywords and getting tons of traffic are gone. Long gone. Having a great following on sites such as Google Friend Connect, Networked Blogs or even a huge friend list on Facebook or followers on Twitter can’t get you the kind of traffic that posting to your site often can. Unless you pay for guaranteed seo services you won’t get the quality traffic that posting frequently guarantees.

Bad blogging advice

During the first couple of year of blogging I wrote, maybe, three times a week. I often didn’t post on weekends and I certainly didn’t post everyday or more than once in a day. Occasionally, I might post twice in one day but only if there was a major news story that I had to comment on or wanted to capitalize on. If I posted to my blog twice in a day I would skip the next post because I didn’t want my readers to get sick of me posting content. This was a widely held belief among bloggers back then. Don’t post too much or you will piss off your subscribers. Of course, I never had that many subscribers so I don’t know why I listened to that bad blogging advice.

No clue

It was always my intent to have a large audience. I wanted traffic because I blog to earn money. Sure, I love to write but as my fourth grade math teacher used to say “I’m not doing this for my health” I want compensation. By being polite and worrying about what my audience thought I let traffic slip out of my hands. Since then I have learned that if I want to have a successful blog I have to write for the people who use the search engines to find me. Yes, I love my loyal readers but they already know about my blog. They have made the transition from reader to friend and while I certainly want them to read my posts and enjoy what I write, I want new readers too. It is the new readers that pay the bills by coming to this website.

The internet is competitive

If I don’t post often the search engines won’t place me in their search results. I’m competing (and so are you) with millions of different sites offering the same kind of information. If they are posting once a day I need to post twice a day – or more. Sites like CNN, The Huffington Post and TMZ don’t need to worry about being ranked in the search engines because their brand is well established. They are like the mall, housing all kinds of different stories updated hourly. You could spend you whole day reading at one of these sites and barely make a dent in all their content. Can you say that about your own site? Sites like these post more articles in a day than you will post all year. They don’t need Google or Yahoo.

But you do, if you want traffic.

Take this blogging challenge, if you currently post only a couple of times a week then write every day for the next week. Whatever amount you currently post double it for the next week and keep an eye on your traffic numbers, specifically the traffic coming from search engines. You will be surprised to see just how effective writing more can be. Give it a try and let me know your results in the comment section.